Page 59 of Blood and Bells

Something in me unclenches enough to be noticeable. “Thank you.”

“But,” she adds, pointing a piece of cinnamon bun at me with the grave authority of a woman about to ruin my afternoon, “you also need to decide what you actually want from him.”

The thought catches in my head like a scarf on a nail. “What?”

“You’re mad,” she says. “That part’s clear. But what do you want him to do? Do you want him to apologize? To never do it again? Or do you want him to be something that he isn’t?”

“I don’t—” I stop. “I want him to mean what he says.”

Marcy smiles, soft this time. “That’s a good answer.”

“See. It’s perfectly reasonable.”

“Yes,” she says slowly. “But it’s also a hard thing to ask because it requires him to never make a mistake and people are consistently bad at that.”

“He’s not people,” I say. “He’s⁠—”

“A vampire,” she finishes. “Which, ironically, simply means he’s had longer to practice getting things wrong.”

I press my lips together hard enough to qualify as a decision.

“This is a disaster.”

“This is a crush,” she corrects.

“It is not a crush.”

“You went all cat burglar on him to stare at him through a window.”

“I did not⁠—”

“You crept up on him,” she says, sweetly. “From outside. Through glass.”

“I hate you.”

“You love me,” she says. “And you’re deflecting.”

My hand goes over my face on instinct, as if one good palmful of skin might cancel the conversation.

“I’ve got to focus,” I say. “On the festival. On the tree. On fixing this.”

“And you will,” she says. “You’re very good at fixing things.”

“Not this,” I mutter.

Marcy gives me the sort of look usually reserved for crossword clues and people about to make avoidable mistakes.

“Maybe not yet,” she says. “But you don’t have to solve everything today.”

“I do,” I say. “Christmas is in—” I stop, because I don’t actually want to count the days out loud. “Soon.”

Marcy drums her fingers against the table in a syncopated little rhythm that suggests she is enjoying this far more than she should. “Yes, that famously unspecific deadline of Christmas.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” she says, pushing her empty mug aside. “Then here’s your plan.”

“Since when do you make plans?”