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“Why would I want him dead?”
“Because you want him to bite you—because you want to be one too—and he—he won’t oblige.”
“Who told you that?”
“The—the angel who hired me.”
“I know that angel. He was here. He interviewed me.”
“You don’t want him dead?”
“Of course not. I love him.”
I sit down on the sofa. They’ve got a nice place. Maybe they enjoy the horseraces. Even if they don’t, the tourists aren’t so bad off-season according to Fodor’s. And maybe when you’re the oldest vampire, you don’t have to obey the no-daylight rule. Maybe you get to walk around in the day—in a nice, clean, modern medieval city—maybe one you knew when you were only a thousand years old and it was being built and a lot trashier—and feel pretty mortal and normal. Who knows?
“Why did my employer get it wrong?”
She’s got the same look the angel did. “The angel didn’t get it wrong, Mr. Pagano. He lied.”
“Why?” I’m thinking: Angels are allowed to do that? Lie? Sure, if God wants them to.
“Why?” I ask again.
“I don’t know. That’s one of the things I love about Frank—”
“Your man’s name is Frank?”
“It is now. That’s what he’s gone by for the last hundred years, he says, and I believe him. That’s one of the things I love.”
“What?”
“That he doesn’t lie. That he doesn’t need to. He’s seen it all. He’s had all the power you could want and he doesn’t want it anymore. He’s bitten so many people he lost count after a century, and he doesn’t want to do it anymore. He’s tired of living the lie any vampire has to live. He’s very human in his heart, Mr. Pagano—in his soul—so human you wouldn’t believe it—and he’s tired of doing his father’s bidding, the darkness, the blasphemy, all of that. I don’t think he was ever really into it, but he had to do it. He was his father’s son, so he had to do it. Carry on the tradition—the business. Do you know what that’s like?”
“Yes. I do.”
I’m starting to like her, of course—really like her. She’s great eye candy, but it isn’t just that. The more she talks, the more I like what’s inside. She understands—she understands the mortal human heart.
“But I’m supposed to kill him,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because of—because of ‘balance.’”
“What?”
“That’s what my employer said. Even though Frank wants to flip, and you’d think that would be a plus, it wouldn’t be. It would throw things off.”
“You really believe that, Anthony?”
Now we’re on first-name basis, and I don’t mind.
I don’t say a thing for a second.
“I don’t know.”
“It sounds wrong, doesn’t it.”
“Yeah, it does.”
