30. The Hot Guy Doesn’t Need an Umbrella
30
The Hot Guy Doesn’t Need an Umbrella
You
Your replacement, Lizzie, stares at the scorch marks on the wall.
“What happ—” she starts to ask, but then she notices Ziros.
He leans against the far side of the counter, looking bored, scorched black barista apron still affixed over his chest. Arms folded, staring off into space.
Poor Lizzie.
She freezes mid-word, her head swiveling back and forth between you, Ziros, and all the burn marks. Like she’s trying to piece it all together.
And probably to figure out if Ziros is going to be a new coworker, and what the odds are that he’s single. Maybe it’s a good thing he’s blindingly handsome. Maybe that’ll keep her from asking too many questions.
Questions like, why are the blinds shut?
You don’t know Lizzie very well, having only worked with her a couple times, and it looks like she’ll be doing this shift alone. You frown. It is your birthday, after all, and you’d really like to get out of here, but is it really okay to let her work this place by herself with the possibility of more monsters roaming just out in the back alley?
You glance at Ziros, but he just keeps staring into space, absently waving the fingers of one hand. Absently, in such a way that a mysterious breeze stirs through his hair.
You widen your eyes and give him a look, hoping to catch his attention in a stop that! sort of way, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Just stares into space with a darkening expression that makes you wonder if maybe he’s thinking about the monsters, or his brother. Or both.
And hopefully Lizzie doesn’t notice that mysterious breeze, either, and wonder where it’s coming from. Because there’s no fans on or windows open. No reason for his hair to be blowing.
No reason but magic, that is.
“We just had a little incident earlier,” you say as casually as you can, leading Lizzie toward the counter as you launch into the most mundane overview you can manage. An end-of-shift handover update that includes only such boring topics as how many customers there’s been, what the status of the coffee is, and how you hope she has a nice, quiet shift.
After Lizzie is all set, you pull Ziros aside and whisper, “ What do you think the chances are there’s another monster in the alley? ”
He just shrugs.
“Why, hu—” he starts to say before you cut him off with a look. He just smirks. “I mean, June .”
No, no, he was totally going to call you ‘human’ in public on purpose.
That troublemaker.
“Don’t worry,” he says, slinging an arm around your shoulders. “If there are, I’ll take care of them.”
And he’s talking not-as-quietly as he really ought to.
Lizzie glances over at you from the cash register, like she’s hearing snippets of your conversation and wondering what juicy thing you’re talking about.
“There’s a bit of a mess in the alley,” you say as you steer Ziros toward the back door, grabbing a fresh trash bag and holding it up for Lizzie to see. “We’ll be back in a few.”
She just watches you go, gaze focused on Ziros’ arm around your shoulders, probably trying to determine what your relationship is.
And maybe disappointedly registering that she probably doesn’t have a chance with him after all.
You unlock the deadbolt, already bracing for the worst as you swing the door open.
And…nothing happens.
Nothing bad, anyway.
The sky out back is dark and ominous, looking like it’s seconds from either pouring or hailing, but otherwise it seems normal. No monsters, anyway. None that you can see.
As soon as the door shuts behind you, you turn to Ziros, sliding out from under his arm.
“Okay, so there’s trash up and down the alley from where I kinda sorta had to use it to fight the monster.”
Ziros looks like he’s trying not to laugh.
“Human. You fought the skaddler with trash ?”
“Yep.”
“But you had a sword.”
“It was tiny! At least, it was at first.”
Which reminds you: You pull out the now-once-again-tiny sword, removing it from its sheath—hoping Lizzie isn’t watching through the blinds as you hold it out.
And………………a great big nothing happens.
Yep.
You give the sword a little shake, hoping maybe that will jog it back into its magical girl transformation sequence of awesome enlarging, but still— nada .
Zilch.
Maybe it only transforms in extreme cases of life-threatening desperation?
“What’s the matter?” Ziros asks with a smirk, folding his arms as he watches you wave your tiny sword around. “Can’t get it up?”
“Ha, ha.”
“Have you tried rubbing it?”
