“She drank my blood,” he admits.
I look over at the strange human in shock. “You just kept her alive on your blood?”
“I did! My teachers always thought I was the laziest child! ‘Finnigan, you need to at least try.’ I was trying! Trying to stay alive!”
“How old is she?”
“She’s five years younger than me, so she’s… twenty-four.”
“At five, how did you understand she needed blood?”
He leans back in his seat. “At five, I didn’t. My mom did.”
“Your mom did… what? Just a little bloodletting every time your sister was hungry?” I ask in disbelief. “Why didn’t she register her? If she’d registered her, she would have been able to go to the blood bank and get her something to drink.”
He folds his arms over his chest, and I realize he’s drawing into himself and not planning on answering much more. “I don’t know, Church. My mother was crazy.” He leans away from me, telling me he’s done with this conversation.
“Call me Marcus when we’re not at work,” I say, changing the subject.
“Perfect! Call me Babe when we’re not at work.”
I glance away from the road to glare at him because I know exactly what I won’t be calling him.
FINN
When I walk into the restaurant, I realize where we are. A vampire establishment. This isn’t a restaurant open for humans to come in and eat delicious food. This is an expensive place for vampires to sip on blood and make small talk.
He’s trying to intimidate me again. It’s kind of cute how much he’s trying, but I am nothing if not stubborn.
“What a lovely place, thank you for bringing me here.”
He gives me a charming smile. “You like it? Wonderful.”
The host stares between us, glances at Marcus, and hesitates.
“I made a reservation this afternoon for Church.”
“Yes…” The vampire glances at his computer, then back at Marcus. “Two?”
“Correct.”
“Right… this way,” the host says as he leads us off. There is instant attention on us as we walk through the restaurant filled with vampires. Almost all of them are staring at us and whispering as Marcus takes a seat at the table right in the very middle of it all and smiles at me.
I smile right back at him and sit down.
The host sets a menu in front of Marcus then stares at the menu he’d been planning on handing out to me. “I will… be back with your menu!” And then he hurries off.
“This is so exciting! Let me guess… am I the main course? Should I lie on the table? Do I take my clothes off? Will the fabric get in your teeth as you gnaw on me?” I ask.
His eyes narrow. “Does anything faze you?”
“Seeing you in the shower did a little,” I admit.
Marcus snorts and lifts up his menu to look at it.
“What do you need a menu for? Is it just like: Blood, blood in a bigger glass, blood in a gauntlet, blood in a Dixie cup—”
“How long are you going to go on for?”
“I was hoping to at least reach the fishbowl.”
A woman walks up and smiles at us. “Good evening, gentlemen, I’ll be your waitress. And… here… is a menu for you,” she says as she slides a sheet of paper in front of me that was clearly just assembled a minute ago. “I’ll be back in a moment to take your orders.”
I snicker as I hold up the paper. “Oh my god. I don’t know how I’ll ever decide. Like… should I pick SpaghettiOs or grilled cheese? What do you think? Thank you so much for splurging and bringing me here.”
He starts laughing. Literally laughing as he grabs the “menu” from me. “Oh, this is even better than I could have imagined. I’m so glad you let me pick.”
“Me too!” I say sarcastically. “While grilled cheese sounds better, I’m a little concerned. Like… are the SpaghettiOs safer? How long ago did they expire? Did they just find them in the closet?”
Marcus starts laughing even harder, and I’m honestly surprised by it. I assumed the only expression he’d wear with me is one filled with grumpiness. “I couldn’t have asked for this to go better.”
He’s very fixated on that, but I’m still concerned about the meal. “But then we have this grilled cheese. Do they know what grilled cheese is? Will it just be a slab of cheese with grill marks?”
“I am thrilled to find out.”
The waitress returns and smiles at us. “Did you guys have time to decide?”
Marcus waves at me. “Yes, please go ahead, Finn.”
I look at him, surprised he’s using my name. But I’m pretty sure he’s doing it just because he wants me to order my meal. “Do you have Coke?”
“Umm… no… we have blood?”
“Hmm… a little… metallicy for my taste. Pepsi?”
“Blood.”
“What about water?”
“Um… out of the tap.”
“Sure.”
She smiles. “Wonderful,” she says before writing it down like she can’t remember that the only human wants water. “And for your meal?”
“Um… now this grilled cheese. Can you tell me what’s on it?” I ask, not because I actually care, but because I’m enjoying this.
“Um… hold, please,” she says and then rushes off before I can tell her I’m joking.
“Oh no… she just left to see what was on a grilled cheese,” I say as I look at Marcus who is covering his face with his hands.
He slowly looks up at me. “Why are you enjoying this? You’re supposed to be scared and want to leave.”
“Scared? What am I scared of exactly? How my grilled cheese will be cooked?”
“The vampires leering all around you.”
“Hey, I already offered to lie on the table and let you suckle on me and you didn’t seem too interested. Did you change your mind?”
“I did not.”
I grin at him. “Hmm… that’s too bad.”
The waitress returns and gives me a huge smile. “Cheese. The item on the grilled cheese is cheese.”
“Awesome! Thank you so much for checking. I’ll take that.”
“Perfect,” she says before writing it down.
Marcus gets some gross-sounding pigs’ blood soup and a cup of some other blood. Probably human. I think he wants it to bother me, but I grew up in a house with a vampire and a half-vampire. Blood doesn’t bother me. He’s really going to have to try much harder if he expects me to run off.
“So… tell me about yourself,” I say as I lean forward.
He leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “I have nothing to say.”
“Must have been a boring life.”
“I just have nothing to say to you.”
“Ow… my throat hurts. It’s so weird… it’s almost as if someone—”
“No,” he interrupts.
“So how long have you been a detective?”
“I have no interest in conversing with you.”