Page 77 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“Blackthorne. Voss. Volkov. Thorne. And then Volkov again, which I’d call lazy if I weren’t so busy being something else.”

He hangs the coat on the hook by the door. Slowly.

“Where did you get those?”

“Mabel. Off the top of her head while she wrote a number on a folder. She didn’t even have to think about it.”

I take out my phone and pull up the customs house photograph.

“And this is you. March of 1938. Nine people on a windy day and eight of them are blurred.”

Julian looks at the screen for a long time. He doesn’t pick it up.

“Yes.”

“That’s it? Yes?”

“You made a statement, and it was correct. I’m not going to insult you by pretending otherwise.”

“Don’t you dare do that.”

His gaze comes back to mine.

“Don’t hand me the exact corner of it I happened to point at. That’s what you do. I ask a question and you answer that question exactly, and then you stop. Every answer is true. Every single one. And somehow I walk away thinking I’ve learned something enormous when I’ve actually been given one beautifully arranged bite off an entire plate.”

Something moves in his face.

“That is unkind.”

“I know.”

I’ve been carrying the irritation around since this afternoon, and it hasn’t improved with travel. But looking at him now, standing in the hall where he has been some version of himself for longer than my country has existed, I can see what I’m doing to him.

I make myself stop.

“I’m not angry that you’re private,” I say, more quietly. “I understand why you’re private. Or I’m starting to. I’m angry about the size of the portions.”

Julian says nothing.

“Monday night you told me you were a vampire. You told me how old you are. You told me about Marguerite and the pans and why half this house looks like everyone stepped out for lunch in 1862 and forgot to come back. And I went home thinking you’d finally given me the whole thing.”

“I gave you more than I have given anyone in a very long time.”

“I know.”

And that’s what takes the rest of the fight out of me. I know. I know what Monday cost him. I know what it meant for a man who has spent centuries saying nothing to sit across from me and say as much as he did. I know because I was there when his voice changed over a copper pan.

I put my phone down on the hall table.

“But I found out this afternoon that I still don’t know enough to ask the right questions.”

Julian looks at me for a long moment.

“I have never had to tell anyone before,” he says. “I don’t know the order it goes in.”

That hits hard enough that I have to look away.

“Okay,” I say.