“Right,” I said, grinding my teeth. “Don’t worry about that.” I sighed and pushed harder with my gaze. “Listen, Paul. In addition to the footage, there’s one other thing: you’ll try quitting smoking again. And when you feel stress, you’ll…” I paused, frowning. What was a human, life-affirming alternative to smoking? “…take a short walk.”
“But the cravings—”
“You don’t crave cigarettes anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Instead, you crave… chewing gum. Or maybe a bit of hard candy. Or a cough drop. Your choice, really. But never cigarettes. Starting… err, right now.”
A little shaky on the dismount, maybe. But I mean, why the hell not?
Then I broke the compulsive spell on him.
Paul blinked, then gave me a rueful smile. “Right, I’ll grab you that footage.” He paused. “Why did you say you needed it?”
I arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t.”
“Right, of course.” Then he turned and hurried into the back area.
I followed him into a small manager’s office, scowling to myself.
First, I hadn’t been able to watch Eli accept my vampirism without knowing the full truth—even though I’d known he wouldn’t react well—and now I was standing in an automotive parts store, feeling bad about hypnotizing strangers to get what I wanted, when I’d never done felt that way before.
Hell, I was now doingfavorsfor them… out of the kindness of my heart.
Except I didn’t have a heart.
Did I?
Paul absently fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tossed it in the trash, all without seeming fully aware he was doing it.
And Eli was ever-present in my mind.
When he walked out the door last night, it had hurt. Nothing had hurt in hundreds of years. Nothing had frightened me, either. Or made me feel even a speck of pity. Or even genuine anger. And since meeting the young doctor with the strangely intense dark eyes—like they had seen eons rather than decades—I had felt all of the above. And my motivation for hunting Joseph’s killer was all wrong, too.
And underneath it all, I just wanted him. I wanted Eli back. I wanted him to look at me and seeme. Not someone he ought to have been afraid of.
It was a poison. A sickness. A plague.
But the most frightening thing of all was that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted it to stop. For the first time since I had become a vampire, the world around me seemed like it belonged to other people too. Like everything around me actually mattered—just because it did, inherently—in some way I wouldn’t have beenable to explain, even if I’d had another eight hundred years to try.
And that was all because of Doctor De La Cruz. Because of Eli.
He had somehow given me back the world.
Tears sprang to my eyes at the thought, and I let out a choked sob without any warning at all.
Paul looked at me strangely. “You okay, buddy?”
I let out a startled laugh at his question.
He actually seemed like he meant it. And oddly enough, I was abruptlygladI’d done him a favor—and perhaps added years onto his lifespan by banishing his desire to smoke. Because Paul seemed like a nice enough guy, didn’t he? I didn’t even blame him for reaching for the gun.
The world needed more folks like Paul.
“Not really,” I told him, letting out another high-pitched giggle.
I sounded halfway to madness. And I still wouldn’t have traded it.
