Page 70 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

Jory cleared her throat. “So… what does a vampire hotel room look like?”

And just like that, the tension was broken.

“One moment, please,” he replied, lifting the phone away from his ear to switch the call from voice to video.

There was a beep just before the screen was filled with her face and he was lost entirely. She was laying on her side in bed, bare shoulders visible above the dark green duvet tucked under her arm. It looked like she was wearing a tank top of some kind, but the room was dim, her face lit only by the glow of her phone. Her hair was wild and wavy around her, a few tendrils curling over her shoulder. She was breathtaking.

“Well?” Jory said, pulling the comforter up to her chin.

“Aye,” Callum said with a croak. “Shall I start from the door?”

“Aye,” she replied, her voice teasing.

“Well,” he said, rising and moving to stand in front of the door and turning to his left to flip on the bathroom light. “Here is the bathroom.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you need a?—”

“Nay,” he said with a chuckle. “But what if I had a guest?”What if you were with me?He coughed. “Then there’s the other usual stuff. Shower. Tub. Sink. Mirror.”

Callum stepped into the bathroom, flipping the camera so it faced the mirror, where his reflection was clearly visible, with his rumpled dress shirt and even more rumpled hair, sticking on end from dragging his fingers through it.

“’Tis a myth, ye ken, about vampires and mirrors.”

She nodded.

“I think that if a vampire didnae have a reflection in a mirror, we would have been discovered by humans a long time ago. At least a quarter of King Louis XIV’s court were vampires. Can you imagine?”

Jory snorted a laugh and he smiled.

“Okay. So what else is there?”

He walked out of the bathroom and turned to the far wall. “Here is the view when ye first come in.”

“The window is a bold choice.”

“It isnae a real window. I’m five floors below ground. ’Tis a display. Here,” he said, walking over and pulling the curtain away to show her the small gap behind the screen where it was mounted to the wall.

“Wow,” she breathed. “Does it show the view outside?”

“Aye. A simulcast. If I wanted to, I could watch the sunrise.”

“Have you ever done that?”

He thought for a minute. Usually when he checked into a Somnus, he closed the curtains over the screen immediately. Watching the sunrise, watching the sun do anything, really, felt like a cruel tease. Because what he really wanted was to feel the sun baking hot and bright on his skin as he lay on his back in a meadow somewhere, smelling the salt of the sea in the air while the wind whipped sea grass around him. With her. The thought of sitting in a hotel room and watching the sun rise on a screen had felt a bit like how Penny talked about sparkling water, like someone described a fruit to someone who’d never had one and they recreated the taste by description alone.

“Nay,” he said. “I never watch it.”

She was quiet again.

“Would you watch it? With me?”

Would he watch the sunrise with her? As if she even had to ask. As if he wouldn’t do anything she asked. He cleared his throat and clicked so that the camera view faced him again. “I think you are about a half hour behind me for that.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “Well, I could watch yours.”

When he was quiet, she added, “Never mind. It was a silly idea. You don’t?—”

“I want to.”