Around eleven the crowd dwindled, and as if on cue, one of her favorite customers walked in. Claire waved Teresa off and took down a glass to fill it with type B+, Peter Updike’s favorite.
She held out the same drink he’d been ordering every Monday and Wednesday for the last year and a half. “Good morning, Peter.”
“Morning, Claire. Thank you.” Peter drained the glass and smiled, showing his fangs. “Thanks.”
Twothank-you’s from Peter could mean trouble. She leaned her arms on the bar and studied him until he gave a low chuckle.
“I’m all right. Well, I mean I’m decent. I had a rough anniversary this week.”
For a two-hundred-seventy-nine-year-old vampire, a rough anniversary could mean almost anything. Claire set her hand on his, and he looked up with pure honesty in his peridot eyes.
“When you say ‘decent,’ do you mean…I should worry?” She spoke quietly, though Peter had told her about his struggle at this very counter when he first began coming in.
“No, kid, I’ve been careful. You know I’m always careful.”
She nodded. He had to be, in a way other vampires didn’t. Peter was one in a thousand, a vampire whose thirst raged so hard it could overwhelm his control, cause him to crave blood from the vein.
“It’ll ease up in a few days,” he said. “Until then I’ve just got to be extremely regimented, no more than twenty hours between slaking.”
Curiosity tugged her mouth into a frown that she tried to hide behind cleaning a few glasses. She wanted to understand this rare affliction better, mostly because Peter had grown to matter to her. Hazard of the job—most customers mattered over time, as they told little snippets of their life to her over their drinks.
“You can ask me, you know,” he said with a smile—fangless now that he’d finished slaking.
“Do you actually…?” No, better not to ask. He was a customer as well as a friend.
“Do I actually look at humans as prey, when the thirst gets bad?”
She stared at him and allowed her mouth to fall open.
He chuckled, a low musical sound, and shrugged. “It’s an obvious question, kid.”
“You don’t have to answer it,” Claire said.
“The answer is yes.”
Oh. She bit her lip, looked away, didn’t want to judge…but humans were not prey. They were people, no less than vampires and wolves were people, regardless of their physicalvulnerability. Yeah, she razzed Ember sometimes, called hervanillawhich wasn’t the most polite term. But she could never view humans as…a slaking source. A pumping heart, veins and arteries filled with what she needed to quench the thirst.
No. Never. She’d never been that thirsty in her life, even one winter night her car had spun out into a ditch, and the ensuing hassle had caused her a full twenty-seven hours between slakings.
“That’s what it means, being a bloodfiend,” Peter said quietly. “I could sugarcoat it for you, but…” He shrugged.
“Sugarcoating isn’t my style.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m glad you told me, Peter. Really. I’m glad to know you better, and…and if you ever feel…”
“Dangerous?” He glanced around the room, but at the moment he was the only customer. He leaned toward her across the bar, his eyes flashing like gemstones, his brown hair curling around his ears, his hands tucked into his elbows as he propped his arms to mirror Claire’s pose. “I did this week. But we’re careful, all of us who go through this.”
“Because you know so many of you?” She cocked an eyebrow. If they were one in a thousand, there might be ten total in the entire city.
“I know two others. We’re not local to each other, but we’ve formed a long-distance support group.”
“Oh wow, really?” She reached out again, this time to squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry, Peter. I don’t mean to be such an annoying cynic about everything.”
“A little cynicism doesn’t bother me, kid. You’re pretty much a natural at this bartending thing, you know. Getting even us relics to open up our life stories.” He grinned.
Claire rolled her eyes. “If I serve so many relics, then y’all aren’t opening up to me at all. A measly half-dozen of you have come clean in my bar.”
