Warin’s frown deepened. “Liv, I am serious. You are not to get involved. Do you understand?”
Well, wasn’t he Mr. Domineering? Get a little corpse blood in him and the polite young man I’d let into my home earlier in the evening turned all patronizing. I rolled my eyes and grabbed my drawing kit again.
“Right, whatever. So what does it mean to Compel someone?”
If he was suspicious of my quick capitulation, he didn’t show it. “It’s a hypnosis, of a sort.”
“And you use it to make people forget what you are?” I asked, arching my eyebrows at him. That sounded pretty fucking creepy. “What else can you do with it?”
His looked down, and I resumed my drawing to capture the way his dark eyelashes shadowed his cheekbones. “We can capture the mind of any human. Make them do whatever we ask. How long it lasts depends on the strength of the vampire and the will of the human.”
“That…” My pencil came to a halt as I stared at him. “I’m sorry, are you telling me you can… mindfuck people?”
“Yes. If humans truly understood what we were, what we can do, it wouldn’t be our physical strength you feared.” He looked up at me then, capturing my gaze with the magnetic pull of his. “Would it?”
“I…” I frowned, unable to ignore the icy tendril traveling up my spine when I remembered all the little things he’d told me about his kind. Things most humans didn’t know—shouldn’t know. “Are you going to Compel me to forget?”
“No.” He didn’t move his gaze from mine. “I can’t. You’re the only human who’s ever been able to resist my Compulsion.”
“Oh, that’s… Wait, you tried?” Mild outrage made me scowl at him.
“Of course I did. You know about our weakness for silver, you know the location of my home, benefits of ingesting vampire blood…”
“Pure safety procedure?” I asked, still feeling kinda miffed about his apparent attempt to mindfuck me without my consent.
“Yes. And that’s why you can never tell anyone what you know. Other vampires are unlikely to let you wander around with so much information and a free mind.” He finally released my gaze, settling back into the couch as if the matter was fully discussed.
But I only had more questions.
“But why? Why can’t you Compel me? I’m as ordinary as ordinary can be,” I said, frowning at the vampire.
“There is nothing ordinary about you, Liv,” he said softly, flicking those long eyelashes up to look at me once more with the most intense stare I’d ever received in my life. “I do not know why you can resist my Compulsion, but I know you are far from ordinary. I’ve known it since we first met.”
Predictably, the deepest blush of my lifetime heated up my entire face, until I was pretty sure I was glowing like a lighthouse. Before I could think of a joking deflection, a sharp shrill cut through my living room.
I jolted, dropping my pencil in my lap.
Warin slid his hand into his pants’ pocket and withdrew his fancy smartphone. Faster than my eye could follow, he’d lifted it to his ear. “Yes? Yes. I’m on my way.” He hung up without another word.
“Running late?” I asked, glancing at my own phone. To my surprise, it had been four hours since he’d arrived. Huh.
“Yes. My apologies—I will have to leave now.” He got to his feet, but turned toward me before he’d gotten more than a few steps toward the door. “Would it be acceptable if I come back another night?”
I smiled—I’d been low-key worried he wouldn’t want to repeat the evening after the blood incident. “Yes, you have to. I’m nowhere near done with my drawings. I have time tomorrow night, if you do?”
He frowned, regret flickering across his pale features. “It would be hard to fit it in tomorrow night.”
I reached out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
He obeyed, eyebrows raised in question.
I quickly typed in my number and gave it back to him. “There. Give me a call when you have time, and we’ll figure something out.”
Warin nodded. “I will. Thank you for tonight, Liv.”
I grimaced and got up to see him out. “Yeah, sorry again about almost poisoning you. I promise, I’m done attempting to play Better Housekeeping hostess. You’ll have to bring your own dinner next time.”
I didn’t miss the look of brief relief on the vampire’s face as he turned to leave.
8
I drove back to the supermarket after work the next day.
The same old man who’d served me the previous day was minding the butcher’s counter again. He lit up in a smile of recognition when I stopped in front of him, shopping basket over one arm.
“Ah, how was the sausage-making, dear?”
“Not good, I’m afraid.” I leaned on the counter and gave a dramatic sigh. “It tasted off. I was wondering if there might have been something off with the blood? Grandma always made it with very fresh ingredients, and this was just not up to par.”
“Oh dear, that’s a shame. I can assure you there’s nothing wrong with the blood, but…” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose it’s possible our new suppliers treat it slightly different before they package it for shipping.”
“Oh, you have a new supplier?” I perked up. “Could I get the name and address for them? To give them customer feedback, I mean.”
The butcher hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. “Yes, I suppose that would be all right. You’re certainly no vampire.”
I snorted. “No, can’t say that I am. What, are the undead trying to infiltrate pig’s blood suppliers?”
“You would be surprised,” he said, face grave. Leaning over the counter, he whispered, “I’ve had five colleagues across the city have their storerooms raided just this past month. The only thing missing was blood. Now, I might not know much about the undead plague, but I do know the city hasn’t been overrun by thieving sausage makers.”
“Oh, goodness me,” I said, not having problems getting my face to display a sufficient amount of shock at this news. Why on Earth were vampires raiding butchers? Chicago’s murder rate certainly hadn’t dropped, and vampires certainly were accountable for a percentage of it. Maybe they were like Warin and didn’t drink directly from humans? If someone had truly contaminated the animal blood supply, they were targeting peaceful vampires, rather than the ones who hunted humans. That seemed… unusually cruel. And counterintuitive.
The butcher nodding knowingly at my shocked expression. “Mmhm. Those filthy monsters are everywhere. The general population likes to try and forget they exist, but they’re out there. Just waiting for a moment’s inattentiveness to pounce.”
Waiting to pounce on a butcher’s supply of pig’s blood so they could eat without hurting humans, it seemed. I nodded empathetically nonetheless.
“Let me get you that address for your letter,” he said, nodding as if he saw in me a Friend of the Cause. “It ain’t right that we can’t make a good blood sausage because of those monsters.”
* * *