Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 122946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
“Am I breaking like every vampire custom right now?” I asked gently.
“Not all of them.” He chuckled and drank.
Holding my glass, I drank, too. The taste of the human blood soothed the dull ache I had all but gotten used to in the back of my throat. Before I realized it, I was lifting the cup all the way up and drinking every drop.
“Better than your deer and forest rats?” Theseus teased.
“Are you trying to pick a fight with me?”
“Me,” he mused. “Never.”
I bit back my laugh at the expression on his face and looked at the door as I smelled her walking. Taelon glanced down at Lucy, and she looked up briefly before keeping her head bowed. When he moved to let her walk in first, she honestly looked like she didn’t know what to do. For the first time ever, she looked awkward and uncomfortable.
“So, I’m guessing I’m not going to get my dry cleaning back?” I asked her, waving her to sit in the chair Taelon was sitting in across the aisle from me.
“Our business is never late on an order,” she said, taking a seat.
“Our?” I asked, looking over to Taelon, and before my eyes, he shifted into this old man—short white hair, a chin beard, and wrinkles all over his white face—the same old man I remembered ironing clothes in the back. “Mr. Ming?”
He laughed, nodding and changing back into his youthful self. “I’ve wanted to let you know for so long that the secret to the stains is just baking soda, vinegar, salt, and steam.”
By the look on Lucy’s face, I was sure she was using all of her energy and composure not to throw the glass of blood in his face. But she said nothing.
“It’s his gift. It allows him to shift into older and younger versions of himself. He can do this to others as well.” Theseus sounded as if he was telling me, but I thought he was asking.
I looked at Lucy. “So, he made you look like an—”
“An elderly woman, yes. It makes more sense for the business, and the elderly are less threatening to humans,” Lucy said gently. Her eyes drifted to the glass in front of her, and I noticed her hand ball into a fist. She was trying to hide her nails.
Taelon took the blood, finishing it off, quickly. I had seen her drink before, but then again, it was only as the older version of her. Maybe it hid how she looked as a Lesser blood.
“Druella, did my old friend get to tell you how we met?” Taelon asked me, clearing changing the subject.
“Friends?” Theseus eyebrow raised.
Taelon grinned. “Aren’t we? Can’t you remember what you told me all those decades ago?”
“Actually, Theseus explained in the car, although he said you weren’t friends, but rather you just bothered him long enough.” I sat up, and Theseus’s eyes shifted on me. This was my chance to discretely tell him I’d used this gift of mine again. “He told me he came here a hundred years ago, pretending to search for someone who’d offended his family. It took you fifty years of annoying him before he finally told you the truth.”
“Annoying?” Taelon scoffed in fake hurt, looking to Theseus. “I truly hope her politeness will rub off on you.”
“In return, I shall make sure my temper rubs off on her,” he said, his eyes not leaving mine.
“She has enough of one on her own,” Lucy muttered, drawing Theseus’s cold eyes to her. “Lord Thorbørn.”
“You can call him Theseus,” I said to her and offered him a glare, challenging him to say otherwise. “At least when we are all together like this. For my sake. This lord stuff is weird to me. What do they call you? The fifth?”
“Exactly or Mr. Swan when I am the only one of my family present.” He relaxed back in the chair as the plane took off. “My job is not as important as my siblings to be called Sir and Madam.”
“What is your job? Outside of getting stains out of my shirt,” I joked.
“Recordkeeper of the land,” he answered, and when he realized I didn’t understand, he went on. “How many new vampires were created in our lands, new families, gifts of those families, how many covens there are, how many circles within those covens, and such.”
“You gather all of that information?”
“Now you understand one of the reasons I like the comfort and simplicity of a dry-cleaning business,” he joked before looking to Theseus. “Though I cannot be ungrateful. It was thanks to my work I was able to meet her. She was young too—”
“I was not as young as her,” Lucy interjected quickly. “And you don’t have to tell her our whole story.”
Taelon pouted, and for him who looked almost as rugged and strong as Theseus…almost; it was amusing. He quickly let her be and glanced over to Theseus. “Now that she is leaving, may I ask who it is that changed her, for our records? Of course, you do not have to tell us, but it has been one of my biggest mysteries this year.”