Chapter 8 #2
The vampire lazily picked up the takeout containers from the couch and strolled over to the window. She opened the hatch with a click, rolled them so they were partially open, then threw the cardboard boxes down from their fifteen-story perch.
Aster heard the sound of someone—or multiple someone’s—screaming expletives from the street below.
“Sylvia, Jesus Christ. Littering.”
“Meh.”
Before Aster could launch into a speech about the degradation of the environment, Sylvia had already circled back to the couch.
And oh—now Aster understood. She’d cleared the dam between them; the green-eyed vampire kneeled into the fabric, propped her elbow against the cushion, and just stared at Aster from a few inches away, biting down on her lip.
Aster felt like God’s strongest soldier.
“What?” she asked shortly. “Do I have something on my face?”
“I think we should talk about it.”
Now there was the greatest surprise of the century.
“Talk about what?” Aster said, voice trembling. As soon as the words left her mouth, she became very unimpressed by her own evasiveness. Sylvia Maroven of all people was recommending they stop avoiding a subject, and Aster was the one making it difficult?
“I think you know.”
Sylvia’s hand dropped to Aster’s palm. Her nails scratched softly against it. Aster felt it like electricity—she wiggled her toes just to keep from screaming.
Aster ventured a brave guess. “Does it have something to do with the biting?”
“Bingo,” Sylvia said, her mouth forming a ridiculous o. “I want to suggest a way forward.”
Aster couldn’t help but laugh. A way forward.
Did Sylvia think they were in some sort of business meeting?
Were they going to talk about improving their bite KPIs?
No, Sylvia knew what she was doing. Or, at least, there was some sort of method to the linguistic madness.
She was clearly trying to intellectualize the whole thing—her calmness a box she could use to stuff all her uncomfortable feelings into.
At least, Aster had to hope so. The alternative was that Sylvia felt a pathetic little fraction of the fraught disaster that had become Aster’s mind.
It wasn’t impossible, Aster supposed. Sylvia had been born a vampire after all, she’d probably done this kind of thing all the time back in London.
Swapped blood with half of the Maroven clan and then some.
The more Aster thought about it, the more deflated she became.
This was just another instance of Aster’s humanity coming back to bite her.
“Hey. You. Loser.” Sylvia lifted Aster’s chin up, and Aster’s eyes widened. Despite her tone, the vampire was looking at her with an aching softness—all that business-like quality vanishing. “Don’t get all Sad Aster on me. I haven’t even said anything yet.”
Aster scoffed, offended, but she still didn’t dare move her head.
“What is Sad Aster supposed to mean?”
“Get all withdrawn and depressed about something completely hypothetical.”
“I wasn’t doing that.” She was totally doing that.
Sylvia huffed, taking back her hand, to Aster’s great disappointment.
“I’m just trying to be an adult about this because, well—” She waved her hands around nonsensically.
“I am technically the older one, vampire-wise. And I started this whole mess. Pressed the big old red do-not-press-this button on your vampire mating instincts or whatever. So I’ve been thinking about how to best rewire those instincts. Like, a hard reset. And I think…”
Sylvia dragged her hand through her hair, then looked at Aster with a displeased expression.
“I think you need to go bite someone else. Like, a mortal, obviously. I’d say another vampire, but we all know you’re not going to find a willing one alive who won’t piss themselves at the sight of you. And mortals are a dime a dozen, so…”
Wait, what? Aster’s entire body went cold. She felt like she’d just been stung by wasps—sudden and painful and then gone, leaving her feeling empty. Like a husk.
Which didn’t make any sense. Because Sylvia was probably right.
If she wanted to get out of this state she was in, draining some mortal might do the trick.
She doubted it, given that she’d never had this reaction to mortal blood before, but whatever Sylvia did to her might have changed her biology completely. It was a complete unknown to Aster.
And yet.
“Yeah. No thanks,” she muttered, pulling her knees up to her chest.
Sylvia frowned, as if personally offended.
“Why not? Do you seriously want to continue suffering like this?”
Suffering. And god, that stung too. Is that really how Sylvia saw this? As suffering?
No, Aster was wrong to cast Sylvia in that kind of light.
She was right. This was suffering. Every moment that her teeth weren’t in Sylvia’s neck felt like wasted time now.
Like staring into space. This wasn’t productive, it wasn’t useful—it was just an impediment to a great partnership that had worked just fine—no, worked fabulously—for six hundred years.
“Fuck. Okay.” She sighed. “I’ll try it.”
Sylvia brightened, but it seemed a false sort of brightness. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Good,” she said.
“And you— are you going to find a human, too?”
Aster really hoped the answer was no. But she knew it would be a yes.
For some strange reason, Sylvia blushed. She looked away, toward the fridge.
“Nah, I’m good,” she said. “I don’t really feel like it.”
Wait, what? Aster laughed. “Seriously? You always feel like it.”
“Not right now, okay?” Sylvia growled. “Jesus. Back off.”
The anger was a surprise to both of them—and Sylvia seemed to immediately regret it, because she frowned softly, then leaned forward, taking Aster into her arms.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
They just sat there, wrapped up into each other, for several silent moments.
But through it all, Aster’s mind raced. She knew Sylvia was right.
She knew they should put a stop to this before they did something really, truly stupid.
And yet she had zero control over her own words as they left her mouth in a quiet, urgent whisper.
“Can we do it one more time?”