Chapter 20

20

MINA

Was I a cannibal now?

Or just a vampire?

I drove Sylas and myself home in shock—I forgot to put my headlights on until someone else on the road flashed theirs at me. I'd gotten what I wanted, but not quite the way I'd wanted it—I think I'd hoped there would be more groveling on Logan's part, and gloating on mine? But I hadn't told Sylas that, and I honestly wasn't really a gloat-er.

What I wanted, I realized, seeing Logan there again, and being as close to him as I'd ever been since that one night in May, was my old life back.

Which was never going to happen.

It made going through all of these motions rather futile feeling—except for the knowledge that somehow I'd be depriving them of all of their lives too.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket—another text from Brad, no doubt—and I wanted to throw it out the window .

"Why should he have recognized what you were wearing?" Sylas asked.

Of course Logan hadn't recognized Ella's sweatshirt on me.

Because to do that, he would've had to care.

Suddenly I felt a lot less bad that Sylas had chopped him into hamburger.

"Did you get to actually feed on him?" I deflected, rather than answer.

"Not fully, no," the Nightmare beside me said with a shrug. "But there will be more where that came from, once word gets out. I very much like the news programming in your era." He sounded so confident as to be almost smug. "Assuming you let me feed from people's ambient fears, that is. We could go to one of your parks again tomorrow, or even a grocery store would do."

"Yeah, sure," I said, shaking my head.

Logan's death still didn't feel real—even though I could taste his blood in my mouth. I'd be worried about getting some disease from him if I weren't so certain I was dying soon myself.

"We could also drive back there tomorrow," Sylas continued. "Revisit the scene of the crime. People will be picking pieces of him out of the grass for days."

I made a face. I didn't want to think about whoever's job that was going to be. I did wonder how much of him, his juices and what not, were seeping into the soil right now though. Maybe things would grow better in that one patch of lawn in the future, because of him.

It might be the first positive thing he'd done in his whole life.

"And for what it's worth, you did well," Sylas said—and I was so surprised I veered into another lane. His hand whipped out, grabbed the steering wheel, and pulled us back before I had a chance to process anything. "No dying before your time."

There was no one else currently out on the road, so I pulled over.

"What do you mean?"

"I get to be the one to kill you. You're not allowed to have accidents, or for that matter, commit suicide."

"Is . . . that a thing that happens? When people hire you?"

"Attempts, occasionally." His tone was casual, matter-of-fact, and I shook my head to clear it.

"Before that—you know I'm not looking for murder grades from you, right?"

His form condensed and I could've sworn I watched him sigh. "I'm here to help you, Mina. That's all. We both have the same goals, up until you die."

He had been true to his word.

Exactingly.

"Okay, so—how should this work in the future?" I asked, gesturing to the space between us.

His eyes—or the spaces they would be if he had them—grew darker, and his whole bearing became more intense. "Be precise. Tell me exactly what you want, and I will do my best to give it to you. You have an imagination, don't you?"

I frowned. "Yes, of course. But I don't use it like that."

"Sure you do. You watch your television, you read your books. You don't lack for thoughts of murder and mayhem in your daily life. What you have lacked thus far is the ability to act, and opportunity. "

I let his words hang between us in my car. I wanted to tell him, "No, I'm not really like this," but I couldn't really, after watching Logan burst. "What do most people murder for?" I asked instead, pulling my car back on the road.

Sylas considered this. "Love. Hate. A hate that they think is love. An inability to see themselves in a future they believe is unavoidable—like you, I think."

"I don't disagree." I wrung the steering wheel a little.

"You could tell me about it, you know," he offered. "Whatever they did to you. I'd prefer it in fact. I'd like their deaths to be as traumatizing as possible."

I snorted. "Yeah, I think the only person you damaged with Logan's death was me, unless you whispered, ‘You're going to do an impression of microwave popcorn' into his ear before exploding him."

"True." Sylas gave a low chuckle. "But most of my clientele talk more. They've never had anyone interested in their stories before, and I am forced to be a rapt audience."

I bit my lips shut—and felt my phone buzz again. Fuck.

"Well, I'm the reverse of that. I've told my story so often that I don't want to hear it anymore. Not even from myself."

We were quiet the final drive into my apartment complex, and I let us in—well, just me, and Sylas just seeped around the door's edges to wait for me inside.

"I'm going to shower, brush my teeth, throw that toothbrush away on principle, take some sleeping aids and pass the fuck out," I announced, leaving him behind in my apartment's entryway. "See you in the morning. We can go cruise grocery stores for you then, and I can get a new toothbrush. "

Sylas didn't fight me on any of this, and I did exactly what I said I was going to do—it wasn't until all the Benadryl and melatonin I'd taken had almost hit that I had a realization about our earlier conversation.

I was pretty sure Sylas had been admitting that he was lonely.