I lay still, feeling kind of awed. She was a better person than I would ever be.

“Did you fall asleep?” she murmured almost silently after a few minutes.

“No.”

“Is that all you were curious about?”

I rolled my eyes. “Not quite.”

“What else do you want to know?”

“Why can you read minds—why only you? And Archie, seeing the future and everything… why does that happen?”

I felt her shrug under my arm. “We don’t really know. Carine has a theory… she believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified—like our minds, and our senses. She thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Archie had some precognition, wherever he was.”

“What did she bring into the next life, and the others?”

“Carine brought her compassion. Earnest brought his ability to love passionately. Eleanor brought her strength, Royal his… tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness,” she chuckled. “Jessamine is very interesting. She was quite charismatic in her first life, able to influence those around her to see things her way. Now she is able to manipulate the emotions of those near her—calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”

I considered the impossibilities she described, trying to take it in. She waited patiently while I thought.

“So where did it all start? I mean, Carine changed you, and then someone must have changed her, and so on.…”

“Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don’t believe that all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”

“Let me get this straight—I’m the baby seal, right?”

“Correct.” She laughed, and her fingers brushed across my lips. “Aren’t you tired? It’s been a rather long day.”

“I just have a few million more questions.”

“We have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.…”

A feeling of euphoria, of pure bliss, filled up my chest until I thought I might explode. I couldn’t imagine there was a drug addict in the world who wouldn’t trade his favorite fix for this feeling.

It was a minute before I could talk again. “Are you sure you won’t vanish in the morning? You are mythical, after all.”

“I won’t leave you,” she promised solemnly, and that same feeling, even stronger than before, washed through me.

When I could speak, I said, “One more, then, tonight.…” And then the blood rushed up my neck. The darkness was no help. I was sure she could feel the heat.

“What is it?”

“Um, nope, forget it. I changed my mind.”

“Beau, you can ask me anything.”

I didn’t speak, and she groaned.

“I keep thinking it will get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts. But it just gets worse and worse.”

“It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on my sleep-talking,” I muttered.

“Please tell me?” she murmured, her velvet voice taking on that mesmerizing intensity that I never could resist.

I tried. I shook my head.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is,” she threatened.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said, then locked my teeth.

“Please?” Again in that hypnotic voice.

I sighed. “You won’t get… offended?”

“Of course not.”

I took a deep breath. “Well… so, obviously, I don’t know a lot that’s true about vampires”—the word slipped out accidentally, I was just thinking so hard about how to ask my question, and then I realized what I’d said and I froze.

“Yes?”

She sounded normal, like the word didn’t mean anything.

I exhaled in relief.

“Okay, I mean, I just know the things you’ve told me, and it seems like we’re pretty… different. Physically. You look human—only better—but you don’t eat or sleep, you know. You don’t need the same things.”

“Debatable on some levels, but there are definitely truths in what you’re saying. What’s your question?”

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Ask me.”

I blurted it all out in a rush. “So I’m just an ordinary human guy, and you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I am just… overwhelmed by you, and a part of that, naturally, is that I’m insanely attracted to you, which I’m sure you can’t have helped but notice, what with your being, like, super aware of my circulatory system, but what I don’t know is, if it’s like that for you. Or is it like sleeping and eating, which you don’t need and I do—though I don’t want them nearly as much as I want you? You said that Eleanor and Royal go off and live like a married couple, but does that even mean the same thing for vampires? And this question is totally offside, completely not first date appropriate, and I’m sorry and you don’t have to answer.”

I sucked in a huge breath.

“Hmm… I would have said this was our second date.”

“You’re right.”

She laughed. “Are you asking me about sex, Beau?”

My face got hot again. “Yes. I shouldn’t have.”

She laughed again. “I did climb into your bed, Beau. I believe that makes this line of inquiry quite understandable.”

“You still don’t have to answer.”

“I told you that you could ask me anything.” She paused, and then her voice was different. Kind of formal, like a teacher lecturing. “So… in the general sense—Sex and Vampires One-Oh-One. We all started out human, Beau, and most of those human desires are still there—just obscured behind more powerful desires. But we’re not thirsty all the time, and we tend to form… very strong bonds. Physical as well as emotional. Royal and Eleanor are just like any human couple who are attracted to each other, by which I mean, very, very annoying for those of us who have to live with them, and even more so for the one who can hear their minds.”

I laughed quietly, and she joined in.

“Awkward,” I murmured.

“You have no idea,” she said darkly, then sighed. “And now in the specific sense… Sex and Vampires One-Oh-Two, Beau and Edythe.” She sighed again, more slowly this time. “I don’t think… that would be possible for us.”

“Because I would have to get too… close?” I guessed.

“That would be a problem, but that’s not the main problem. Beau, you don’t know how… well, fragile you are. I don’t mean that as an insult to your manliness, anyone human is fragile to me. I have to mind my actions every moment that we’re together so that I don’t hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, simply by accident.”

I thought about the first few times that she’d touched me, how cautiously she’d moved, how much it had seemed to frighten her. How she would ask me to move my hand, rather than just pulling hers out from under it…

Now she put her palm against my cheek.

“If I were too hasty… if I were at all distracted, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I’m with you.”

If her life were in my hands that way, would I have already killed her? I cringed at the thought.

“I think I could be very distracted by you,” she murmured.

“I am never not distracted by you.”

“Can I ask you something now—something potentially offensive?”

“It’s your turn.”

“Do you have any experience with sex and humans?”

I was a little surprised that my face didn’t go hot again. It felt natural to tell her everything. “Not even a little bit. This is all firsts for me. I told you, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”