“Thanks for talking to me,” he said.
“Glad to,” Peter said. “Where would you like to start?”
“I’m…not sure.” He wasn’t freezing up this time. The surroundings, the connection of sitting beside Peter in person, able to meet his eyes—Tai could talk now. But doubt was sinking in, demanding an explanation what he thought he was doing here, how talking could possibly help him.
“Then may I ask some questions? Just to help me gauge where you are with all this.”
He shrugged and maintained his smooth expression, survival instincts buzzing at his core. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Who do you go to now, when it gets bad? Do you have one of us in your life—friend or family?”
“One of us—another bloodfiend? No.”
Peter turned toward him, waited for eye contact before he said, “Not even long distance?”
Tai shook his head.
“Then who do you talk to?”
“I have a couple friends who know what I am, and they’ve accepted me anyway. But I don’t—I’d never—I deal with this myself. I have for years, Peter. I’m under control.”
Peter set a hand on Tai’s shoulder and kept it there. “Good to know. That tells me a lot.”
Tai gave a mirthless laugh. “Oh yeah? Such as what?”
“Are you thirty yet?”
“Thirty-two.”
“And what happened in your teens, when the condition first presented?”
Tai squeezed his eyes shut against the flood of memory that threatened to drown him right then and there, hitting harder than the crash of the waterfall in front of them. His voice came calmly, naturally despite the flood. “I was told to work on myself. On control. So I did.”
“Were you given any tools to help with control?”
Did threats count? Probably not. “Peter, listen, we can talk about the…condition. Claire thinks I need some help. Maybe you can give me…I don’t know, tips or something. I’ll take them. But I’m not going to talk about my father.”
“Fair enough.” Peter squeezed his shoulder once, then released it. Acknowledging the boundary. Good. “Walk me through how it is for you.”
“You mean daily?”
“Sure.”
“I slake daily like every other vampire.”
“How often?”
Was this old guy for real? Tai stared him down, spoke slowly, firmly. “I slake every twenty-four hours. Like every other vampire.”
“Hmm. Okay. Tell me about the incident where Claire found out. She said it was about a month ago, but she didn’t go into detail. Wanted to leave that up to you.”
He could talk about this. Despite the skepticism that clung to him, he had committed to being here, to saying hard things. “Claire and I came upon a car accident, and we helped free someinjured humans from their vehicles. It was a lot of exertion, blood in the air, and afterward I… I don’t know what to call it, if there’s a term for what happens to us.”
“Well, there’s technical jargon likehematorexic episode, but I don’t find that helpful.” Peter’s mouth twitched with the hint of a smile.
“No,” Tai said.
“Colloquially, we bloodfiends prefer to call it an attack.”
