Chapter 3 — Roommates of Doom

Three weeks into the arrangement, Lila had a working theory about vampires: they were dramatic, they were old, and they had no idea how to be alive.

Evidence A: the grocery store.

"Do we need this?" Kael asked, standing in the middle of the produce aisle, holding a pineapple like a holy relic. He was wearing a black turtleneck and sunglasses at night, because apparently "blending in" to him meant "look like a bodyguard at a funeral."

"Only if you plan to cosplay a piña colada," Lila said. "Put it back."

"It has a crown," Kael said, with genuine wonder. "It's the king of fruits."

"You are one hundred and seventy years old. You've seen empires fall. You're impressed by a pineapple."

"I've seen empires fall. I've never seen a fruit with a crown." He put it in the cart.

Evidence B: the espresso machine.

At 9 a.m., Lila walked into the kitchen to find Kael Voss—master of the night, terror of the Council—jabbing at the espresso machine's buttons with the controlled fury of a man defusing a bomb. The machine beeped at him. He bared his fangs at it.

"I'm not drinking coffee for you," Lila said. "I don't even like coffee."

"Then why does the machine exist?"

"Because my landlord gave it to me and it's decorative."

Kael stared at the machine with the hatred of a man who had lost a duel. "It's not decorative. It's a challenge."

He did not beat the espresso machine. Lila found him an hour later, sitting in front of it, having conquered it and produced a cup so strong it was probably a war crime. He was drinking it, expressionless, because he refused to admit defeat.

Evidence C: the streaming incident.

"What is this," Kael said, holding the remote like a foreign weapon, "and why do humans keep ghosts in a box to watch them for entertainment?"

"That's not ghosts, that's the show with the boy and the monsters."

"You watch a small boy fight monsters in a box, and you're telling me this is recreation and not a ritual."

"You're a vampire. You live on blood. You don't get to judge anyone's recreation."

He watched an episode. Three hours later, Lila woke to find him still on the couch, binge-watching, wrapped in her throw blanket, eyes fixed on the screen with the intensity of a general reviewing troop movements. When she asked if he liked it, he said: "The monster is poorly designed. But the child has courage."

He did not stop watching until dawn.

The comedy of it all—a thousand-year-old predator learning to live like a human for a human—was almost enough to make Lila forget why she was really here. Almost.

Because she was still finding the pieces.

Piece one, in the study: a file folder, mis-filed, half-hidden. She didn't open it. But she saw the label: SUBJECT: Reed, Lila. Classification: Pending.

Piece two: the way Aldous looked at her sometimes. Like he knew something she didn't and wasn't sure if he should feel sorry for her.

Piece three: Kael's hands. When he thought she wasn't looking, he'd hold his own palm up and study it—the palm that had branded hers—with an expression she couldn't read. Grief? Guilt?

She didn't ask. She was a professional. Professionals didn't ask questions about the client's medicine cabinet.

But at night, alone in her room, she'd lie awake and replay the brand—the current that had run from his palm into her heart—and wonder if the current was the contract, or something else.

And in the living room, alone in the dark, Kael would replay the same moment, and wonder the same thing.

Neither of them slept. Both of them pretended they did.