Penny looked at him. No more blue and black lines, thank God. But now... He was a uniform chalky color, with gray hollows on his face. “You burned up a ton of energy trying to stay warm. Trying to save me and everyone else.”
“It’s like that. Vampires don’t ‘digest’ food as much as they just convert it into energy.”
Penny nodded slowly and slipped out of her boots, legs sending up distress signals even from that. She let her coat fall to the floor with a twitch of her shoulders. “What happens... What happens if you drink the blood of someone who is sick?”
“What kind of sick?”
“Like a fever?”
Brax jerked his head towards hers. “You’re too weak for that.”
“I’m not! You can barely stand.”
“I can if I have to!”
Penny reached for him. It was odd to reach for someone—anyone, but especially a monster, a very recently reformed and possibly very untrustworthy vampire. “You could get the bad blood out of me. I could feed you. We could both get better.”
“Penny... Penny, I can’t do that.”
“I could cut my finger again?”
“It’ll hurt you. Not the finger!” he cut her off before she could finish, “The giving blood when you’re weak.”
“You won’t take much. We don’t want you to get sick.”
Brax hesitated, then returned the gesture of reaching for her, cupping her cheek. “You don’t want that, lover. It’ll turn you against me in your head. I’ve been the good vamp, the vamp who can’t bite, who doesn’t feed from humans anymore. If that changes—”
Penny staggered to her feet abruptly and aimed herself at the bathroom mirror, where a cloud of misty, normal steam wasjust kissing the surface of the glass. Her uninjured finger began darting and dragging.
I trust Brax. With my life.
He trusts me with his.
“Is that true?” she demanded, not looking at him.
“Yes.”
“Am I being stupid? Is this just how you got the others back before you were cursed? You acted like you’d die for them, you started off irritating as hell, and then turned into this patient, noble person?”
“I don’t know about patient, but I know about how I used to be. I was never, ever noble for anyone, not even Marietta. I protected her because it suited me. And, well, protecting you suits me, too. But I suppose saving the rest of the town, which I couldn’t give a piss about, that might have been a little bit noble.”
“Then the truce is still in effect. If you were doing this to hurt me, it’d hurt you, and I don’t want that to happen.”
“I remember that. You were carrying on at me something fierce about not wanting me to even give myself an itty bitty cut.”
“Because... Because when you think you love someone,” Penny slid to the tub again, sitting right beside him, her naked body pressed to his clothed one, “you can’t bear to think of them being hurt in any way, especially not because of you.”
“When you think it, hmm?”
“When you want to believe it, but you’re afraid it’s all part of a fever dream.”
“You seem way more lucid now.”
“Yeah. Just freezing and burning by turns, and aching everywhere.” She snuggled in as he immediately pulled her close and slid his coat around her, covering her under a leathery wing of fabric. “But my mind is clear. How’s yours?”
“Crystal.”
SHE SAT IN THE TUBand watched him unveil his body like a sculptor showing off a glorious new work in marble.