You’re about ninety-nine percent certain that’s not going to help, but maybe you’d better try anyway. Just to be sure.
You run your hand down the blade, jerking back with an “Ouch!” as you accidentally cut yourself.
Oops.
“That was supposed to be a joke, human,” Ziros says darkly, and before you realize what’s happening, he grabs your hand, pulling your finger into his mouth.
What the?
Oh, right: Vampire .
You look away, blushing. For some reason, this feels way too intimate, but also a little awkward.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s just a tiny cut,” you grumble as you pull your still-bleeding finger away.
Shoving your tiny sword back in its tiny sheath, you pocket the whole thing and pinch your wounded finger with your other hand.
Man, now you really hope Lizzie hasn’t been watching out the window.
“Ha,” Ziros says, narrowing his eyes at you like he’s trying to decide how life-threatening a tiny finger cut would be for a human. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one whose immortal life is now wagered on the ability of a very accident-prone human to stay out of trouble.”
“I’m hardly accident-prone!” You protest as you follow Ziros deeper into the alley, scanning for trash all the way. “I’ll have you know, my life was perfectly normal before you showed up.”
“Was it?” He asks, and he doesn’t sound like he believes you. Fortunately, the alleyway is as devoid of people as it is of monsters, because he says, “The magic in your blood didn’t just appear overnight. You’re anything but normal .”
“Yeah, well, nothing weird ever happened around me. Not until that bookshop appeared.”
“Nothing weird?” Ziros asks, waving his hands, and a gust of wind billows through your hair.
You’re about to complain that he’s just making trash-collecting harder, when the magical breeze sweeps down the alley, gathering up all the loose garbage in one go.
“Hey, human. Better open that bag,” he says with a grin as all the trash rushes back toward you at once.
Oh, hell no —
You’re not fast enough.
You’re about to get a face full of used disposable coffee cups, paper towels, and random street trash picked up along the way.
And on your birthday, of all days!
Fortunately, Ziros is fast enough.
Just at the last second, he steps in front of you, grabbing the bag and holding it open as the entire alleyway-worth of scattered trash sweeps in.
All but one little candy wrapper, floating like a leaf on the wind.
Ziros clears his throat, and a last little gust whisks it in with the rest.
You just stand there.
Heart still strangely pounding—wait, are you impressed by this man’s trash collection skills now?
Ha, that can’t be it.
You’re probably just relieved that you didn’t get a mouth full of the stuff (ewwww) .
He grins smugly at you as he ties up the bag, hoisting it over one shoulder like some sort of trash Santa.
“What d’ya say we hit the dumpster, and then we go do something actually fun for your birthday?”
“No more monster fighting?”
You glance behind you, into the gloomy, broody, rather ominous darkness of the somehow-still-empty alley.
Yeah, so far, so good.
“Hey, I’m not making any guarantees.” Ziros chucks the bag of trash easily into the dumpster and slings an arm around your shoulder again as you head back for the cafe door. “Looks like the alley is all clear for now, but who knows—you seem to attract trouble.”
“Fair enough. After all, you can’t seem to stay away from me.”
“That’s different.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. That’s mag—”
You shush him as you step inside, but fortunately Lizzie is too busy helping a small queue of customers to notice he was totally about to say magic .
Man, what a relief not to have been attacked by monsters, and to have gotten the trash taken care of!
Now if only you could figure out how to enlarge your sword on command, you’d be all set.
Just as you’re gathering your things to finally head out, you happen to notice the pastry display case. You were so preoccupied all shift, you completely forgot Mel said you could help yourself for your birthday.
With a quick explanation to Lizzie between customers, you grab a pastry for each of you and Ziros to enjoy on the walk home.
Enjoy being the key word.
A word maybe you didn’t realize would be so far from reality.
“These are…” Ziros coughs, and it looks like he’s resisting spitting it out.
It takes all your effort to swallow the first bite of yours.
“Like eating chalk?” you ask with a laugh, glancing down the sidewalk as if expecting Mel to suddenly pop out from between buildings and overhear you dissing the merchandise. You squint down at yours with a grimace. “Man, I was wondering why we get so few sales on them.”
