Midsummer Phoenixes (Phoenix Immortal)

11. Vampire Tales and Vanilla Milkshakes

Vampire Tales and Vanilla Milkshakes

amory

A bout three weeks into June, the Moonlight was busier than it had ever been, and I felt a lot less guilty about burning it down. To be honest, I wasn’t actually feeling very guilty about bursting into flame at all, because whatever had happened meant Soyer was okay. Still, technically, the Moonlight in ashes was my fault.

“A chocolate milkshake for your thoughts,” Elias said.

The vampire was at the counter with his vanilla milkshake, though he ignored his drink, for now. Ever since he’d come in about a half hour ago, he’d been a tad less… less , and I wasn’t sure why or whether I needed to worry for him.

“You’re not getting a chocolate milkshake.”

I said that as softly as I could and shuffled a little closer to where he sat. Rae had their section covered and was offering their patrons small talk over at table fifteen, and I’d just done a coffee round to check on my own tables. No one needed my immediate attention.

“Amoryyy, why are you so mean to me?” Elias’s bottom lip quivered, but his eyes firmly focused on mine.

I opened my mouth, closed it. Then, I leaned in. “Hey, are you okay?”

The vampire’s green eyes went wide. “Pardon me?”

“Well, you just seem…I don’t know. Is everything okay?”

He held my gaze, but reached for his milkshake, pulled it close, and sipped some through the rainbow straw.

“Are you checking in with me right now, Amory?”

“Yeah?”

Elias smiled. It started out normal enough until he turned it up to Hollywood star levels.

“You’re so sweet, you know that? So sweet. I was just…I was just wondering, Amory.”

I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with chocolate milkshakes. I asked, “What were you wondering?”

Elias shrugged. “Well, just”—he looked around, then leaned in. “I was wondering what it was like. When you met the Black Shuck? Did you kiss in the moonlight?”

I snorted. “Do you really think he walked right in here and kissed me?”

To be fair, it would be a very Soyer move to do just that, but I didn’t think I needed to tell people such details about him.

Elias shook his head. “No, I mean in the moon’s light, did he kiss you outside while the moon was out? Not in here, that would be such a workplace romance. Or maybe in here?” He did a dash of puppy eyes. “Could you tell me a little bit about how you two met, please? Pretty please? I’ll beg. I’m really, really good at begging.”

“You don’t need to beg. But I don’t know if Soyer would want me to tell you.”

Elias’s mouth fell open. “But Amory! I need to know! Please?”

He infused that please with the raw emotion you usually only saw in young children begging for their favorite treat.

“I don’t think I can talk about it.”

I really, really couldn’t. Soyer had been murdered, and those three assholes…

The thing on the subway was too much to even think about. It had all the qualities of a dream, or of a dream turned nightmare, and whenever I recalled the way Soyer had bled and died that day… I really didn’t like thinking about it.

Elias moved on his seat, bringing my attention back to him.

“Can you at least tell me something? I don’t even exactly know when you two became an item?” He leaned forward some more so that his butt was almost off the chair and most of him on the counter. “Did he rock your world right off the bat? You probably wouldn’t tell me what it’s like with him, and I understand. We’re not that close yet to discuss our bedroom adventures, although I hope we can be some day. But will you please tell me just the tiniest morsel?”

I frowned. “Why are you that interested in me and Soyer all of a sudden?”

Elias looked surprised, but he overacted. “Suddenly? I have always been interested. As a little not-so-secret secret, everyone is wondering how you bagged the Dark Prince. Anyway, I want to know about the two of you because you are my friend.” He sat back. “You know what? I’ll tell you something about me first. Tit for tat.”

He glanced to his left over to Ben’s corner of the counter.

Ben had a plate with two Pride brownies in front of him as well as an oat milk chocolate mocha. We didn’t have the mocha on the menu yet, but I’d made it for a patron—one of the two women who usually came in together, and then Roland of table one had asked for it a few days later, and now, I got a few requests for it each night, often from those patrons I thought were pawns. I was going to talk to Dwayne about adding it to the menu soon.

“You won’t overhear while you’re on guard wolf duties, will you?” Elias asked, barely even raising his voice.

