The other vampire didn’t move an inch. “You think I would leave? Now?” He turned to me. “After what just happened? And how she made me feel?” He squeezed my knee. “I’m not leaving. That isn’t a normal reaction.”
“When did we ever have anormalreaction? The way that it was with the five of you and me? It wasn’t standard. We were all way too attached too quickly.” I leaned back on the counter.Maybe I’ll just lie down right here. Why not? It seemed as good a place as any.
“I always took that as the presence of death making it intense.” Griffin took my arm and raised me to a sitting up position. “Have you been feeding her?” The question was to Caesar.
He nodded. “At least until you showed up. We were working on the chicken. Come on.” When Caesar would have taken me from Griffin, the other man set me in the chair instead. Caesar smirked. “Back to the chicken, then your iron pills and vitamins. Then clothes. Shower. Sleep. We leave tomorrow. Griffin is apparently coming with us.”
“Apparently? Yes, I’m coming. You can get off your high horse with her. Just because you found her first doesn’t give you special rights. I was thinking about her, too. A lot. I was going to work on getting Rowan to change his rule. There are easier ways than blowing everything to hell.”
I took a bite of my chicken, which had gone cold. Getting it down wasn’t easy, but I worked on it. “There’s no impending death,” I told Griffin, bringing back the old topic. “So I don’t have any explanation any more than you do. Sorry.”
He rubbed the back of my neck. “She needs a lot more time. Paramours can take up to two to three bites a day. If we can get her healthy, there is nothing wrong with keeping her like that. You bite once, I bite once. Done.”
“I’m not hungry. Not even a little bit, right now. I fed this morning, but only because she offered.” Caesar took my hand. “Another bite. I don’t feel at all hungry, and that’s after three mild feeds. You tell me how you feel tomorrow. We may not need to feed for ourselves. We may just need to feed for her. That’s fine, by the way, Maci. Don’t worry about that.”
Griffin sunk into a chair. “I have been constantly hungry since I woke up. Desperate in that coffin to be fed. Then it was such a haze. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Pass out with the dawn. Wake up. Do it again. A need to survive beyond which I could handle.”
That sounded like hell. “I’m sorry it happened to you.”
He blinked. “Your sorry is unnecessary. It’s what happens when we change. I wouldn’t go back to being a human.”
That broke my heart a little.I’d change him back any day of the week. “I can’t fit anymore. Let’s go. Get the clothes. Shower. All that stuff.”
“Right.” Caesar grinned. “I’ve been trying to get answers from books we left behind.”
Griffin rolled his eyes. “They’re not the important books. You won’t find anything in them.”
“Well, it seemed a good place to start.”
They were silent the whole way to my apartment. I had no idea what two vampires sitting in silence meant exactly. Were they annoyed? Bored? Upset? Just quiet? Was it something I’d done? I rolled my eyes and decided I didn’t care.
When we got to my place, I jumped out of the car. I certainly had more energy than before, that was for sure. In fact, all in all, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so great. A song came to my soul, and I started to hum, going upstairs to my apartment.
“This is Wanda’s bar,” Griffin said in a low voice. “You live above a bar?”
I looked over my shoulder. “Wanda helped me for a while, and then she let me stay here for free so, yes, I live here.”
“Lived,” Griffin corrected. “You don’t live here anymore. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“That’s fine.” It really was. “If I don’t have to pay for feedings, then I have no need to be here. But if you vampires drop me off in the middle of Iowa where there are no vampires so that I die in terrible pain, I’m going to be pissed at you.”
He blinked. “Why would we do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m never exactly sure why any of you do anything.” Inside my apartment I didn’t have too much stuff, but I did have a working bathroom. They needed to shower and change, too, so I turned to regard them. “Why don’t you two get your clothes wherever and however you’re going to do that? I’ll shower and pack, then I’ll wait for you here. We can get back to the house before daytime and leave when you wake up tomorrow. How is that?”
Caesar nodded. “I suppose you’re safe enough. You’ve been here alone for some time.”
“There’s no such thing as safe, and we all know that.”
Griffin grabbed my wrist. He stared at it for a second before he licked it. I tried to pull back. What was he doing? “Are you going to bite me?”
“No. I’m going to make those marks go away. I don’t like them. I don’t in any way want to see the evidence of others having bit you.”
I took my hand back. “While I appreciate the sentiment, I think the damage is done. I don’t think you lick it and make it go away like it’s some kind of ice cream cone.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to lick your wrists once a day and the scars will fade. Eventually, they’ll be entirely gone.”
“Griffin…”It has to be said.“Even if you could make them go away, and I’m not sure it works like that, I don’t want you to touch my scars. They’re mine. I earned them. I survived. They’re mine, and when my wrists hurt, which they do a lot, I can look down and remember why. I don’t really care how you feel about them.”