He shook his hair out of his face. “No problem. I think Lysandro was kinda expecting you.”
I bet he was, I thought, following Benji to a discreet door on the side of the library. When I stopped at the table closest to it to wait for Lysandro, Benji opened the door and turned back to me. “Come on.”
“I thought I couldn’t go down there.”
The kid grinned. “You can’t go into The Vault itself, but he’ll meet you in his office. Staff isn’t allowed in there, and I know it kills Miss Irene that she’s never been inside, but he lets me in there after close when, uh, we’ve needed to talk.”
His cheeks pinkened, and I wondered what that was about, but he turned and bounded down the narrow stairway before I could ask. At the bottom of the stairwell, we turned back under it. To the left was a room made of glass walls with dim overhead lighting. I caught a flash of movement inside. “Was that Lysandro?”
“Probably.” Benji grinned over his shoulder. “Come on. His room is at the end.”
His room? That was a curious way to refer to an office, but I continued following him. When we reached the end of the glass room, we turned left down a small hallway and then stopped in front of a wooden door on the right. As Benji used a skeleton key to unlock the room, he waggled his eyebrows at me.
Why did he have a key if staff weren’t even normally allowed in here?
He ushered me inside with a sweep of his arm, and as I stepped past him, I gasped. The room was as colorful asLysandro. Bright tapestries hung on the walls, and a patchwork quilt was neatly folded at the end of what had to be a king-sized bed that was set up on a riser. A small kitchenette sat against one wall with a round table for four in front of it.
“This is his office?” I asked incredulously.
Benji snickered. “Sorta. He spends more time here than anywhere else, so he made it homey.”
I whirled toward him. “So he actually sleeps here?”
“Generally,” Lysandro’s amused voice came from the doorway. “Thank you for showing him down,” he said to the kid as he walked in, squeezing his hand as he passed him.
Benji’s cheeks went even pinker than before, and he left without even a backward glance at me. My eyes widened. Holy shit. I really had thought Lysandro and I were friends. Finding out he’d never told me he was a vampire had made me question that fact, even when he reassured me last night that we were. But this…
“Lysandro!” I said sharply. “He’s a kid.”
The vampire made his way to the table, pulled out a chair, then hopped up to sit on the tabletop with his feet on the seat of the chair. “You’re so cute.”
He looked so amused, but he had no idea how outraged I was. No matter how much help Ego needed from the old vamp, I couldn’t let this stand. He was taking advantage of a child!
Lysandro held up a hand. “Don’t panic. Benjamin is twenty-seven years old.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “That kid isn’t twenty-seven.”
Lysandro chuckled, shaking his head. “No, he doesn’t look it, does he? That’s why I usually don’t take on donors so young.”
My brain scrambled trying to make sense of his words. The connection seemed obvious, but I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around the vampireness of it all. “Donor?”
“Of course. I’m not a monster, Scotty. I only feed from blood donors. I thought Benjamin was a little too young, but he frequented my favorite vampire bar in New York City. He was there—willingly, I might add—every time I went, and he approached me several times.” He flicked his hand to the side. “Always prattling about how it would be an honor to feed someone of my stature.”
Vampire bars existing where I’d grown up was enough to blow my brain, but right now, I was more interested in Lysandro. “What does that mean? Your stature?”
He gave me that same fond smile I’d grown accustomed to on all my nights studying here. “I’m very old, Scotty. Many would consider me an elder amongst my kind.” He shrugged.
“So Benji?” I prompted.
“He wore me down.” He rolled his eyes theatrically. “He’d already been donating his blood to others for a couple of years, and appeared to be around twenty-three at that point, so I figured, what the heck? His age reversal was probably complete. But alas…”
Age reversal?“I’m so confused.”
“Hmm. Yes, you would be. When we feed upon a human, we close the wound with our saliva.”
“So they don’t really walk around with scars like in the movies?” I asked, unable to stop my curiosity.
He huffed. “How would we keep our secret if a bunch of people were walking around with a collar of fang marks? Such a ludicrous notion. Although…” He trailed off.