Ben looked up at him and shook his head.

My brows rose in surprise. I knew Ben had super hearing, but seeing it was still amazing. So many things about this new world of pawns and cursed was.

“Excellent. So then. Once upon a time, I was a human boy, much like you, Amory. Can you tell when I was born? Please guess.”

“Elias, maybe this isn’t the place for you to tell me a fairy tale?”

“Pfft.” He sipped some more of his milkshake and made a face at it. “This is fine. It’s not really a fairy tale either, and not a very long one on top of that. I just want to tell you about my first crush. So. When do you think I was born?”

“For real?”

Elias nodded. “Yes. Guess, Amory. Unravel the enigma I am.”

I’d never thought about it. Imagining Elias in a different time seemed wrong. Unreal. I knew Soyer was old, had lived through many ages, and even that was odd, mostly because he fit this age so well, because he was so at ease spending the days with me streaming some show or texting or—

Then again, that was technology, and technology didn’t make people. Didn’t make them behave one way or the other. I leaned forward on my elbows after looking over my shoulder to make sure Dwayne didn’t want anything and double-checking none of my patrons needed me either.

“Are you French? You knew my name was French. Were you born, uh, before the French Revolution?”

Elias didn’t move for a heartbeat, then he chuckled. “You think me that old and that continental, Amory? And French , of all things?

“Well, I’m not French. I’m British. I lost the accent like I lost a lot of things from that day and age. Decency, filial obligations, the false attachment to a ridiculous faith… Anyhoe. What was I going to tell you?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure. You’re a Brit?”

That was fascinating. And clashed totally with how I saw Elias, this bratty guy who sometimes overshared.

“No, I’m a vampire. I was something else before that though, just like most of us were something else before we became ourselves. I was telling you about me. About my first crush.”

“Elias, you don’t have to. And even if you do, I still won’t be able to talk about how Soyer and I met.”

He looked at me, and for a moment, his guise of over-the-top vampire broke, and I saw a glimmer of seriousness inside of him poke through. He smoothed the expression away soon enough.

“Maybe you’ll tell me about your first kiss?” he prodded.

I shrugged, heaved a sigh. “That’s sort of the same thing.”

“Oh! Well, now you’ve definitely earned my trust. And this little tale.

“As you’ll have surmised, I was born human, as most humans are. Unless they are monsters in human guise, of course. My brother was like that, but I digress.

“We lived in the country. It was beautiful if you like nature. Green fields, the orchard blooming in whites and pinks each spring, the gorse mirroring the sun’s yellow here on earth. You know, bucolic.

“My father had a business that consisted of many parts, but I’ll tell you about one of them. He bred horses. It’s not so much that he was personally involved, at the time you had people for that, but the outcome, the yearlings to be sold for a high price at auction, those were his laurels, his pride and joy. Feathers in his cap.”

Elias paused to take another sip of his milkshake. One of my patrons, a black-haired guy at table seven, looked up at me searchingly.

“Excuse me for a sec,” I told Elias who sighed and gestured like a king dismissing me from an audience.

I headed over to the guy. He was young, early twenties maybe. His hair was straight and black, and the tips fell into his eyes.

“Could you bring me a spoon?” he asked, pointing at his milk tea.

“Oh, right away. I’m so sorry, this should have come with one.”

I dashed back behind the counter, grabbed him a spoon, and put that on an extra saucer to serve to him.

He looked excited when I walked toward him and put it down in front of him. “Here you go.”

The guy clapped his hands once and looked at the spoon. His eyes were very dark, a little bit like Soyer’s.

“Thank you so much! The tea is very nice, by the way. This is such a shiny place. I think I love it here. And yummy food!”

He pointed at the French toast that sat next to him, half finished. We had a few people like him, ordering breakfast around midnight, and each time, I wondered whether they were working shifts or whether they just craved the comfort of a nice breakfast before going to sleep.

“Thanks. We appreciate that. Let me know when you’re ready for your Pride brownie.”

He beamed. “I get extra food?”

“Yup. During the month of June.”

