6. Six
Six
B y noon the next day, Leslie could hardly concentrate on selling her art. Her senses were tuned for the moment she would smell a vampire’s presence at the fair again. Her mind kept wandering to the results of the matchmaking test. To the surging sense last night that something in her life had changed now that Ryker had entered it.
What was he doing right now? Would he wait to show up until the fair ended at five? That would be disappointing.
Okay, enough. Focus. On her art. On the lovely people who stopped to study it, often to praise it. Her heart warmed with every word of admiration. Right now a woman around her age was walking up and down in front of her table of pocket-sized overhead dioramas, mouth open and eyes intent. She’d browsed Leslie’s work for close to ten minutes and hardly glanced at Leslie.
“So cool.”
“Thanks,” Leslie said.
“I follow this artist on social media who makes stuff exactly like this. I love it—hers and yours. Maybe you know her? Artists are a small circle, right? And I think she’s from Tennessee.”
Leslie shrugged though the woman didn’t look up. “I’m the only diorama artist I know personally, but I follow a few. What’s her name?”
“Leslie Snow.”
Leslie laughed. “In that case, hi.”
The woman at last met Leslie’s eyes, a crinkle between her dark brows. She gasped. “Oh my gosh, it’s you.”
“Yep.”
“This is so exciting. Can I have your autograph?”
That was a first. “It’s not worth anything.”
“To me it is.”
“What should I sign? A business card?”
“Ooh, okay.”
Leslie fished a pen from her purse, signed the back of her card, and handed it over. The woman took it with a grin.
“Can I ask you a non-art-related question?”
“Sure,” Leslie said.
“Where do you get your contacts? I’ve paid an arm and a leg for mine for years, and I still can’t find light-shade indigo like that.”
This just kept getting more surreal. Leslie’s lips curved, though of course she didn’t show her teeth. “I don’t wear contacts.”
“Oh, come on, nobody has eyes that color except…” The woman’s eyes were indeed a plastic sort of purple that might look convincing to humans. They grew wide as she stared at Leslie for three full seconds before blurting, “You’re a vampire?”
Leslie nodded.
“No. Way. You just got so much cooler. And you were already cool.”
She wished she didn’t squirm inside whenever a human stranger realized what she was. She didn’t want to be ungrateful for the support of her art. But she was just a person like everyone else in this town…a person who happened to eat for fun rather than nourishment. A person who happened to need a daily slaking of blood. And yeah, she could knock them unconscious with her gaze if she really wanted to…could beat them at literally any physical challenge…but she was just a person.
“Thanks,” she said, because no other reply would be polite.
The woman stayed a few more minutes. Meanwhile a delightfully balanced scent of salt and acid wafted to her, and her heart gave an extra beat.
Ryker didn’t approach until the woman moved on to the next booth. “You really are a puzzle.”
His jeans were khaki-colored today, his open-necked shirt a pale sage green and his shoes the same slip-ons as yesterday. His hair was still effortlessly perfect, his mouth a twist of intrigue and enjoyment. His eyes were blue and beautiful, alive with silver sparks.
“What do you mean?” she said as calmly as if he didn’t send her heart rate into overdrive simply by entering sensory range.
“You were uncomfortable with her.”
“Not with her. Just with her awe.”
“Why?”
Leslie shook her head. How could he need an explanation for this? “I’m not worth anybody’s awe, Ryker. I don’t know why that needs to be said.”
He studied her a long moment. The little crinkle formed between his eyes while his mouth remained half-turned up. At last he nodded. “So I was thinking today you could be my tour guide.”
“Haven’t you explored by now?” After all, he’d had all night and all morning. He could easily cover the entire town in that amount of time.
“I walked around, but I didn’t have your perspective on the place.”
She spread her hands. “This is home.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe that’s all you have to say about Harmony Ridge.”
But it was, in a way. She wouldn’t mind showing him around, of course, but she’d keep her expectations low. She didn’t typically need anyone else to love her town the way she loved it, but she hoped Ryker wouldn’t find it dull.
“You won’t get the full experience today,” she said. “I’m committed to be here until five, and most places close at six or seven.”
“And I assume the entire town is shut up tomorrow.”
“Everything but the diner. They open at one in the afternoon, after the owners are out of church, and they close at seven.”
“Good business sense.”
“Yeah, they’re always packed on Sundays. Where are you staying, by the way?” She should have thought to ask last night.
“The closest hotel. It’s about twenty minutes from town.”
“Oh, okay, good. So you researched our blood supply before you came.”
“Sure.” He cocked his head. “There aren’t a lot of options. Where do you get yours?”
“The hotel.” She laughed at his slow blink. “I’ve got a standing monthly order with them, as do my parents. I think it’s some sort of accessibility law that they have to be stocked at all times, in case a vampire books a room.”
Ryker nodded. “It’s a law.”
Of course he would know. “You’re probably the first vampire guest that hotel has seen in at least a year. I buy from them before their supply expires.”
