I shot her a warning look. After the shock she’d experienced, she needed more than a couple of eggs. “She’ll have pancakes as well. The tall stack, please.”
Thea pursed her lips like she was annoyed, but she didn’t argue. “With chocolate chips.”
“You have questions,” I reminded her when we were alone again.
“And you’ll answer them?” she asked.
“Some.” I took a sip from my mug and refrained from gagging. It tasted more like the dirt they grew the beans in than coffee. Thea took a long swig from hers without complaint.
“Because you can compel me to forget?” she asked.
“I could, but I will leave that up to you.”
“Up to me?” Her voice pitched up with surprise.
“You were not given any other choices this evening. It only seems fair to let you decide whether you’d rather forget tonight ever happened.”
Thea fell silent, and I waited for her to speak. Finally, she raised her eyes to meet mine. “I’m not sure.”
“Because you have questions?” I guessed, and she nodded. “Ask me anything.”
She didn’t need to know that I couldn’t compel her. No one did. Not until I figured out why. There was only one way to get to the bottom of that mystery. I needed to know what made Thea tick, and there was only one way to learn that. Over the centuries, I’d learned a bit about humans. There was one thing in particular that always held true. You could learn more about a mortal from the questions they asked than any answer they might give to yours. Maybe it seemed safer to them to let their guard down when asking rather than answering.
“On one condition,” she said.
I hadn’t expected her to issue an ultimatum. Not when she could barely hide her curiosity.
“You answer any question I ask,” she said firmly, folding her hands triumphantly in front of her.
“There are rules–” I started to explain.
“You said you could make me forget it all, right?”
Was she calling my bluff? I nodded slowly, wondering where she was going with this.
“Then, there’s no reason you can’t tell me everything,” she smiled sweetly.
Thea Melbourne wasn’t as naive as I thought she was. But before I could decide what that meant for me, she leveled a no-nonsense glare at me and asked the last question I expected from her. “Why do you hate me?”
CHAPTER NINE
THEA
“Hate?” He chewed on the word for a moment, and I caught another glimpse of his fangs. They weren’t as long as they’d been earlier when I pissed him off, but they were there. I added fangs to my growing list of topics to discuss. Julian lifted his broad shoulders, his face a mask of detachment. “I don’t hate you. Why would you think that?”
So he was going to deny it. I didn’t know where to begin. He’d been hot and cold since the moment we officially met. But his mood swings weren’t what made me think he disliked me. “Earlier, when I was playing with the quartet, I caught you watching me.”
“Yes,” he said calmly, his long, graceful fingers molding around his coffee mug in an oddly human way. “People often watch musicians–or has that changed as well?”
“Watching is the wrong way to put it,” I said, bypassing his question.
“What is the correct way?” he asked.
I thought for a moment before landing on it. “You were…uh...murdering me with your eyes.”
He stared at me, his face still carefully removed, but shadows clouded his eyes. They didn’t go completely black like the vampire who’d bitten Carmen, but his pupils seemed to take over. Yeah, I needed to ask about that, too. But after a moment, he snorted, and the darkness evaporated. “I’d been talking to an old friend and discussing some private matters. I apologize if you thought I was–how did you put it? Murdering you with my eyes?”
“Oh, okay.” I grabbed my coffee and took a long drink of it, embarrassment washing through me. I’d imagined it. I mean, why would he want to kill me? Apart from the obvious reasons a vampire might want to kill a human.
“Next question.”
“How old are you?” I opted for a more benign one this round before I humiliated myself again.
Before he could answer, the waitress reappeared and plopped our plates in front of us. “Syrup is over there.” She pointed to the condiments clustered at the end of the table. “Can I get you anything else? Ketchup? Hot sauce?”
My stomach knotted at the thought of ketchup, and I shook my head. After all the blood I’d seen tonight, I didn’t think I could handle the sight of any red liquid. I really hoped that a vampire hadn’t ruined french fries for me forever.
“Thirty,” he answered when she left. “Give or take.”
“Thirty?” I blinked as I tried to make that math work. “You said you were asleep for like thirty years.”
“Thirty-five,” he corrected me. “Pureblood vampires don’t age past thirty.”
I narrowed my eyes, wondering if he was going to twist every question I asked. So Julian Rousseaux thought he would be cute? I would be clever. “What year were you born then?”
“I was born around the Battle of Hastings,” he said.
“And that was when?”