He nodded. “I will tell my nest mates. They’ll like that. But don’t give them shiny things, okay? I came here first. I should get all the shiny things.”

Nest mates? I shrugged it off as a pawn thing. Or a weird college thing. Or just a weird thing.

“Sure thing. Enjoy your meal.”

Once I was back in front of Elias, he shook his head and sighed as if he were a teacher about to scold me.

“That crow is just going to steal that spoon as well as the first one you gave him, Amory. Why are you giving him whatever shiny thing he wants but continue serving me vanilla and cream? This might make a more desperate man cry and lick your shoes. Should I ask the Black Shuck for permission to lick your shoes, Amory?”

“No, thank you.” No, I wasn’t going to rise to his bait and pretend outrage at whatever kink he was into. Certainly not during Pride when all kink should be celebrated.

Elias shrugged. “Your loss. My tongue is very skilled. Valentin and Simeon both think so.

“Anyhoe, my father and his yearlings. His pride and joy, you see. Those horses who didn’t make him proud were sold, to the butcher sometimes. My father was like that. He also made a point of hiring the best horse people he could get his hands on.

“I must have been thirteen, maybe fourteen, when he hired Myrddin, a Welshman you’d probably call a horse whisperer. Myr wore tall boots and rough clothes the first time I saw him, and his hair and hands were dusty from working the stables. He smelled much like a horse himself, though I didn’t get close enough to smell him that first time. He was leading a mare in from a paddock. She was a spirited horse that had kicked another stable hand before, but with Myr leading her, she looked like the sweetest darling pony you’d ever laid eyes on.”

“You’re not going to tell me about how he trained you like a horse, are you?” I asked.

Elias snorted and went back to sipping his vanilla and cream. “As I said, I was a boy, and Myr was older. Also decent. He wouldn’t have done anything like that, not ever. But he saw me, in a way a lot of people didn’t. Not before Val and Sim at least.”

That was the first time I’d heard him call Valentin and Simeon that, and by the way he cleared his throat, it had been a slip of the tongue. I ignored it.

“He sounds like a nice person.”

Elias nodded. “He was. And I think smarter than my father gave him credit for. Of course, to my father, Myr was just someone who worked in the stables, easily replaceable, one peasant much like any other peasant. Some people thought like that. Some still do.” He smiled up at me. “You know, your Shuck was never like that.”

This made me lean forward. “Are you sure? You’ve known Soyer for longer than I.”

Elias nodded. “I daresay most everyone knows the Black Shuck longer than you do. Then again, we all know the Black Shuck whereas to you, he is Soyer.”

“Or Mr. Bennet.”

Elias perked up. “Do you call him that in the bedroom? Does he make you?”

I couldn’t help the embarrassment this time, mostly because the conversation taking this turn was my fault.

“No! Jeez. All the vanilla milkshakes to you, but don’t assume—don’t assume everyone is like that.”

Elias frowned. “But, Amory. It sounds as though you mean to suggest I suffer from a vanilla milkshake kink. I decidedly don’t.” He slid his half-full glass over to me. “Can you make me a chocolate one?”

“Nope.”

“Meanie.” He heaved a sigh. “But rest assured, your Mr. Bennet isn’t a stuck-up asshole who looks down on everyone who doesn’t have the right pedigree or values or who doesn’t fancy—doesn’t matter. He’s not like that.

“Anyhoe. I started spending more time in the stables. I enjoyed watching Myr work with the horses. I didn’t really understand myself then, but I suppose that was normal for a teenage boy. Probably was around the same time you started having wet dreams and fantasizing about other boys and maybe looking at naked men on the Internet?”

Elias framed that as an actual question, and he looked at me, expecting an answer. I glanced at Ben, who looked super ignorant, scrolling on his phone as if nothing else existed around him.

Which, if he could hear us, that was very nice of him. And Elias still seemed off tonight, despite what he was saying.

I whispered, “Yeah. I had wet dreams, morning wood. Normal stuff. I was, uh. I realized I wasn’t looking at girls that way, and it scared me.”

Elias nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s how it was for me as well. To love meant to be terribly, terribly scared.

