Chapter Twenty Amelia

TWENTY

Telegram sent from Maurice J. Pettigrew, Treasurer of The Collective, to the Board of Directors

Quarry has attached note to door of apartment. Stop.

Says “GONE FISHIN’?”. Stop.

Apartment door locked. Stop.

Surveillance from outside suggests he is not inside. Stop.

Coward is clearly trying to hide. Stop.

Tell group to search Lake Michigan. Stop.

Do not see what appeal “fishing” has for vampires. Stop.

But we already knew our brother was odd. Stop.

Amelia

Kissing you was probably a mistake on my end, too.

Reggie’s last words to me before he left my bedroom played on a loop in my head as I tried, to no avail, to fall asleep.

Why should him regretting kissing me keep me up half the night? I regretted kissing him, too, didn’t I? Out of all possible outcomes, this was the cleanest one. It was much better that he agreed we’d made a mistake than for him to be pining away for me.

Or, worse, for me to be pining away for him.

And yet there I was, staring sleepless up at the ceiling, feeling pangs of something I refused to name, as the taste of his lips on mine lingered like a delicious mistake.

The storm outside wasn’t helping. Everything that seemed terrifying about stormy winter nights when I was a child seemed possible now. Monsters lurking under the bed. Witches who would cook your bones into a stew. It was probably because I was exhausted. Or maybe it was just the fact that I was stuck here all alone with a vampire, but I was suddenly anxious, in a way I hadn’t been in many years and that probably should have embarrassed me, about being alone.

“This is ridiculous.” I threw off my covers and climbed out of bed. It was nearly two in the morning. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well accomplish something. I pulled the old bathrobe I kept stashed on a hook in my closet over my pajamas and shouldered my briefcase.

I set up my laptop on the kitchen table. No need to fall behind on work while I was stuck here. However long that might turn out to be.

There was an email from the Wyatt Foundation waiting for me as soon as I logged into my work account.

To: Amelia Collins ([email protected])

From: John Richardson ([email protected])

Dear Ms. Collins,

The Wyatt Foundation greatly appreciates your assistance with our tax matter and we appreciate you setting up a time to meet with us in person. As such, we will reach out very soon about when it might be convenient for me to come by. Incidentally, does your office ever hold meetings in the evenings? If not, I am sure we can make a daytime arrangement work; I just wanted to double-check, as evening usually works best with my schedule, my circadian rhythms etc.

Let me know. And once you have done that, then I will let you know. And so on and so forth.

In the meantime, I have attached another set of documents to this email for your perusal.

Very truly and sincerely yours,

J.H.C. Richardson, Esq, PhD

ps: Do you know what a “tax bracket” is? Someone on our board saw the term online but none of us know what it means.

The attached documents included a nearly indecipherable firsthand account of what I thought might have been a 1952 Tunisian fabric store opening and a medical journal piece called Inexplicable Exsanguination: A Path Forward . I closed my eyes, groaning. Evelyn wanted me to present on the Wyatt Foundation to the partners in a few weeks, but my sense that we should close this damn file instead was growing steadily.

I sensed it immediately when Reggie entered the kitchen. It wasn’t so much that I heard him. Rather, there was a shift in the room’s energy I could feel. His perpetually boisterous presence altered the peaceful quiet I had always associated with this cabin just by walking into a room. Even when he was silent, everything about him was always so loud.

I was starting to find that when he wasn’t around, I missed the noise.

The laugh that burst out of me when I looked up from my work and saw him dispelled any lingering awkwardness between us.

He wore an ancient apron of Dad’s that said Kiss the Cook in red letters. Beneath the words was a cartoonish pair of bright red lips, all puckered up. I could have sworn Mom made him get rid of the thing years ago. Where on earth had he found it?

Reggie pointed at the pile of papers I’d arranged beside my computer, hand on his hip. He looked so much like Mom when she disapproved of something we’d done as kids it was uncanny. “You’re usually asleep at this hour, as you’ve reminded me more than once. What’s all this?”

“I can’t sleep,” I explained. “So I’m working.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Why not ?” He stared at me. “It’s the middle of the night, for starters. And we are in a winter wonderland .”

Was he being serious? “A winter wonderland?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “More like a winter nightmare.”

The right corner of his mouth kicked up into a half smile, cracking his stern fa?ade. But he recovered his composure quickly. He leaned over and put his hand on my laptop as if to close it.

I glared at him. “Don’t.”

He chuckled. “Can I just say that you are the epitome of what’s wrong with young people today?”

“I thought the official boomer position was that millennials are lazy,” I quipped. “Not that we work too hard.”

He rolled his eyes. “First of all, I am not a boomer. But no,” he said, shaking his head. “The problem with young people is not that they’re lazy. It’s that they think they have unlimited time. So they postpone the fun parts of life thinking they can get to those later. Only at the end do they realize how badly they squandered…well. Everything.”

Holding my gaze, he slowly lowered my monitor until my laptop was closed.

“Hey!” I protested. I tried to pry his hand off my computer but he quickly covered my hand with his to keep me from shoving him off. A wicked, delicious shiver ran down my spine at the contact. I could tell from the way the muscles in his forearm tensed that he felt it, too.

I didn’t know why I found that nearly unbearably hot. But I did.

“It is the middle of the night,” he said again, his voice sounding more strained. “You can do that work tomorrow.”

“You have no idea how behind I am.”

“I don’t,” he agreed. “I also don’t care. If you don’t take a break, you’ll burn yourself out before you’ve even started living.”

“Reggie—”

“Two hours,” he said, holding up two fingers. “Take a break with me for two hours. If at the end of those two hours you still think getting back to work is more important than sleeping like a normal human, then at least you’ll have done something fun first.” He leaned in closer, his face nearly level with my own. “And if, instead, you decide you’re enjoying your break, you can keep taking one the rest of the time we are stuck here.”

With me , he didn’t say. Take that break with me. But the implication was there—in the way he looked hopefully into my eyes, in the way his grasp on my hand tightened almost imperceptibly. His eyes were so vivid, with a sort of starburst brightness to the blue I’d never seen in anyone else’s eyes.

I really must have been the densest person alive not to realize from the jump just how not human he was.

They were beautiful eyes, I realized.

He was beautiful.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I took a small break,” I conceded.

“It wouldn’t.” I could all but hear the grin in his voice.

“Do you have ideas in mind for what we might do?”

“Yes,” he said. “Loads of ideas.”

I didn’t know if he was being serious. “Really?”

“Yes. But I’ll narrow it down to two options.” He held up one finger. “First idea: we go tromping through the snow in the snowshoes I found in the basement.”

I stared at him. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not joking,” he said. “If I were joking, I would have said something like, it’s raining cats and dogs outside, and I just stepped in a poodle .”

I snorted. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I am,” he agreed. “No interest in snowshoeing, then?”

“It’s the middle of the night.” I shook my head. “Hard pass. What’s your second idea?”

He smirked. “I’ll show you. But first—close your eyes.”

“Close my eyes?”

“If you choose option two, it’s a surprise. So yes. Close them.”

Did I humor him? Trust him? It was true that I wasn’t afraid he would hurt me. But how was I supposed to react to a vampire telling me to close my eyes?

I closed them anyway. “Can you at least give me a hint?”

“No.” He closed his hand around my wrist, and…

I’d been honest when I’d told him I wouldn’t kiss him again. But the gentle, restrained way he was touching me right now stood in such delicious contrast to the way he’d grabbed me on the kitchen table earlier that suddenly…

That earlier moment was all I could think about.

“You’re gonna love option two,” he said, guiding me out of the kitchen by the hand. “Follow me.”