Page 48 of Even Vampires Bleed (Even Ever After #2)

Cassiopé

L éandre comes back to the kitchen after a while, and I realize I heard nothing through the walls, not even the water falling from the shower.

I could get used to that level of phonic insulation.

He helps me crush the potatoes once they are boiled. We add a little milk, and then we cook the meat together with the onions and garlic—meat that we had to cut in tiny pieces by ourselves because there was no way to make it into ground beef in this kitchen, and that’s how I needed it.

He adds the carrots—in small pieces, too—while I keep turning the wooden spoon inside the pan.

Then he adds the tomato, and he shows me how to reduce the intensity.

I let it cook for five minutes before I transfer the mix into a glass container and cover with the mashed potatoes and some cheese—I’m not supposed to put any, but there was cheese in the cooler and everything is always better with cheese.

We put everything in the oven and…

Now what do we do?

The food would cook in maybe two to three minutes with a modern oven, but the meat should have been ready in under a minute. It took more than five minutes, so now I have no idea how long we should wait.

I’ve never used an old oven before.

“How long do we wait?” Léandre’s question echoes my thought.

“Would you believe me if I said that I don’t know?” I answer truthfully. “I’ve never used that kind of antique.”

“It’s a test of patience,” he says, as if he knew exactly what I meant.

Wait, he does. I keep forgetting that I’ve been asleep for three days.

“If you want to go take a shower, I’ll keep an eye on it,” he adds.

I have the stupid idea to sniff myself to be sure he’s not telling me that because I smell.

He obviously didn’t smell me—however I smell—earlier, when he was delightfully sweaty, but now that might be different.

I resist the temptation to do it and instead take the opportunity to go shower.

I might not smell, but I’ve been in the same clothes for three days, except for the shirt.

The shirt must have been a bit destroyed by my fall and wood impaling because I woke up with a new shirt on. I don’t think Léandre was ready to get me fully naked and change all my clothes, though, so the shirt being in tatters would explain why it’s the only thing he took the liberty of changing.

So, yeah, I’ve been in the same clothes for three days and I need that shower.

When I open the back door, though, I arrive directly in the bedroom I slept in.

I could have sworn that it was supposed to be a corridor, that there were supposed to be rooms—plural.

But there’s only one room. With my sleepy mind, I seem to have missed that piece of information earlier when I made my way to the other clearing.

Where has Léandre been sleeping until now? Because there is no indentation on the other side of the mattress. The only side that looks like it’s been messed with is the one I was sleeping in just hours ago.

So where?

I drop my dirty clothes in a corner, take a quick shower, and get dressed in new clothes.

I open the bedsheets to air them—they probably need to with the fact I didn’t move from them for so long—and walk back to the living room.

Léandre has some explaining to do.