Page 47 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“I’ll tell you. They send an ‘in case I get murdered’ text to the group, with the location of the date, their date’s name and picture, and anything else that might give the cops a lead if they disappear. It’s the same for blood donation. But I can text my buddies and tell them where I’m going and give them as much info on the vampire as I can, but what’s to stop that vampire from bleeding me dry? You think my buddies can call the cops on a vampire? You think they’d take that any kind of serious?”

“Surely there’s someone?—”

“Some global vampire task force? Come on, friend.”

Jory sighed. “What does any of that have to do with Callum?”

Robbie leaned his forearms on the counter. “Okay. So here’s the deal. Sanguine, and his other clubs, work with the blood donor database. People who have signed up for blood donation. When you go to Sanguine as a donor, you get hooked up to a biometric device that monitors your blood pressure and blood volume, and it sounds an alarm if either gets too low. Then, an employee steps in. If the vampire doesn’t stop feeding, they are forcibly removed and get booted from the club. If they do it twice, they get banned for life. But that doesn’t usually happen. What happens is the vampire feeds, and then the donor gets driven home and given electrolytes and IV fluids and whatever they want to eat. Then they’re monitored remotely for twenty-four hours after the donation.”

“Wow. That’s… quite an operation.”

Robbie nodded. “He’s saved thousands of lives, Jory. And he gives those biometric monitors away to anyone who applies. Free. He’s… Fuck, Jory, he’s the best guy I know.”

Jory was silent.

Robbie scratched his shoulder with hot pink painted nails. “But you already knew that, right, Jory? He’s the best guy you know, too.”

Jory found herself nodding, remembering Callum being the first to show up to help and the last to leave when the helping was done. How selfless he’d been. How good.

But it didn’t really matter, did it? Becauseeven ifhe were the best guy, even if he spent his nights rescuing orphans from burning buildings and helping elderly nuns cross the street, even if he was out to save the world one vampire feeding at a time, it didn’t change anything.

He had still trapped her here. With his damned impatience, his revenge. He had still left her to fend for herself, tostrugglefor almost a thousand years. Besides, no matter how good he was or how much she had found comfort in his arms, the same comfort she had so many years before, she was going home.

She would do well to remember that.

* * *

Of all the things Jory had been in her eternal life, of all the iterations of improvised, imitated humanity, the one thing she had always been was reliable. Which is why she felt completely unmoored when she sent a text to Esther from the parking area outside Callum’s cabin and asked her if she would be able to open the store that morning.

Something came up. Can you cover for me?

I’ll buy your coffee for a month.

You already buy all my coffee, weirdo.

Okay, well, I’ll let you take whatever you want from the store.

I’m on my way now. You don’t have to give me anything.

1. Last I checked I work for you

2. Even if I didn’t we’re friends and I will always help you

But you can keep buying me coffee, sugar mama

Jory smiled and pressed her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, remembering the way Callum’s arms had wrapped around her, how familiar it had felt, how safe. She was not a small woman. In fact, in most situations, she was guaranteed to be the tallest woman in the room. But Callum made her feel small. He always had. There had always been something irresistible about that, especially for someone who was immortal and eternal. The feeling of smallness, even if only physical, had been comforting in a way it hadn’t been since the last time he’d held her.

She’d felt small other times—when she’d run through a moonlit marsh with only the most important things she could carry tied in a sack slung over her shoulder as she raced to escape an angry mob who had found her to be an easy scapegoat for the recent crop failure. She usually settled on the fringe of a settlement or town, close enough to have the security of numbers and the access to resources, but far enough away that people didn’t want to befriend her. But this was the third time in a row that that plan had failed.

A witch, they’d called her, and accused her of bringing the plague last time, of causing the local lord’s daughter to bear no sons before that. This time, they said she had withered the crops in the devil’s name. She’d seen them coming, a long line of torches moving in a blazing stream from the village to her home. She’d raced into the marsh, the mud sucking hungry and thick at her ankles, swallowing her shoes and weighing down her skirts. She’d wept silently, racing through the night toward the road that led to the port, praying with all her might that there would be a ship, that she would have enough coin to tempt them to take her. She didn’t care where.

There had been a ship. There had been a captain who agreed to take her to the Americas if she would stay in his cabin and warm his bed on the journey. He’d been a bit lonely, and she’d been sodesperatelylonely that she’d agreed. He was kind enough and, she learned later that afternoon, a lynx shifter who loathed water but had needed a career with ever-changing personnel so that no one would discover the fact that he never seemed to age either.

Jory had loved the ship. It had made her feel closer to Callum, and as she’d stood on deck and watched the men climbing in the rigging, she imagined him high on the main mast, staring at the distant horizon. It had been a comforting thought. She’d gotten on well enough with the captain and thought that, perhaps, she could stay with him for a while, that she could besafewith him for a while.

But just before arriving in the Americas, he told her that he had a wife in the colony and a wife in England and that he didn’t have room for more commitments in between.

Jory drove down the gravel drive and remembered standing on the beach, apart from the activity unloading the ship. The people of the colony stared at her with disdain. She had been a lone woman on a ship. No chaperone. No companion. No one to pronounce her virtuous. And she hadn’t been virtuous, had she? Though what good had virtue ever done anyone? She saw their condemnation and knew that it would only be a matter of time before another line of torches and pitchforks wound its way to her doorstep in the dark of night. So she ran. The running was almost more familiar than the staying.