Demon Moon

body. I would do anything to have you. Tell me what I need to do.”
    Her spoon rattled against the rim of the bowl. She carefully set it down and said, “I’ll come home with you tonight.”
    He was at her side in an instant, pulling her to her feet.
    “Wait,” she laughed. “I have to stay and help. We close at ten.”
    A soft groan of despair escaped him, but he sat down. Peripherally, she saw Nani come out of the kitchen and began eating the mulligatawny as quickly as possible.
    Colin’s eyes gleamed. “Shall I tell her?”
    “No,” she choked, torn between horror and amusement. “I’ll tell her you ate one of the regulars.”
    He laughed, his elbow propped on the table and his fist curled loosely in front of his mouth. She paused with the spoon halfway to her lips, struck by how boyish he looked in that moment. He’d been only twenty-two at his transformation, but his features usually gave the impression of ageless youth; he could have been a man of eighteen or forty. His laugh took away that untouched facet of his appearance without reducing his beauty.
    When it faded, he leaned back in his chair and smiled lazily. “There’s no evidence. I was nothing but a dream to her.”
    A dream? That was similar to what Fia had called it: unreal. “That’s what you make them think?”
    “I don’t make them. It’s how they remember it.”
    “How do you know, if you leave them directly afterward?”
    “I have been living in San Francisco for a long time, Savi.”
    One hundred years multiplied by an average of one a night…“Oh, my. And some twice? Was Roberta?”
    An indefinable tension passed over his features before he nodded.
    “And I thought I had gotten around,” she said.
    His lids lowered. “Does it trouble you?”
    “That I’m a slut? No.”
    The corners of his mouth turned down, flattening the curve of his bottom lip. “That is not what I meant. I would hardly hold your romantic nature and your desire to increase your odds against you.”
    She stared at him. Is that what he thought—and was he correct? She loved the physical pleasure she found in bed, but she’d never analyzed her reasons for seeking it with so many people, afraid of what she’d discover. And she wouldn’t begin now. “And yet you wonder if I’d hold your nature against you. As if you should starve yourself.”
    “I don’t have sex with every one.”
    “Neither do I.”
    “Only one or two a week.”
    Oh, god. “Okay.” It didn’t come out as strongly as she intended.
    A muscle in his jaw flexed. “It’s always consensual. And I don’t take advantage of—”
    “It’s fine, Colin.” Her cheeks hurt from the width of her smile. “Really. Even if you wanted to—and there’s no reason you should—you couldn’t stop.”
    And he couldn’t; he had to feed. The number truly didn’t matter, either; it was the knowledge that a few days from now, maybe tomorrow, he’d be with someone else. And then someone else.
    The dull pain in her chest had returned. Thankfully one night of sex—even spectacular sex—wouldn’t whet the pain from dull to sharp.
    Perhaps it could be a dream for her, too. Unreal. Her smile softened as she looked up at him again and caught him studying her face with dark intensity. As if reassured by her response, he relaxed.
    She took a sip of water, then said, “It’s probably a good thing that most vampires aren’t like you. Can you imagine even twenty in a city like this, trying to feed from a different person every night? Within a decade, ten percent of the population would have been sucked on. And a community of a hundred vampires? No way to keep that secret, even if everyone had your ability to make them forget.”
    “Yes, it is fortunate,” he said. “But there would be no community if they were like me.”
    “Because you can’t reproduce? Or because you’re reclusive?”
    He shook his head, and the tips of his fangs showed in a smile before he hid them. “Choose one.”
    Which question? The second didn’t signify, she realized; even reclusive vampires needed to eat, community or no. “Have you ever tried to reproduce?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?”
    “They died.” A bleak expression sat upon his features for a moment. “Not this one, Savi. I’m sorry. Another time.”
    She wouldn’t have many other times with him, but she nodded. “Why don’t you take a consort? Do you love the hunt that much?”
    “Savitri, my sweet, you double up your questions as