ix.

FIFER EXPECTED HE wouldn't call or text again, not for days, and this time, she decided, she would not initiate contact.

Well, on the way home, walking back from his place, fuming and confused and still a little turned on in that unfinished way that made her feel frustrated, she decided this. She got home, went to bed, used a vibrator to finish herself off and then rolled over in the darkness and thought about never having an orgasm like the kind she had with him, how his sharing her pleasure made it something different and pleasant and achingly good.

And then she wanted to cry. Because she was ruined, wasn't she?

He'd shown her this, and now she would always want it, and she wasn't going to be able to have it, not forever. He'd pointed out already that it was doomed.

And besides, he was legitimately frightening. It was exciting, the way he scared her, but she wasn't entirely stupid. He had kicked her out of his house because he wasn't sure he could stop himself from keeping her captive and sucking her dry, essentially. In some way, maybe he was a vampire, but not the obvious kind.

Messing around with some kind of ancient creature like him, it was insanity.

She would not call him.

She was done.

I'll just forget about him, she told herself. I'll move on.

She knew she'd never forget him, of course. She'd long for him forever, a gaping pit of want inside her that would never be filled.

And the next morning, she wondered if she'd be able to keep herself from initiating contact with him. She had coffee, gazing wistfully out the window, thinking that maybe she would indulge herself in a long sobbing session—just to get it out of her system.

Her phone rang.

It was him.

"Oh, shit, I should have texted," he said. "I forgot that we don't use cell phones for calling people anymore."

She laughed. "Good morning to you, too."

"Should I hang up and text?"

"No, I answered. It's fine." She was still laughing.

"I'm calling to apologize," he said.

"All right," she said. "For what?"

"For scaring you last night. For being dramatic and intense and acting as if everything's dire just because I like watching you come."

She licked her lips, digesting this. "So… so what? You're not tempted to keep me captive in your house and steal fifty years of my life?"

"Look, I can't—I can't keep you against your will, you know. If we were in Faerie, you'd be stuck there, and time works differently there, but my house isn't magic or anything."

She furrowed her brow, because she didn't know what to think at this point.

He was still talking. "Like ‘Rip Van Winkle' or something, right? He was taken out of the mortal realm. But this isn't like that. We're not in a fairy story. You're not a captured princess, and I'm not a monster in a tower, and it's fine. If you ever want to leave when you're with me, you can just go. I don't know why I got so freaked. I've been kicking myself over it all night."

Something occurred to her. "Do you sleep?"

"I can," he said. "Not last night."

"Are you downplaying how dangerous you are in order to lure me back into your lair?" she said, and there was a sharpness to her voice, even though she made it light, even though she was joking.

"No," he said. "But I guess that's fair for you to think that. Why don't we back this up a little? We've been moving too fast. Let's go out on a date. In public. You need time to get to know me, so that you can judge my character, and then you can decide whether you trust me or not."

She supposed that made sense. "I mean, I wouldn't mind going out on a date."

"Lots of dates," he said. "We don't have to be alone together until you feel comfortable again."

"Well, that seems extreme," she said. "It's not as if you were going to force me, anyway, right? It was just that it would be so pleasurable I'd want to stay? And really, tricking someone into thinking something is so pleasurable they'll give up anything and everything just to have more, that's not even a real thing. It's just something in a fairy story, like you said."

"Exactly," he said.

Of course, there was, like, heroin addiction, wasn't there?

"Dinner?" he said. "Tonight?"

"Yeah," she said. "Okay."

"YOU'RE ANTSY," SAID Gigi, who was a tall, green elf with long black hair tucked behind her pointed ears. She was lounging against the door to the piercing room. "You got a hot date tonight or something?"

"Actually, maybe I do," he told her. He had been trying to play solitaire on the counter at work again, but he'd knocked the cards askew three times. Now, he was gathering them up off the floor. He'd give up on cards.

"Really?" said Gigi. "Anyone I know?"

"Uh, Fifer Ione," he said.

"Oh, yeah, she's fun," said Gigi. "Spends more time in my shop than any other asexual I know." She tilted her head to one side. "Wait."

"She's, um, not aromantic," he said. "And, you know, I'm…" He lifted his hand, showing off his bony wrist as his hoodie slipped down. "It's kind of perfect. At least it could be if I could stop fucking it up, I think."

"So, that means she wants to have a romantic relationship but just no sex?" said Gigi.

"Yeah," he said.

"Huh," said Gigi. "I just didn't even know that was a thing." She folded her arms over her chest. "So, how are you fucking it up?"

He busied himself shuffling the cards. "I don't know how to do it, that's the thing. I'm too much and not enough. I either ignore her or smother her. I'm trying to scare her off, but then I don't want to scare her off. I want her; I don't know if I can handle wanting her. It's… I want it to be light and casual, and I can't seem to manage that."

"Nothing about you is light or casual," said Gigi. "What do you mean, scaring her off?"

"Oh, you know, literally threatening her."

"Threatening her?" Gigi was taken aback. "With what?"

Hollis set down the cards, looking across the shop at her. He didn't do anything except to slowly allow the aspects of himself that he kept hidden to rise to the surface. It wasn't so much that he looked different when he did this, just that mortals got the sense of what he was, got that sense of his being predator and them prey.

