Page 52 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

A pause.

“That was my intention.”

Oh.

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Very good.”

Unable to resist, I cross the kitchen and kiss him. Not like on the counter. Just once. Just because I can. When I step back, his eyes stay on mine.

“I would walk you home, but if I walk you home tonight I will not leave.”

“I know,” I say. “Sunday.”

“Sunday.”

He leaves. I lock up my building and stand outside in the cold for considerably longer than locking a door requires.

I’ve spent weeks inviting Julian Volkov into my life. Apparently he’s decided it’s his turn.

He’s never made me wait for an answer.

Tonight, I don’t make him wait either.

CHAPTER 11

“Say it again,” Lucy demands.

“No.”

“Say it the way he said it.”

“I’ve said it four times.”

“And I’ve made the same noise four times, which is the arrangement,” she says. She is cross-legged in the middle of my bed with my coffee in one hand and a curling iron in the other, which is a combination I have asked her not to attempt since 2016. “Go.”

I look at the ceiling. “He said, ‘I have been asked to attend a benefit at the Maritime Museum on Sunday. I would ordinarily send money and remain at home.’”

“And then…”

“And then he said, ‘May I ask you to accompany me.’”

Lucy puts her face in a pillow and screams again. Even muffled by the pillow, it’s the kind of scream that would have brought Denny over from the boatyard if he heard it.

“He didn’t say it like a question,” I tell the ceiling. “That’s the trouble. He said it like a sentence he’d been practicing.”

“He wrote it down first.”

“He absolutely wrote it down first.”

“Where’d he get the second ticket?”

“From Mabel. At her desk at the Historical Society, at two in the afternoon, with the door open.”

Lucy sets the curling iron down very slowly, which is how I know she’s understood the implications. “So everyone knows.”