“Anyhoe, I began spending time in the stables. The way I spent my free time wasn’t much scrutinized back then, and slipping away was easy.

“Myr noticed me. He didn’t seem to mind my presence, but at some point, he asked me whether I was bored—oh, he had this lovely Welsh accent. I can still hear it. An acquired taste to some ears, I suppose. Sweet to me still.

“I would like to think I said something that showed my wit—I might have tried. But I was a child and stupid like all children are, and as likely as not, I stammered nonsense. Myr took pity on me, handed me a brush, and put me to work cleaning the horses.

“He was careful, making sure I wasn’t ever too close to one who might bite or kick or otherwise hurt me.”

“You never cleaned a horse before he made you? Weren’t horses pretty common around then?”

Elias groaned. “Yes, Amory. We all had horses before we had cars. But you had people for that sort of thing. You rode the horse, someone else took care of the horse shit and everything else as well.”

“Ah. You were someone upper class? Like royalty?”

He licked his straw before he spoke. “I am someone upper class today still. Just like you. We are now royalty together, you and I. Noblesse high five?”

I frowned at his palm. “No, thank you.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, but you are no fun, no fun at all tonight. Well, then I must carry the entertainment.

“Myr had me clean the horses he tamed, and somewhere in there, I would like to think he tamed me. Not like you think, not with anything that crossed a line. All he did was notice I was there, took up space. He was nice, though he didn’t talk much. I didn’t talk much then either.”

I giggled. He gave me a hard look.

“Oh, you mean that? There was a time in your life when you weren’t a talker?”

Elias straightened. “Yes, there was. And it was then. Myr didn’t mind. However, he would tell me stories on occasion. I don’t remember exactly how it started, but I think I pointed out an unusual star shape in a horse’s coat, and he started telling me a story.

“His stories were nothing like the ones I knew. They weren’t as pious or as clean. You would call them queer today, or pagan, or both. They were just old. They talked about heroes purposefully forgotten, about worlds I wasn’t supposed to know about, but Myr, Myr gave them to me. And for that, he was sacked.”

His words sank in, and they felt much too much like what I remembered of being a child. Well before everything. Well before I’d realized I was gay.

I wasn’t sure what was right to say. What I could say. Elias tapped the side of his milkshake glass, green eyes staring off into the distance.

“Was he okay?” I finally managed.

“Well. I hope. I think so.”

“And you?” I whispered.

Elias’s eyes met mine. It took him a second to conjure up a smile to cover any other emotion I might have glimpsed. “I was okay. After all, I didn’t meet Valentin and Simeon that much later.”

My eyebrows crept up my forehead. “You met them when you were a teenager?”

He groaned. “Nonsense. I was in my twenties. I simply meant that the time between when Myr left and I found them doesn’t mean anything.” He gave me a long look. For a second, I saw him without the guise of complaining of this and that, of begging, of being cute. He gave me a small nod. “You might feel like that too, eventually. Until then, maybe take a lover? How about Ben?”

At the other end of the counter, Ben’s cellphone dropped from his hands, clattering onto his brownie plate.

“Sorry!” I called over and waved. “Do you have to?”

Elias shrugged. “No?”

I rubbed my eyes. “You have to, don’t you?”

“Maybe?”

The black-haired guy with the spoon waved me over then to let me know he was ready for his brownie. I left Elias alone with his milkshake for a while and served two pies, lemonade, more coffee.

After the black-haired guy had paid and left, I noticed that the extra spoon I’d brought him was gone, and he’d also stolen the extra napkin I’d put on the saucer on which I’d served him that spoon.

Not that this annoyed me because he had left a nice tip. Also, our new napkins had our logo. But weird it was, no question.

By that point, two of Rae’s patrons left as well, and the writer came in, laptop bag in his hand.

I met Rae at the coffee makers where they were busy making a fresh pot.

“Hey, if you want to leave, I can take care of the rest?”

They looked over my shoulder. “You’re taking table seventeen?”

“Yup. I can finish up for you.”

They shook their head. “No can do. I have a work ethic that is almost as impressive as these heels.”

They pointed at the indeed impressive boots they were wearing over their uniform, the pants version of it. The boots were bedazzled and so high I’d been afraid for Rae, but they were pretty sure-footed in them.

