“Are you mad at me?”

They were the first words spoken between them since they’d left the restaurant, and opening the door to the brownstone, Bennett waved Ruby inside. “No, I’m not mad at you. Like so many others, you have only romances and gothic novels to influence your opinion about vampires, and most of those gloss over the reality of this disease. They don’t dwell on the unpleasant aspects of my kind. We’re painted in dark colors, true, but the peripheral is blurred so as to not turn people away. They don’t speak of villages plundered and destroyed. They don’t speak of all the innocents who lost their lives when, centuries ago, we knew not what we know now. I was actually reminded of that not too long ago.”

“How so?” Ruby said as they climbed the stairs.

“Just something one of the elders said to me,” Bennett said through a soft smile. “Again, that’s something for another time, if there is another time.”

“That’s as much up to you as it is to me, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

Ruby waited until they were standing outside of Bennett’s apartment before answering. “Okay, so the way I see it is this. When you told me you’d be honest with me, I took that at face value. I didn’t exactly think about what that honesty could bring, so yeah, tonight my eyes were opened a little wider because, like you said, I’m basing what I know about vampires on fiction, not fact. The fact is…the fact is vampires aren’t all heroic babes wearing black leather or courageous, well-mannered men with chiseled features, but they aren’t necessarily all villains either. Like you said, survival is the strongest instinct we have, and it would be wrong of me to condemn you for wanting to survive.

“If and when the time comes when you’d like to share with me more about yourself or your life or the lives of your kind, I can’t promise some of it won’t shock me. I can promise, however, that it’s impossible for me not to ask questions. I know that got on your nerves tonight, and I’m sorry, but it is what it is. So, like you said to me, I’ll say to you. This can easily end as quickly as it began. I can walk up those stairs, and that’ll be it. No hard feelings. No repercussions, and as promised, I’ll never speak a word about you to anyone. It’s your choice, Bennett. Do I go up to my place, or do I go to work tomorrow sleep-deprived?”