by Tessa Bailey
Something akin to longing swept his features. “No, I…can’t.”
What was the cause of these nerves popping in her fingertips? If she didn’t find a way to prolong this association, it would be over before it started and something about that seemed horribly wrong. “We don’t have to stay here,” she said. “I was just thinking of taking a walk, actually.” Before he could respond, Ginny tugged her apron off over her head, tossed it on the closest counter and sped through the embalming room door. “Coming?”
“A walk,” he repeated, somehow already right on her heels. “In the middle of the night?”
“It’s the best time to go. Everything is so quiet.”
“How have you lived this long?” A beat passed. “Please, I can’t do this.”
“It’s okay.” Her smile was innocent. “I can go by myself.”
With a growl, Jonas reached Ginny’s side and she hid a relieved smile.
“One hour,” he muttered. “I get one hour.”
CHAPTER TWO
Luna Park was closed for the night, but some of the rides still twinkled where they lined the Coney Island boardwalk. With fall moving in gradually, the wind had a cool bite but summer was still laced throughout, carrying the scent of scorched sand and saltwater. Apart from a handful of people sleeping on benches and the occasional rat scurrying out to retrieve pieces of popcorn and dropped pizza crusts, the boardwalk was empty of life, quiet enough to hear the waves crashing nearby, the sizzle of the whitewash.
Jonas walked beside her with his hands clasped behind has back, staring straight ahead, occasionally mouthing phrases to himself. I shouldn’t be doing this seemed to be his favorite, with have you gone insane coming in at a close second.
I get one hour.
That was her favorite of his mutterings so far.
He hadn’t said, “You get one hour.” He’d said, “I get one hour.”
And maybe, just maybe, that meant he was enjoying being with her, even if he looked like he was being boiled alive in a pit of hot oil.
A girl could dream.
“One hour,” she murmured now. “And then I won’t see you again?”
Grooves formed between his brows. “Correct.”
She ignored the pang in her chest. “This is a unique opportunity then.”
He seemed reluctantly intrigued. “How so?”
“Since we’re never going to see each other after tonight, we can say the weirdest things on our minds without fear of reliving the embarrassment every time we meet. Maybe I can even pass on the secrets of womankind. Aren’t you curious why women open their mouth when they apply mascara?”
“Not until now. Why do they?”
“It’s reflexive. When a woman is trying not to blink, the oculomotor nerve is activated, triggering the trigeminal nerve that opens the jaw. Mouth open equals no blinking—and our bodies just do it naturally.” She beamed at him. “Aren’t you glad you came on this walk?”
He laughed, the full, deep sound making her think of underground wine cellars and the dark, less traveled sections of a library. “It’s going to be impossible to forget,” he said, seeming suddenly at a loss for words.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he responded, looking over at her curiously. “I just can’t remember the last time I laughed…without making myself do it out of politeness.”
“Are you always polite?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I always try to do the appropriate thing. The right thing.” Under his breath, he said, “Usually, anyway.”
Ginny stopped short, something terrible occurring. “Are you married? Is that why you shouldn’t be doing this? You said you had roommates and I just assumed that meant you were a single man—”
“I am unattached, Ginny.” He seemed transfixed by her hair blowing in the breeze. “In a manner of speaking.” With a visible effort, he gathered himself. “What about you? Do you always do the right thing?”
“I’m in the funeral business. I like to leave room for a gray area.”
Amusement broke across his face. “Care to elaborate?”
Ginny hummed. “We had a client once, back when my father was still alive. The deceased asked to be buried with his gold watches. Jonas, he had fourteen of them. Seven on each arm.” She shook her head at the memory. “His sons couldn’t afford to pay for the funeral or his burial plot, so we snuck them two of the watches inside a Big Mac carton.”
He flashed a smile. “I detect no gray area there. What good would fourteen watches do buried six feet underground? You can’t take it with you.”
“Exactly.”
“When you’re dead, you can’t lift your wrist to check the time, anyway,” Jonas said.
Ginny laughed into her palm—and the sound made him misstep and stop walking.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” He opened his mouth and snapped it shut. “It’s almost as if I missed your laugh more than mine.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
When they started on their way again Jonas appeared quite distracted. “All right, my turn for a question. Are you an optimist or a pessimist?”
“Pessimist to the bone. You?”
“Definite optimist.”
“An optimist who works in a funeral home?”
“Owns a funeral home.” She squinted an eye at him. “Jealous?”
He shoved his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled and directionless. “Christ, Ginny, you are so endearing, it’s painful.” His jaw set. “Let’s head back.”
Reluctantly, she turned and they started off in the direction they’d walked. “Why a pessimist?”
“Seen a lot of things go wrong in…my time.”
“Name something you’ve seen go right.”
“Is this a technique optimists use to bring one over to the light side?”
“Nope, I just invented it.”
His white teeth flashed, but his smile slowly melted away. “Time gets things right, I suppose. The seasons show up without fail, cycle after cycle. People put up their Christmas lights at the same time every year. Nighttime arrives sooner, then later, then sooner again. Children grow up, learn, get married. Time never fails, it keeps going.”
