Page 8 of Unholy Gambit: Checkmate in Blood (A Paranormal Halloween #5)

“The Aos Sí are excellent strategizers, so it makes sense you have an affinity for chess. Most are beautiful, which of course you are. Most are tall, which you aren’t, but you are quite thin.

Your thoughts are precise, logical, a blade you use to analyze the world.

At a guess, I’d say you’re perhaps twenty percent Fae.

I thought your mom around ten-ish percent, but with all the other things happening that night, I didn’t take the time to pay too much attention. ”

She was silent a few moments, and he realized he’d misunderstood her question. She’d been asking him about his wording, a teasing little taste of her blood.

“How much are you in my head?” she asked before he could answer her true question. “Can you hear all my thoughts?”

“I can.”

“So then answer the question I clearly didn’t ask right.”

He’d never understood feelings, emotions, romance. The fact he was inundated with these concepts and sensations now was a chaos he couldn’t deal with, but he had to smile at her intelligence. Her moxie. He also needed to answer the question.

“I drink less than a Red Cross donation. I’m a visitor to this territory, without hunting rights, so I brought someone who’ll willingly feed me.

A young shifter who can replenish his blood supply daily, when most humans can only donate every couple of months.

He’s well-paid, plus he got a free trip to America. ”

He paused, considering what else she needed to know. How to settle her concerns. “There’s a way for me to purchase bagged blood, should I think he needs a day off. I do not need to drink from you, and if I eventually do so, it will be an intimacy between us — one you wish to happen.”

She blew out a breath. “Thank you. Can you restore my memories of that night?”

“You’ve mostly restored them, and after decades…” He shook his head. “You were a child, and they’ve evolved as you’ve grown. It’s best I don’t fuck with them anymore.”

She didn’t like that answer, so he tried a logical explanation to explain the mechanics better. “Think of overwriting information on a hard drive and then trying to dig for the original information, you either find the data below, or you completely trash that sector.”

She understood, but was pissed at the loss.

So he offered a solution. “If you like, I can replay my memories of that night for you. It’ll give you a memory of it from my perspective rather than yours.

I won’t show you the parts that happened while I paused your consciousness, but I will show you the rest.”

“You don’t want me to see you cutting Maman’s arm off.”

“It isn’t something you need to see.”

“She barely remembers it happening. Did you make it so she wouldn’t remember, or did you wipe that memory?”

No way to pretty this one up. “I paused you both.”

The repercussions of that echoed around in her brain for a mile. The idea clawed at her, that he could pause any human, anytime he wanted, that his kind could control her kind, manipulating them like a demented puppet master with remote-controlled marionette strings.

He’d known she wouldn’t take well to the answer, but he’d promised not to lie to her.

He pulled up to City Café, and his Aurélie got out and switched gears in her head, focusing on logistics.

Her voice came into his head through the psychic path he’d left open between them, the one he never intended to close.

I assume you’ll know where I’m sitting without me having to text you. We should still exchange numbers soon, though .

We will. See you in a moment.

Thirty seconds later, she telepathed. I’m an idiot. You don’t eat, and I invited you to a restaurant.

You are one of the smartest humans I know. You’re tired, hungry, and you need food. Of course I brought you to a restaurant. I’ve fed already this night and won’t feed again until I rise tomorrow. Everything is as it should be.

Can you consume anything besides blood and water?

Whiskey, vodka. Most hard alcohol is fine, as is beer without additives.

Because it isn’t altered much by human digestion. It’s pretty much the same whether in the glass or the vein. Do you drink from veins or arteries?

Exactly right, and we prefer arteries, though brand-new vampires are coached to drink from veins until they get the knack of helping the blood coagulate as they pull out.

* * * *

Aury stepped into the restaurant and breathed in the scent of warm bread and a griddle full of Southern-fried goodness. She followed the young teen male to a booth, ignoring her knee.

Physically, she was balanced for the first time in her life, but emotionally? Fuck .

However, it seemed reasonable to expect Axel was still in her head while he parked, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by thinking of him as a monster.

She needed to parse through what she’d learned, but later. He wasn’t a threat. Wasn’t a stranger. He’d taught her how to stop the pain of a mangled knee, and he’d saved her life. Both from the burglars and from the protocol that required him to kill everyone present.

Before she could consider another thought, she boxed up the questions threatening to spiral into a whirlwind and slammed the lid shut until…

Until the following morning, when he’d be asleep. Vampires die at dawn, she was pretty sure that part of the lore was accurate.

For now, she focused on seating logistics, exit points, and choosing what she wanted from the thousands of items available, because this wasn’t a normal menu, it was a spiral bound book.