Page 62 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“Do you sleep in a coffin?”

“No.”

“A bed?”

“A bed. A very good one.”

“During the day?”

“I prefer the night. The day is not fatal. It’s uncomfortable and inconvenient, like most things that are supposed to be good for you.”

“So sunlight doesn’t kill you?”

“Cloudy days are tolerable. Direct sunlight makes me feel as though I have a low fever and a great deal of regret, so I avoid it as much as possible. I have always preferred being indoors.” A faint dryness. “It’s tidy that my nature and my preference agree.”

“The garlic.” I lean forward. “The actual garlic. Is that real, or is that a book thing?”

He pauses, and I can see him deciding how honest to be, and then deciding all the way. “It’s real. Not fatal. It’s—unpleasant. The smell is very strong to me. Overwhelming, at a certain concentration.”

“So when I put forty heads of garlic on my counter⁠—”

“I stood at the far end of the kitchen and I thought about you a great deal to distract myself.”

I feel that one land somewhere useful.

“Right,” I say. “Noted. Moving on. Crosses?”

“No.”

“Running water?”

“I bathe, Penny.”

“Mirrors! Do you show up in—” I twist around to look at the dark window over the sink, where the two of us sit reflected, him and me, plain as day. “Never mind. You’re right there. You’re very reflective, actually. You have terrible posture in reflection, did you know that?”

“I have perfect posture.”

“You have four-hundred-year-old posture, which is a different thing.”

I grin at him and his mouth curves.

“You’re not afraid,” he says.

It comes so quietly that I almost miss it.

“No.”

“You should be.”

“Probably. There’s a whole shelf at Harbor Books that agrees with you. I read three books online this morning at six because I couldn’t sleep, and one of them spent eighty pages on documented attacks, one spent considerably more time than necessary on blood rituals, and the third had an entire chapter on vampire seduction that I am choosing not to discuss with you.”

“Wise.”

“I didn’t say I skipped it.”

His eyes close briefly, and I grin again.

“Penny.”