Ginny looked out at the ocean, though her attention longed to be on Jonas. “I can’t decide if that’s beautiful or terrifying. Maybe it’s both.”
She felt his nod rather than saw it. “Both is right,” he said quietly. “Are you enjoying this walk, Ginny?”
“Very much.”
“Good. Quit while you’re ahead, please.” He took her elbow and propelled her along. “Midnight walks aren’t safe.”
“I never take them anyway.” That trickle of honesty broke the dam on the rest of it. “I just didn’t want to say goodbye yet and I knew you wouldn’t let me go alone.”
He frowned. “How could you be sure?”
“I don’t know. I just…was.” They were off the boardwalk now and onto the regular sidewalk, the El and P. Lynn coming into view in the distance. And if she thought she’d been panicked before when Jonas was preparing to leave, that feeling was sevenfold now, forming a block of ice in her stomach. “It’s your turn for a question.”
“Her voice,” he whispered almost inaudibly, closing his eyes. “I can’t think of one.”
“Try?”
His gaze traveled over her face in an almost desperate fashion. “What do you care about most?”
“Sure, save the whopper for last.” Ginny swallowed. “My father’s legacy. People thinking of me as reliable. Not having regrets. A perfectly pleated skirt.”
When he watched her in static silence for long moments, Ginny realized they were no longer walking, but facing each other beneath a street lamp, right outside the front entrance of P. Lynn Funeral Home.
“There’s more, but I can’t think of them right now,” she murmured.
Jonas reached up and smoothed her flyaway hair. “Oh to be on that list.” He seemed to brace h
imself—and fail. “I’m sorry I have to do this. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t understand.”
His voice became hoarse. “Look me in the eye, Ginny.”
“Why?”
“You can’t remember this. We’re not supposed to meet.”
The ice block in her stomach expanded. “I want to remember this.”
“Ginny…”
“I don’t understand. H-how are you able to make me forget?”
Jonas closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the green embers in them glittered, flaring brighter when he took a step farther into her space. And another. Until she had to tip her head back to look up into his magnificent face. He raised a hand, extending it slowly toward the right side of her head, his fingertips ever so slightly brushing her hair—and fangs sliced into view between his lips like daggers.
“Do you understand now?”
The Q train roared past overhead, shaking the atmosphere, in the same manner her insides started to tremble. What…what was wrong with his teeth?
No, not teeth. Not incisors such as her own.
Those were…fangs?
Breath wouldn’t come. She was rooted to the spot, hypnotized and drawn closer, despite the voice of caution calling from the back of her mind. Something is wrong here.
Something is wrong.
Comprehension struck and a scream wound its way up her diaphragm, sticking in her throat. Surely he wasn’t trying to make her believe something so outlandish.
Something that only existed in fairytales and movies.
Cold skin. A deep sleeper. No pulse. Fangs.
“Is this a joke?”
He shook his head. “If only.”
Had the whole night been an elaborate setup? Why would he go to such lengths to scare her? Even as her mind posed the questions, she couldn’t quite buy into her own suspicions. Intuition wouldn’t let her. Did that make her a crazy person or an idiot?
Both. Definitely both.
“You’re trying to make me believe you’re a vampire?”
“I am a vampire, Ginny.” His dark brows drew together. “I’ve never been sorrier about that.”
Ginny turned and threw herself at the door, fumbling her keys while trying to insert the right one into the lock. “Why would you do this?” she asked, her voice wavering.
“Don’t run from me,” he begged thickly.
“Why?” Her vision blurred. “You need to erase my memories?”
“I’m required to.” She finally got the door open but he easily pushed in after her, bringing them both to a breathless stop in the dark lobby. “But that’s not why I’m asking you not to run. I…God.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I’ve officially lost it. I can’t bear to have you scared of me even though you’re going to forget I exist in a moment.” He stormed in her direction. “Believe in what I am or don’t. Just know this. If I could, I would come back tomorrow in the daylight and ring your doorbell. The way it should be done. Flowers and a promise to have you home before curfew.”
“I’m twenty-four. I don’t have a curfew,” she said without thinking. “At least, I don’t think so. Besides tonight, I don’t go out much after dark.”
“Good.”
If this man had really been pranking her, hadn’t he gotten his payoff? Why was he still standing there? Why did she still want him to stay?
“Can you prove you’re a-a…vampire?”
A muscle popped in his cheek and once again, the jewel green in his eyes flared to life, bright and luminous like something from another world.
“The answer is right in front of you,” he rasped.
Could be actually be telling the truth?
Ginny’s heart raced so fast, she blinked to keep focus and not give in to a dizzy spell. This man had fangs and glowing eyes. No pulse, lest we forget.
Those weren’t things that could be faked. Was she simply being human and rejecting what her mind deemed abnormal?
The truth was right in front of her.
“You’re a vampire.”
“Yes.”
She blew out a long, shaky breath. “Oh Lord.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. Her body trembled violently, but she didn’t run—and couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was the way he was looking at her. Like he would keel over out of sheer misery if she took off again. “A dangerous one?”
