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  “This isn’t a game,” Elijah said, glad that the venue was still noisy enough with keyed-up music fans that nobody could hear much of their conversation. “Those jokes you were making are about some serious stuff.”

  “What if I wasn’t joking.” Finn’s tone turned more earnest, teasing and flirting falling away. “What if I was absolutely sincere.”

  Elijah couldn’t stop the smile that played at his own mouth. “Then I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help you with that.”

  “What, vampires don’t kill people?”

  “Oh, they very much do,” Elijah agreed with a nod. “But I’m afraid I don’t and never have. You managed to set a trap for a predator who doesn’t prey. Sorry about that. Better luck next time.”

  Finn’s expression hardened. He put the empty beer bottle back onto the bar and stepped in close, crowding Elijah’s personal space.

  He smelled really good.

  “Listen,” he said, voice a threatening whisper. “I took photos on the bruises on my neck before they faded that night. Gnarly purple blotches all around where you closed the puncture wounds. I’ll take those photos and put them all over social media. I’ll retweet every snap that fans took of us at the backstage door tonight.”

  He laughed, low and deadly. “I’ve never had a dick pic scandal, but this sounds even more interesting than that, doesn’t it? Even if you’re as toothless as you claim, someone else is going to notice if I do all that, right? Those ‘powerful people’ you mentioned earlier?”

  Elijah stared at Finn, utterly bewildered. “Why? Why go to all this trouble?”

  Finn shrugged and stepped back, turning away momentarily to ask for another beer before addressing Elijah again. “Not your problem. All you have to do is kill me, and all of this is done and dusted. And I won’t quit until you do.”

  3

  FINN

  The bar continued to buzz with post-show activity around the two of them after Finn’s threat. Crystal Pulse’s fans had always been pretty well-behaved as far as healthy boundaries with the band’s personal time went, probably because all the members were so generous with spending as much time with fans as they reasonably could.

  If the band ever got much bigger than they currently were, that would probably change, but the status quo held steady for the time being.

  Elijah looked like he couldn’t decide whether Finn was crazy or full of shit. The real answer was that Finn was both of these things, obviously, but also totally sincere in what he was threatening.

  His heart was racing. It was an absolutely wild sensation. Finn couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted anything, not as much as he wanted Elijah to kill him.

  Before now he hadn’t really even wanted to die, not in any kind of active way. He was just so… tired of everything, that was all.

  Talking about vampires in interviews as a way to pull Elijah back into his orbit had just seemed like an entertaining game to play; a way to turn a cool piece of secret knowledge into another way to self-destruct. Finn hadn’t really considered whether he’d wind up dead because of it. The outcome hadn’t mattered one way or the other, because these days nothing mattered anymore for Finn.

  Now that he knew that Elijah was a vampire who didn’t like to kill people, though, things were a different story. Now Finn wanted Elijah, wanted to be stuck forever in Elijah’s memory as his first kill.

  It seemed like a fittingly awful legacy. It felt like the only thing left that he could do that would make Finn worse than he already was — the final step down the spiral staircase to becoming the worst possible piece of shit he could possibly be.

  “When you bit me,” he told Elijah now in a low voice. “I wanted to die exactly like that. You’re lucky that junkies don’t know about the high you’re packing in those fangs, or you’d be jumped at every corner by would-be victims.”

  “Getting off seems a weird reason to want to end it, but each to their own I guess,” Elijah replied, shaking free of some of his shock. “But like I said, I can’t help you with that.”

  The hideous romance of being Elijah’s first kill is almost more than Finn could stand. He wanted this beautiful man to drain him dry right there, leave his body on the sticky filth of the grimy bar floor where it belonged.

  “If you won’t kill me right now, then come on tour with us,” he demanded, the words out of his mouth before he even knew he was going to say them. “Feed off me. Fuck me. You still have to kill me sooner or later, but I’ll consider — not promise, but consider — holding off on putting your secret vampire shit all over social media for a while if I’m getting sucked and fucked out of the deal.”

  Elijah blinked. “All right.”

  “Wait, seriously?”

  Finn’s surprise made Elijah chuckle. “You still seem to be holding onto this fantasy that I’m some kind of suave predator, but if you’d actually thought about it you’d have realized that we hooked up because I like your band. I’m a groupie. Hardly very romantic or threatening.”

  “You’re a vampire.”

  Elijah laughed again. God, he was so hot. Finn was really glad the interview shit had worked in getting him to come back.

  “I bit you because the sex was so good, but it was a slip up on my part. I try to avoid mixing the two as much as possible, especially with musicians.”

  “Why especially then?”

  “Most vampires mesmerize their victims — the ones they don’t kill, I mean — in order to erase any memory of the encounter. But I dislike doing that, especially to artistic minds. I kind of hoped you’d be classy about it and keep it a secret, but I’ve proved to be a little idealistic in that.”

  Finn couldn’t help but snort in amusement. “Seriously? Your method of protecting the whole sweeping underworld conspiracy of vampires existing was ‘I kind of hoped you’d be classy about it?’”

  “I guess I’m an idealist.”

