Page 68

That was not good.

Not when we were launching merch.

Not when Mr. Lane was putting so much pressure on this show succeeding.

“Again,” Silas said through the radio, “that is not love. Those are hormones. Next caller.”

I hit the call button before I could talk myself out of it.

“We have Madison,” Jack announced.

Here we go! #SilMad4Life

“Are you ever intimate with a partner?” I asked. I blushed alone in the storage room for asking such a personal question.

“Are we talking about sharing thoughts and feelings with someone, or having sex? Humans can be amusingly imprecise about that distinction.”

“Sex.”

“Are you asking if, in all my years on Earth, I have had sex?”

“No. Well, yes, I guess. You are always telling people that they are confusing hormones and love. Which makes me wonder if maybe you don’t know the difference yourself.”

Omg. She went there. Go, Mads.

No way is that guy getting cracked. He talks like a Victorian dude. Nothing sexy about that.

I disagreed entirely with that last one. I was pretty sure I could listen to Silas philosophize about just about anything and be practically panting and writhing while he did so.

“I’ve had sex, yes.”

“Do vampires feel dopamine, oxytocin, and norepinephrine?”

“We still retain our human sexual hormones, yes.”

“So, you know that warm, pleasant, close feeling after sex.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t sound so sure about that, but I was going to ignore it.

“Well, as someone who knows that feeling and the feeling of love, let me tell you—they are entirely different.”

“Or you have simply convinced yourself of that. The placebo effect is a true medical phenomenon.”

“What was her name?”

“Whose name?”

“The woman who ruined you,” I said, trying to keep my voice as gentle as possible. I knew ‘ruined’ was a loaded word, but Silas was full of incendiary language himself.

There was a long pause. Long enough for me to wonder if he’d simply cut me off without a word. Long enough to become suspicious.

“There wasn’t one. That’s rather the point.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Luckily, I don’t need you to believe something for it to be true.”