After Ziros’ cake earlier, the bar has been set pretty high, but this is especially bad.
Ziros glances at a nearby trash can, and you can’t exactly blame him if he doesn’t finish his.
With baking skills like he has, this must seem especially bad.
“You don’t have to finish that,” you say, though guilt keeps you powering through yours.
Yuck .
Does it still count as wasting food if you throw away something that was hardly food to begin with?
“Did your boss bake these herself?” Ziros asks, heroically eating the last bite of his as you choke down the remainder of yours.
Water! You need water.
“Not sure. I think she sources them somewhere.”
“Like, last week.”
“What?”
“I think these are old. There’s no way a pastry baked in the last day could possibly be this dry.”
“Maybe.”
Or maybe Mel does make them herself, and she’s especially gifted at making terrible baked goods.
But, hey, maybe this is an opportunity! Maybe you can get Ziros a job somehow as a chef for a cafe. That’d be cool!
Extra rent money, and maybe the cafe would actually benefit.
If nothing else, it would be a good deed to anyone else misfortunate enough to think the ones currently in the display case looked edible.
If only there were a way not to hurt your boss’s feelings while bringing it up.
Speaking of work…
Now that you’ve finally managed to swallow the last dry crumbs of pastry, you guiltily remember what you meant to ask Ziros several blocks back:
“Is it really okay we left Lizzie working there by herself? I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. Or to a customer.”
“She’ll be fine. Any non-magical human will be. Loads of human places have been built close to fault zones since all eternity, and nothing bad happens—usually. Except for the occasional monster sighting, that is, but nobody believes those anyway. Where do you think all the monsters of legend came from? Every culture’s got ‘em.”
You hope he’s right.
And you glance around, but fortunately nobody seems to be paying your conversation any mind. All the other pedestrians here are on their phones or pulling out umbrellas, hurrying toward their destinations as the first thick raindrops splat down from the dark clouds overhead.
“Here,” Ziros says, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “You’re getting wet.”
Before you can protest that you’re fine, he waves one hand, and a stiff breeze blasts all the raindrops away.
Hopefully, everyone else on this sidewalk stays too busy to notice.
You know you should protest to him so brashly using magic in public like this, but it’s kinda nice.
His arm is hot and comforting around your shoulders, and you let yourself sink down against his side as you walk, the warmth of his body lulling you into relaxation as the steady rhythm of your steps fades together into one.
Sy
— On a rooftop high above —
What the hell is that damn brother of mine doing now?
I’ve never seen him like this.
He’s playing her. He must be playing her. He’s using that little human to get whatever he wants—probably his freedom—and then when he’s done twisting her emotions to his end, he’ll dump her.
He doesn’t actually care about her.
No way.
I know that bastard better than to think something like that.
Ziros
There’s pretty much only one rule when it comes to immortal happiness. One rule that’s more important than any other:
No matter what you do, never fall for a human.
You’re way better off if you hate them.
Or in Sy’s case, flirt the hell out of them, but never make a real connection.
Never fall for a human, because it’s only going to end up in heartbreak. There’s no way for a human to live as long as we do.
Well .
Unless we die early.
But that’s not really much better.
Dying early sure ain’t on my bucket list.
That’s the only reason I’m protecting her. It’s not because I’ve let myself fall for her.
Yeah, nothing like that.
It’s just that I don’t want my lifeline severed early, all thanks to some human’s pathetic death.
That’s all.
And in the meantime, as long as I’m stuck with her, she’s mine .
So I might as well try to make the best of it.
That’s all this is.
So when we get back to her apartment and I ask, “What do you want to do for your birthday?” It’s not because I like her or anything.
Not because I care about her.
It was just her damn delicious blood making me crazy earlier. Making me think things I don’t really feel. Things I didn’t really mean.
And just remembering her in the shower—
I have to think about something else, because all I want is more .
Fine.
It’s not just her blood I’m after.
Her body is damn amazing.
I need her.
I need her like I’ve never needed anything else in my damn life.