Page 78 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy

“No, just checking,” said Harrison. “Because I had to convince Maisey we didn’t need to bring a cooler of our own. I said, ‘They will have blood.’”

Maisey snuggled into Harrison’s shoulder. “You were right, love.”

Benedict surveyed them both with a small smile. He was actually recently back in this whatever-they-were-calling-it, a triad, after a long solitary spell of maybe sixty years, where he’d been living in a basement apartment in New York City and working at clubs, playing music, his hair chopped short and dyed bright green. Well, perhaps he’d done that in the 1980s and then not had the presence of mind to change it. Now, he was back with Maisey and Harrison and he seemed content and happy, but it wasn’t uncommon for vampires to do those sorts of things.

Liz knew Tad had been quite solitary before her, but he never seemed to tire of her, nor she of him.

They had time, she supposed, time and each other.

That night, as she looked up at the fireworks in the sky, through the skylight in her rented house, she contemplated the words her sister had said to her, centuries ago.

She wasn’t alive, she supposed. Life was about growth and change and meeting new challenges. Her existence was often about sameness, stagnation, an endless array of similarity. But the world changed, of course, in ways that delighted and intrigued her.

And anyway, she didn’t think she was missing anything.

Jane had wished to die because everyone she loved was also going to die. When her children sobbed at her deathbed, it was all part of the natural order of things. As their mother, their grandmother, Jane had to leave the world to make room for their growth.

But Liz loved Tad.

So, she wasn’t missing anything at all.

Maybe she was not alive. Maybe she was dead, an animated corpse, a monstrous fiend.

But she would be quite happy to spend her endless death with her husband.

Come what may, they had each other.

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