Avet picks up his fork like a monkey and pokes at the lettuce. “Healthy. Yuck. I can feel the nutrients eating away at the thick coating of preservatives currently holding my insides together.”
“A salad isn’t going to kill you, Avet. Just eat it.”
“You don’t know it won’t kill me. It’s a foreign object. My body might reject it.”
“Then when you die, be sure to tell me where you hid the griffin’s talon. I always wondered where that ended up.”
Avet snickers and takes a bite, talking with his mouth full. “And you never will. Eats at you, doesn’t it.”
Now it’s my turn to jab at my food as if it is in need of killing. “Other than slowly poisoning yourself with vending machine garbage, what have you been up to in the last three years?”
It’s a crummy question, but I’m no good at small talk. We both know Avet is eventually going to have to tell me the reason he’s come here. Best get on with it.
“You really want to know?”
“I’m literally never going to ask you again. It’s your golden moment; face it or flush it.”
Avet chuckles. “I’ve always loved it when you said that.” He frowns at his food again, picking out a cherry tomato. He makes a face before biting into it. “A lot’s changed since you cut out with no warning.”
Of course Avet is going to take the immature route before he gets to the reason why he is in my home. “I told you for weeks that I was going to leave. You just didn’t want to hear it.”
“You’re always griping about something. How was I supposed to know you were serious?”
I fight the urge to display my exasperation. “Carry on. I left and then…”
“I assume you want the condensed version.”
“If you tell it to me by way of a musical number, I’m kicking you out all over again.”
Avet wraps his ankles around the legs of the chair, as if he worries someone might come up from behind and yank him from his spot. “I kept trapping on my own for a while. A few months, maybe. A year. Hard to keep track.” He takes another bite, keeping his eyes from me. Avet lets the implications of loneliness hang in the air before he continues.
We don’t need to talk about how hard it is to live apart. I’m thirty years old, and when I left, I had been on the road, trapping with Avet since we ditched high school to go into the business of trapping creatures that go slurp in the night. Two full decades of never leaving each other’s sides came and went before either of us had learned to live without the other.
It’s a lesson I often regret learning. But I don’t say that to Avet.
He stirs his salad with his fork as if wishing it was cereal. “I had no sense of where I was, other than moving on to the next hunt. Kill the next monster. I was tracking down a werewolf when I got the call.”
“What call?”
“Cher.”
I lean back in my seat. “How is your little sister? Is she still the smartest person in the room?” Eleven years younger than Avet and myself, Cher wasn’t one for the trapping life. That’s just as well; her grandparents have dreams for her that involve medical school and a lab coat.
Avet keeps his eyes on his salad, suddenly fascinated by the greens. “She was still doing her undergrad studies when he took her.” Avet’s gaze travels up to meet mine.
My nostrils flare. “What? Who took her where?” I don’t realize I am gripping my fork until my fist aches.
“The sorority reported her missing seventeen days ago. I packed up her things in a rush. Didn’t find anything all that helpful, except that one of her sorority sisters told me Cher was last seen with a creepy guy with long teeth.”
My stomach drops. “A vampire.” The fangs are the giveaway.
“Exactly. So I’ve been on the road, tearing apart every lair near her college.”
“By yourself?”
A funny look passes across Avet’s features. “Yep.”
I’m surprised there aren’t more scars on his body. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s alive. Vampires are not easy to take down, especially when you’re outnumbered.