  “That’s a weird way to pronounce ‘idiot’ but sure.” Finn grinned. “So we have a deal, then, Mr Idiot Vampire? You come on tour until I convince you to kill me?”

  Elijah held out a hand to shake Finn’s own. “Consider me your groupie prisoner, I suppose.”

  4

  ELIJAH

  Elijah’s house was more like an especially expensive storage locker than a home. He had a gardener who came to tend to the plants outside, and a cleaner who kept the interior similarly presentable. His various knick-knacks and trinkets were tastefully arranged on stylish shelves beside comfortable furniture; mementoes of places he’d gone and adventures he’d had.

  The trouble was that whenever he was there, most of his thoughts were caught up with planning what would be his next excuse to leave. It was a nice enough place, but for all its pretty treasures it was empty. The sound of the grandfather clock in the hall ticking away the minutes and hours with elegant, methodical precision was enough to send Elijah absolutely crazy if he listened to it for too long.

  He opened his laptop and sent an email to Emelie, assuring her that the situation with Finn had been sorted out. Elijah figured it was only a lie in spirit: technically, the situation had been resolved, and if Elijah failed to mention to Emelie that a much more complicated situation had replaced it then that was a matter to talk about another time.

  After sending the email, he looked up when Crystal Pulse’s next show was scheduled for. It was in two days.

  I’ll be at your next show, he texted to the number Finn had given him, then booked a car for the evening Crystal Pulse were going to be playing. I’ll have to miss the show, since I can only travel after dark, but I can meet you afterwards.

  We’ll be at a hotel that night, rather than on the bus. I’ll send you the details, the reply came.

  Elijah went into his walk-in closet and chose some of his more nondescript clothes, things suitable for blending in with musicians, fans and roadies while travelling on tour.

  As he packed the clothes into a bag, he wondered to himself if this whole arra
ngement was recklessly, stupidly crazy, but then quickly stopped wondering since he already knew the answer was yes, and also already knew he was going to do it anyway.

  He missed seeing the show, as he’d warned Finn would be the case, but Finn was still so amped up from being onstage when the two met up in the hotel foyer that Elijah couldn’t help but feel a little like he was getting a contact high.

  “Come up, I asked for a room to myself tonight,” Finn said, eyes bright and reckless. He’d showered and changed, but the aura of rock and roll still clung densely around him.

  They were barely inside the room before they were tangled in one another, kissing and grinding close in the narrow hallway just inside the door.

  “Bite me,” Finn demanded, wrenching the collar of his t-shirt to one side. Elijah hesitated.

  “Listen, I know I agreed to this, but I don’t think—”

  “I’ll publish the photos,” Finn warned. “That was the deal. You have to bite me if you don’t want them up.”

  Elijah scowled, stepping back. “This is fucked.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s what you’ve got to work with.”

  “No.” Elijah shook his head. “I’m sorry I let this go so far. I guess I got swept up in the glamour of the band fantasy, but this a bad idea for both of us. I’m gonna go wash my face, and then when I come back out we’re going to work out some other way out of this, got it?”

  The bathroom light was stark and sharp, painfully bright to Elijah’s vampire senses. He splashed water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror, wondering how he’d managed to screw everything up so badly that he’d wound up here.

  He’d worked so hard to keep all his contact, every interaction, with humans as perfunctory as possible for so long. He could move among them, but never be a part of them. That had been the deal he’d made with himself, and until now he’d managed to keep it.

  Spending an extended stretch of time around an incredibly compelling man like Finn was exactly the opposite of that deal. And that wasn’t even taking into account how absolutely unacceptable it was to even contemplate the bargain Finn had wanted to strike.

  Thank goodness Elijah had called his bluff on it before things went any further.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a text from Finn, consisting of nothing but a link to an Instagram post.

  The photograph was stark and awkwardly framed, a selfie focused on Finn’s neck instead of his face. Bruises adorned his throat from the vulnerable spot below his jawline down to the enticing curve of his shoulder, reds and purples and greens and browns. It looked like hickeys and violence in equal measure, which was a pretty good approximation of the truth.

  I found my vampire, the caption read. But he won’t bite me again. I have to make do with our memories from last time.

  He was still looking at the photo when his phone vibrated with a call, Emelie’s name popping up onscreen like an early warning of the incoming storm.

  “What the fuck.” Her words were flat, no rising intonation of a question at the end.

  “I know, I know, I screwed up, but I’ll fix it, I swear—”

  “If you’re in over your head, there’s no shame in saying so,” Emelie went on. “I’m not going to lie, Eli, I’m nearing the end of my patience with this. I know you’re against using mesmerism on creative people. I know that’s important to you. That’s why I gave you this opportunity to fix this yourself. But if it escalates even one incident further, I’m going to step in and clean things up. Got it?”

  He left the bathroom and went back into the hotel room proper. Finn was lounging on the bed, looking as smug as a cat who’d gotten the cream.

  “You don’t get to say no,” he told Elijah with a shit-eating grin. “Next time, put out or you’ll get another dose of that. Got it?”

  Elijah was trapped between an angry Queen and an asshole rock star, both of them demanding immediate results.

