Somehow, hearing her friend’s words seemed to calm Kimberly because she nodded sharply and turned back to me.
“Okay,” she said. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But eat first.”
I handed her a cupcake with blood drizzled over the frosting. The idea that vampires couldn’t eat anything but blood was false. We could eat plenty of different things, but we needed blood for energy and nutrition. To us, blood was like water. Without it, we wouldn’t last very long. We’d wither, and become inconsolable, and we’d start making really bad choices in order to find a way to sate that hunger and desire.
Kimberly examined the cupcake carefully. She didn’t seem entirely sure about it. She smelled it, and then she stuck her tongue out to flick at the frosting. Raven and I just watched her with amusement. Suddenly, she looked up, surprised.
“Hey, it’s pretty good.”
“Imagine that,” I said.
She ate the rest of the cupcake in two bites, and after saying goodbye to Raven, we finished the tour of the house. I watched her as we walked through the mansion. She seemed both amazed and excited about the different places inside.
“And you have a library,” she whispered when we got to that room.
“Yes.”
“With books from all over the world.”
“You could spend all day in here if you wanted to,” I said.
“But what about...” She looked over at me.
“What about what?”
“Are we supposed to?”
“What?”
“Are you going to breed me?” She asked, lowering her voice. She looked around, as though somebody might walk in on our conversation.
“What?” I laughed. “Did you just ask me if I’m going to breed you?”
She nodded.
“First of all, vampires can’t have children,” I told her.
“We can’t?”
“No. When I killed you and brought you back, it destroyed your ability to bear life. That just comes with the territory, I’m afraid.”
I hoped she had never wanted children, and that this wasn’t something that was going to sadden her. Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind too much.
“What about male vampires? Could they mate with a human and make a little vampire half-breed?”
“No,” I said. “That’s not the way it works.”
“Hmmm,” she said. She moved on to other things, touching the different books and looking around. I watched with amusement as she looked around. Finally, it was time for us to go to my office. I took her hand and led her to my private space. It was an office I used for just about everything I could possibly need to do.
I sat down at the desk and pointed to a chair.
“Sit,” I told her.
She stared at the chair, but then she sat down. She gripped the arms of the chair and looked around.
“I have to make some phone calls. Don’t run.”