Page 58 of Blood and Bells

“Bend them. For you,” she says. “Important distinction.”

“It’s not,” I say. “He found a loophole.”

Marcy tilts her head. “And that’s the problem?”

“Yes.”

“No,” she says. “That’s not his problem. That’s your problem.”

I frown at her. “They’re the same thing.”

“They are absolutely not the same thing.” She takes a sip of her drink, entirely too calm about this. “The problem is that he made you feel safe enough to believe him. The thing you’re struggling with is that it’s made you think that maybe you shouldn’t have.”

“I don’t—” I start, then stop, because I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence.

“You don’t like that he made a choice you wouldn’t have made,” she says. “And then stood there and explained it like it was reasonable.”

“Yes,” I say, too quickly.

“And you don’t like that part of you understands why he did it.”

I hesitate.

Which is answer enough.

Marcy smiles, small and knowing. “There it is.”

“I don’t like any of this,” I mutter.

“No,” she agrees. “It’s messy. And you like things to be…” she gestures vaguely and then continues, “less messy. What a shock that professional event planners happen to be type A personalities.”

“I run events, Marcy. My entire job is making things not messy.”

“Shame your emotions disagree with you.”

A cinnamon bun comes apart under my fingers in sticky spirals, shedding onto the plate like evidence. Across from me, Marcy twirls one dark curl around her finger and waits with the patience of someone who already knows the ending and is enjoying my slower route to it.

“I just—” I stop, trying to get the shape of it right. “If he’d just…told me. If he’d said, ‘this is what I’m going to do, and you might not like it, but I think it’s necessary.’ I still wouldn’t have liked it, but at least it would have been honest.”

“Instead, he did it and then explained it afterwards.”

“Yes.”

“Like a man who thinks the explanation is the important part.”

“Exactly.”

Marcy leans back in her chair, considering me over a drift of milk foam dusted with nutmeg like it’s a particularly festive interrogation.

“So you’re not upset that he’s a vampire. It’s that he acted like one in a way that didn’t match what he’d told you he’d be.”

“Yes.”

“And then he tried to logic his way out of it.”

“Yes.”

She taps her spoon twice against the side of her mug, a small, decisive punctuation mark. “Okay. That’s fair.”