“The heels are very impressive.”

“I know, right? Look, if you want a pair—not to boast, but I customized them a bit. I could make you a pair, and we could both wear them at work.”

Rae started chuckling even as I tried to say something that didn’t come across as offensive. After all, they’d only just taught me to say server rather than waiter and waitress, and I wasn’t going to be an offensive dude all over again.

“I, uh, you know.” I scratched my neck.

“I was kidding! You’re so serious, Amory. Although, if I can get you into a nice set of boots, that would be fun, right? We could do a costume party. For Halloween. That would be amazing, right?”

I cleared my throat. “You’ll have to talk to Dwayne about events, Rae.”

“You sure?”

“Very sure.”

They pouted. “Think about it, Amory. Big Halloween party at the Moonlight! Everyone would come. Although we can’t put that on the fliers. Too suggestive.”

“Very funny. So funny. And we don’t do parties. Look, I have to get table seventeen his coffee. And if you want to, go home early tonight. I promise it’s fine.”

They sighed. “Then who would post on the Moonlight’s Insta, Amory? I’m the only one who cares to share our pretty food and drink.”

Dwayne looked out from the passthrough as I grabbed a clean cup for the writer.

“Rae, you posting food photos again?”

“About to, boss.”

He nodded. “Come back here and take pictures of the kitchen. I want people to see how clean everything is back here. And that we know what a fucking pancake is supposed to look like.”

“Oh, Lindy said it was okay to add several photos of her crêpes, boss.”

I didn’t hear Dwayne’s exact response, but there was a lot of grumbling in there. I grabbed a coffee pot and made my way to the writer.

“One coffee. Anything else for tonight?” I asked him.

He glanced up at me, the reflection from his screen bathing his pale face in blue.

“Can I have toast, please? Just buttered toast, jam on the side.”

“Sure, absolutely.”

I left him to his writing and passed the order on to Dwayne. Before I went back to Elias, who was now noisily slurping the drags of his milkshake, I stopped by Ben.

“You’re good?”

“Very, sir. Thank you for asking.”

I rolled my eyes. “We went over this. You don’t have to call me sir. If this is about Elias…” I leaned in as close as I dared to whisper into Ben’s ear. “I think he’s having a bad day. He doesn’t mean anything by it.” Ben’s eyes widened with me that close, so I pulled away. “Sorry.”

“Not at all, sir. And there’s no issue. But thank you for clarifying.”

Which sounded a lot like, There’s an issue, and you’re not helping.

Given that I didn’t know what the issue was or how to help, I decided to move back over to Elias, ignore Rae and Dwayne chatting in the kitchen and Rae complaining about how Dwayne’s old apron didn’t have our logo on it. I also ignored all memories I had of the kitchen from before the remodel. All of them.

“I’m sitting here, all alone,” Elias said, then sniffled. “And I came to visit with you, Amory, my bestest friend. My soul twin!”

“Your what now?”

“Soul twin. It means we share twin souls, torn apart by the random circumstances of our respective births. We were meant to be twins. Don’t you feel that too?”

“Not really.”

Elias did a little act of his heart being broken and tearing apart. Apparently, his mood had lifted somewhat.

When he was done, he sat there, face very straight, and pointed at his empty glass. “I would like a chocolate milkshake, please, Amory.”

I rolled my eyes all over again, collected his glass, and made his milkshake. Vanilla, as always. I let the blender run its cycle and grabbed one of the tall glasses we used for milkshakes.

Just as I was about to pour his shake, I looked around. Elias was sitting there, his head resting on his folded arms, doing his best to look sad. I grabbed the chocolate syrup and squeezed the smallest dab into the bottom of the glass, then poured his milkshake, topped it with cream and rainbow sprinkles.

When I placed it in front of him, his eyes were wide. “One vanilla milkshake for you.”

He made his bottom lip quiver all over again. “You are my soul twin!”

“Nope. I just run the blender.”

He bit his bottom lip. “Really, if you want those boots licked during the Halloween party—”

“There will not be a Halloween party! Jeez. Why does everyone around here have to have super hearing? Everyone but me?”

