“You have questions.” He sat and uncorked the bottle. The electric lantern made his pale skin glow. It shone off his high cheekbones and the lines of his neck. His mouth was soft, his lips slightly curved, even at rest. I remembered it open, redder than blood, the teeth shockingly white and sharp. I remembered his hands, strong enough to crack the wood of the basement door, strong enough to break Brody’s bones. But now he sat easily in my kitchen chair, regarding me steadily with calm, entrancing eyes. He was terrifying, but he was beautiful, like a freezing winter morning in the very heart of the mountains. I bridled at the thought and dropped my gaze to the tabletop.
“How old are you?” I heard myself ask.
“Not old enough to have known Jacob More,” he said, with something like amusement in his voice.
“That’s not an answer.”
He still didn’t smile but something like humor flickered in the dark depths of his eyes. “I don’t know exactly. Over eighty, less than a hundred.”
“How do you not know how old you are?”
He lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “You stop counting after a while.” I narrowed my eyes and his mouth twitched. “And, well…at the time, it wasn’t considered important where I’m from.” His brow creased slightly, his eyes far away. “I remember the Second World War but not the first. Do I get to ask a question now?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, regarding him closely and trying not to think about the fluttering in my belly. “What question?”
“Is this really your home?”
“Why?”
He tilted his chin slightly. “I knew you must live here when we arrived. I could smell it. But the place looks like it belongs to someone else.”
Something prickled over the skin of my back. “Again, why do you care?”
“Just curious, like you.”
“I’m not curious about you,” I said in tight voice. “That’s not what this is.”
He inclined his head. “Very well. You don’t have to answer. Next question?”
I picked at a splinter on the table, not looking at him. “Daylight…”
“What about it?”
“Does it kill you?”
“No.”
“Then why—?”
“The cellar?” He sipped his wine. His mouth was stained slightly pink. I hurriedly lifted my gaze. “We have to sleep, just like you do.”
“During the day?”
“We’re sensitive to sunlight,” he said slowly, factually. “We don’t produce melanin in the same way, so we burn easily. And it’s hard to see.”
“So you just…sleep?”
He frowned at his glass. “Not the way you sleep. The Blood requires us to…offline. Recharge.”
“Could you stay awake if you wanted? During the day?”
“Yes, though it’s hard. But the Blood wakes us if there’s a threat. Is it my turn now?”
I hesitated and reached for the other glass. “I thought you said you were supposed to answer my questions.”
“Polite conversation normally goes both ways.”
I fought a scowl. “We’re not exactly meeting at a dinner party here.”
“No,” he said softly, looking into the fire. “But that’s not my fault, is it?”
