Page 34 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

Julian’s eyes stay on me.

“People kept bringing casseroles, and someone kept offering them to me. She brought six of them out, one after another. She’d put a plate in front of me and touch my shoulder. Eventually she’d take it away untouched, and come back later with something else.”

Julian tilts his head slightly.

“And the seventh?”

My head snaps around to look at him so fast my neck hurts.

“How did you know there was a seventh?”

“Because you said six,” he says quietly. “And you’ve been holding your breath ever since.”

I release the breath.

“The seventh one I ate.” The words scrape a little on the way out. “I don’t know why. It didn’t fix anything. I just remember looking down and thinking that someone had decided I was still going to eat.”

My eyes sting, and I look over at the candle.

“I was already cooking by then. I thought I understood food.” I rub my thumb along the edge of the blanket. “But I think that was the first time I understood that sometimes feeding someone has almost nothing to do with whether they’re hungry.”

I glance towards the kitchen, towards Gran’s table, and then over at the cocoa Julian hasn’t touched.

“It’s a way of saying you’re here. I’m here. You matter enough for me to put something in front of you.”

Julian doesn’t tell me it isn’t. He doesn’t tell me my parents would be proud. He doesn’t tell me everything happens for a reason or that grief makes us stronger or any of the other things people say when they are desperate to get you safely to the other side of a painful conversation.

He just sits beside me. Quiet and present and still holding his untouched cocoa. Somehow that feels more like comfort than comfort usually does.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says.

I pull the blanket tighter around me. “You’re supposed to say something comforting.”

“I know what people say.”

Something in his voice makes me look at him.

“I have heard most of it, but none of it was ever any use.”

“You’ve lost people too,” I say softly.

“Yes.”

“A lot?”

His face changes. Not much. Julian never gives you much. But for one second I see something behind it that is far older and deeper than the room we’re sitting in.

“Enough,” he says.

A hundred questions rise up, and I don’t ask one of them. Not because I’m being good, but because whatever that one word cost him, it was more than I have any right to spend. I’d rather sit here with him than be right about anything.

The storm eases sometime after midnight. It doesn’t stop. It merely retreats from end of civilization to deeply unpleasant. The candles have burned low. The room has gone soft at the edges. Julian leans forward to move one farther from the curtain. His hand crosses the candlelight.

Long, strong fingers. Pale skin. No watch.

The flame catches his eyes when he straightens, and for one second the dark brown isn’t brown at all. There’s red underneath it, deep and warm. Then he turns his head, and it’s gone.

I don’t look away. Instead, my attention drops to his mouth. I have been doing this for weeks. At the Salt & Sage. At Harbor Books. At the Lantern. At the grange. Looking at his mouth, then dragging my eyes somewhere respectable.