“What about blood bars? Did my map search fail me, or is the closest one really a three-hour drive from here?”
“No failure. That’s the closest.”
Slowly Ryker shook his head. “Have you ever been?”
“Nah. Not really interested. For me, slaking is necessity. I’ve never thought of it as some kind of experience.”
“Same here. Food is enjoyable for me; blood is nutrition. I like the social aspect though.”
“Is that why you mapped the closest one?”
“Partly. Plus I like the security of knowing where the closest emergency access would be, no ordering required.”
Leslie had never thought much about the social element of a public space run by vampires for vampires. “Maybe we could go sometime. The cultural exposure might be cool.”
He grinned, and the effect was pure and dazzling. “I’d love to be the one to introduce you.”
For the next few hours, Ryker stuck around. He claimed the second camping chair behind Leslie’s table, which she’d set up out of habit in case Hannah stopped by. They made small talk that nonetheless added details to her picture of him, of who he’d been and what he’d been doing since college. He admitted a few of the cases he’d worked had ended up in the news. His role was one that never got publicity, so she couldn’t simply search his name on the internet to find out which cases he was referring to. But when she pointblank asked about the biggest case he’d ever helped solve, he clammed up.
“Will you tell me someday? When we know each other better?”
“It’s not that,” Ryker said, lounging in the mesh chair with his ankle resting on his knee, looking like a model again. “It’s only… There are one or two things I’ve worked on that aren’t public knowledge for security reasons.”
“National security.”
“Yeah. It isn’t you. Tai doesn’t know details about them either.”
Tai. The best friend he referred to so frequently, the two men must talk on at least a weekly basis. “Tell me about him, Ryker. How y’all met and why you get along so well.”
“Hmm,” he said, and his eyes gained an earnestness she hadn’t seen in him before. “Tai Kristiansen. The guy is something else. Owns every room he steps into, knows ten times more people than I ever will and knows how to get crap done. But the thing is, he also watches out for people. For their welfare.”
“So it’s a meeting of the minds between you two.”
“What do you mean?”
“How you’re describing him…I would guess a lot of that describes you too.”
“Me?” Ryker shook his head. “I mean, getting crap done, yeah. I’m pretty unbeatable at that.” He gave the low, husky laugh she found so appealing. “But Tai’s next level, Leslie. The world is lucky he didn’t set out to be a con man, not that he ever would. He’s Director of Fundraising for a health research organization, and I’ve seen their books before Tai and after Tai. They hired him during a financial downturn, and the guy not only kept their doors open; he got them to a level of thriving they didn’t know was possible.”
“What type of health research?” she said.
“Genetic disorders, some of which are super rare and get hardly any research funding. Tai makes a real difference.”
“And it’s not only a job to him. He actually cares about the people helped by his work.”
Ryker nodded, the silver chips in his eyes glittering with his eagerness to praise his friend. “He comes across when you first meet him as super-efficient and super-detached, but that last one’s a front. He’s a total softie underneath.”
“Would he be mad you’re outing his soft side?”
“Probably.”
She laughed. “How long have you known each other?”
“About five years… No, six now.”
“Don’t tell me: you met at a blood bar.”
Sudden caution flickered behind Ryker’s eyes. “Nope.”
Interesting. His eyes had lost some of their blue, dulled toward gray as if… But how could her question threaten him? Or maybe it was a vicarious sense of threat. She tried again, too curious now not to. “If he’s the networking genius you say he is, surely he does all the vampire social things.”
“Most of them, yeah.”
“But not blood bars.”
Ryker tilted his head and studied her a moment. The crinkle formed between his eyes again, and this time the puzzle running through his mind seemed to be how much he could say. Belatedly, Leslie got it.
“He’s the odor-sensitive friend you were talking about yesterday.”
Ryker nodded once, a clipped motion.
And if Tai also avoided recreational slaking… “Are there actually vampires that struggle with control? That’s not a human legend or something?”
“Um, no, not a human legend. It’s very rare, maybe one of us in a thousand. But it’s real.”
“And Tai is one in a thousand.”
Ryker pushed a hand through his hair, and the ruined perfection only looked more stylish. “He definitely would not want me outing that.”
“You didn’t. I guessed.”
He gave a low hiss.
“I’m sorry, Ryker. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. We sort of stumbled into it.” He shoved his fingers through his hair again. “It’s so easy to talk to you.”
She let the words linger, soaked them up. After a moment she said, “So tell me how you did meet him and how you knew you’d be friends.”
Before Ryker could begin, they were interrupted by a chattering group of high school kids who had visited her exhibit before. The kids had a dozen new questions for Leslie, and one of the girls seemed to touch every last model. She was gentle, though, so Leslie let it go.
When the group had moved on, Tai didn’t need a reminder where the conversation had left off. Without prompting, he picked it right back up again. “We met at a restaurant. Tai was meeting with a potential donor, and I was on a first date, which was going great until she went to the bathroom. When she came back, she was fuming. Said some vampire had blocked her in and tried to grab her.”
