Page 27 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“I just wish Black Harbor had something mysterious to investigate.”

“The most mysterious thing to happen in the last twenty years was the Aldens’ garage.”

She immediately assumes an expression of complete innocence. “That was arson.”

“That was a space heater. Doris has never forgiven you.”

Somebody down the table starts in about the church roof, and we both concentrate on the ham. Everything is fine.

Then the room does that small hitch. It’s not quite silence. Black Harbor is incapable of actual silence in a public building. It’s more like a ripple, a collective half-turn towards the door, half the conversations in the room missing the same beat.

I know before I look. My whole body knows before I look, which is something I choose to ignore.

Julian is standing in the doorway in a dark grey coat, and he’s scanning the room. I understand with shocking clarity that he isn’t scanning it the way a stranger checks an unfamiliar space. He’s looking for something specific.

Then he finds me, and something eases around his eyes, and some tension I hadn’t noticed he was carrying goes out of his shoulders. It’s not a big thing. Julian doesn’t do big things. He immediately starts towards me.

When he came to my dinner party, I thought the most unsettling thing about Julian Volkov was that he didn’t eat. I was wrong. The most unsettling thing about Julian Volkov is watching six feet four inches of broad-shouldered, dark-coated man cross a crowded room while looking directly at you.

My face gets hot. Something warm and heavy turns over low in my stomach, and I want, with my whole ridiculous body, to be closer to him than I am.

Peg Halloran slides down the bench before he gets there. She doesn’t say anything. She just picks up her plate and moves two feet to the left, like the whole town has been holding that space open for weeks and she’s tired of waiting for him to take it.

“Penny,” Julian says.

“You came to the harvest supper.”

“I was told you’d be here.” He says it perfectly plainly. He doesn’t dress it up. He takes off his coat, folds it over one arm, and looks at me. “I hoped you’d be here.”

Across the room, Theo catches my eye. Very slowly, with great ceremony, he lifts one hand and taps an imaginary piece of chalk against an imaginary board. I consider throwing a roll at him.

Julian sits beside me. And stays there.

I keep track of it at first, the way you’d keep track of an alibi. He could get up. There are fifty people in this room and at least twenty of them would happily claim an hour of him. Mabel has been trying to get him to attend Historical Society meetings since June. Wendell wants to talk boats. Harriet wants to know whether he has any brothers. The mayor wants money for the roof. There is an entire room full of Black Harbor in front of him.

Instead, Julian turns his shoulders towards me. He asks about the anniversary lunch and remembers that Fern wanted whipped cream on the parsnips, because I mentioned it once, days ago, and he tucked it away the way he tucks everything away.

“She surrendered,” I tell him. “There will be no whipped cream.”

“A victory for root vegetables everywhere.”

“June Purley is furious.”

“I don’t know June Purley.”

“Jarred garlic.”

His expression goes grave. “I understand.”

Eunice Ballard catches his attention sometime during the ham. This isn’t difficult. Eunice has moved her folding chair closer to our end of the table and is talking about her back surgery to anyone within range.

“I had Walter then,” she says. “He drove me to Portland every week for six weeks. He was a terrible driver, but a good man.”

“What did he drive?” Julian asks. The question is so unexpected that Eunice freezes.

“A green Buick,” she says, and something happens to her face. “A green Buick,” she repeats. “Ugliest car you ever saw. He loved that thing.”

“Then he had taste as well.”