Page 20 of My Neighbor Literally Bites

"I should have told you," he says finally.

"Yes," I say. "You should have."

His hand stills. "I will try to do better."

"This isn't just what happened between us," I say quietly. "Not for me."

His eyes lift to mine, careful and bright in the low firelight. "No," he says. "Not for me either."

The answer settles somewhere tender instead of frightening. I turn enough to see him. The words are not everything, but they are not nothing either.

"Then start there," I say.

He nods once, solemn and quiet, and draws me closer. For some crazy reason, I believe him, but it's not the end of an answer, it's just the beginning.

16

ALARIC

The mug her lips were around still sits by the windowsill where she set it, a brown ring drying at the bottom. This house has been clean, ordered, undisturbed for many years. Now, it has a woman in it. One of her boots lies by the cold hearth and the other halfway across the room, as if she'd been pulled out of it. A thread of chestnut hair clings to the back of a chair. I find I have no wish to move any of it. Hannah comes down the stairs, working her arm into a sleeve.

"You let me sleep," she says.

"You needed it."

"What I need is to be home before Lily wakes up and starts building a case." She lifts the mug, sees the ring beneath it, and winces. "I'll clean that."

"Leave it."

She pauses with the mug in her hand. "I've seen your shelves. Every spine lined up like soldiers."

"They prefer it that way."

"They're scared of you." She sets it back down, deliberately off-center, and watches to see if I'll flinch. "Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing." She says it like she's memorizing something.

I walk her to the door. The morning is wet with mist tangling through the pines between my land and hers.

"Come for dinner," she says. "Tomorrow. Lily's threatening to cook."

"That sounds scary."

"It is." She rises onto her toes, kisses the corner of my mouth, and is gone down the path.

The house behind me is quiet, and I feel her absence immediately. On the mantel, the empty space beside the clock looks suddenly obvious. Last night she noticed it and asked what used to stand there. I told her nothing. That was not true. Renee's portrait had stood there for decades, face turned toward a room I never let change. This afternoon, the absence feels less like loyalty and more like a question.

I think of Hannah's head tilted, decorating my bottom floor with a warmer color. My mind flutters to the table in hers with three chairs and one of them mine. I admire the thought of being invited instead of watching. It should all frighten me. Instead, I hold onto it like it might still break.

The wind turns, and I catch it. Bloodroot. Crushed, fresh, carried down off the ridge. I dress fast, and speed out the door into the trees before the scent fades.

Two days after spending the night with Hannah, the marks become visible. The first, on the old chapel, where the congregation stopped meeting before I ever came here. A symbol into the warped door and packed the grooves with red paste. Bloodroot sap, thick as a wound. It's another hunter's mark.

I follow the ridge down to the creek crossing. Another, scored into the underside of the footbridge where no casual walker would look. At the cemetery I find a third, low on the stone gatepost, half-hidden by moss someone scraped away to make room. Each one fresh. Each one fed with that sap like poison.

The last is the worst. Elspeth's old schoolhouse. The mark there is not cut but painted—large, deliberate, spanning the boards beside the door. They aren't hiding, they're done with that. The marks must be a warning to other hunters that vampires are here, or they've checked each place for the archives. Knowing which one is something I can't answer.