Chapter 74: Threading

POV: Carly

She excused herself after the second bottle of champagne.

The bathroom was at the back of the restaurant past the piano. She took her time. Touched up her lip gloss in the oval mirror and looked at her reflection and thought about the evening and felt so unreasonably happy about it that she had to press her lips together to keep the smile from becoming something embarrassing.

Two bottles of champagne. The piano. The booth that felt like their own separate world. Him making her laugh and her making him laugh and the specific ease of being with someone who did not require performance.

She fixed a strand of hair that had come loose from the bun.

She thought about what he had said about drawing her. Before he knew her. His hand just doing it. Not understanding it for a long time.

She understood it.

She had been watching him across rooms since the first week of term and telling herself it was suspicion and competition and everything except what it actually was and she understood the experience of looking at something and not letting yourself see it clearly.

She capped her lip gloss.

She took one more look at herself in the mirror.

She looked like someone having the best night of her life.

She was having the best night of her life.

She turned and walked back through the restaurant toward their booth.

She turned the corner.

She stopped.

The waitress was at their table.

Not taking an order. Not refilling something. Standing beside Niko with her hand turned up on the table and his hand over hers and his eyes a specific shade that Carly had never seen in a well-lit room before. Not blue. Not the amber she had seen when he was angry. Something darker and deeper and completely still.

The waitress was nodding at whatever he was saying. Slow and rhythmic like something automatic.

Carly stood at the edge of the dining room and watched.

His lips were moving. Low and deliberate. The waitress nodded again.

He released her hand.

His eyes shifted back to their natural blue as he looked up and found Carly standing there.

He smiled. Easy and unhurried. "I told you you did not need to touch up. You look exactly as beautiful as when we left school."

She crossed to the booth and sat down and looked at him.

"What was that." She said.

He reached for his champagne glass. "I was asking about dessert. They do a butter cake here that you are going to love."

"Niko." She said.

He set the glass down.

She held his gaze. "I am not an idiot. What were you doing with her hand and why did she look like that. Do not lie to me."

He exhaled through his nose. Ran one hand through his curls.

"It is called threading." He said. "It is an ability that comes with being a vampire. I can create a direct connection with a human's mind and direct their thoughts temporarily. Make them calm. Make them forget. Make them not afraid." He paused. "I use it after I feed."

She sat very still.

"You fed from her." She said.

He did not answer immediately.

"You fed from our waitress." She said. "Tonight. While I was in the bathroom."

"I have not fed since this morning." He said. "The Monroeson bloodline requires more frequent feeding than most. If I go too long without it my control becomes unreliable." He held her gaze steadily. "I would not take that risk with you present."

She looked at the table.

She thought about the waitress. The nodding. The specific blankness of her expression.

"She does not remember." Carly said.

"No." He said.

"You took something from her without her knowing." She said.

"I took very little." He said. "And I healed the wound after. She will feel nothing."

"That is not the point." She said.

"I know." He said. Quietly. Without defensiveness.

She looked at him.

He looked back.

"The Monroeson bloodline." She said. "You mentioned that before. About the healing."

"Our blood carries a specific property that most vampire bloodlines do not." He said. "When I feed a small amount of my blood to someone I have fed from it closes the wound completely. No mark. No pain. No memory of it." He paused. "It is not something every vampire can do."

She turned that over.

"So the people you feed from." She said. "They are genuinely fine afterward."

"Yes." He said.

"And the threading." She said. "It takes the memory."

"The memory of the feeding specifically." He said. "Nothing else. I do not go further than that."

She looked at the butter cake that had appeared at some point on the table in front of her without her noticing when it had arrived.

She looked at the waitress across the room now moving normally between tables. Smiling at another customer. Completely unaware of anything unusual having happened in the past fifteen minutes.

She thought about the library. The first night. His lips dark with blood and that sinister smile and how she had been terrified and how far away that night felt right now from this booth with the candlelight and the piano and the empty champagne glasses between them.

She thought about he is a vampire and I am a witch and none of this is simple.

She thought about the sketchbook. The morning. The record player. Just ours.

She picked up her fork.

She took a bite of the butter cake.

It was extraordinary.

She pressed her lips together.

"This is very good." She said.

He watched her carefully. "Yes."

"You could have told me." She said. "Before. That you needed to feed. I would not have." She stopped. "I do not know what I would have done but you could have told me."

"I did not want to have this conversation in the middle of our first date." He said.

"We are having it anyway." She said.

"Yes." He said. "We are."

She took another bite of the cake.

He watched her.

"I am not going to pretend I am fully comfortable with all of it." She said carefully. "The threading. What it does to people. I have opinions about that."

"I know you do." He said.

"But I also understand that you need to feed." She said. "And that you were trying to keep us both safe. And that your bloodline being rare is not something you chose."

He was very still.

"I am not asking you to be something you are not." She said. "I just need you to be honest with me about what you are. All of it. Even when it is uncomfortable." She looked at him directly. "Can you do that."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Yes." He said.

She nodded.

She took another bite of the cake and pushed the plate toward him even though he could not eat it and he looked at the plate and then at her and she shrugged.

He almost smiled.

"Would you." He said. "Have a problem with me feeding. If you knew ahead of time. If I was honest about it."

She considered that honestly.

"I do not know yet." She said. "I think that is a conversation we need to have properly. Not right now. Not after two bottles of champagne."

"Fair." He said.

"But I am not ending the evening over it." She said.

Something in his face settled.

"Okay." He said quietly.

She finished the butter cake.

He watched her finish it with that expression. The warm one. The real one.

"It was good." She said.

"I told you." He said.

She shook her head and felt the smile come back and let it and thought that complicated and good were not mutually exclusive and she was going to have to get used to holding both at the same time and that was probably fine.

That was probably exactly fine.