“Great. I can’t wait.”
Jon went to the kitchen in a hurry because he didn’t want the crêpes to get cold. Once they were seated, Barion put the ones with the Parma ham on their plates and Jon couldn’t suppress a moan when he got the first taste of salty crunchiness mixed with soft dough and the almost biting flavor of the cheese. Barion sure knew what was good. They ate the first crêpes in deferential silence, showing the excellent food the respect it deserved. Before they started with the spinach crêpes, Jon asked Barion, “How should I introduce you, by the way? Do you have a gamer name you’d like to use?”
Barion sighed. “I’ve been thinking forever about it, trying to come up with clever puns or names but it seems I’m not that creative. So it’s going to be my WoW name, Big B.”
Jon bit back a chuckle. “Big B isn’t so bad. It certainly fits.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Which reminds me, what does PLM stand for? Did you know there’s tons of theories out there about your name? Some of them quite disturbing, I might add.”
Jon laughed. “I know. People can get quite inventive.” He turned serious. “Nobody but me knows what the letters stand for. Well, Grann could probably guess it if she knew about the name.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Jon. Keeping secrets is fine. That just makes me more interested in getting to know you better.” Barion winked.
If Jon hadn’t known better, he would have thought Barion was flirting with him, but that couldn’t be the case because he knew from Sammy that Barion was looking for his mate, not some quick fling or short affair. Jon didn’t even know if he wanted to have one of those. Technically, he was looking for something serious as well, though he doubted zombies had fated mates. At least he’d never heard of it, and he had been too chicken to ask Grann, in case she decided to take matters in her own hands and find him someone. Her meddling was bad enough as it was. Despite all those logical thoughts running through his mind, Jon felt the urge to tell Barion this secret he kept more out of habit than anything else.
“You can’t tell anybody.”
Barion put one hand over where Jon thought the heart was located with demons and held the other one out to him, his pinkie finger extended. “Pinkie swear.”
That was so ridiculous that Jon had to chuckle. Then he hooked his own pinkie with Barion’s to seal the deal. The sudden heat surging through him from the point where their skin met reminded him of how cold he always was, but for the first time, it didn’t bother him. Perhaps because his thoughts were occupied otherwise. “Pinkie swear.”
They shook and after unhooking their fingers, Jon took a deep breath. “PLM stands for Papa Legba’s Miracle. It’s what Grann called me after I was resurrected. She says Papa Legba works in mysterious ways and him waking me along with her had to have some secret reason. We don’t know what that reason is yet, though.”
“Well, I have to admit that’s kind of anticlimactic.” Barion pretended to be disappointed. Jon wasn’t fooled though, because the laughter in his eyes gave the demon away. “You sure it’s not some secret code for the end of the world or something?”
“I’d say me coming back from the dead is spectacular enough. I could be wrong, though.”
“It is pretty impressive, I guess.” Barion shrugged.
“You guess?”
“Demons are immortal…and more or less indestructible. So yes, I guess because I don’t have a frame of reference there.”
For a moment Jon was speechless. “Now I understand what Maribel meant when she said demons are different.”
Barion shrugged. “We are. Doesn’t mean we don’t want the same things as everybody else.”
“Like a mate.” Jon had picked up on the longing in Barion’s voice.
“A mate, friends, love, companionship. I know demons aren’t necessarily associated with those things.”
“It’s okay, Barion. Most people think all zombies want is a brain to eat.”
“Don’t you?” Barion winked.
“Only once a week. And I have to say I’m not particularly fond of human brains. I prefer calf or pig.”
“What is so bad about human brains? I’m asking purely out of interest, of course.”
“Of course. Well, first there’s the whole ‘where to get it without murdering somebody and drawing a crowd with guns and pitchforks’ issue. Plus, for reasons unbeknownst to me, people don’t like it when the brains of their deceased are taken out, even though the Egyptians have done it for thousands of years. And lastly, human brain tastes strange. Grann says it has to do with the spirit that has lived inside the body, but frankly, I think it has more to do with what humans eat these days.”
“So no human brains for you.”
Jon shuddered. “Not if I can help it.” He used his fork to get one of the crêpes with the strawberries and cream out. It was delicious, the ripe strawberries so sweet that it was almost too much. Almost. “So good. Thank you for bringing these.”
“It was my pleasure. And thank you for letting me play with you. That’s an honor.”
“About that, is it okay for you if we do it live? People dig that and it would be a nice surprise for my subscribers.”
