Page 14 of Nightshade

I withdrew my fangs from his skin and there, my lips a hair’s breadth above his skin, I drew a shaky inhale. “Yes, sweet?”

“Is that enough?”

I lifted my head, and there he was, a little pale, with his wide gray eyes staring my way, his lips slightly parted. He’d give me more if I told him I needed it.

Instead, I placed my palm against the bleeding puncture wounds on his forearm and pressed. I doubted he needed the help to stop bleeding, but a part of me feared his generosity would change when he saw my fang marks on his skin.

“Yes, darling. You were just perfect for me.”

He let out a little exhale, and I thought, if I hadn’t drained him quite so much, he might be blushing again.

“G-Good,” he said. “I’m glad you feel better.”

I lifted my hand, and he was already healed. There were two little smears of blood against my palm, and I licked them clean.

Then, with a sigh, I let my hands fall into my lap.

We were still sitting so close that Leo lurched forward at the first sign of my dejection. His hand closed over my shoulder, and it took⁠—

I knew he wasn’t reaching out to hurt me, but it took considerable effort not to flinch away from him. He moved faster than a human. Faster than a rat, certainly.

But I didn’t want to alienate him, so I slumped forward and pressed subtly into his touch.

The way he tipped his head put his face very close to mine. “What’s wrong?”

My lips pulled in a halfhearted smile, and I shook my head. “I do feel better, thank you.”

“But?”

I tugged at a loose string on my trousers. “The rest isn’t your problem. Truly, you’ve done more than enough.”

He let out a dissatisfied huff, and I struggled not to grin and make my victory apparent before I’d grasped it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again, like if I left it to him, he’d fix every problem the whole world over.

“It’s just . . . now, I have the whole night to run, and I actually feel like I could manage it, but I don’t . . . I don’t know where to go where the witches couldn’t find me. They have my blood. I’m surprised I’ve made it this long, really.”

He hummed, and when I glanced up at him, his brow furrowed with a line in the middle.

“I don’t suppose . . . ”

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t suppose you know anywhere safe I could go?”

CHAPTER 9

Leo

Keep him talking, my brain shrieked, so loud I could barely hear his voice over it.

It was the only thing I could do. Keep him talking, and maybe he wouldn’t notice that I was deeply uncomfortable with . . . well, best not to even think about that, wasn’t it?

Thank fuck I’d moved the crushed basket into my lap, and maybe, just maybe, vampires didn’t have senses as good as wolves. Not that I had any idea about that, obviously. For all I knew, vampires were everything or nothing like every book and story I’d ever heard of. Heck, when we’d gotten a motel room just outside San Francisco, Evie had found a television show with vampires. Those vampires had been immune to the sun, though, so I doubted that held much truth.

Altair’s exposed shins were healing right before my eyes, but not ten minutes earlier, I’d watched them smoke and burn and flake. He was decidedly not immune to the sun. Plus he’d implied even his terrifying-sounding sire hadn’t been immune, talking about the logistics of vampiric ocean travel in the nineteenth century.

Briefly, I wondered how Altair himself had succeeded, but something told me he wouldn’t want to explain that. It was a safe secret for him. A way he had used to escape, and talking to a near-stranger about that would be too much, far too fast.