The pub was warm and dim, washed in amber light that clung to the old wood and smoke-darkened beams. A fire crackled in the grate, the scent of charred oak mixing with stale beer, and something sweeter.
Her.
I stepped inside unnoticed. Humans rarely gave me more than a second glance unless I wanted them to. Tonight, I didn't. I slid onto a chair on the opposite side of the room, near the back, half-shadowed with a clear view of the bar.
Of her.
Ellie sat near the hearth, legs curled under her on a threadbare armchair, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Mary sat beside her, feet up on a low table cluttered with two pints, an open bag of crisps, and a pile of weathered journals.
One was open in Ellie's lap, her fingers tracing a line of text as she read aloud.
Her voice was soft but carried. Clear vowels, southern lilt. I'd heard her laugh before, but this was different. This was easy. Unguarded. She'd found a friend. Someone to connect with. To share her burdens.
I should have left.
It wasn't just the scent of her blood, though that had been a battle from the moment I'd caught it on the wind. It was her. The way she moved. The way she studied the words on the page like they might bite her back.
I'd lived a long time, perhaps too long. Nothing caught me off guard anymore. Nothing moved me.
And yet here I sat. Guarded. Moved.
Mirelle had noticed, of course. She always did. It was the thing I liked least about her. "You're too interested," she'd said earlier. "Not just in her blood."
I'd denied it, of course. But she wasn't wrong. And that troubled me.
Alec, at least, didn't care why I was invested. Just that I was controlled. With an added resentment that we couldn't trust him to be the same.
But Mirelle knew better. She saw my interest in Ellie. How I watched her. How I was drawn to her. She knew what it meant when a creature like me started feeling anything but hunger for the human cattle.
It was a problem.
And we had far too many of those already.
Across the room, Ellie leaned in, whispering something to Mary. Mary followed her gaze, eyes catching on mine. She smiled.
Ellie frowned. Her gaze shifted toward me, hesitant at first, then sharper. She said something I couldn't hear over the noise of the busy pub. Mary laughed, her smile widening.
And then Ellie rose.
My fingers curled on the tabletop. I could leave. Perhaps should.
I didn't.
Instead, I watched her approach.
She walked with the kind of confidence you earned, not borrowed. Shoulders straight, chin slightly lifted, but there was caution in her step. Wariness and weariness both. She wasn't sure what she was walking into.
She stopped beside my table. "Are you watching me?"
I tilted my head, letting the smallest smile curl my lips. "Yes."
"Why?"
My eyes flicked down to her arm, and she frowned, clasping the bite mark with her hand, covering it although it was already covered by her jumper.
"Just making sure you're okay," I said, smoothly.
"As okay as I can be." She grimaced. "Given, you know, a flipping dog bit me."
"Not uncommon these days, I gather."
"So, I hear," she agreed.
"Perhaps you should avoid going out alone in the middle of the night."
"Or I just go better prepared next time."
"Perhaps, with someone."
"You?" Her lips parted and her heartbeat stuttered, just once, then steadied. I heard it. Felt it. The rhythm of her life, the call of her blood. But that wasn't want made me lean forward. "You're confident. Or is it arrogance?"
"Why not both?"
There was a gleam of challenge in her eyes. A hint of a smile on her lips.
"Does that line often work for you?"
I simply shrugged, smiling. She studied me a moment, and then laughed, shaking her head.
"Yeah, I bet it does."
I kicked the chair beside her, sliding it across the floor just enough to give her room to sit. I inclined my head towards it. "Care to join me?"
"You don't even have a drink."
"Easily remedied." I raised my hand towards the bar, and turned my head, catching Maggie's eye. Glamour was not my strongest gift, but I was competent enough at it to impose my will, to make known my desire.
Maggie poured a single glass of whiskey and brought it over. She set it down on the table before me and blinked, shaking her head as a look of puzzlement crossed her face. As though she wondered why she had done that.
"Thank you," I said, slipping a twenty-pound note across the table to her. "Please, keep the change for your service."
"Ah… sure." She blinked but took the money and went back to the bar, occasionally glancing back over her shoulder at me.
"That was weird."
"I tip well for the service."
"Okay." She offered a tight smile. "Thank you, for last night. I'll leave you to it."
