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“They don’t?”
“Nope. And before you ask, the sun doesn’t kill them, either. They do try to avoid it, though.” She gets up and disappears into the bedroom before I can ask why. That’s probably just as well. I’ve already got enough to think about—the rest of my questions can wait until tomorrow.
Cat comes back after a minute with a fat pillow and what looks like the softest blanket in existence. I reach out to touch it and prove my guess right.
“You can use the bathroom first,” she offers. “I’m going to load the dishwasher. Is it okay if I run it tonight? It’s super quiet.”
“Yeah, of course.” I’ve crashed here before and can attest to how quiet it is, but the fact is, once I’m asleep it would take a herd of elephants to wake me before I’m ready. It’s why I have five alarms set on my phone.
“Cat?”
She stops halfway to the kitchenette and turns to face me, mugs in her hands. “Yeah?”
“Does it hurt? I mean, when a vampire bites you, what does it feel like?”
A smile creeps across her face. “Fucking amazing.”
Chapter 4
When I was a kid, my teachers used to tell us that we could be whatever we wanted to be. Doctors, lawyers, athletes. Stay-at-home parents, teachers, artists. If we focused in school, we could find ourselves doing things we never dreamed of.
I don’t think they expected meeting a vampire to be one of those things.
Though, my grade four teacher, Mrs Davis, did have a way of looking at us when we misbehaved that gave the impression she wanted to suck the life out of us.
I probably shouldn’t be thinking about life being sucked out right now, since I forgot to ask Cat if vampires can read minds. They can in some movies and TV shows, but not all.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Adam,” Nisha says with a polite nod. She has the same lilting Indian accent that Ladi’s parents do, though not as heavy. “Cat speaks of you often.”
“She does? I mean… that’s nice. And it’s nice to meet you too. Um… your house is epic. Love Cat’s place.” I give her two thumbs up, then shove my hands in my pockets, wishing I could take back the last twenty seconds. It doesn’t help that Nisha’s fucking gorgeous. Like, I don’t even swing that way, but ten out of ten, way out of my league, would scrub the biohazard that is my shared bathroom if she was coming over just to impress her. She’s almost as tall as me, curvy as fuck, with rich brown skin and black hair tumbling down her back in loose curls. She’s wearing sharply tailored pants with a matching vest over a crisp white shirt, and the occasional flash of fang plus her boss bitch energy is hot. I can totally see why Cat’s okay with being Nisha’s snack.
“Adam and I were talking last night,” Cat says smoothly, covering up my awkwardness, “and he thinks he might be ready to register. It reminded me that you said Tristan had just let another feeder go…”
Nisha’s face lights up. I mean like, lights the fuck up. You’d think Cat had just told her that she’d won a million dollars or something. The smile she turns on me is no longer just polite, it’s warm. Welcoming. Dare I say enticing?
Yeah, probably not.
“That would be perfect,” she declares. “He hasn’t been able to tolerate anyone since Nadia retired, but then the Association’s only had newbies to send him.” She makes a tsking sound, as if to say newbies could never hope to… something. Fucked if I know what. I thought the whole job was basically holding out my arm and staying still. Can’t see why newbies who’d been through the kind of assessment Cat was telling me about couldn’t handle that.
“A legacy is exactly what he needs. Someone who understands the requirements of the role and the demands our society puts on him.”
I shoot Cat an alarmed look, because that someone is not me. Does Nisha not know that I didn’t grow up in the vampire world?
Cat’s smiling and nodding, though, so clearly she thinks everything’s going fine. And hey, I’m the one who woke up at five to go to my shitty ex-job, realised I could go back to sleep instead, wished I could do that every day for the rest of my life, and then remembered everything on offer with this job. I’d be fucking stupid to pass this up, and if that means I have to fake a few things, no worries.
“We can go over there this morning,” Nisha’s saying. “I’ll call now. He had a temp out there yesterday, but he hates that and will probably wait as long as he can stand it before calling them in again.”
A… temp. Like a temp feeder? That’s a thing? I look at Cat again, and this time she’s looking back, her expression promising to explain later.
Nisha checks her watch, then asks, “Have you had breakfast? You should eat while I make this call. You don’t want to have low blood sugar.” She chuckles like it’s a joke, so I manage a heh-heh too, and then when she leaves the room, pulling out her phone, I whirl on Cat.
“What the fuck?”
“It’s fine,” she soothes, voice low. “I can give you a crash course on everything you need to know, and you’ll pick up the rest.”
She’s definitely overestimating how smart I am. “You never said anything about temps,” I hiss. “How does that even work?”
She waves it off. “Usually, they’re feeders who’ve retired from full-time service. My mum’s a temp. Whenever a vampire is between feeders, they can call the Association and arrange a meeting with a temp so they can feed. They’re feeders who haven’t worked a full ten years yet but don’t want to commit to a full-time live-in situation.”
