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And as for pledging eternal service?

“You know he hates serving anything, Phone. I once managed to do some light necromancy and briefly controlled him enough to make him kiss my boots, and he got so mad he bit his own hand off,” I holler across the living room, at the mug of rice Phone is now sitting up to her neck in.

She suggested trying it when the turning off and on thing didn’t work.

But her muffled reply seems to suggest it hasn’t helped, either.

“I told you, start thinking of other signs he was lying. Like his exact tone.”

“What I played for you was his exact tone. That’s not my memory of it, that’s the impression that was left on the magic swirling around his face when he spoke. The problem has to be in the translation, just look harder.”

She sighs. “Believe me, I’ve tried. I want there to be a way around this.”

“But there isn’t one.”

“No. He said those exact things. Those exact adoring things. Oh god, we should brace for him turning up here,” she says, then before I can tell her not to panic she knocks her mug over. Rice goes everywhere; the whole thing rolls and she almost crashes to the floor. I have to jump up from the couch and rescue her before she ends up accidentally committing suicide.

“He’s not going to turn up here. Or, at least, not until nightfall,” I remind her.

But when I do, I jab a finger at the window I can just see through my open bedroom door. The only window in the whole apartment, in fact. The rest are all either nonexistent, or inexplicably bricked up. I put a picture of a porthole over my sink, just to feel a little more normal.

Though that’s hardly the point.

What I see there is.

It’s him, it’s fucking him.

He’s just suspended there, outside my window, in broad fucking daylight. And sure, the overhang of the roof is shielding quite a lot of him. It’s only really a small part of his right arm that’s exposed. But the thing is, even a small part still burns to a fucking crisp. Most of his bicep has blackened like a beef joint on a barbecue. Some of the skin is starting to slough off, revealing muscle underneath.

And even though his right cheek and his right bare foot aren’t entirely exposed, even though he thankfully has pants on, the sun is definitely affecting them. His face is beginning to very lightly smoke. Almost like steam in a sauna. The cuffs of his jeans look singed; his foot is slowly pinkening.

But he’s not doing a single thing about it.

He just drifts in the air, suspended by power he obviously knows he has. He knows he can fly, and yet for some reason doesn’t seem to wholly understand the other things he’s capable of. Or even the other things he needs. It’s got to be a trick, I tell myself for the twenty thousandth time.

Though, god, it looks so convincing.

I mean, his eyes are closed. His chin is on his chest. And he’s not showing a single sign of suppressed pain. Almost like he’s coffin unconscious, except somehow outside, while exposed to daylight. “Phone,” I say, as I peer at his completely slack and slightly burning face. “What happens when a vampire goes without rest?”

Though I know the answer before she says it.

I’ve tried to make it happen to him before today.

“Their bodies begin to shut down after a certain period of time.”

“So theoretically, they could fall asleep in someone’s garden during the day.”

“If they were that exhausted, it is poss— Wait, why are you asking me this?”

“Oh, no reason,” I say, as cheerily as I can.

But it’s too late. I have given the game away.

“Yaaarrrrghhh,” Phone screams, and then uses her kickstand to fling itself out of my hands and directly at the window. I watch her thud uselessly off the glass, and onto the carpet at my feet.

“I would be touched at your terror for my life if that hadn’t been such a ridiculous and pointless endangering of yours. I mean, what did you think that was going to do? Ignite his crippling phobia of glass being gently tapped?” I sigh as I retrieve her and her now slightly battered body.

“It got you to stop moving toward the window, didn’t it? And it only cost me a minor injury, so do not fool yourself into thinking this means I would die for you. I would not. I would only risk a slight loosening of my butt flap.”