What if one of those women started hitting on him?
I bumped their table a little as I breezed by them, telling myself it was purely accidental.
Frederick held my gaze as I approached him. His thick, long eyelashes were just as wasted on a man now as they’d ever been.
In truth, it was strange seeing him here. This was the first time we’d interacted outside of the apartment, and until now I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to think of him as a fixture of the lavish place where he lived. Seeing him outside of it was as jarring as seeing a flamingo on the El.
His gaze slid over me, nose twitching a little when his eyes fell on my awkwardly bandaged left hand. Could he smell the cut on my hand? I didn’t want to think about it.
His brow furrowed. “What happened to you?”
I hid my injured hand behind my back.
“It’s nothing.” It was the truth. That afternoon’s trip to the recycling center had been productive, in the sense that I found several usefully large pieces of scrap I wanted to take back with me the next time I had access to Sam’s car. But on my way out I snagged my hand a little on the jagged underside of an old bicycle seat. It barely even rose to the level of a bad paper cut, and it stopped bleeding almost immediately—but the guy working there had freaked, babbling about tetanus risk and liability. He insisted on bandaging me up before letting me go.
I’d been such a tangle of nerves on my way over, I’d forgotten to take off the bulky padded bandage and swap it for a more appropriately sized Band-Aid.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Frederick countered, still staring at me. He sounded genuinely concerned. “Show me.”
He leaned in closer, and I could smell the shampoo he must have used that evening before arriving. Sandalwood and lavender. The scent-memory of that moment just outside his bathroom—me, dripping wet, in just a towel—hit me like a tidal wave, crowding out more rational thinking.
I dug my fingernails into my palm before I could do something stupid. Like run my fingers through his thick, luscious hair in a public place.
Leaning in so that he could hear me but no one else would, I whisper-hissed, “I’m not about to show a vampire an injury that was bleeding an hour ago.” My tone was harsher than I intended, and his face crumpled a little. I fought to ignore the pang of guilt that shot through me. “Just . . . just trust me when I tell you it’s fine. Okay?”
His eyes fell to the table. “Okay.”
I glanced back at the ordering counter, where Katie was grinding beans for the next morning’s brew. It was a slow night, and no customers were in line.
“I’m getting a drink.” I jerked my thumb towards the counter. “Want anything?”
Frederick shook his head. “No. I am unable to consume anything other than . . .”
He arched an eyebrow meaningfully rather than finish his sentence. The coffee bean grinder started up again behind the counter, loud and abrasive.
“Oh.” I wondered if this was something I should have known. I couldn’t remember if Spike or Angel ever drank coffee in Buffy. “Not ever?”
“It would be like you trying to consume metal,” he said, quietly. “My body simply does not recognize anything other than you know what as sustenance.”
I wanted to hear more about this. Had he really consumed nothing but blood since becoming a vampire? It was a hard thing to wrap my mind around. For starters, it seemed incredibly inefficient. Assuming his caloric requirements were roughly the same as a human of his size, how much blood did he have to drink every day?
More than anything, though, a diet consisting of only one thing for literally forever sounded terrible. And boring as hell.
I made a mental note to ask follow-up questions concerning his dietary habits later.
“May I come along with you while you purchase your drink?” He looked around at the other customers at Gossamer’s, taking in how each of them had drinks or food in front of them. “As I will explain in more detail shortly, I need to learn how to blend in with modern society. I have not ordered coffee in over one hundred years. I suspect the process has changed.”
My eyes widened.
In over one hundred years.
This was the second time he’d made an oblique reference to how old he was, but it was just as jarring hearing it now as it had been the other night. He didn’t look a day over thirty-five. The cognitive dissonance required to look at him and believe he was centuries old was staggering.
My mind flashed once again to the moment before I fled his apartment. He’d said, I need your help. Sitting with him in Gossamer’s—watching him regard our surroundings with equal parts confusion and fascination—I thought I finally understood the kind of help he needed.
And, perhaps, why he’d placed an ad for a roommate in the first place.
I fidgeted with my purse strap to disguise how rattled I was.
“Yeah, why don’t you come with me?” I suggested. “Coffee shops are a big thing in Chicago. You said you want to blend in—”
“Yes,” he cut in, emphatic.
I swallowed. “Okay. Well, if you want to blend in, you need to learn how to order coffee. Even if you never actually drink what you order.”
He pushed back from the table without another word, the wooden legs of his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum floor. He followed so close behind me as we made our way to the register that I could feel his cool, solid presence at my back as we moved. I shivered—in part because his proximity was more exciting than I wanted to admit to myself, but also because his body radiated cold in a way I’d never experienced with anyone else.
I thought back again to when we’d collided outside of the bathroom. I’d been so mortified I hadn’t fully registered just how cool, how unyielding his chest had been when my nose brushed against it.
I was thinking about it now, though. Just how many clues had I missed?
Katie looked up when we reached the counter, her yellow flowery Gossamer’s apron as bright and chipper as her personality. She was easily the nicest supervisor I’d ever had, one of the few managers who didn’t try and pull rank when it came time to clean the milk frother or handle obnoxious customers.
“Here on your night off?” she asked, clearly surprised to see me. Her surprise made sense. I rarely came here when I wasn’t working.
“I was in the neighborhood,” I lied. She didn’t need to know I was meeting Frederick at a place I worked because it would make me feel more empowered for the conversation we were about to have. And because I wanted witnesses, just in case I was wrong about him being a friendly vampire and this went south in a hurry.