Page 49 of Dark Flame

“Not like you can use the information to your benefit.” My amusement fades at the sight of her scrunched brows. With a sigh, I concede, “Ask what you want to. It’s all but written on your face.”

“Do you sleep in a coffin?”

The random question throws me enough, I laugh. Of course, this witch would ask that of all things. Harlow Sinclair is as interesting as they come.

“No. I enjoy my bed too much.”

“So youdosleep?”

“Occasionally. Our sleep needs are much different than a mortal’s, or even yours.”

“Huh. And here I pictured you getting into a skinny box and folding your hands over your chest.”

“If you’re referring to that ridiculous movie based on that equally ridiculous book,Dracula, you’re wrong. Although, the fact you’re picturing me sleeping at all might be something we need to chat about, Hellion.”

She doesn’t take the bait, instead leaning on the armrest, her eyes open in childlike wonder. “So Dracula is just a story and nothing more?”

“Oh, he’s real,” I confess, thinking of the millennia-old vampire. “But Bram Stoker didn’t record his story correctly. Also, no one’s seen him in a few centuries.”

“Have you met him?”

“Very few alive have.”

“That didn’t answer the question.”

Another sigh. “I have not.”

“So Mina’s real too?”

“Who’s Mina?”

She snorts and leans back. “Guess that answers that. You called the book and movie ridiculous; you’d know who Mina was if you read or watched them.”

“One doesn’t have to consume something to know it’s incorrect.”

“Wow.” She shakes her head, the hint of a smirk reassuring me tonight’s danger has fazed me more than her. “You can’t make claims about something you don’t know. In the book, Mina was a woman Dracula was compelled by, enough to try to curse her into becoming one of his brides. In the movie, she was a reincarnation of the wife he had during his mortal life, and that’s why he was interested in her.”

Based on that summary, perhaps Bram Stoker didn’t have it entirely wrong.

“Hm.”

“Hm.That’s all you have to say?” Her voice climbs.

“I was thinking.IfMina actually existed for the real Dracula, the book version would be the most plausible. He was drawn to her, obsessed over her until he got what he wanted. It’s very…my kind.” I shift, uncomfortable suddenly with where the conversation is dipping to.

Leave it to Sinclair to probe further. “What do you mean?”

“It means vampires can’t love. Most of the mortal emotions stop existing after we’re reborn as an immortal. Love isn’t possible, but we obsess—strongly, fiercely, almost violently. From the outside, it might look like love, but never mistake it as such. Our obsessions run deep, and we’ll do everything and anything to sate it. There will be nothing in death or life that’ll keep us from the source of our obsession. That’s the closest thing we have to love.”

“Oh.” She’s silent for a while, only the rhythmic thrumming of her heart suggesting she isn’t finished with this topic. She’s analyzing my words, considering what more to say, so it’s not a complete surprise when she asks, “Have you ever had someone to obsess over?”

My reply is an unbothered fact. “No.”

She finally drops the subject, and we sit in a silence that’s unnerving because it’s nothing like I’ve experienced with her. She’s staring out the window while I observe her, gawking much too long at the notes of orange mingling with red. The small brown freckles that decorate her cheeks and wrap towards her forehead, a speckling of stars that make Sinclair glow brighter, enthrall me.

A peace radiates from her despite what happened tonight, almost like she has no idea how close to a different outcome it could have been. The blood staining the carpet behind us is a mere prequel to the pain I could have caused and the horrors she could have witnessed instead. I was gentle—toogentle—with their deaths. It happened too quickly to sate myneed. The very need that has my hands clenching around the armrests before I act and do something so utterly stupid, there would be no turning back.

Then she speaks, no louder than a whisper, and it’s a set of words that throws my axis off-kilter.