This time, Jonas shook his head. “It’s one thing to risk exposure on my own, but I can’t jeopardize them, too.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust my desire to trust you. It doesn’t make sense when we only met last night.”
“Same,” she whispered, a little shaken at how perfectly their feelings aligned. “I understand your wanting to protect them. You don’t have to tell me anything.” She took a key out of the top desk drawer and used it to unlock the bottom one, pulling out her laptop and firing it up. “I’m just going to return a few client emails—”
“I met them through my work,” he growled. “My roommates.”
“Oh.” She closed the laptop. “Why did you decide to talk about them?”
“Maybe if I confide in you, you’ll do the same to me.”
“Not unless I suddenly gain the ability to abscond with your memories.” She swallowed. “Still planning on doing that?”
He said nothing, but a muscle jumped in his cheek.
In other words, yes. As soon as the mystery was solved.
She’d wake up one morning and not even be aware of his existence.
Trying to rid herself of the discomfort in her throat, she cleared it quietly. “Tell me about your roommates anyway?”
He stared at her hard, looking like he wanted to address her comment about memories, but ultimately he let it sit there between them like a nine-hundred-pound gorilla. “One is very serious. The other takes nothing seriously.” He changed positions in his chair, leaning forward and clasping his hands together loosely between his knees. “Like I said, I met them at work. A lot goes into maintaining our cover. Most of us have no issue following the rules set out by the High Order, but new vampires…well, they have a hard time adjusting.” He paused. “A really hard time. And I help them.”
“You helped your roommates when they were…”
“Silenced. That’s how we refer to the newly turned…because their hearts have been silenced. And yes, I trained them, helped them adapt when they were unsure how to fend for themselves.” Ginny had at least forty-five follow-up questions. Such as, how were humans turned? What did new vampires do that constituted a “hard time adjusting”? How did Jonas find new vampires to help? But her pressing questions were put on hold when Jonas shook his head. “You already know more than you should.”
Reluctantly, Ginny nodded.
Jonas waited, watching, obviously hoping there would be some quid pro quo for what he’d told her about an apparent underworld that operated without human knowledge. When she said nothing, he rose and walked to the door. “I’ll be right outside the door while you work.”
“Okay.”
The room felt empty without Jonas’s intense presence and it was hard to concentrate on anything knowing he was mere yards away, but she managed to answer all of her client emails and even make some adjustments to the AdWords she was using to court clients through Google. Larissa wouldn’t be happy knowing she kept a budget set aside for advertising, but it was impossible these days to run a business without marketing in some form. Her father had been a huge believer in word of mouth, and truthfully, that’s why most people darkened their door, but there was no reason Ginny couldn’t add a few modern touches.
Would her father be proud of how she’d been running the business?
It was something she wondered every day. Sometimes she’d even look up from her desk and expect to see him fussing with the catalogues or trimming stray strings on the carpet out in the lobby. Sometimes he’d even used a magnifying glass and would get so lost in the activity, clients would have to step over his crawling form while Ginny greeted and ushered them into the back office.
With a sigh, she put her laptop back in the drawer and stood, confident that tomorrow would be a better day for the business. Yes, that meant that people had to die, but as long as they were doing it anyway, her wish wouldn’t do any harm, would it?
Opening the office door and finding Jonas leaning against the opposite wall knocked the wind clear out of her sails. He looked like he’d been counting the seconds until she appeared again. Or was she reading way too much into the way his fist clenched while his shoulders relaxed at the same time?
“How old are you, Jonas?”
“Twenty-five.”
The grandfather clock ticked out in the lobby. “How old are you really?”
She only caught a glimpse of the haunted quality that spun through his eyes before he transferred his attention to the ground. “I’ve been twenty-five since nineteen fifty-six.”
“Ohh,” she wheezed, wishing for a calculator.
He looked and up at her. Waiting for an official reaction?
Possibly even nervous about it?
“A lot of good movies came out that year,” she said finally, wetting her dry lips. “Do you want to go watch one?”