“All right. I’ll give you a couple of examples,” Bennett said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Let’s say I need to feed, so I go to a bar and look around for someone who’s drinking heavily. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. It only matters how inebriated they are. I go over, strike up a conversation, buy them a few more drinks, and then when they’re in no shape to go home on their own, I offer to take them. I call a taxi, and away we go, and once I get them home, I bite them. They’re so drunk, they’re not really sure what’s going on, and when I’m done, I compel them to forget me, and when they wake up the next morning, they’re none the wiser. Yes, they’re missing some time, and yes, they’re probably confused as to how in the hell they ever got home in the first place, but that’s as far as it goes. Another example is people who wake up in the morning and are more tired than they were the night before. The problem is, when they went to sleep, they left a window open. They didn’t think about it, yet I guarantee vampires do, and once we’re done feeding, we heal their wounds, go on our way, and again, they are none the wiser.”

“You just described two things that have happened to me before.”

“It’s happened to a lot of people,” Bennett said with a smirk. “Trust me.”

“Okay, so I’m still not getting the harmful part. You only removed a few minutes—right?”

“Yes, and on the night you came into my flat and found me bloody and bludgeoned, I could have compelled you to forget that and sent you on your way; however, once you returned to your apartment, you would have found yourself covered in my blood and wouldn’t have understood why. How would that have made you feel?”

“That’s easy. Like I was going crazy.”

“And now take it a step further. Instead of a few minutes, make it a day or a week, or even a month. How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow with absolutely no knowledge of what occurred in your own life since that night when you came into my apartment? You see, that’s where the cutoff would be for me to remove myself from your memories. I’d have to erase them back to then.”

“Shit. Seriously? Bennett, I’d be checking myself into a psych ward if that happened.”