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“Blackwood Place?”

“The name of the house, young man.”

I look past Anna to where Clive is standing, arms crossed. He’s not frowning, but he’s not smiling either, and he doesn’t say anything else.

“Oh. I didn’t know it had a name.” Also, is he going to keep calling me “young man”? I’m not a fan.

“It was named after the family that built it. Do you have any food allergies?”

“Nope! I’m a pretty good eater.” I smile broadly at him.

He doesn’t smile back.

Chapter 8

It’s not until after we drop Nisha off and are headed to the Association that Cat and I can talk. Nisha, thankfully, wasn’t too critical of my blunders. The only thing she said was that I’d picked up some bad habits from spending so much time around humans and that I might want to work on unlearning them. I’d smiled and agreed while secretly cursing Cat for not telling me anything I needed to know before I walked into that meeting.

Cat waits for me to switch from the back seat to the front before she pulls out of Nisha’s driveway. We head to the end of the street, and she puts on her left blinker while she waits for a break in traffic.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she prompts.

“I’m so fucking pissed at you.”

She laughs, damn her. “Why? I just helped you get a job most people can only dream of.”

I think about pointing out that they can only dream of it because they don’t believe vampires exist, but there’s no point in getting off topic. “I’ve never been so unprepared for something in my life, Cat, and that’s counting the time I accidentally walked into an exam room for Advanced Physics instead of Renaissance Lit.”

“I remember that. I still can’t believe you sat the whole exam. Why didn’t you leave when you realised you were in the wrong room?”

I’ve been asked that question many times, and I’ve never had a good answer. The truth is, I hate to back down from a challenge, and in the heat of the moment, taking an exam for a STEM subject I knew nothing about seemed like the ultimate challenge. One I failed miserably, of course.

“Don’t try to distract me. Why didn’t you prepare me for any of that?”

Sighing, she pulls out onto Toorak Road, almost cutting off a tradie in a ute who smashes his horn. Cat flips him off in the rearview mirror and admits, “I honestly didn’t think of it. It’s hard to understand what you don’t actually know, because I’ve always known it. Like… who taught you how to shake hands?”

“What do you mean? Nobody taught me; that’s just something… Oh.” I get it now. My whole life, I’ve seen people shaking hands when they meet—my parents, teachers, characters in media. It’s something I learned passively, and it would never occur to me to tell someone new to my culture that they should offer to shake hands when they meet people. I guess it’s the same for Cat with vampire customs.

“I’ll try to do better, but there’s a lot for you to learn. Anyway, maybe it’s better this way.”

“Better how?”

“Well, what would you have done if I’d told you never to touch or offer a touch to any vampire except your employer?”

“I would have asked why.”

“And when I told you that it’s a social custom that was put in place to protect feeders because vampires are dangerous?”

Oh. “I would have piked out,” I admit. “Are you serious? Dangerous how?”

The car jerks slightly as she whips her head around to give me an incredulous look. “They’re vampires, Adz. They’re predators with heightened strength and speed, and we’re their prey.”

What the fuck? “That’s definitely something you should have mentioned before! I just agreed to work for someone who considers me prey, for fuck’s sake.”

“Just like me,” she points out. “You’ll be fine; it’s not like it used to be. That’s why feeder families and the Association exist—to make things safer for both species. These days, it wouldn’t get you killed if you shook hands with a vampire, but it does tell them you have no freaking clue about customs and traditions, which is weird for a legacy.”

“And we’ve told them I’m a legacy, so we don’t want to get caught in the lie.” Ugh.

“It’s not a lie. You are a legacy. You just didn’t get the education you should have.”