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“Well, if it helps I think we’re making a great start on a plan already. We have cleaned and dried your office. We have patched the holes in the ceiling. And you now have clothes on. Those are all small things you can totally tick off your checklist. And like I always say, once you have the small things down, the big things tend to seem much more manageable,” she chirrups as she counts off these good things on her fingers. Then at the end, she blows a curl out of her eyes.

God, she’s adorable.

It’s a shame I have to bring her peppy mood down.

“Okay, but what if the big things include you being murdered by a vampire,” I say.

But clearly I’ve underestimated her. She almost wags a finger at me.

“I feel pretty sure that is more something you should worry about yourself over. How many lives did you say he’s attacked you in? Seven? He’s never attacked me in any at all. That seems like a super telling ratio.”

“That telling ratio will not stop him using your corpse to get to me.”

“So he’s going to hurl my dead body at you like a javelin.”

“I can tell you’re joking but honestly that’s not so far-fetched.”

She wrinkles her tiny little nose up. “He’s really this gruesome, then.”

“More gruesome than that. I once saw him shove a bike up someone’s ass,” I say, so wearily I know she’s going to believe me. Though even that doesn’t really seem to faze her. She puts a hand over her mouth, but her eyes are full of the same sort of amused incredulity I see in my own all the time.

“But why on earth would he want to do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why he does anything.”

“So he’s never explained why he has this weird mission, then.”

Her expression is all innocence when she says the words.

But I’m starting to get the distinct impression that she’s not innocent at all.

There’s just something about how wide she makes her eyes when she says that last thing. The way she frames it as a statement I’ve already agreed to, rather than a question. And then she reaches a hand out and pats my knee again, and oh my god, I don’t know how I didn’t get it before.

She knows I’m afraid of sharing all this with her.

That I’m doing everything I can to steer her away.

And she’s using all the things I’m not used to, to persuade me to tell her anyway. You’d make a great reporter, Nance, I think. Though truthfully, being a reporter isn’t what this feels like at all. It feels like friendship. It feels like this is what you’re supposed to do to be friends. And I’m so half starved for anything remotely friend-like, I do it.

“Last night he told me it’s a compulsion. Like a gambling addiction,” I blurt out, then regret it even more than I regret first telling her. My voice cracks when I say it. I think there might be tears in my eyes. And, oh god, now she looks horrified. Maybe I can erase this conversation from her mind, I think frantically.

About a second before she sits back in her chair.

Nods her head, firmly.

And answers in the most matter-of-fact way I’ve ever heard anyone be.

“Okay, so he’s a total maniac we have to stop, immediately,” she says.

Kind of like she’s talking about cleaning up a mess a puppy made.

I almost laugh, until I remember how mad that is.

“And exactly how do you propose we do that?” I ask.

But she’s already ahead of me. “We make a list of ways to keep him at bay.”

“I already have that. It’s right here. Laminated, for extra ease of use.”