AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ah, not the entire city? Not the musicians?”
“The lady is a librarian.”
The vampire raised a brow and turned towards me. “You know any dead languages?”
I licked my lips. “They’re something of my specialty.”
He sighed heavily. “Ah. That explains it. The Scholar would be protective of anyone who specialized in dead languages. That’s his specialty.” He chuckled and leaned closer to me while the Scholar hissed a warning that he ignored. “Would you truly ask a vampire to provide snacks to those poor souls struggling with their mortality? Blood pudding, fried blood kebabs, blood gelatin cubes…”
“It couldn’t be worse than the stale fruitcake and bad tuna. It truly was nightmarish.”
He stood and bowed to me with a flourish. “In that case, lady musician-librarian, I will see to your wishes. I’m certain that I can please you much more than you ever imagined, anticipating your desires far better than the dried up academic sitting across from you. We will have another conversation when ladies aren’t present,” he said to the Scholar, with a glare instead of a bow before he turned and left the room without another word.
“You awakened the Marshall of Song?” the Scholar hissed, baring his teeth at me in a way that made me sit back, more surprised than frightened, but his teeth were terrifying.
“I don’t know. I was just trying not to die, Mr. Stead, but you wouldn’t understand, already being dead.”
“Undead is an entirely different thing, Miss Morell, but you wouldn’t understand, since you haven’t ever been dead or undead. It seems that you aren’t interested in staying alive, so I won’t bother you with all the dangers caused by awakening an ancient vampire.”
“Thank you. Could we get back to the demon? You were going to tell me about his followers. What are they like? How do you hunt them?”
He cleared his throat, pressed his lips together, and shook his head. “Actually, I think that I should tell you my intentions towards you. I’ve brought you here this evening because…”
“You want my notes.”
“I want to get to know you better. You see, Miss Morell, my interest in you is personal.”
I stared at him while he took a sip of wine. Personal, personal, personal. What did that mean? “You want to hire me or drink my blood?”
“Hiring you would be business and drinking your blood would be culinary or suicidal, depending on how much I took. Montaine’s blood has touches of the angelic, which as everyone knows, is poisonous to vampires. It probably wouldn’t kill me, and nothing is sweeter than angel blood, but no, I am not here for your blood, otherwise, I would have taken it one of the other times you offered so eagerly.”
I scowled at him. “I don’t want you to take my blood. I just don’t understand what else you could want from me. What is personal interest? You want to be my friend and go karaoke singing at the piano bar every Tuesday night with Anna? Are you doing research on the personal lives of librarians?”
“Men have been personally interested in you before, Miss Morell.”
I gestured at him. “You aren’t a man, you’re the Scholar, with more self-control than any other vampire I’ve ever met, and your eyes are wrong, and your skin is warm, and you make me want chocolate when I don’t even like chocolate. I’m not interested in jumping into bed with random strangers, particularly the kind that finds me edible. That’s not attractive.”
“I remember. You very clearly outlined the point at which you would be intimate with a man, and that was after contracted possession of half of his belongings. I assumed you were talking about marriage.”
I had a sudden urge to jump out the window and into the river below. “I was joking, mostly, but I mean, I guess…Are you talking about a relationship?”
He smiled. “You make it sound like an alien species you’ve heard of but never seen.”
I gestured at him. “How would that work? A real, actual relationship with a vampire? I love the sun and sky, and you’re allergic. You’re nocturnal, I’m not. Where would we live? What would we eat? What would we talk about? You live in a world where you’re somebody, and I make it a point to be unnoticeable. It’s ludicrous. I’m not interested in turning, not now, not ever. I hate vampires.”
He raised a brow. “I’m not offering you a serious relationship at this moment, Miss Morell. I only wished to get to know you better, to see if there was overlapping compatibility, pleasure in each other’s company, that sort of thing. I thought I should be clear about my intentions, because as I suspected, you have no idea what any of it means and are, in fact, completely oblivious to the obvious signs that a more experienced person would see.”
I scowled at him. “I have plenty of experience.”
“Translating tomes, but not dating.”
I glared at him until I finally sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. “Fine. I am oblivious to relationship matters, because I avoid them at all costs. I did date someone a very long time ago, but it turned out that he was a vampire who sold me into a blood/sex ring. That was the first time I was bitten by a vampire, but it wasn’t the last. Mr. Stead…”
“You can call me Michael.”
“I don’t want to call you, ‘Michael.’ That’s a normal name for a nice and normal person. Mike. Mikey. Mick. No, you aren’t a Michael or any of its derivatives. You really brought me out here on a date, because you wanted to get to know me better, to see if we could have some kind of relationship?” I felt kind of idiotic even saying that. No, not kind of.
“That’s right, Miss Morell. I wanted to get to know you better.”
