Page 32 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

He rapped his knuckles on the now-familiar door and waited in the cold, the skies cloudy. He had a backpack full of materials and a stack of relevant pamphlets, and he was the kind of determined that one only got when faced with murderous vampires.

The door opened a few inches and Mari peeked through, looking equal parts frazzled and pissed. Her body blocked any view into the apartment. She was wearing an AC/DC muscle tank about four sizes too big for her, and her short hair was in a wild, stubby ponytail at the back of her neck.

“Oh, hell no” were the first words out of her mouth. “Was some part of my flee the country message unclear? And now there are these animal attacks?”

The worst thing about Mari being so protective was that she was right to be protective. She was doing what any person in her right mind would do, which was to keep the vampire bullshit far away, thank you very much. Now, more than ever, she was trying to take care of her friends.

“I know,” Brennan said. “I know it’s a lot.

I can’t blame you for being protective or wanting to keep all this vampire stuff far away from you, but now—there’s a real threat out there.

And I’m trying to fix it. And Cole, he’s mixed up in all of this and that’s on me.

He is good and, and he’s worth a thousand of me. I know that.”

But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about his self-hate, it was about a person he fucking liked and who made him feel like a human. And Brennan didn’t want to let Cole down. Ever.

He finished, “I don’t want him to get hurt. I… I wanted to put up some protective wards around your apartment. No clue if they work, but I wanted to try.”

Mari did a little head tilt and the seconds passed in the quiet throb of her pulse, the sound of the TV inside, the wails of some neighbor singing in the shower. It felt like a lifetime before Mari’s expression softened.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then a shout emerged from inside the apartment.

“Everything alright, babe?” The New York accent made it clear who it was. Brennan looked at Mari, then over her shoulder into the apartment, then back.

“All good,” Mari called back, cheeks bright red, glaring at Brennan with a fire that said I dare you to say shit to me right now.

Brennan tossed up his hands in innocence. “Good for you,” he said. Then corrected, “Hell, good for him.” He couldn’t even begin to understand the dynamic between Tony and Mari, but it seemed to work for them.

“Yeah, well” was all she said, but she smiled.

Actually smiled. It was small, but it was possibly the first real one she’d given Brennan.

She eyed his backpack, then his face. She stepped back from the door with something akin to defeat, and finally let the door swing open farther than a few inches.

“I’ll only take a few minutes. Or, I can come back later? I mean—”

Mari rolled her eyes. “Fuck it. Do your thing.” Then, “What, do you need to be invited inside? Is that real?”

Brennan offered a wry smile. “It will be, once I carve this sigil into all your doors and window frames.”

Mari stared at him for a beat, unimpressed. “Well, we probably weren’t getting our deposit back anyway.”

She moved from the doorway and Brennan followed her. Tony was in the bedroom, and Mari offered to distract him while Brennan got to work, which was the closest thing to supportive Mari had been of Brennan’s secret.

He set right to it, digging through his backpack to find the pamphlet for reference.

There were a few different sigils he wanted to try out, and the only reason he had to believe they worked was that they were in the pamphlets, but it seemed far-fetched.

Somehow, the idea of a few stray symbols being able to ward off vampires seemed more unbelievable than the existence of vampires in the first place.

As he set to work, Mari returned from the bedroom and studied him, and he felt like measly cells under a microscope with the intensity of her scrutiny.

He tried to ignore her. There was one door, a few windows, and a few sigils for each, so it didn’t take more than a few minutes before he was returning to his backpack to put the knife away.

Then he put on the oven mitts he brought so he could dig out another knife and a bag with a few bulbs of garlic. He handed both to Mari, who accepted them warily, squinting at Brennan.

“This is a silver knife,” Brennan said. “It’s the only thing that can break skin for vampires, I think, and it burns to touch, so it’d be good to have on hand.

And, garlic—it stinks enough that I wouldn’t want to drink anything if it were in the vicinity, so, I don’t know, keep a bulb in your room or something? ”

Mari turned the knife over in her hands. It was a small thing, barely sharp, because apparently silver made for shitty weapons outside of vampire hunting. She curled her fingers around the knife and nodded.

She said, “You actually really care about him, huh?”

Brennan stilled. It was wild to him that there could be any doubts. He was sure the way he felt was stamped on his forehead.

“I do,” Brennan confirmed.

Mari studied him until she finally sighed. “Just,” she said, with the air of giving in, “try to deserve him, okay?”

He would. He was.

Brennan nodded once, a dip of the head. When he gathered his things and passed through the warded front door, pins and needles surged over his skin.