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October 2 - October 2, 2025
what’s a girl to do when the only constant presence during the last millennium of her life has been a guy who’s contractually mandated to murder her?
“Look at you,” he murmured in his faded Eastern European accent, those yellow animal eyes raking down my skin. “Flushed and plump and beautiful. You just fed, didn’t you?” “Beautiful? Aww, Lazlo, I didn’t know you had a crush on— Motherfucker.”
“As long as you don’t let anyone get to you before I do, Aethelthryth.” “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll always save myself for you.”
When he noticed my eyes on him, he lifted the blade up to his face. And with a smile that did not feel like a smile, he began to lick it clean of my blood. It was . . . Well. It just was.
Kill him now. Kill. Him. Now. But I don’t. Because I’m too busy listening to the five words that change my life forever. “Who the hell are you?”
“It was one-sided,” he tells me after he’s done chewing. “From you.” “What?” “The dislike.” “I assure you, it was not.” “And I assure you, when I look at you, I feel anything but that.”
“No, I— No.” I shake my head. “This is wrong. I can’t do this to you.” He frowns. “You don’t need to do anything. I do things. To you.”
“I have a place.” “Here? In New York?” He nods. “Where?” His smile is small and wistful. “Across from yours, actually.” 76 Across is, somehow, an understatement. He lives in the house facing my apartment building, exactly two sidewalks and a narrow crossroad away from me.
“I can’t come in. Unless you formally, verbally invite me.” His eyes widen as though Lazlo Enyedi, Guild slayer extraordinaire, had forgotten about one of our most dangerous limitations. “Right. My bad.” He clears his throat. “Aethelthryth, nothing would make me happier than having you with me here, or in any other place that I will call home, for as long as I live. Please, come in.”
“We don’t . . .” I start. And then: “I’m sorry. You just offered me blood, and I may have taken advantage, and we don’t have to do anything. I can stop if you—” He turns us around until I’m underneath him, and it’s the loudest, most silent fuck no I’ve ever heard.
“Because . . . A slayer and a vampire. Doing it. It has to be a first in all of history, right?” He bends down to kiss me, but not before I see the grin on his face.
