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She shook her head. “No, no. I make. You say you like waffles. I make specially for you.”

Auris put a hand on my shoulder. “That’s very considerate, Eva, thank you.”

We followed her to the kitchen. Charlie was sitting in the chair at the kitchen table Auris preferred when he was on his laptop in the mornings, but unlike Auris, he was staring out the window behind him.

Charlie almost jumped out of his seat when we came into the kitchen, and that neatly took the wind out of my sails. In front of him sat a coffee mug that was a good four parts milk, one part coffee.

For Eva’s benefit, I said, “Excited to be going home, Charlie?”

He looked at me like I’d insulted him. His eyes fogged over in that way that happens sometimes when you get so angry and upset you tear up, and he didn’t say anything at all. Eva said something in Czech, and Auris ignored all of it and poured me coffee from the pot, handed me the cup, and sat at the table next to Charlie.

I wondered whether I should sit with them or move to the living room, but if Charlie had gotten tested earlier, it was probably fine. The only thing I was likely to catch was a snide comment from him.

Breakfast was an uncomfortable affair. I figured out that the spices in the spicy pear jam were cardamom, nutmeg, and cinnamon, but at that point, Eva was done making waffles for me, and I had a plate in front of me, meaning she got to leave the kitchen and return to angry vacuuming.

Auris seemed fine with the loaded silence. Charlie was good at glaring, but he didn’t dare look Auris in the eye.

I did try small talk and asked whether he’d ever been to Prague before (“No.”), whether he liked it so far (“Sure.”), and how he’d slept (“Fine.”). I gave up after that and secretly wished we’d stayed in bed longer.

When I was about to get up and put my dishes in the dishwasher, Charlie surprised me by looking me dead in the eye and asking, “Cut yourself shaving?”

When I reached up to touch the Band-Aid on my neck, Auris spoke very calmly, each word properly enunciated. “Harassing my staff for a few hours, I will tolerate, given what you’ve been through. Offending Ethan for a heartbeat, I will not. If you cannot make polite conversation with him, you will not talk to him.”

That was that. I went back to the living room with another cup of coffee, sort of hiding on the couch, my laptop balanced on my knees. Eva finished her vacuuming and left, saying she’d be by again tomorrow. The rest of the day felt longer than it was while I waited for our houseguest to be gone.

At around four in the afternoon, I retreated to what was to become my office. For now, it only held my camera equipment and a large desk. Auris had insisted on dragging one of the more comfortable armchairs from the small fireplace room in here. In case I ever needed a creative nap, he’d said.

A knock on the door made me look up. Auris opened it but didn’t come into the room.

“I’ll be downstairs for five minutes to tell Jan to get the car ready. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Does that mean something is wrong?”

“No, it means he has the TV on too loud. Or maybe some podcast.”

“Well, uh, I’ll be here.”

Auris gave me a lazy smile that spread all over his face like sunshine on a cloudy day. “I’m counting on it. I’m counting on having you all to myself again very soon, my sweet. You want to consider finishing up work for the day in a few minutes.”

I grinned at him. “I’ll gladly be all yours.”

“Five minutes. Maybe fifteen to walk Charlie to the car.” He closed the door behind himself.

I was busy closing a few random tabs I’d opened—some about Sedlec Ossuary, others about berserkers and werewolves—when the door opened again.

“Forget someth—oh. Charlie.”

Charlie looked all kinds of shifty. He stood in the doorway, and even though he was too skinny to be intimidating, dread hit me hard. It was because of what had happened in Brightam, I knew that. I knew Auris was just moments away, and that he’d be here if I screamed. If anything happened.

“I don’t have much time.” Charlie’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “You seem a decent bloke, yeah? Listen, they tell you things you want to hear. It’s what they do. Then they take, and they take, and they take. You don’t think Jonathan never bit me, do you? Ask your black-haired beauty about my scars, why don’t you. I was Jonathan’s chew toy. Anyway, a little nick is how it starts.” He pointed at my throat. “And then, before you know it, seven years of your life, just pissed away in some Eastern backwater. Run while you can is all I’m saying. Thanks for being there yesterday. Guess he was hesitant to kill me in front of you.”

My jaw dropped, but before I could so much as say a single word, Charlie closed the door, and I was left with my own thoughts in my unfinished office. A gold-framed mirror on the wall across from me reflected the sunset, and I stared into it as if my reflection had the first clue of what to do.

15

I stayed in my office, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t hiding. Being a visual person, I picked up a notepad from the small selection Eva had bought for me, this particular one with cartoon cats on it. Next to the wide-eyed tabby’s face, I wrote out what Charlie had seen: a vampire and a human breaking into the church in which his Jonathan had vanished. Was Auris threatening? He could be. I knew exactly what he was capable of, because I had seen it. Did he give off that vibe? I remembered having been scared to some degree, that first night, on our way to the restaurant.

But Charlie hadn’t known that. He’d just seen me with Auris, following him into his rented room, presenting him with a literal bag of bones. That was not something anyone handled well if they were well adjusted. Add to that whatever bad experiences Charlie had endured before last night. Then, of course, Auris had been pretty direct with him—not chummy, but direct—and who knew what they’d talked about when I’d fallen asleep last night, or back in the bathroom in Charlie’s Airbnb.