“Leave him alone. He’s kind of having a rough time.” I turned my back as Cyrus let the towel drop. He’d been naked in the desert, but those were extenuating circumstances. I didn’t need to see it every chance I got.

“Having a rough time? Is that emblazoned on some twisted family crest you people wear?” His words were muffled, indicating the shirt was going over his head.

I turned in time to see him hitch the jeans up his hips. They were at least an inch too big around the waist.

“The way you people are intermittently feeding me, my weight won’t be a problem,” he quipped.

“I’m sorry. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.” If there was anything in the kitchen. I hadn’t even looked since returning home. Funny, that when I was a human woman food had seemed to dominate every facet of my life. Was I eating too much? How many calories were in that slice of pizza? Were eggs good or bad that particular week? Now that I was a vampire, the necessity for food had completely slipped my mind.

Not the enjoyment of it, though. Nathan kept a huge stock of junk food. I looked forward to the nights the supply seemed to be waning, as it often resulted in a manic trip to the twenty-four-hour grocery store. We’d load up on all the bad-for-humans treats we could find, from Doritos to birthday cake, head back to the apartment, snack ourselves into a sugar coma and fall asleep watching videos. Nathan preferred war movies and intense psychological dramas. I always voted for romantic comedies or historical movies with sumptuous costumes. Inevitably, our disagreement would be settled with a screwball comedy like Young Frankenstein or Half Baked.

“He’s going to be all right, you know,” Cyrus said, interrupting my reverie. With an apologetic smile, he added, “You had that look.”

“What look?” It seemed too intimate, too soon for him to be able to read my thoughts from my facial expression. Part of me didn’t want to give him that power. The same part worried that if Cyrus knew how important Nathan was to me, it would give him ammunition to hurt me. In my logical mind I recognized the changes in him, but my emotions still lived in a place where Cyrus was my manipulative sire.

“You have a look when you’re thinking of him. It used to drive me crazy.” What began as a smile on his face faded to a tight grimace of regret. As if he could still read my thoughts—maybe he could—Cyrus said quietly, “What would yours be? If the spell had been cast on you? That’s all I could think of, when I realized what had happened. What if my father had put that spell on me?”