Blood and Lavender

Second meeting 2

Elias’s POV

She got in the car.

I hadn't been sure she would. Not in daylight, not after a night to think about our encounter, not when she'd had time to realize how wrong it all was. Not after she'd asked questions about my family at the diner—yes, I heard every word through the glass, watched her through the window as Mabel's face turned pale at my name.

But she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat like she belonged there, and something fierce and possessive swelled in my chest.

Careful.

"You followed me," she said.

It didn’t sound like an accusation. She sounded curious, almost pleased. Her scent filled the car, rain and lavender with something sweeter underneath, like apple pie and coffee, and it made it hard to think. She must’ve eaten at the diner, because I could still catch a hint of cinnamon on her breath.

"I was driving by."

"On Main Street. Right past the diner. At the exact moment I walked out. Total coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidences."

She laughed. The sound hit me like a punch. When had I last heard someone laugh like that? Open and unguarded, not out of fear or politeness but genuine amusement? Not since Klara. Not in more than a century.

"At least you're honest," she said. "Most stalkers pretend they're not stalking."

"I'm not stalking you."

"What would you call it?"

I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t give too much away. The truth was simple and dangerous. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I hadn’t rested. I don’t really sleep, because vampires don't, and all I did was lie there in the dark, listening to her heartbeat from across town until the sun forces me down. I told myself I’d stay away, and it only lasted for four hours. I drove into town just hoping to see her from a distance… and then she walked out of the diner, and I lost whatever control I had left.

"Mira." Her name was honey on my tongue. "I told you. Small town. We were bound to run into each other."

"That's not an answer."

"No. It isn't."

She looked at me then—really looked, the way she had last night. Most humans glanced away from my eyes. The gold unsettled them, even if they couldn't say why. Some primal part of their brain recognized that my eyes weren't human and sent warning flares.

But Mira stared straight into them, as if trying to read something written behind my pupils. Like she wasn't afraid of what she might find there.

"Your eyes," she said slowly. "They're..."

"Unusual. I know."

"I was going to say beautiful."

The word bloomed in my chest. Beautiful. She thought my eyes were beautiful. Not strange, not frightening, not proof of something wrong. Beautiful.

I couldn't remember the last time someone called any part of me beautiful. Klara had said I was handsome once, but that was different. That was about my face, my form. This was about my eyes, and that was the only part of me that couldn't pass for human.

"You shouldn't say things like that," I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"Why not?"

"Because you don't know what you're saying."

She tilted her head, a small thoughtful gesture making her look younger. "I know exactly what I'm saying. Your eyes are beautiful. Golden. Like honey held up to candlelight. Like... like autumn leaves when the sun hits them just right."

The same words I thought about them myself, centuries ago, when I first looked in a mirror after the turning.

"How do you know what I was thinking?"

"I didn't. I was telling you what I was thinking." She smiled, transforming her face. Making her look lighter, as if grief had loosened its grip enough to let her breathe. "You're not very good at taking compliments, are you?"

"No."

"Well, get used to it. I say what I think. Life's too short to do anything else."

I believed her. That was the terrifying part. She said what she thought, felt what she felt, walked through the world with her heart unshielded. She was the most dangerous kind of human, the kind that makes monsters want to be better.

You can't be better. You are what you are.

"I should take you home," I said.

"You just picked me up. I've been in your car for about forty-five seconds."

"Your aunt will worry."

She went still. "How do you know about my aunt?"

Careless. Stupid. "Small town," I said smoothly. "Everyone knows Carol Miller. She was the nurse at the clinic for thirty years. Delivered half the babies in Fletcher's Grove. Saved my…" I stopped myself. Too close. Too revealing. "When a new girl shows up at her house, people talk."

Mira relaxed, but not completely. I could see questions forming behind her eyes. She was smart. Too smart. She would figure things out if I wasn't careful.

She already suspected something. I heard her in the diner, asking Mabel about the Devereaux family. She was connecting the dots. It was only a matter of time before she saw the whole picture.

And then she'll run. Like they all do.

"One condition," she said.

"What?"

"You take me somewhere first. Somewhere you love. Somewhere that matters to you. Not just a drive around town."

I should have said no. I should have driven her straight back to Miller Road and watched her walk inside, never letting myself be alone with her again. Every moment with her was a risk—to my control, to my family's safety, to the careful life we built over two centuries.

"Please," she added.

And I was lost.