  It should have stressed him out, and yet for some reason he felt more excited than he had in years.

  5

  FINN

  Finn had expected Elijah to leave after the Instagram thing. It was a dick move, and he knew it was a dick move, but Elijah clearly needed to be shown that Finn was serious about this. It wasn’t a negotiable situation. This wasn’t some agreement they’d come to, not really, for all they’d shaken hands over it. This was blackmail, basically, and Finn was the one doing the mailing. Elijah needed to have that made plain to him.

  To Finn’s surprise, Elijah didn’t leave, sitting himself down in one of the standard little hotel armchairs shoved in the corner and pulling out his phone.

  “We’ll talk about this when I’m less angry,” he told Finn, sounding pretty calm about everything considering the snippets of conversation Finn had overheard coming from the bathroom.

  Finn wanted to goad him, draw out that held-back intensity, but before he had a chance to start thinking of ideas his own phone buzzed with a message from Jessica: We need to talk.

  Screw that. She was going to be a prudish asshole about the Instagram post, he already knew that. He was in no hurry for that conversation. Tell me on the bus in the morning after we check out of here.

  “Oh, hey, what are you gonna do in the morning?” Finn asked Elijah, the thought only now occurring to him. “Checkout’s at ten, but the sun will be up then.”

  Elijah holds up his phone. “I already arranged it with the hotel. The room will be mine for the day, and I’ll follow you after dark.”

  “So we’re on the same page now? No more trying to get out of biting?”

  Elijah looked back down at his phone. “It seems you hold all the cards, yes,” he agreed quietly.

  The conversation on the bus was just as stupid as Finn had expected it to be, with Jess and Curtis and Damien all wanting to hold some kind of fucking intervention over the Instagram post.

  “We’re all worried about you,” Damien insisted again, which Finn knew was bullshit because this was the first time that Damien or Curtis had been on this bus in weeks, preferring to ride with the techs now instead.

  “You’re not in the right kind of frame of mind to be doing kink shit with anyone,” Curtis agreed. “Especially not someone you just met. It’s dangerous, and you really need to stop.”

  “Thanks for treating me like I’m five, guys,” Finn replied, unable to keep the sneer out of his voice. “I’m really glad you respect my right as a goddamn adult to do whatever the hell I please, and for everyone else to stay the fuck out of it and mind their own business.”

  Damien and Curtis exchanged an I-told-you-so look with one another, which just made Finn even angrier at them. They moved down to the front of the bus to sit with the driver, leaving Finn alone with Jessica in the seating area.

  She looked exhausted, but that was hardly a new development. She’d looked that way nonstop for some time now. Finn could relate.

  “I don’t care what you’re doing with him. I’m not your mom,” she said as an opener. Finn gave a snort of amusement.

  “You’re two years younger than me, so it’d be a pretty remarkable miracle if you somehow managed to be my parent.”

  A ghost of a smile flickered momentarily across her pale lips. “I just wanted to say, if you ever wanna—”

  “Talk about it?” Finn cut her off, frowning. “We’re not allowed to, remember? Piotr made us sign those things saying we wouldn’t.”

  “I know, I know,” Jessica sighed, pushing her hair off her face. “But we can just talk between us, you know? He doesn’t need to know we did that.”

  The temptation was huge. The secret sat like a dark, slimy thing in his chest, polluting every part of him down to the tips of his fingers and the roots of his hair, covering Finn’s whole being in filthy polluted tar.

  But…

  “What is there to say?” he asked her, voice bitter.

  Jessica looked hurt at the rejection. Fine. Just another thing to add to the list of shitty things Finn had done t
o people who didn’t deserve it.

  “Okay, fine,” she said, standing up and smoothing her little plaid skirt. “I’m gonna go lie down. I hope you have fun with your vampire role-play shit. Don’t come to me when it all falls apart.”

  “I won’t,” Finn snapped, but she was already leaving.

  6

  ELIJAH

  It was clear to Elijah that he needed to make Finn see how serious the situation was, how perilously close they already were to Emelie stepping in.

  Elijah had known truly troubled people before, and thinking of them now gave him a pang — time had never, and would never, blunt those particular memories, and they were still sharp enough to cut.

  But Finn’s self-destructiveness didn’t strike Elijah as a true wish to die. Finn just didn’t want to be in pain anymore, which could sometimes seem like the same thing in its worst iterations.

  When Elijah caught up with Crystal Pulse at their next venue, before their show this time, the whole band were waiting in the backstage area at his arrival. The other members aside from Finn didn’t say anything to Elijah, but the looks they gave him were frosty and skeptical, which made Elijah guess that they were all as unamused by Finn’s recent Instagram post as Elijah was, albeit for different reasons.

  It was a pity that they all wanted the situation to change and yet at odds with one another, thanks to Finn pitting them that way.

  “C’mon, I found a dressing room we can be alone in,” Finn said, grabbing Elijah by the wrist and pulling him along.

  Elijah remained quiet until they were alone with the lock snibbed behind them, the stillness of the empty dressing room a contrast to the bustle of the rest of the backstage area. There were a few old armchairs, some boxes shoved into a corner, and not much else.