Page 42 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“I improved considerably.”

“You did.”

We walk a little farther.

“You fit,” I say, and Julian goes quiet. Not evasive quiet. And not the amused silence he uses when he’s waiting for me to stop asking questions.

“I haven’t done that in a very long time,” he says finally.

“Wrapped sandwiches?”

“Fit.”

Oh.

The fog moves around us, soft and wet and close.

“Maybe you just haven’t been trying.”

“Perhaps.”

I shoot him a look from under my lashes. “That’s suspiciously agreeable.”

“I am tired.”

“Good. I’ll save all my difficult questions for tomorrow.”

“I never doubted it.”

His thumb moves once over the back of my hand.

I smile and keep walking.

My cottage appears out of the fog all at once. No porch light because the hill still has no power. One candle burns in the hurricane lamp I left inside the front window, and the house looks small and warm and waiting.

We stop at the bottom of the porch steps. Neither of us lets go.

“Thank you,” I say.

“For what?”

“Today.”

“You don’t need to thank me. You fed three hundred people.”

“Three hundred and eleven. Plus Wyatt ate four.”

“Of course.”

“And you rebuilt half of Theo’s dock.”

“A small section.”

“You carried approximately six thousand things.”

“An exaggeration.”

“Okay, five thousand.”