Page 51 of Nosfer-Meet You

Juliette follows my line of sight and smiles weakly before taking a sweater dress out of one of the plastic bags. It’s green and fuzzy, and when she slips it on over her head, I feel like I’m going to keel over from how adorable she looks in it.

“Juli, um.” My gaze licks up and down her body. “Okay, I have so many questions.”

“You were out for two weeks. I wasn’t sure if you would ever recover, and I made you a promise,” she says, looking down at her feet. Mary Jane shoes? The cuteness overload never ends, evidently. “So, I went shopping,” she says with a little curtsy. “What do you think?”

I stand up and make my way over to her to pull her in for a tight hug. “What do I think? I think you’re incredible,” I murmur. “But how’d you get all this stuff, love?”

“I enthralled a security guard to unlock the doors for me. I walked right in and took what I wanted.”

I can’t help but laugh. “My little thief,” I murmur, then pull her in close. I wrap my arms around her middle and give her a quick peck on the forehead. “How come you never just … enthralled people before? Since it’s this easy, I mean. You could have been living it up.”

“Non,” she mutters against my chest. “Word would get out quickly about a Nosferatu enthralling humans, and then the other vampires would come for me.”

True. Other vampires wouldn’t be happy about a Nosferatu in their city. They’d make her life miserable until they either killed her or she left. Whichever came first.

I kiss her forehead again and lift her chin to look into her eyes. My Juliette. How close she came to death. Hell, we both did. It’s hard to feel sorry for a bunch of other vampires when the main emotion I’m experiencing right now is relief. Relief and elation that my love is alive and definitely not dust. It’s almost as if my brain can’t believe it, though. I was so sure I died. That she perished, too.

Like Harriett. I couldn’t save her then … and the thought of not being able to save Juli almost killed me. But Juliette doesn’t need saving.

“What happened to the raids, then?” I ask, though I’m too afraid of her answer.

Juliette shrugs. “On a temporary reprieve.”

My brows slam together as I stare at her. No, this is not okay. Not in the slightest.

“I … may have killed too many of the paladins after I thought they killed you.” She raises her hand to inspect her nails, which I only just now realize are painted pink. My girl’s been taking care of herself these past two weeks, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. “A Nosferatu is a deadly thing on a good day. But when you steal her beloved?” She looks back and gives me a salacious grin. “There was no hope for them.”

Yeah, when she puts it that way, I can’t help but sit back and stare at her with wonder. That’s my girl.

Sugardove City is no longer safe for us, or any vampire who wasn’t killed in what the media is now spinning as the most “successful purge of vampiric activity” in human history. Juliette’s face glows from the light of her new cell phone as we huddle underneath the bus shelter and watch the live broadcast. Neither of us even notices the pouring rain as it rattles against the glass.

“Not most successful,” she mutters and shakes her head. “How easy humans forget their own history.”

I lean over her shoulder and gently pluck the phone from her hand.

She whirls around, baring her fangs at me. “H-Hey! I was watching that!”

Booping her on the nose, I slide my phone back into my jeans pocket. “You’re doing something the kids these days like to call ‘doom scrolling,’ mon couer.”

Juliette rolls her eyes at me. “I do not understand what this doom scrolling is, but your French pronunciation is still awful.”

“Yeah, well, I’m British, love. What are you going to do about it? Fight me?”

She stares up at me, and I stare back. Then we break into laughter as the bus drives up to the curb. I grab Juliette’s bag, which is stuffed full of her new clothes, and gesture for her to go first.

“After you,” I say.

The bus driver barely gives us a second glance. Even if he did, one of us could just enthrall him, anyway. We can’t use that trick too often or we’d risk exposing ourselves, but the whole point is to get as far away from the city as fast as possible. Keeping a low profile isn’t exactly high on our list.

We find a couple of empty seats toward the back and sit down, and Juliette rests her head against my shoulder.

“Are you nervous?” I ask her.

Juliette places her hand in my palm and looks up at me. “No. Not really,” she murmurs. The bus lurches forward, carrying us away from a city that was once much more tolerant and a hell of a lot safer for everyone. “But I’ll be with you, so it doesn’t really matter where we go.”

I smile, then place a tender kiss on her brow. She slumps back against my shoulder and quietly hums a familiar French tune. One of the operas we listened to on the phonograph. A distant memory from her homeland.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” I say. “It’ll all work out just fine. Hey, I got you something earlier tonight.”