Demon Moon

covered the Scroll with a list of all of the reasons they should— had to —let go, and dried into lines of obsidian.

    After such a morning, it was a relief to spend the latter part of the afternoon in Colin’s basement, lounging on the sectional with him as Lon Chaney Jr. lurched across the enormous screen.
    She lost count of the times he buried his face into her hair, laughing—and even if his commentary resembled something out of MST3K , she heard the fondness beneath it. He apparently adored monster movies, and judging by the DVD titles stacked two-deep in the shelves, the era and medium didn’t matter. The Wisdom of Crocodiles sat between Frankenstein and Blood: The Last Vampire ; he’d offered up Vampire Hunter D and seven versions of Dracula for consideration before they’d settled for The Wolf Man —the only one Savi hadn’t seen.
    It was too much to hope for a happy ending, but at least a werewolf died at the end instead of a vampire.
    “That is the happy ending,” he reminded her when she said as much a few minutes later, after they’d retreated to the kitchen. He absently shook the decanter of blood he’d pulled from the refrigerator. “The ungodly creature wiped from existence, the Earth restored to its natural order. And, indeed, any man so hirsute should be treated as a perversion. Will this disgust you?”
    Her mouth stuffed full with rice from the takeout they’d picked up earlier, she could only shake her head. He poured the blood into a tall glass; it frothed at the top, like a cappuccino.
    He grimaced and set it aside. “I’ll wait; I detest foam. That smells incredibly good. Perhaps I will hold it below my nose as I drink, and pretend it is red coconut curry.”
    “Do you miss eating?”
    “Not when I’m feeding from you, sweet. But compared to swine? Yes.”
    “I’m flattered.” She poked at a carrot with her fork. “You’ll let me know when it starts to affect you?”
    “Not it if hurries your leaving.”
    “I’ll be able to tell,” she said quietly. “You’ll be shaky, stupid, tired. No libido. If my choice is between your weakness when Dalkiel’s still out there, and my staying—” She shook her head. “It’s not a choice.”
    “And if Dalkiel is dead?”
    “Shaky, stupid , tired,” she repeated, and hated the tremble in her voice. “With no sexual drive. Do you want to live like that?”
    His jaw tightened. “No. Bloody fucking hell.” He unclenched his fists. “I’d still be beautiful; you could bounce upon me now and again whilst I lie in my daysleep.”
    She snorted with amusement, but it didn’t last. Her laughter ended on a sigh. “Talking to them didn’t help us much, did it?”
    “No.”
    If anything, it had only raised more questions. “What did you expect Michael to say when he popped into the tech room earlier? When you said you didn’t want to know the balance of your accounts.”
    Colin stiffened; though the bubbles hadn’t disappeared, he took a drink from his glass. Delaying his answer?
    She forced another smile and waved the carrot in the air. “I know the balance of all your accounts; does that make me terribly vulgar?”
    The glass clinked sharply against the countertop. “I daresay it makes you practical, sweet. Every woman should calculate her suitor’s worth.”
    “After calculating it, I daresay I must be brilliant.”
    “Disagreement would insult your intelligence and my vanity.”
    “You’re insulting it by pretending there was nothing; even Hugh looked as if he was ready to argue with Michael, when usually I can’t tell if he’s upset.” Savi tried to hold her smile when he didn’t answer; she failed. Her stomach ached. Shoving the curry away, she said, “I’m sorry. Not stopping again. You don’t want to tell me; it’s none of my business. A different topic then: You thought the same thing I did, didn’t you? That Hugh didn’t tell me about James Anderson because he was afraid I wouldn’t forgive him.”
    “Yes.” His gaze was steady on hers, dark as iron.
    “When I was sitting alone in the tech room, I was thinking: All of this time I’ve been telling myself that Hugh understood me when I did that shit with the IDs as a kid, and that was why he never disapproved of me or lectured me about it. Because Nani sure as hell did.”
    “As she should have.” He took another drink.
    “Yeah. But then I realized he used his Gift on Anderson, and my first reaction was: He didn’t understand me. He’s