I blinked. “Bound? What do you mean,bound? Please specify before I panic.”
He turned away, perfectly casual about being both undeadandundressed. “You woke me. That… links us.”
“I’m sorry—what?”
He started walking toward the hall, unhurried, and I scurried after him. “No, no, you don’t just drop a‘we’re bound’bomb and then stroll away.What does that even mean?”
He stopped so suddenly I nearly plowed right into him. His back was to me, his shoulders rigid. When he spoke, his tone was even, but something about it felt carefully edited.
“You woke me,” he said again, quieter now. “That act created a tether between us. The link will not break easily.”
“Tether,” I repeated, like that would help it make sense.
He looked at the wall instead of me, jaw tight. “It means you should not run off before I understand the parameters of our situation.”
I laughed, because that’s what my body did when my brain short-circuited. That trait hadn’t endeared me to many people—hopefully it wouldn’t offend the vampire too much. “Right. Sure. I’ll just… not run away from the undead stranger I apparently have asoul cordwith.”
His gaze dropped to my feet. “You should not be walking barefoot on cold stone.”
I blinked at him. “That’s what you’re focusing on?”
He said nothing. I decided to ignore it, because my list of “unprocessed trauma events” was getting long.
“Okay,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “This isn’t going to work. You have to—whatever—untetherus, because I have to go teach third graders in six weeks at a new school, and I can’t exactly bring a terrifying vampire to Career Day.”
The look he gave me somehow managed to combine pity and irritation. “You believe I control it? If I could sever it, we would not be having this conversation.”
He was infuriatingly calm. Not cold, exactly. Just… steady. Like nothing I said could touch him. Like the world could collapse, and he’d still speak in complete sentences. I’d never met a man like that. It was impressiveandwildly annoying.
I stepped closer without meaning to. He shifted back half an inch. His eyes flicked to my throat, then away so fast I barely caught it.
“What’s a third grader?” he asked.
The question was so sincere I almost laughed through my panic.
“A student,” I said. “Children who are eight or nine years old. I teach them.”
“Teach,” he repeated carefully. “As in… educate?”
“Yes. Reading, math, spelling. Life lessons. I mainly try to keep them from eating glue.”
He studied me as if I was speaking a foreign language. “In my time, only the wealthy educated their children. The rest were sent to work.” His voice wasn’t wistful, softened with curiosity that almost sounded like reverence. “Do you teach wealthy children?”
“Some,” I said. “Some are better off than me. Some aren’t. It’s a mix. But all children go to school now.”
He seemed to consider that. “Times have changed.”
“You think?”
His voice stayed even, but there was a quiet restraint under it, like he’d practiced calm until it became armor. “The connection will calm itself if we remain near each other,” he said. “Distance will cause distress. That includes your… third-grade institution.”
My throat went dry.
I was bonded to a vampire. Anakedvampire.
This could not be real.
“Look,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “I don’t know what cosmic nonsense this is, but I’m on a healing journey. I’m journaling, crocheting, and eating cereal for dinner. I don’t have time to be spiritually leashed to Count Broodula.”
