Page 150 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

I don’t move.

“You made one for me,” he says. “Again and again. I cannot taste any of this. I will never taste any of it. But I know why it matters to you. I know what that casserole meant. I know why you talk about your grandmother’s garlic bread as though it was a member of the family. I know Lucy Carver believes those orange things constitute food, against all available evidence.”

“They do.”

“They stain silver.”

“That’s how you know they’re good.”

His mouth curves. “I knew what I wanted to give you. I simply could not make it by myself. So I asked.”

I reach across the table, and he gives me his hand. For a little while, neither of us says anything. The clock ticks behind him.

Eventually I look around. “The room’s different.”

“Yes.”

All eighteen chairs are around the table. Empty tonight, except for ours, but not stored. Ready.

“Are you going to use it?”

Julian follows my gaze. “I thought I might ask Theo up. And Mrs. Libby. Eventually.”

“Together?”

“I am not doing this twice.”

I laugh. “She’ll inspect everything.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“Theo will find something wrong with the fireplace.”

“He already has.”

“Of course he has.”

Julian looks around the room. “There is a great deal of this house I haven’t opened in a very long time. I’m told I don’t have to do all of it at once.”

“Who told you that?”

“Bess.”

I smile. “She’s right. There’s no rush.”

He returns the smile. “No rush at all.”

We stay at the table after that. I eat orange cheese curls out of eighteenth-century silver and drink the wine he poured for me. He tells me about the first casserole, which apparently Dot fed to her chickens after saying well in a way that will haunt him for decades. I tell him Lucy is going to make the cheese curls a permanent requirement now. The candles burn lower, and outside the windows the last of the light leaves the water.

Eventually Julian stands and comes around the table. He holds out his hand, and I take it.

We go to the window at the front of the room. Black Harbor is below us, lights scattered along Water Street and around the harbor. I can see the Widow’s Lantern and the Historical Society and the dark line of the breakwater. Behind us, the dining room clock ticks.

“Penny.”

“Mm?”

“Stay with me.”