She turned and walked away. She'd gone three steps before I said, "Find anything interesting in her journals?"
Ellie stiffened and spun back around, brow furrowed and a flash of anger in her eyes. "How do you know…"
"I notice things."
She was silent for a moment, considering, then said, "They talk about… symbols. Circles. Binding spells." Her voice dropped. "Foxglove and blood. Things that shouldn't make sense."
"But they do."
She met my gaze, voice barely a whisper. "Yes."
There it was, that certainty beneath the fear. She hadn't run. Not yet. She was trying to understand. Not dismiss. That made her rare. It made her dangerous.
"It's not real," she said. "Can't be…"
"But you feel there's something to it."
She took a step towards me. "Yes."
"Tell me."
"I think Sylvia was trying to seal something away," she said. "But I don't know what. And the woods… there's something in them. Something watching."
She's close, I thought. Too close. Too soon.
I needed to be careful.
Not scare her away.
"You're not wrong," I said, carefully.
"But not right, either?"
"No," I agreed. "Not yet."
She leaned forward, placing her hand flat against the table as she lowered her voice. She looked around, making sure we weren't overheard.
Likely because it sounded crazy.
"Then tell me."
I looked at her. Really looked. Her cheeks were flushed from the fire and the beer. A faint scar curved near her wrist. Old. Faded. Her hands were stained with dust and old ink from the journals she'd been thumbing through.
She was not beautiful in the way that Mirelle was, not crafted like porcelain, not draped in centuries of courtly perfection. But she glowed. Real, flawed, mortal and alive in a way I hadn't felt in almost two centuries.
Her scent filled the air.
I didn't just want her blood.
I wanted her.
Entirely
And that was worse.
"Some knowledge," I said, voice low, "Burns hotter than fire. It consumes. It does not return what it takes."
"What does that even mean?"
I met her eyes, throwing every spark of power I could claw from the blood of Tomas, into my attempt to dominate her will. To bend it to my desire.
"Sell me your property."
A frown marred her forehead, her brows drawing down as anger flared in her eyes.
"I've said I'm not selling!"
It was beyond irritating that glamour wouldn't work on her.
I would have to try a more mundane manner of persuasion.
"You can feel it, can't you?" I leaned back in my chair, relaxing my will. It wasn't working anyway. "Something is wrong with that house."
"No."
Stubborn, stubborn, mortal.
"If you sell, that burden passes to another. To me, in fact. You can go back to your life, with money enough to set you on any path you choose." My fingers tapped a soft beat on the tabletop. "Take the highest offer you were given and double it. I shall pay that."
She gaped at me, looking at me as though I were mad.
Which was not entirely unlikely, to be fair.
"You can't be serious."
"I am always, serious."
"Yeah, I can believe that." She gave a soft harrumph, shaking her head. She looked back over her shoulder, at the stacked books of her great-aunts. Her tongue darted out, wetting dry lips. "No."
A sigh escaped me.
Part of me had hoped she would take the offer. That she would flee and live a life in the sun, unburdened by the knowledge of what she was.
A normal life that had been denied me.
If I had been given the choice, all those centuries ago, would I have taken it? Knowing what I did now?
I couldn't say for sure.
But probably not.
"Okay," I said, shrugging. "I had to try."
"Why is it so important to you?"
I lifted the glass of whiskey and threw it back in one single gulp. I barely tasted it. Barely felt the heat in my throat and the alcohol would have no effect whatsoever.
My gift of healing ensured I could never get drunk.
Which was a shame because sometimes, at times like this, I really felt the need to do so.
"Some things are best left for another time," I said, pushing myself up from the chair. I inclined my head to her and glanced across at the stack of journals. "Your great-aunt wasn't crazy."
"She wasn't?"
Ellie didn't exactly look convinced by that, and she eyed me askance, as though wondering if I was perhaps as mad as her great-aunt had been. I merely smiled in reply.
"Keep reading," I said. "When you're ready, come find me and I'll give you what answers I can."
I turned and made it two steps before her voice stopped me.
"Find you how?"
"Read the journals," I said, not looking back. "And you'll know."
I didn't give her chance to say anything else and was out of the door and into the cold night. I paused a moment, breathing in the night air, before I sighed and set off walking back towards town.
Mirelle was right.
Which really annoyed me.