“I think so,” he says. “As far as I know, Diantha, you are very generous.”
His voice, his touch—it all pulls me to him like a cat to a sunbeam. I find my feet moving one over the other until we’re nearly chest to chest. I’ve missed this—him. It’s the only thought that pulses through me at this moment. Everything else, all that static noise, turned down to nothing.
But we just can’t. Not again. Not right now.
I force myself to open my eyes and take a step back. “Can I try the…uh, the Jesus tears?”
Orfeo pulls a bottle from the depths of one of his empty kitchen cabinets and pours me a healthy splash into a fishbowl-sized glass.
“Let it breathe for a moment,” he advises. “Really should let it breathe for a few hours.”
I snort. “Is that a metaphor?”
“Mmm.” He pours himself a smaller glass. “There are many parallels between human blood and wine.” His eyes jump from his glass to catch my gaze, and he smirks. “I certainly see the appeal in both.”
“They both stain horribly,” I reply, taking my glass as he hands it over. The wine’s tears trail down the sides, heavy and viscous, a rich shade of vibrant red-purple.
I stare at the wine and try to pull forward some sort of standout feeling from the chaos in my chest. Am I sad? Scared? Anxious? I try to identifysomething, but right now I am totally, completely blank.
“Perhaps this is a banal question,” Orfeo says, leaning forward onto the counter. “But are you okay?”
I let out a little laugh. “Not banal at all. I was just thinking about how I can’t really…” I take a quick sip of my wine. “Howdo I even vanquish a demon? Ormanydemons? How do I…lead you all? How do I become whatever it is I need to become? What if someone gets hurt because of me? How do I?—”
“Diantha.” He cuts me off. “You are not alone in this. This is not a matter of becoming. This is who you are. All of what you need is inside you.”
“That’s it?” I whisper. “It’s just inside me? I’ll know how to vanquish a demon because of what I am?”
He rakes his teeth over his bottom lip, then lifts his glass and empties the contents in a single, smooth sip. “Our world is a simple one. Hierarchy is innate. Skill is acquired through transformation. Power and death are neither rare nor permanent. I know it’s all very different, but you’ll adjust.” He reaches across the island and pulls gently at a loose thread hanging from my sleeve. “You will learn to embrace these parts of yourself, and we will help you along the way.”
“It feels impossible.”
He fixes me with a stern look as his fingers trace the ridges of my knuckles. “Give yourself time.”
I nod. “Time. Yeah, okay.”
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “You must be famished.” His fingers still lay over mine.
I turn my hand over and he lingers, a soft pressure on my palm. I notice for the first time that his hands are scarred. Covered in a crosshatching of fine white lines that travel all the way up, disappearing into the ink that wraps around his wrists. “I think so.”
“What do you like?” He traces the faint lines etched in my skin. He finds my love line, which is short and squiggly. Something my mother always pointed to as the reason I preferred solitude over play dates with other kids from our building or going to the diner with her and her loud-mouthed, psychic girlfriends.
“What do I like,” I repeat. Ididlike going to the diner sometimes. When no one commented on how frizzy my hair was or how I shouldn’t be having ice cream for dinner. I always ordered the same thing: a Neapolitan sundae with wet walnuts, no whipped cream.
What’re you, an eighty-five-year-old divorcée?One of my mom’s friends always made that joke. They’d throw back their heads and laugh, even as my face would heat with anger.
Oh, leave her alone.My mother’s stock reply.Leave the kid alone!
His fingers don’t stop. They keep their steady, tender pace.
“Ice cream,” I say. “I’d really love some ice cream.”
Orfeo goes out and comes back with enough ice cream to silence the nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that what he really wants is for me to fuck off back to my apartment. That no one in their right mind would willingly take in a guest for an indeterminate amount of time.
But as usual, Orfeo shocks me—both with the quantity of ice cream and when he opens a drawer and pulls out two spoons.
“Do all vampires eat ice cream?” I ask, accepting my utensil and immediately going for the pistachio cream gelato that looks like it may have cost him a small fortune.
“Well.” He levels me with a bored look. “Considering most humans can’t digest dairy, what do you think?”