Gigi flattened herself into the door, eyes widening.

He pulled it all back in, shaking his head.

"Fuck, Hollis." There was no bottom to Gigi's voice. "What… what are you?"

"I should stay away from her for her own good, right?" he muttered. "What business do I have messing with her? She's so pretty and sweet and bright and I'm…"

"Well, don't do that," said Gigi, pushing off the door. "You're not a bad guy, Hollis. You're a great guy, actually. You deserve some happiness in your life. It's not like you want to hurt her, right?"

"Obviously not."

"So, just don't hurt her," said Gigi.

"Like it's all so simple," he said softly.

"It is," said Gigi.

"WELL," FIFER FOUND herself saying, "I guess I picked up a guitar when I was a teenager. I just wanted to be able to accompany myself when I wanted to sing. It seemed to me that you couldn't sit down and start singing at people a cappella, but that if you had a guitar, you kind of could."

"Oh, yeah?" He was grinning at her from across the table at Alma Bea. They'd had beef brisket and smoked chicken and brie mac and cheese, but now they were on dessert.

"Yeah, say you're at a party or a bonfire or something," she said. "How many times is there just some dude sitting somewhere, playing guitar?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Is that common?"

"Oh, come on, don't act as though you've been living under a rock for the past thousand years. You've been to parties."

"Well, let's say that I have, and that you're right. So, that's why you started playing music?"

"I thought that I could play my own songs and people would listen, but I realized that no one wants to hear songs they've never heard, so I started learning to cover other bands songs and then sneak my own in there. I always loved playing for people. Music is good for people, and being able to give it to them, it's just… I love it. I love playing live. I love everything about performing."

"You're an amazing performer," he said.

"Why do you play?"

"Not for other people," he said, chuckling.

"Well, I guess not. You chase half of the audience away at the open mic, don't you?"

He tilted his head back, studying the ceiling, thoughtful. "I guess I like the feeling of inhabiting a song. It's nice to listen to a song, but playing it, it means you're inside it in another way, and it feels more alive and more real, and you're surrounded by it. I like doing that. I don't know why I want to do it in front of people, though."

"Well, you're good, and you should," she said.

" You should," he said.

"I am," she said. "I have booked three gigs over the next two weeks."

"That's impressive," he said.

"It's not bad," she said. "I'm lucky, and I know it. I lucked into some natural talent. It was never as hard for me to play guitar as it was for other people. I hear music in a way that I'm not sure other people do, and I have a knack for getting my fingers and voice to match what I hear in my head. That's a thing I don't think can be taught. I lucked into getting that. And I've been lucky to connect with people in this area, and I have contacts, so I can do that—just book gigs. It's not like most musicians have that kind of privilege."

"Oh, please," he said. "You don't have to be so humble. I'm sure you worked very hard for everything you've accomplished."

"I did," she said, nodding. "But when you're accomplishing things, it's a lot easier to motivate yourself to work hard."

He considered. "True, I suppose."

"Anyway, even with all that, even with all my humility and gratefulness for all my advantages, there's no way I could book enough local gigs to pay my bills."

He nodded. "Ah. I see. So, that was a preamble."

"I don't mean to whine," she said. "I talk to so many other musicians who are envious of what I have, and I don't mean to belittle it. But if I want this to pay well, I need to tour. But I can't tour. Or I can, but I don't want to. Not to be a huge diva about it, but there are a lot of elements of being a starving artist that are not really any fun as it is, things I already deal with, and I'm just not going to add to it anymore. No more touring."

"What if you could make the tour more comfortable?" he said. "What if you had a tour bus, sort of a home on wheels that you could retreat to and feel at home in? What if—"

"Well, I don't think that's going to happen," she said.

"What if it could?"

She drew back. "What are you saying?"

"That would be weird if I gave you a huge gift like that, wouldn't it?"

She nodded.

"It would make you feel indebted to me, and it would deepen the already existing power imbalance between us, and it would be uncool in every single way."

"I'm not going to tour," she said. "I'm not going to make a living as a musician."

"Oh," he said. "So, what are you going to do?"

"Well, that's what I haven't figured out yet," she said. "I don't think I want to supplement my income with delivering groceries and takeout forever. There are advantages to it, but it's also not a lot of security, and I can't guarantee how much money I can make each day."

"Did you go to school? Do you have a degree?"

She nodded. "Yeah, in history, if you can believe that."

"Why would I find that unbelievable?"

"Just because of its extreme pointlessness," she laughed. "You don't major in history and then stop with your undergrad degree. You get a masters or a doctorate. You teach or you work in a museum or something."

"Do you want to go back to school?"

"No, I'm way too old for that. And I don't want to teach or work in a museum. It's funny, because I haven't much thought about what I want to do with myself besides being a musician."

"Why is that funny?"

"Just… everyone says to you that you can't make a living doing music and that you need to have a backup plan. And when people said that to me, I always nodded and agreed. And then, pointedly didn't make up a backup plan."

He laughed.

"Is this the part where you offer to make me your kept woman?"

He sucked in audible breath. "No, of course not."

"I couldn't do that anyway," she said. "You're not wrong about this power imbalance between us."

"But you like it," he said in a knowing voice. "Rich, powerful being, way too old for you… I feel like that's a common female fantasy."

"I couldn't have dreamed you up," she said softly.