Chapter 2 – Jack
Chapter Two
Jack
I watched disappointment strobe across Luna’s delicately boned face, then she stormed off and I heard her start a shower.
I made my way to my apartment’s kitchen, fed my cat Sugar, and pulled out the few food items I had that a human could eat.
I’d been so close to giving Luna my blood after the affair at Vermillion. Once she was safely back on my couch, I realized just how much blood Paco had drained from her—and how brave she’d been in letting him, knowing full well just how dangerous a vampire’s first taste of blood could be.
But she’d been too weak to give me permission when I asked, and she wasn’t quite on death’s door. She’d been pale and weak, but I’d known by the strength of her heartbeat that she’d survive, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it until I heard her tell me that she wanted it one more time.
Because I hadn’t given Paco a choice—I’d changed him in desperation before he’d died, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing yet.
I thought it was, given the alternative . . . but now that it’d been almost a week, and he hadn’t reached out to me, I didn’t know. He hadn’t called, or texted, or dropped by, not at my apartment, and not at Dark Ink.
The only thing I was sure of was that he was alive.
As his creator, it felt to me like we were connected by this thin silver strand, a magical manifestation of my concern.
On my side, it felt like it was a thread lost in a maze for a minotaur.
I didn’t know where it ended; I only knew that it had one.
Whereas on his side, I knew if he felt it, and if it felt to him like mine had from Rosalie, my maker, to me . . . it was more like a leash.
Which was why even though I knew I could figure out exactly where he was, at all times, I couldn’t use my powers over him to track him down.
Even if it meant he never came back to me.
He had to trust in me, that I wasn’t that kind of . . . owner was the wrong word for it. I loathed the word “master,” “boss” didn’t make any sense, and I didn’t want to be any of those things besides.
I just wanted what we’d always had. Him and me.
Together, for as long as he would have me.
Caring for a broken Luna had given me something to do other rather than think about having possibly lost Paco.
The shower cut off, I heard the hair dryer running, and by the time Luna had made herself presentable in her own clothing, some short skirt and slouchy gray goth-girl-number top, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich waiting for her, alongside a small cup of all the vitamins I could think a human might need when they had to replenish half their blood supply quickly, which I’d overnighted from the internet.
When she came out, I offered both to her.
“You kept me alive with this?” she asked, holding up a diagonally cut wedge of sandwich.
“And these.” I shook the cup of pills.
She looked between them and me. “You know what works better than vitamins, Jack?”
I’d had no illusions about what her mood would be when she finally healed up. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Vampire blood!” Her hands went into fists at her side. “What would you have done if I had died? Would you have granted me the same gift you gave Paco?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. If Paco had killed her, my conscience wouldn’t have given me a choice.
“But you didn’t die—and I told you if we survived, we would talk like equals.
So now that you’re awake, we are.” I reached over to nudge one of the chairs in my small dining room out, and she slumped into it like a petulant child.
I took a seat across from her, bringing both the sandwich and the pills, pushing them across the table to her.
“Don’t you want to be older first, Luna? Live a little longer? Or get a goddamned tan?”
She frowned at the sandwich, as if to eat it might be akin to admitting she was mortal, but then she broke down and took a bite. “No. I don’t,” she said around a mouthful.
“You don’t realize what you’re asking for.”
Luna glared at me. “Don’t project your bullshit relationship problems on me, Jack. Unlike Paco, I know exactly what I’m getting into. I’m a hundred percent prepared, and what’s more—you swore you would do it.”
She wasn’t lying. She’d worked for Rosalie for years—she probably knew more about being a vampire than I did.
And she wasn’t wrong. I did owe her. I’d practically promised her this, if she helped Paco, which she had.
I just wanted to hear it all the way from her lips first.
I didn’t want to turn someone who didn’t want to be turned.
Not again.
“You truly want this?” I asked her.
She set the crust of her sandwich down and pushed the plate aside, sensing my sincerity. “More than anything, Jack. Believe me.”
I rocked back in my chair, remembering what it’d been like when I’d been turned, and the problems that’d ensued right after—I’d been trapped in Vegas, without money or ID.
“Did you want a final meal first? Any last thing you want to go see in daylight? Go home to your folks and say goodbye or anything?”
Her mouth opened, her chest heaved, and her eyes suddenly went wide.
“Luna?” If she was having a heart attack in front of me, I was going to feel like an asshole for not granting her request earlier.
Her hands fluttered, as did her eyelids. “No—just—yes—I can’t believe it,” she said, confused words tumbling out of her mouth. She didn’t seem like herself. “Maybe—just—a few more days?” she squeaked.
I frowned. “What changed?”
She gathered herself quickly. “You did!” She said it like it was a complaint. “I mean you—you mean it now!”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I squinted at her, trying to read her, but she looked away.
“It’s just . . . I thought I was ready, but I’m not,” she blurted out.
What precisely had changed between the pre-sandwich Luna and post-sandwich Luna I was facing? “All right,” I said slowly. “Well, the offer stands. You just let me know when you’re ready for me to take you up on it, okay?”
She started nodding and didn’t stop. “That sounds perfect.” She stood and picked up the cup of vitamins, downing the chalky pills dry. “We going into Dark Ink tonight?”
“It’s my night off.”
“You take nights off?” she said, her voice going high in disbelief.
“Sometimes.” I watched her carefully. She was still flustered. I was watching the surface part of her, reading all the things that made her still human, whereas my hunger was reacting to the nervous way she breathed.
It wanted her to run, and it wanted me to chase her. I yanked it back.
“Okay, well,” she went on, “I bet there’s tons of things I need to do there, to get caught up, especially if it’s been awhile.” She composed herself quickly and pushed her chair in. “I don’t suppose someone brought my car back from Vermillion?”
I jerked my chin towards the kitchen’s counter, where her keys sat beside my own. “Maya said it was scaring off clientele.”
Luna snorted, shaking herself, seeming to finally come back into her body.
“I’ll just go by the shop then. See what I’ve missed and get caught up on mail and payroll.
” She darted down beside the couch and picked up her small backpack from where she’d left it days ago. “I’ll be back later. Don’t stay up.”
I felt my eyebrows crawl up my forehead as I watched her leave. “I won’t.”