Elias looked me over. “Cuz you’re cuter that way, and the Black Shuck likes you cute?”

“That was a rhetorical question.”

Elias stirred his not-quite-vanilla milkshake. “And I gave you a rhetorical answer, oh soul twin mine. So. You and the Shuck and your first date? Tell me, pretty please?”

It had been perfect. Soyer had taken me to dinner, technically dark lunch, and the food had been nostalgia, a dash of sweetness, spices balancing perfectly with the wine we’d shared.

For reasons I couldn’t quite name, I didn’t want to tell Elias about it. Soyer and I, we’d been in a bubble that night, him offering me…himself in a way. Asking me to give him a name, like some character from a myth or ancient story.

I hadn’t named him in the end. He’d done that himself, but to do it, he’d used something that I loved. The action had been meaningful, meaningful in a way I wasn’t sure I understood quite yet.

I didn’t want to share that night with Elias, or with anyone. Deep within me, I could tell that it was a treasure, not the kind that got more and brighter if another person saw it, but the kind you had to keep sheltered from too much light, too much exposure.

It made me smile just thinking back to that day.

“What? Oh, you are swimming in a sea of memory, Amory. Tell me, tell me now!”

“He took me to the amusement park just outside of the city. Lake Eureka. You know it?”

Elias’s eyes went wide. “That’s where he took you? For a first date? Well. Okay, I suppose that works. I mean, why not? Did you make out in the hall of mirrors?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s a no then. Okay.”

“People don’t go to amusement parks to make out, you know.” At the other end of the corner, it sounded like Ben was keeping himself from laughing. “I think I’m feeling very judged right about now.”

“No, Amory, don’t. No one judges you. No one sees you in your apron and thinks lewd thoughts, no one.”

Ben shuffled his phone and dishes on the counter to hide that he was still bottling up his laughter.

“You are all so bad, and on top of it, you were right about the guy with the spoon.”

“Spoon? Oh, the crow boy. Well, I warned you. They cannot resist shiny things, ever.”

I was about to ask about what that meant and what exactly Elias meant with crow boy when the bell above the door twinkled and announced Soyer. He walked in, his eyes settling right on me.

“Welcome to the Moonlight Diner.”

“Thank you, Amory,” he said. “Young Hawthorne.”

Elias sipped his pseudo-vanilla milkshake, and with his straw in his mouth, he said, “Hi.”

Soyer sat on the stool next to him. That calmed Elias down considerably, but at the same time, it brought Soyer’s attention much closer. Not that I minded it. The opposite. His eyes on me were like a feeling, like physical touch, and knowing that he watched was nice. I knew that was weird, and I didn’t care.

The rest of the night was uneventful. I brought the writer his buttered toast with jam on the side, and he tore that into pieces only to then dip it in the jam. I hoped it did something to help him with his lover in the machine. They seemed to have a good conversation going tonight if the amount he was typing was any indication.

Elias waited until I was back in front of him to finish his illegal milkshake in one long drag.

“This was delicious,” he said. “I have things to do though. Some online dabbling, you know. Text me so we can grab juice?”

“Sure.”

“Bye, Young Hawthorne,” Soyer said.

Elias shrugged on a light coat as fancy as the suit he was wearing. “Adieu, Mr. Bennet.”

He walked out of the diner, giving me and Soyer a royal wave.

“Did you put chocolate syrup in his milkshake, Amory?” Soyer asked, eyeing the glass.

“Nope.” I collected the evidence quickly and headed back to the kitchen.

There, I walked in on Rae aiming their phone camera roughly at Dwayne’s chest while Dwayne had his hands on his hips, his tee stretching in a way that would definitely show in a photo.

“Oh, come on, you don’t have a dad bod,” Rae was saying.

I cleared my throat. “Just dropping this in the dishwasher. You carry on.”

“Thanks, kid. And you, eyes on the griddle.”

“Oopsie, I thought where I was aiming was the hot stuff,” Rae said.

And I left. This time, I was the one who was trying not to giggle.