“Not Tai,” Leslie blurted.
Ryker held up one hand. “I’m getting there. She said she threw a knee but missed him, slipped past him when he dodged. So I’m like, ‘I’ll be right back,’ and she was like, ‘forget that, I’m coming with you, let’s teach him a lesson. White guy with black hair.’”
Leslie gave a theatrical blink. “That’s not much to go on.”
“I know, right?”
She couldn’t help it. She cracked up. “Mistaken identity.”
“You stole my punch line.”
“Please tell me you didn’t actually hit him.”
“Hit? No. I caught him coming out of the corridor to both restrooms, flung him into the wall with just enough control not to crack drywall, and hissed in his face.”
“And what did Tai do?”
“Next thing I knew, I was the one pinned to the wall getting hissed at. My date got between us like, ‘Wrong white guy with black hair!’ She apologized on my behalf and explained the situation, and Tai understood.”
“How long did you date her?” Maybe this shouldn’t matter. It didn’t mostly. She was curious, that’s all.
“A few months,” Ryker said. “It was a friendly breakup, totally mutual. She got married and she’s got a kid now.”
“Oh wow. A kid.”
Ryker nodded, his eyes suddenly sharper. But it was too early to discuss their respective thoughts on parenthood…right?
“So,” Leslie said, “y’all invited Tai to join you for a drink?”
“Not exactly. When Sophia and I said good night, Tai’s contact had left, and he was paying their check. I found him to apologize one last time. We started talking. Hit it off.”
“Despite his super-detached persona?”
“Oh, that’s never bothered me.” Ryker shrugged. “Even before he let me see through it, I knew I liked the guy. You know how it is. Vampire intuition.”
“Micro-expressions and body language, you mean.”
“Yeah. We’re hard to lie to.” Was that a flinch? “Not impossible, of course.”
“I know what you mean, though. I think only a fellow vampire could lie to me. Humans don’t have the same control of their facial muscles.”
“Exactly. But even among vampires, you can usually tell, right?”
She cocked her head and waited for him to realize what he’d said.
After an awkward second, he shoved his fingers through his hair again. “Right. Not a lot of practice around here.”
“Not a lot.”
“What about college? We were a minority for sure, but we banded together pretty fast, the couple dozen of us. Come to think of it, how did you and I never run into each other in a study group or something?”
She shrugged. Hadn’t given it much thought in the last ten years, but a hint of insecurity poked at her as curiosity crinkled his face. “I didn’t seek out vampires when I got to college. My best friend and I were roommates—she’s still my best friend by the way, lives here in town—and she’s human. And way more extroverted than I am. So her friend group in college became my friend group too, and they were all human.”
Slowly he nodded. “And you weren’t curious about us?”
“At eighteen? No, not really. I was meeting Hannah’s new friends and trying to navigate the massive campus, the class schedules… It was a lot at first, and then once I’d adapted, I had plenty of people to hang out with.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Your college was bigger than your hometown.”
That he listened and understood instead of writing her off… Leslie smiled. “Exactly.”
“I bet you had all sorts of interesting conversations, being the only vampire in their group.”
“Oh yeah. There was this one guy who kept saying I was lusting for his blood, accused me of fantasizing about ‘turning him.’ I explained over and over again—dude, that is not how it works. It’s genes. You’re born a vampire, or you’re never a vampire. Also I would never bite a human—it would be immoral, illegal… Nothing I said made a dent in his brain-loop.”
Whatever “interesting” anecdote Ryker had expected, his open-mouthed stare said Leslie had just exceeded his expectations by a thousand. “That is disturbing.”
“He didn’t last long in the group. The rest of them got together and warned him to leave me alone, and when he didn’t, they basically kicked him out.”
“Good,” he said. Maybe she was reading into his stormy glower, but Ryker seemed downright protective of her past self.
Over the next few hours their small talk was easy and comfortable, even when it highlighted the differences in their backgrounds. When the fair closed for the day, Ryker again helped her pack up, remembering in detail how she packaged and positioned the various models in the back of the van for their maximum safety. Then they set out on foot. They paused often for her tour-guide descriptions and still covered her entire hometown in less than two hours.
“And there you have it,” Leslie said at the dead end of a final residential street. “The town of Harmony Ridge.”
“I like it,” Ryker said.
“You do?”
His mouth turned up as his eyebrows crinkled. She caused that expression pretty often, come to think of it.
“What’s so funny?” she blurted.
Ryker blinked, cocked his head. “Not funny. You keep surprising me.”
“Oh.”
“In a good way,” he said. “Did you think I wouldn’t like Harmony Ridge?”
She shrugged, but… “I thought you’d be underwhelmed.”
He gave a low hum for her ears only. “Well, I’m not.”
A smile took over her face. Not funny, not underwhelming. “There’s one last place to show you. It’s one of my favorites.”