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Despite everything, the comment makes Lauren?iu a little less miserable.
“My mother would kill you if she heard you say that. No, that’s a myth. You hang garlic to make it last longer.”
Paimon lifts a finger. “Itdoesaffect vampires, though.”
“Yes, but it affects everyone. Try spending thousands of days surrounded by garlic and having to smell it every day.”
“Fair point. Did you always have to deal with difficulty from everyone?”
“My father cared for me, but I didn’t get to know him long before he died. My mother loved me. Her experiences were different than mine—she grew up in communist Romania, and I grew up in America. When it came to others outside of the family, she was reluctant to trust. But she supported me. She was incredibly excited that I was going to get my degree soon.”
“Is she still around?”
“I was told that she died, and I wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral.”
Voice low and soft, Paimon says, “I’m sorry, Lauren?iu.”
Lauren?iu is taken aback. His throat constricts.
No one has ever said sorry to me.
It’s okay because, in the end, I’ll kill everyone who has wronged me. I’ll kill them, I’ll laugh, and I’ll be content.
“You know how to say my name.”
Paimon stares, red eyes unusually intense. “Of course I do. Lauren?iu Nicolescu, no middle name.” All pronounced correctly. Lauren?iu’s chest stirs. Most people laugh and mutter, Oh yeah, I’m not even going to try that one. Paimon makes his name sound effortless. Not a burden. And it strikes Lauren?iu that he can justhavethis basic respect. Without begging. “It’s been thirty years.”
Lauren?iu grits his teeth, pivoting back to a reliable, safe emotion: his resentment.
“I loved him. My only friend. My companion. The one person in the world I trusted besides my mother. And he, he left me. He was my family, my soul, and he didn’t care enough to even check on me after he left me bleeding. After I was left in a straitjacket every day in the hospital, and even the doctors and nurses refused to speak to me.” Most of them, anyhow.
Not unkindly, Paimon jokes, “Careful with the upholstery.”
The vampire blinks and looks down.
He’s clawed the armrest open, stuffing bleeding from it. “I...I hope this can be replaced.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter at all.” Paimon raises his hand and snaps his fingers, and when Lauren?iu looks at the ruined armrest, it’s fixed, not a single sign of damage. “That’s quite a story. Your ‘friend’ did quite a number on you. He left you for dead while you were changing?”
“Yes. Sometimes, I thought I was dead. A ghost.”
“You want revenge. Right?”
It’s a silly question. Obviously. Who wouldn’t?
Paimon stands, and he gets something in one of the drawers. When he returns and sits, he hands Lauren?iu a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
God. It’s just like being back in his childhood home, which always smelled of cigarettes and incense.
Lauren?iu smokes, and it’s a while until he speaks again.
“I tried to get revenge already.”
“He killed you?”
A bitter laugh. “Well, yes, my first death before I became a vampire. But my second death, my staking, his husband did that.”
Lauren?iu lied to himself. He’s been told sorry before. A palm coaxing the hair from his face, wiping at the blood running from his mouth.
