Page 57 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

But god, I can’t let all of that stick.

I’ve got to focus on something else. “Okay, so first of all, I am not cynical.”

“Then tell me you can imagine I am here because I want to be.”

“Well, I can see that you sort of need me right now.”

“But I do not. I survived perfectly well before my feet brought me here. And now that I have watched all one hundred and forty-four episodes of the televisual classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am even better equipped to live in this world.”

I think I do a double take at that.

I’m glad of it, though. Now I can change the subject.

“You binged the whole thing in the time it took me to walk here?”

“It is very addictive. And apparently I can take in everything at much higher speeds than I initially thought. At this rate, I shall be fully versed in the ways of the modern world by morning.”

“Are you sure? Because I don’t know how right Buffy gets it.”

“Oh, do not fret, I am aware of the ways that it does not—such as the advantage an ancient vampire takes of a mere child, and the expectation of this child that she must battle the forces of evil, and the entirely imaginary prison the unpleasant one, Xander, makes for himself, called by many of this land the Zone of Friends. None of which I understand at all. Why does he not value friendship alone? How is it that the beautiful witch Tara is the one who suffers over him? A truly fair and good depiction of such people and their relationships would have had Xander be the one punished, for his many, many crimes against humanity,” he says, by the end of which he’s almost talking to himself. Just musing away about Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the weirdest way. Barely aware of me anymore.

Which is good because all I can do is stand there, gawping at him. And not just because it’s bizarre. No, it’s also the fact that he’s right. He’s absolutely right, and so passionate about that rightness it sort of knocks the wind out of me. Just hearing the fierce way he talks, and about all the things that I had long since discarded. I honestly can’t even remember the last time I enjoyed a show like that—or even a book or a film.

As if the world has grown old and boring to me.

Or maybe it has just died in some way I can’t face.

Even when I was Madison I remember loving movies as a kid, then slowly finding them stale as an adult. Everything inside me withering, as death and horror and the simple sadness of reality took over. And the wildest thing is—Halsten was the same. He was worse than me, of course he was.

A thousand years lived like that will do that to you.

And now I get to see this.

This simple joy. The wonder of discovering all the things I’d forgotten or can’t love anymore or find worthy of an eye roll. It’s amazing—and he doesn’t even know it. He looks up at me when he realizes I’m just standing there, staring, and I can see he goes to apologize or ask me what he did wrong.

So I rush ahead before he can.

“I see why you want to stay this way,” I tell him, voice cracking as I think of the unspoken end to that sentence: Because I would want to stay this way, too. Then I turn away before he can see tears in my eyes. And eventually, I finish it off a different way. “Which is just a way of saying that you have a point.”

Then I breathe a sigh of relief when he seems satisfied by that.

“I am pleased that you would think so. Switch has also informed me that my views on these matters are illuminating, particularly with regard to Ross, the most evil of the Friends. But of course it is not her good opinion that I most seek.”

“You don’t have to seek it. You have it. No matter what we find out, you have it. We’re friends now, and I want to … I want to stay that way. So you can still ask me things and I will still help you, and if you struggle, you know. I’m here.”

Good god, what am I saying, I think.

Though the truth is, I don’t regret it once it’s out.

Partly because I can feel, as I do, how much of a fact it is. How much I like him as a person. How much I like the funny way he talks and the things he says, and want to talk about them, too. But mostly, it’s the thing he says next.

“That means a great deal to me, in light of my transgressions in the library.”

Like he’s been thinking he did something wrong.

“There were no transgressions, Sten. You were very—” I catch myself before I finish that sentence with something very bad indeed. Something like sexy. Then I start again. “You were very polite, and gentle, and good. It says a lot that I wasn’t scared at any point, considering how scared you probably should make me.”

It doesn’t help matters, however.