“Love you, bye.” I waved, then moved my mouse.
Considine waited until I exited out of the screen before he announced. “I’d say I’m hurt that you think you can trust me only with your physical well-being, but we can start our relationship à la bodyguard romance. It’s not a role I ever saw myself playing, but I’m not opposed to it. It seems like it could create several entertainingscenarios.”
“You’re not my bodyguard,” I said.
“You just told your mother you feel comfortable enough to discard your mask and face certain danger because I’m with you. That makes me your bodyguard,” Considine said.
I shut my laptop and picked it up, leaving my kitchen to put the laptop on the coffee table in front of my couch. “That isn’t what I said at all.”
This felt more like what I was used to. The two of us, hanging out and having fun.
But is it really okay? There’s still so much I don’t know, and Considine is a top predator in the world of supernaturals.
Considine followed me across the room, seating himself on my couch as if he were used to it—and he was. “Regardless, I’ll admit I am pleasantly surprised you trust me even that much.”
I shrugged. “You hate busy work. But you’ve enmeshed yourself in the workings of the Curia Cloisters so that there would be legal repercussions for you—including paperwork. I don’t think you’re doing this as a long con with the end plan to kill me.”
“But you think I have an end plan?” Considine said.
“Yes. I just don’t know what it is,” I said, honestly.
Even if I know Considine doesn’t mean to kill me, he’s a wild card, and he could have a thousand other reasons for doing this.
In the end, he was the vampire who’d lied to me, and I was the vampire slayer who’d lied to him, just with less success.
We might have had a friendship before, but that was based on deceit from both of us. I didn’t think Elder Maledictus and Slayer O’Neil could have the same easy friendship Connor and Jade had. Not just because of the lies, but because we came from entirely different worlds.
That knowledge made my heart unexpectedly twist in my chest.
“You do, in fact, know my end plan.” Considine threw his arm over the back of my couch and looked up at me, his expression serious. “But it seems you have forgotten: I fancy you.”
“I notice you keep using the term ‘fancy’ to draw a line between us. You don’t even pretend to love me,” I said.
Considine blinked. “I get the feeling if I said something like that to you, you would bolt.” He pointedly looked at the empty cushion next to him, inviting me to sit on my own couch.
I shook my head and planted my feet.
Considine shrugged. “As I was saying, you are my focus now. I’ll admit to having a few side goals—I would really like to squelch that flying lizard when I get the chance, and maybe make a Dracos offspring or two cry, nothing much. But you are the lucky recipient of my attention. Your health and safety are my priority. So, what must I do to get back in your good graces?”
I stared at Considine. “I’m thankful for your concern. The problem is—given all the lies we’ve told each other—I don’t know what I can trust.”
“Do I need to tell you about my life, then?” Considine stood up, not with anger or frustration, but something closer to determination. “I shall spoil the sordid tale for you: I have spent the past couple centuries playing nanny to the ungrateful Dracos offspring. My sojourn in Magiford was meant to be my first holiday in years.”
I studied Considine’s face. “I wasn’t really after information, just truth. But Considine, I’m not an idiot. Slayer resources haven’t tracked you in centuries,” I said. “You disappeared from society. You can’t really have been hanging out with Killian and his siblings for all that time.”
“In this case, I’m sorry to say, you’re wrong. I didn’t disappear from society because I’m hatching secret plans, or whatever you’re thinking up. I left because Ambrose Dracos was a sentimental fool who loved his offspring dearly to the point that they lost their anchors when they lost him and must be tricked into continued survival.”
I shifted, mulling over the unexpectedly heated response I’d gotten.
That anger wasn’t directed at me…but Ambrose Dracos, who has been dead for centuries. Has Considine really been watching over the Dracos line for so long? Why? They’re among the oldest and most powerful vampires alive, and they each have their own Family.
“You keep an eye on them out of love—not love,” I corrected my mistake at the sour look on Considine’s face.
“Before he died, Ambrose extracted a promise from me—that I would watch his offspring and keep them alive,” Considine explained.
“Ah. So you’re the reason why everyone in the Dracos line has survived,” I realized.
I’d looked up Ambrose Dracos and his kids in the week I was stuck at home after being released from the hospital, and I’d noticed the oddity.
