When Casey reached for Sylvie’s , it was with plete tenderness and love. “You gave me the choice..was..did they have a choice?” When Sylvie shook her head, Casey let her hand slip free and she scooted bato the pool, thinking. “Is there something else to this, other than their mind? I have a feeling that ck of choice isn’t the only thing here, minx.”

  Unwilling to face Casey while she begaain, Sylvie turned and slid bato her lover’s arms. “I am after all, a vampire that was turned against her will, taught the ways of being a vampire by a trolling and dominatihat gleaned pleasure from a certain amount of torture. It is a miracle that I am not a psychopath.”

  “What makes you think you aren’t?” Casey quickly quipped.

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” Sylvie shht back. “I will take your silence as an affirmation of your desire to hear this.”

  Familiar with the text to which Sylvie spoke her st line, Casey leaned down and her lover’s ear with her fangs. “I thought we promised not to include her.”

  “You’re right, babe. Sorry..it just sounded really funny in my head.” Sylvie added and resumed her little story. “There was more to Kody than I initially let on.” Sylvie half-turned aled into the crook of Casey’s arm and looked up. “It was their nature. pletely selfless…if that makes sense? They were also a twenty-sed-tury person born iweh tury. Kody is in fact part of the baby-boom…let that sink in.” When the look of uanding crossed through Casey’s eyes, Sylvie slightly nodded and resumed her little tale. “They were born with ideas that couldn’t be used or appreciated back then. They were called a dreamer and told that they never applied themselves…even though they were a perfect student. It was unbelievable. What little I saw that they did at night? Perfebsp; Every tiail into an answer or researbsp; Their bs? Frustrated them, nothing was as advanced as they to be, so they made what was necessary.” Sylvie reached into the pool of blood and held Casey’s hand tightly. “So I asked, well told Franco to do it.”

  “To ge Kody?”

  “Yes.” Sylvie raised her eyebrow. “Told him to do it, Casey.”

  It suddenly dawned on the young vampire the implication her partner just offered and took a deep breath, swallowing the fear and ahat threateo reemerge. “I ot wait until this five-year prison of anger is gone. I am a lover not a fighter.” Casey stuck her to quickly. “Alright, since I am your first and Franco was obviously much older where you couldn’t hurt him, how did you tell him to do anything?”

  “When you have two hundred years of being the perfect soothsayer, people and vampires tend to listen, Casey.” Sylvie drew little figure eights across Casey’s blood-skin vas. “I lied.”

  With a quick dip for a total body submersion, Casey came out of the thick liquid and slicked her bloody hair bace more. “You lied. That seems way too easy. Someone had to know you were lying.”

  Gleefully shaking her head enough to make her pstic bows clid affirmed by her egotistical yet charming smile, Sylvie brought Casey’s hands up to kiss them o a time. “No one did, I mean if I told yht now that in the en mihe blood iub would leak out…but first looked like this…” Freezing her body and eyes in pce, Sylvie appeared to have the exact look she had while getting a vision, other than her irises which still slowly ged phases. After a long minute of silend staring at the ceiling Sylvie fluttered her eyes and looked up at Casey. “Now all I have to do is fake hunger.” She giggled, “As if that is a problem for a vampire.”

  “You are a lunatibsp; Casey added and held onto her deceptive partner. “Alright, I have what you did. It still doesn’t answer why you did it.”

  Swiftly shifting so she wasn’t looking at Casey, Sylvie turned so her back was once again pressed into Casey’s big chest and ed Casey’s arms over her shoulder. “ we just skip ahead t Kody?” Sylvie tried to plead.

  “You didn’t.” Casey shook Sylvie by her shoulders. “Damn it dy…tell me you didn’t.” Fed up with the i act from her lover, Casey spun Sylvie around and stared into her new-moon bck irises. “Oh, oh! You did!” A wide smile crossed over Casey’s blood-coated lips. “You enthralled and then drank from them! Didn’t you…” Casey rolled her eyes, “I know you wouldn’t ever have sex with them, so the only other possibility is that you drank from him…” Casey noticed the guilty look appearing from Sylvie’s emerging full-moon eyes. “...more than once…” When Sylvie’s eyebrows went up and and used her thumb to point in the air, Casey began smiling so wide that it hurt her cheeks. “...more than twibsp; three…four?...” Casey put her hand over her mouth and giggled as she looked down. “How long did you charm and feed from Kody?”

  “Most of their Junior year of college. Every night really.” Sylvie covered her face with her hands, hiding herself from Casey’s disapproving gaze. “Hey! They were great in school, I was in their room every night, I got hungry, I read their notes and studied their projects.” Sylvie then looked Casey dead into her sun-shining eyes. “How do you think I learned about blood g, blood seeing and feeling?”

  Still uo really process what she was hearing, Casey id her head on Sylvie’s shoulder and used her lover’s proximity to settle her partly ragiions. “So you learned blood g, what else did Kody’s blood give you, Taini? There has to be more than this.” Casey closed her eyes and pictured Sylvie with her long brown hair and her once heavily sun-browned Native Ameri skin radiant in the moonlight. Sighing tently, Casey dreamily spoke. “My dear, I see you flying into their dorm just after the su down, I bet they thought you were an angel….” Taking the time to lightly kiss her partner somewhat out of possessiveness, Casey purred ahe memory of Sylvie much like they initially met. “Kody was human, and probably not the most social.” Casey opened her eyes and shook her head, “You charmed them every night…you two talked many hours, didn’t you?”

  “Yes and yes.” Sylvie kissed Casey’s hands, “Sometimes I would ‘bump’ into them at a store, or act like I was lost and needed dires, I even acted like I o be carried to a ibsp; She waved her hand, “The introdu was almost too easy as time went on. It was strange, Kody would show up at pces that we’d met before, without knowing why they were there. I always got the feeling that it was the stant use of our erasure, almost like there were shadows left behind.” Sylvie cupped blood in her hands and poured it over her hair and took in the coppery st deeply as it flowed past her nose. “I got to the point where I just left them in a trand took all of their ideas, wrote them down.” Sylvie looked back at Casey, “You know the chip that we were supposed to get? The ohat Kody went and got themselves?”

  “Yeah. I remember; how could I fet?” Casey muttered.

  Closing her eyes and rolling them up in her head, Sylvie took a few seds to gather her thoughts. “That was one of their older designs…” Sylvie turned and opened her new-moon eyes. “I gave them back the design. You see…I trol Kody. They just don’t know it.”