“Not to you. Never to you.” He said those words with his fist crammed to the center of his chest. “Either way, I’m afraid you won’t have to worry about any of this for long.”
She couldn’t recall fictional vampires having the ability to erase memories, but if vampires existed, nothing would be far fetched anymore. “No. Please don’t make me forget you.”
“I have no choice. I’m sorry.”
“We can’t even be…friends?”
“God no.”
Ginny flinched.
Jonas cursed. He closed the distance between them, slipping his fingers into her hair, cradling her skull, bringing her close until their foreheads almost touched. “You don’t understand. I can’t be anything to you. And you can’t be anything to me. It would put you in danger.”
Memories were sacred to Ginny. Memories were her stock and trade. Every day of her life she’d witnessed the value and importance of them. They were all people had during the toughest times of their lives. Stealing memories struck her as the worst kind of violation. And not only that, a sin. She would protect them at all costs.
But how?
How?
The answer came to her in an almost meandering, obvious way. Tell the truth.
“You would put me in danger, Jonas?” She shook her head. “I’m already in danger.”
Her words visibly wounded him. “I said I’m not going to harm you.”
“You misunderstand. I’m not in danger from you. It’s someone else.” She wet her lips. “I’m in serious danger from someone else.”
The rotating green in his eyes pulsed and fizzled out, her muscles loosening at the quick loss of invisible support. His hands, however, caught her by the upper arms, holding her steady. “Who? Tell me immediately.”
“No.”
“No?” His confusion was as obvious as his frustration. “Why not?”
Ginny shrugged. “Come back tomorrow night and maybe I’ll tell you.” She snapped her fingers between them. “Although if you erase my memory, I won’t know you from Adam. So I definitely won’t trust you enough to tell you my life has been threatened. But maybe…over time you’ll earn my trust? I’d need my memory for that, though, wouldn’t I?”
When had she become the kind of woman who played head games with a vampire?
Tonight, apparently.
But were they really head games if she was merely stating the facts?
Jonas was not happy. “You will tell me right this moment who threatens you and I’ll deal with them before sunrise.”
“So it’s true, you can’t go out in the sun?”
“Not without turning to dust.”
“I didn’t invite you in. I guess that’s a myth?”
“Yes. And please stop changing the subject. Who seeks to harm you?”
“Sorry. My lips are zipped.”
“One last chance, before I make you tell me.”
Alarm pinched her spine. “How will you do that?”
This time, when his eyes started to glow, he seemed reluctant about it. “Do you remember earlier tonight when I made you hang up the phone instead of calling an ambulance? I can give you a very strong…suggestion. And you’ll be compelled to follow.”
“Please don’t do that,” she said on an exhale. “You’d be taking away my will.”
His fingers tightened on her arms. “You’re not giving me a choice.”
“Yes,” she stressed. “I am.”
“I can’t walk away and leave you in danger. And I can’t come back.” His gaze fell to her neck and he blinked several times. “You don’t know how or what you t
empt. I’ve already stayed around you far too long.”
She shook free of his hold, backing toward the hallway that led to the residential section of the funeral home. “I’d rather face the threat alone than have my memories tampered with. Memories are all a person has some days.”
He tilted his head curiously at her words, but matched her retreat, step for step. “Tell me now, Ginny,” he murmured, smoothly, so smoothly, and her footsteps halted, her thought process trailing off and spinning into a spool of silk. “Tell me who threatens your life.”
Instinct ruled her and instinct dictated she make Jonas happy. It was suddenly what mattered most. Give him what he wants. She wanted to get on her knees and bow to him, on the off chance he might stroke her hair and grant her some praise—and wait, what? What is happening to me?
He’s doing this.
Him and his hypnotic green eyes.
The words were right on the tip of her tongue. Words that would reveal the information she’d told exactly nobody. But if she told Jonas about her recent night of peril, this would be the last time she saw him—and not only was that possibility abhorrent…it also struck her as wrong.
I’m not supposed to let him go.
“Stop,” she wheezed, covering her eyes with a hand. “Please stop.”
When long minutes passed without him saying anything, she peeked out from between to fingers to find him dumbfounded. “How did you do that? How did you fight me off?” He studied her face. “No one’s ever tried, let alone succeeded.”
Ginny had worshipped Lauren Bacall her entire life, but she’d never felt more like her than when she laid a hand on the hallway doorknob, flipped her hair and looked back at Jonas. “Better luck next time, Dreamboat,” she breezed. “See you tomorrow. You know where to find me.”
CHAPTER THREE
The following afternoon, things got weird.
Weirder, more like, although the insanity took a while to gain momentum.
Ginny woke up at approximately two o’clock, when the sun was highest in the sky, par for the course for someone who worked night shifts. Whenever her late starts felt unnatural or she woke feeling as if she’d missed the important half the day, she reminded herself of all the bartenders, subway technicians and bodega staff waking up across Brooklyn at the same time—and went about her usual routine.
