Page 10 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“I ate nothing,” he says, hoisting two chairs at once like they weigh nothing, which, for those forearms, they may not. “I owe you labor.”

I open my mouth to argue but Mabel catches my eye over a stack of dessert plates and gives me a look that says, plain as print, let the man be useful, dear, it’s the only way some of them know how to say thank you. So I let him. I let him carry chairs and gather goblets. Then he starts on the dishes, standing at my sink in his rolled sleeves with the candlelight going gold on the water. He washes my grandmother’s good glasses one at a time and sets each one down like it might shatter if he breathed on it wrong.

He’s careful with everything. I notice that. The way he handles the glasses, and the way he returned that wooden horse with both hands. A man used to being stronger than the things around him. A man who’s learned to hold the world gently on purpose.

I dry beside him and this is where I discover that Julian Volkov with his sleeves up is a genuine problem for me. His forearms are…substantial. Pale and smooth and corded with muscles that move under his skin every time he turns a goblet in the water. I am standing eighteen inches away with a dish towel, and all my years of professional composure have left the building.

“You have gone quiet,” he observes.

“I’m concentrating.”

“On the drying?”

“It’s precision work.”

“Mm,” says Julian, and hands me another goblet, and our fingers touch.

He’s cold. I knew that already, but knowing it and feeling it are different things. His hands have been in water hot enough to make me wince this whole time, and they’re still cool. Not clammy or unpleasant, but cool and dry and smooth, like the inside of a stone church in summer. My body registers it before my brain does.

I nearly drop the goblet.

“Careful,” he says. His hand comes under mine, steadying me, and for one second we are both holding the same piece of my grandmother’s crystal. He is close enough that I can see that his eyes are dark brown and faintly, impossibly red, like the last inch of wine in a glass held up to a candle.

Then he lets go.

“Ten,” he says.

“You’re counting the glasses?”

“I count most things.” He turns back to the sink. “It is a poor habit and I have had a long time to acquire it.”

Theo leaves at eleven with the promise of broth and an actual handshake, gripping Julian’s hand like he means it. He shakes it like Julian’s a normal guy who came to a normal dinner, which I think might be exactly why Julian shakes it so seriously back. Mabel leaves at half past, pinning me with a look on the way out.

“He didn’t eat a thing,” she murmurs.

“I noticed.”

“It’s eleven thirty and he’s still here.”

“I noticed that too.”

Mabel’s eyes flick past me to where Julian is carefully returning the dried glasses to the wooden armoire. Something works behind those cat-eye glasses, some old, sharp thought turning over.

“So did I, dear.”

Lucy leaves last, her camera bag over her shoulder, and she doesn’t say anything at all, which from Lucy is a whole paragraph. She just looks at me, and looks at Julian putting away the final glasses. Then she looks back at me, and raises one eyebrow so high it nearly leaves her face, and lets herself out into the dark.

“Can I ask you something,” I say after she leaves, “that isn’t about food?”

“You may ask me anything.” A pause. “I make no promises regarding answers.”

“That’s the least reassuring sentence anyone’s said in this building.”

“It is honest, though.”

“That’s worse.” I hang the towel over the rail. “Why did you come tonight? Really. You’ve said no to Mabel three times, and Mabel is the single most difficult woman in this county to say no to. She once got a state senator to reshelve nonfiction.”

Julian is quiet for long enough that I think I’ve stepped over something.