“And you’re afraid those guys you work with might find out?” I shake my head. “You were already afraid they’d take advantage of my power.”
“No, this is different. Diantha, you could kill them. Vanquish them to the Underworld for eternity. If they find out about you, they’ll send someone to kill you. A human with a human gun.”
Right now, I can’t make any intellectual sense of what Orfeo’s saying. How can I vanquish them if I don’t even know whether my mother was actually a witch? Is there such a thing asnon-humangun?
“What about this portal in Echidna?” I ask. “You have to know something.”
“I’ve never heard of it, but it makes sense…Why else would Alfo have such an easy time blending in here? It never felt right to me.” He nods with finality. “I will find you more information.”
“Thank you.” I look down at my phone. “It’s nine. But I don’t want to move.”
His eyes slide from the ceiling down to my face and his features soften, his eyebrows unknitting from a frown. I swallow against the throb in my throat. “Then let’s stay a little longer. Here…” He reaches over me and pulls a pillow down off the couch. “Lift.”
“You sure?”
“Of course.” He slides it under my head. “You rest, and I’ll start my essay. I’ll put you to sleep with my observations about that ram with wings.”
I laugh, snuggling into the pillow. “Are all vampires funny?”
“God, no.” Orfeo’s mouth twists into a smirk. “They’re the most self-serious, dramatic bastards you’ll ever meet. We could sleep in any box and what do we choose?Coffin.”
“Do Mediterranean vampires sleep in coffins?”
He shakes his head. “We sleep in four-post beds with silk sheets.”
“You’rekidding.”
“No, I’m not. We eat oysters and drink chilled white wine. We kiss our lovers just for the pure pleasure of it. We lie in the sun.”
“Sounds like heaven.” My eyelids begin to drift shut, heavy with sleep. “Tell me more.”
Diantha
“Diantha.”The music of his voice pulls me from my dreamless sleep. “Dai, amore.It’s almost eleven.”
My eyes fly open and I attempt to jolt upright butJesus, my neck.I’m still on the floor, my head on the pillow, but I’ve somehow curled myself around Orfeo’s thigh, like a cat. My head is almost resting in his lap.No wonder I’m stiff.
“Eleven?” I rub the heel of my hand into my eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You looked so peaceful. Like a little sleeping fox. And…” He holds a piece of paper in front of my face. “Writing in English can take me some time.”
I stretch and yawn and force myself to get to my feet, but after shaking all the blood back into my limbs, I sort of feel…amazing?
“Why do I feel like I just slept for fifteen hours?”
A haughtiness flashes over his features. “We have that effect on humans. We’re like the sun, and you are our dying little houseplants. We recharge your cells.”
I narrow my eyes at him while I pull on my cardigan. “Why? So we’re nice and ripe and juicy when you’re ready to finally dig in?”
He snorts, placing my pen and notebook back into my bag for me. “See, you know a lot about Mediterranean vampires.”
“How lovely.” I pull my hair up into a ponytail, finally warm enough to want my curls off my neck.
Orfeo watches me, the fire dancing in his eyes, lips twisted in a way that makes him look even more playful than usual. “So, you’re feeling better?”
I can see traces of his human self in that perfect, symmetrical face—little flaws like the scar through his eyebrow and the hump in his nose that probably once, when exaggerated, made him look like the safest place on Earth.
I nod. “Mhm. My heat stopped working early this morning. I woke at three, almost frozen. Then, I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
