“When I feel thirsty, I’ve got to slake as soon as possible. It’s that simple—and that hard. In the beginning at least, it’s going to feel like giving in.”
He was quiet a minute, borrowing her cue of sipping his latte to shield a surge of feeling she couldn’t help seeing anyway. He tasted his scone and nodded his satisfaction. Claire let the silence settle and hoped it bolstered him.
“So,” he said after a moment. “I, uh, I thought it would be easy to say everything I want you to know, but it’s…”
Claire reached across the table and took his hand. He looked up and met her eyes, and his were glinting as always, now with a furrow of disquiet between them.
“Take your time,” she said. “I’m here.”
He nodded. “Um, another thing… I never say anything, but I have a hard time keeping warm. Not like ‘don’t we all, vampires are basically reptiles’ but like…too cold to think sometimes. Peter said this is a bloodfiend thing too.”
He went on to describe an entire lifetime of ignoring his discomfort, his needs, of berating himself for something as simple as being the coldest person in the room. He didn’t seem to realize he was describing deliberate self-neglect, and Claire waited for him to complete the picture he was painting, to tell her at lastwhyhe had never allowed himself the simplest solution. She wanted to hug Peter Updike for all but ordering her boyfriend to invest in a whole lot of blankets.
“Ignoring the cold makes the attacks worse,” he said. “According to Peter.”
“Thank goodness for Peter,” she said.
He smiled.
Claire finished her espresso, popped the last bite of croissant into her mouth, and pushed aside her napkin and mug to take both his hands. She leaned across the table, propped on her elbows.
“Tai, where did you learn to ignore the cold?”
He gripped her hands so hard, if she were human he’d have cracked her bones. She gripped with equal strength.
“I’ve never talked about this part,” he said. “Never said the words aloud. To anybody.”
“Until today, to Peter?”
“No,” he said. “Not this, not to Peter. Even Ryker knows only an overview, no specific details.”
“But you want to tell me?”
He nodded. His gaze was fixed on hers, intent, intense. His lips pressed tightly together.
She took a reasonable guess. “You don’t know how to start.”
He shook his head.
If he wanted, needed to free his story, then she would find a way to help, find a key to the lock that held Tai’s story inside him. Maybe he needed an opening question. “I think maybe you’ve dealt so badly with your condition because of something that happened when you were young. Is that right?”
He nodded again, opened his mouth to speak, and he truly did seem to freeze. Statue mode, a vampire’s response to a threat he might not be able to beat in a fight. But then he said hoarsely, “When I was twelve, my mom died.”
It was the one thing she never would have guessed. A vampire who died…his own mother… “I’m so sorry, Tai. Was she…? How old was she?”
“Forty-six.”
An accident, then. Something awful, if a vampire didn’t survive it.
“Yeah,” he said as if reading her thoughts, though they wouldn’t be hard to guess. “A car accident, no survivors. It’s always been a reminder for me. No matter what humans think, instant death can still take us.”
Claire had no idea what to say, but he didn’t seem to need words from her. He needed to be heard. She held onto his hands, kept her mouth shut, and listened.
“One split second difference and she’d be here. One split second. I can’t understand it. Our reflexes, she should’ve been able to… So I can’t let it go, in my head. By now you’d think…but I still can’t.” His eyes grew shiny, and he blinked a few times until the tears dried without falling. “Anyway. I didn’t know how bad their marriage was until Mom died. She’d made a will, on the infinitesimal chance something happened to her. It was worded precisely, witnessed and notarized and fortified every possible legal way, because she knew he’d try to have it thrown out—which he did, but it was air-tight. Mom brought old money to their marriage, and she willed every penny of it to me.”
Claire felt the shock take over her face. “That’s why you’re…?”
“So wealthy I can work for Josie Strong and take a quarter of my salary? Yeah.”
