I swallow. “Um . . . strawberry blond?”
“Strawberry blond,” he repeats, and even though he doesn’t say pretty again, I can almost hear it. And then he continues. “Ethel, since the very second I regained consciousness, I have been very alert to my surroundings. Perhaps too alert, if you take my meaning.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“No? Well, I know how many exits and vents are in the hallway, and I could easily draw a blueprint for this building. I’ve been counting the cars driving outside, I can guess your weight and age to the decimal point, and I can feel that I have at least seven weapons strategically placed on my body—while you have been doing a poor job of hiding a single dagger behind your back. I would also easily be able to reconstruct the series of blows and relative positions that led to this”—the back of his hand brushes against my cheekbone, a barely there touch that has me pulling back and shivering at the same time—“specific pattern of bruises on your skin. This is a degree of situational awareness that doesn’t strike me as typical for a paralegal, so . . . what are our jobs, Ethel?”
I swallow. I should swat his hand away, but I am paralyzed, unable to recall the last time someone touched me voluntarily without trying to hurt me.
“Ethel?” he prompts, finally dropping his arm. He stares, waiting for an honest response.
That I simply cannot give him.
Your job—your one, single job, the reason you were bestowed immortality, the reason you were trained in all those things you just mentioned—is to kill creatures like me.
My job is to run from you.
As you can probably imagine, this puts us at odds, even more so because you’re not the type to half-ass anything. In fact, you want to kill me so bad, you just stopped someone else so that you’d be the one to do the honors.
Frankly, I admire your commitment.
Yeah. That’s not gonna work.
“Am I a criminal?” he asks, sounding intrigued by the prospect. “Is that why you’re withholding information from me?”
“What? No. No, not a criminal. You are just . . .” I rack my brain. “An asshole.”
He snorts. “Don’t spare the feelings of the infirm.”
“Well, you’re an infirm asshole, so . . .”
“I am not.”
“Excuse me? I would know.”
“Why am I an asshole?” He’s scowling now.
“Several reasons.”
“Such as?”
“You . . .” Are a literal vampire killer. “Because.”
“You didn’t list any reason.”
I huff. “You wear sunglasses inside, for one.”
His face falls, mortified. Mafia boss? No problem. Douchebag? A line must be drawn. “Do I really?”
“No,” I say, feeling a little guilty. “I’m not even sure you own sunglasses. But you and I, we don’t get along very well.”
He lets out a single dismissive laugh. “Right.”
“I’m serious. We are nemeses.”
“No, we are not.”
I frown. “Why don’t you believe me? We deeply dislike each other.”
“Maybe you don’t like me, because I clearly . . .” He stops. Shakes his head. Declares, as though the truth exists only to be molded by his words: “We aren’t nemeses. I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Says the slayer,” I mutter bitterly, and when his eyes widen, I want to punch myself.
“Slayer,” he repeats, his voice hushed. I tighten my grip around the dagger, waiting for . . . I don’t know. For him to remember. For an attack. Definitely not for him to ask, “You mean, an exterminator? For bugs?”
My shoulders slump in relief. I hear myself saying, “Yeah. Exactly.”
“And we’re nemeses”—his tone is derisive—“because, what? You had a bedbug situation I couldn’t fix?”
I am the bedbug, Lazlo. “It’s just in our nature. Because I’m a . . . an entomologist.”
“A what?”
This is coming together surprisingly well. “You are a sl—an exterminator, and I am the kind of scientist who studies insects and their behaviors. As you can probably imagine, my existence—my professional existence, that is—is incompatible with yours. You kill bugs. I keep them alive.” Do entomologists really hate pest control? Probably not. Doesn’t matter. “Conflict of interest.”
The head injury must be working in my favor, because Lazlo asks, “Is that why we’re here? Because of pest control?”
I nod enthusiastically. “You were on a job. I tried to stop you. We both stumbled, that’s why you fell and I have”—I point at my cheek—“this.”
The hesitation on his face spells out: You know all of this sounds like bullshit, right? But instead of calling me out on it, Lazlo says, “Sure. Fine. Let’s just go.” With enviable agility, he rises to his feet. “A doctor will know how to help me remember this stuff.” That you clearly made up remains unsaid.
“Agreed. You should check out Mount Sinai, but Lenox is—”
“You’re coming with me,” he says, scowling again. So deeply, I decide to casually remind him that I still have a dagger with a flick of my wrist.
“Sadly, I can’t.”
“Why?”
The trick about lies is, one has to put their whole heart into them. So I don’t let myself hesitate. “I’m allergic to the sun.”
A slow blink. “You are allergic to the sun.”
“Yes. It’s a pretty common condition, actually.”
“What happens if you go outside?”
“Boils. Pus.” Instant death. “You know. I’d rather wait for sundown to get out. Anyway, it was great to hang out with you. Good luck at the hospital, and . . .”
My voice drifts into silence as Lazlo lowers himself back into a sitting position. The tip of his boot brushes against the side of my sneaker.
“The hospital’s the other way,” I joke weakly.
“I’m not leaving you here alone.” He sounds, and looks, equal parts put-upon and determined.
A thought occurs to me: What if he’s faking it? What if he knows that I’m trapped here with him? That he can torture me and keep me at his mercy for the next ten hours? What if he’s just a great actor, toying with a lying mouse?
To test that theory, I ask, “Hey?”
His eyebrow arches: What, now? He must have little faith in my ability to carry out an interesting conversation.
I clear my throat. “Have you heard of vampires?”
“Of course I have.”
My stomach sinks, and I grip the dagger once again.
Until he adds, in a knowing tone: “Like Dracula. Carmilla.”
“Yeah. Or Nosferatu. You know, vampires.”
“I’m familiar.”
“Right. I was wondering: Do you think they really exist?”
He stares. Stares. Stares. And right when I’m sure he’s going to end me, he says, “Ethel?”
“Yeah?”
“I know that I hit my head. But what happened to yours?”