The remaining two or so hours of my shift went by quickly. We didn’t get a ton more patrons, but those who were there still made it feel lively, maybe with the exception of the writer, who was very focused on his ghost in the machine lover tonight. He wordlessly closed his laptop and dropped a bill on his table at ten to three, then left. He was the last person to do so.

“You look like you had a fun day at work,” Soyer commented when I closed up. He’d saved his slice of pie and had only finished it two minutes ago.

“I did. Elias told me this weird story…I’m not sure I can tell you about it. It was a good day. How was yours?”

“It’s getting better. I cooked dinner. If you can guess what, I’ll give you a kiss.”

“Gnocchi with pumpkin sauce and sage,” I said, not even thinking about it.

Soyer spun in his seat. “Did fucking Roland tell you? I’ll have a chat with him about talking to you about things he shouldn’t be talking to you about.”

I chuckled and walked over to Soyer, put my hand on his shoulder. “He didn’t tell me. I guessed, like you said. I was right?”

Soyer narrowed his eyes at me. “You were. I suppose you want your prize.”

“I suppose I do, but”—I looked over my shoulder at the reflective window wall and the shimmering world beyond it.

Soyer sighed. “Fine. In the back. Or the cab. Or, if you ask very nicely, in the elevator.” He picked up his plates. “But you have to run the dishwasher and close up first. Come on, chop-chop. Time’s a-wasting.”

“Hey, wait! Let me do that,” I said, jogging after him like we were playing tag.

“Too slow. Too thorough.”

“Well, someone has to turn the lights off.” I stopped in front of the swing door to do just that.

Soyer went through to the back, and I followed behind him.

There he stood, facing me, the arms that held the dishes wide, the invitation clearly written on his face. I didn’t stop. Stopping never even entered my mind.

I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him, let him kiss me back. Sparks flew in the darkness, just tiny sparks, but even those were bright. I felt him, close and warm, and my skin itched pleasantly as if warm feathers were running all over it.

“Thank you for the kiss,” I told him when I pulled back, his taste on my tongue.

To his credit, he was still balancing the dishes in his hands, hadn’t dropped them to hug me like I was pretty sure he wanted to.

“You are most welcome, Amory. Dinner is getting cold. We have to leave. I have to get you home so I can hold you all night.”

“I want that,” I told him and took the dishes from his fingers. “Let me take care of those.”

He did, though he was watching me like he did every night.

“Hey, do you ever think, I mean did you ever think that some of the time you lived is less memorable than the rest of it?” I asked, remembering Elias’s story.

“And where is that coming from, my heart? Is there anything you worry about?”

I closed the dishwasher and hit the start button. “Not really. And maybe I’m wrong, but Elias said something that made me wonder whether the time when he was still human was just…uh…less to him than when he became a vampire, you know? As if it had less weight.”

Soyer cocked his head as we walked down the hallway next to each other. “You’re not worried about that. You’re worrying about him?”

“No. I mean, I was. And you seem to live pretty much in the here and now. Sorry, it’s a weird question, I guess.”

The lights in the storage room were still on, and once more, I was relieved that there weren’t piles and piles of napkins around to stumble over.

“Not really. But I would think the answer depends on the individual and has less to do with whether you were a pawn or a human at the time.”

I nodded as I pulled my jacket from my locker. “Yeah, that makes sense.” At the same time, I thought, I barely even remember how the fear felt back when I was still living at home and hiding all the time. I just remember it existed. “Hey, I’m really looking forward to dinner. I was craving gnocchi to be honest.”

Soyer made a displeased sound. “And you’re only telling me this now? If you crave something, tell me. I don’t want to have to make the right dinner for you on accident, Amory.”

“Not an accident,” I said and placed my hand in his. “Nothing about you is an accident, Soyer Bennet.”

He stared at me with those deep black eyes that had seen so much, looked as if they could hold oceans inside them. Then he squeezed my hand and led me away, led me to his home, his strange phoenix home high up in a tower in a city that was mostly asleep.

It could have been a dream while the city slept, him and me, but it wasn’t, never had been. My phoenix lover with a voice like song and eyes like gemstones, he was real. And so was our love, while the city lay asleep, while it was awake. Always.