“New coat?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she turned away from him and adjusted her scarf. “Thanks for the gift certificate. It was way too much.”
Gregor shrugged. “Good coats are expensive, and I ruined yours.”
That made her laugh. He was growing to like the laugh that lived in her voice. “I’m glad you did. My mom bought me that awful red down thing, you know, because it’s so damn important that I stay warm…” She stopped mid-thought and shrugged, “You know, mothers.”
Did he ever know mothers. “Where do you want to go?”
“There’s an Irish pub not far from here. One pint, and then it’s jammies for me, got it?”
Gregor went a little lightheaded thinking of her jammies. He was developing a flannel fetish. He’d played with the notion of hiring dancers to work the club in flannel nightgowns. Wet flannel nightgowns, maybe. Short, wet flannel nightgowns. “Got it. Pint. Jammies.”
The walk there was a little awkward. What were they supposed to talk about? It was easier to fight with her. Fortunately the bar was only a couple of blocks away, and as it turned out, he liked her choice. It was a friendly place, with a quiet back room fitted with a fireplace. There was even a table open near the fire. Gregor loved heat sources: fires, radiators, human women. They settled down by the fire with pints.
Madelena sucked the head off her pint of stout, and then licked the creamy foam off her upper lip with a sheepish grin.
“Stout’s my favorite,” she said. “It’s like dinner in a glass.”
Gregor was trying to figure out her looks. Such a great mouth, nice to look at, better to kiss, but then there was all that thick black hair hiding the shape of her face, and those glasses were like a mask. Her scent was always pleasing, but tonight it was not quite as he remembered it. He wondered if she’d been sick recently, or maybe she was coming down with something…
“Faustin? Don’t go all glassy like that, it’s creepy.”
Gregor shrugged off his stupor, his fascination, whatever it was that afflicted him whenever he came near her. “Why don’t you call me Gregor?”
“I don’t know, I kinda like Faustin. Does anyone ever call you Greg?”
Greg? The thought made him bristle all over. “Absolutely not.”
Madelena smirked, then laughed aloud. He scowled, and she laughed harder, clutching her sides. Gregor folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“So glad to amuse you.” He was not used to be laughed at, but he liked to see her skin flush with color.
“Greg!” she wheezed. She hid her face in her hands.
Gregor sipped his pint, waiting for the hilarity to end. It wasn’t that funny. But just watching her laugh made him want to smile. By some miracle the beer tasted decent, not like chalk as everything else had tasted to him lately. Probably because she was near.
When she finally stopped laughing, she took off her glasses and began to rub them with her shirttail, still grinning. “Okay Greg-or Faustin. Tell me about yourself.”
“Look at me.” He put a little spin of command on the words.
Startled, she lifted her head, her eyes naked, her pupils flaring wide. Her eyes were beautiful, almond shaped and wide set. They were dark, like he already knew, almost black, but now he could see the warmth in the iris, like coffee held to light. Thin brows framed her eyes in high, intelligent arcs. A few tiny black freckles or moles dotted the tops of her cheekbones and the corners of her eyes. Without her glasses her gaze was a little unfocused, but that softness reminded him of the blood languor, so was twice as sexy. These were eyes he could learn to love. Maybe, just maybe, this would work.
This inspection took just an instant, and in that instant she recovered from the command, plopped the glasses back on her face and opened her mouth to say some smartass thing. To stop that, he said, “López de Victoria, I’m guessing that’s a Puerto Rican name.”
That brought a smile to her face, slightly exasperated and also a little proud. “It is, but I’m a complete mutt. Puerto Rican, African-American, Irish—you name it, I’ve got it in me.”
“You have family around here?”
“Tons. They’re all in Queens. My mom, my sister, Lenora. My sister has three great kids.” The smile slipped from her face and that sadness he had seen at the library returned, like a cloud passing over the moon. She bent over her pint.
“What’s bothering you tonight, Madelena?” He did not use any compulsion this time, because it was bad form with a potential spouse, though it was hard to resist the temptation to pull the truth from her in one quick tug.
One of her hands fluttered up in an “it’s nothing” gesture, but she turned her face to the fire. Her glasses caught the flame and hid her eyes. He thought she might not answer at all, but then she said, quietly, “Big change is hard, you know? Tonight marks the start of a big change for me. Everything is going to be okay, I know that. It’s just that it’s real now, and there’s no going back, and I’m missing some things already. Which is stupid.” She took a deep pull on her beer and turned to face him again. “Really, I’m okay.”
Gregor had a hard time believing she was talking about a leave of absence.
She hardened up again, and lifted a brow. “Don’t glower at me like that, Faustin. You’ll get wrinkles.”
Crispy shell, candy center. He should have known all along, he would have if she wasn’t so good at annoying him.
Like now.
“So, Lord of Sulk, tell me something,” she said. It wasn’t a request. It was a command, calculated to set him off balance. But he was on to her now, and he gave her his most accommodating smile.
“What do you want to know?”
At that, her face lit up with mischief. She wanted to know if he was a vamp, but he doubted she had the balls to ask directly. As he expected, she went fishing.
“Well, why don’t you tell me about your family?”
Because vampyr don’t have families? “I’ve got two brothers, both live in the city. My folks live in Brooklyn. They’ve been there forever. In Kensington, by the park. That’s where I grew up.”
He watched her process this. Nope, he was not born in 1725, the son of a minor Scottish laird. Sorry.
“And you’re…close with your family?”
Nope, he wasn’t created by some ancient Nosferatu and doomed to wander the sewers in tortured isolation. Ma and Pop Faustin made him the old fashioned way, but he really didn’t want to think about that too much.
“Yes, we’re all very close. My folks are great, both of them are very…Old World. My brothers and I are tight. Sure, we fight sometimes, but they know I’d do anything for them.”
The expression on her face made him want to crack up. She thought she had him all figured out, and now she was trying to regroup. God he loved teasing her. But there was a point to it. It was a good thing that she was open-minded about the existence of his world—that was one hurdle he didn’t have to face—but she would also be full of misinformation about vamps too, and that had to be corrected.
She gave him a long look, chewing on the inside of her left cheek. Somehow she reminded him of a gunslinger. “What’s your favorite food, Faustin?”
He threw his head back and laughed. Half a pint of lager had made him drunk.
Madelena grinned triumphantly. “Come on, Faustin. You have to answer.”
The answer was you. Her life’s blood was all he wanted, all he needed. If they mated, for the first few weeks he’d feed lightly off her every day, and need no more than that. By feeding on her, he’d learn the contents of her soul, and her blood would possess his body and bind them for life.