A Tale of Two Vampires by Katie MacAlister Page B

smiled.
    He bared his teeth in return. “This monster who deflowered you—he isn’t on the continent, is he?” Oh, how he hoped for an answer in the affirmative.
    Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed as she thought through what he had asked. “My first boyfriend? You mean Tony? A monster? You know, I’d point out yet again that you’re way over the line as far as what’s politically correct by asking about him—”
    “First?” He pounced on the word. “Good god, woman, how many defilers have there been?”
    Her jaw dropped a little. “I can’t believe you just asked—no. You didn’t. In the interests of U.S.-Austrian relations, I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me how many men I’ve slept with. In fact, I think I’m just going to pretend I don’t know you.”
    She turned her back on him again, sitting rigidly upright, careful not to touch him any more than she had to.
    He didn’t like that at all. He liked the idea of her having multiple lovers even less. And most of all, he didn’t like just how much it mattered to him to find each and every man who had touched her, so he could lesson them within a hairsbreadth of their lives.
    “Google…fu…” he growled, pulling out the journal and making another note. Then he added the name Tony, and a reminder to investigate the nearest ship sailing for the colonies.
    He could have sworn she giggled, but she kept her back turned to him, and said nothing when they entered the outskirts of town. The silence lasted until she got a good look at buildings they were passing, and then all hell broke loose.
    “What the—no!” she wailed, pushing herself off his thighs, almost pulling him off the horse as she struggled to the ground. “No, no, no! This can’t be! It just can’t!”
    “The day I understand women is the day that I turn back into a normal man,” he told Demeter, watching as Io ran first to one side of the road, then the other, yelling at the top of her lungs at the small houses that staggered in a drunken line toward the town square. “I suppose I should stop her before she wakes up everyone.”
    With a martyred sigh, he dismounted. Io was spinning around the square, her hands clutching her hair, her eyes huge with genuine fear, visible to him even in what remained of the moonlight.
    Something in him stirred at the sight of the fear. She didn’t strike him as the type of woman who backed down from any challenge, and yet there she was, looking every inch the madwoman she claimed she was on the verge of becoming.
    “Cease this noise,” he said sternly, striding toward her, the horses following him. He stopped and spun around to face them. “Stay there,” he said, pointing to the ground.
    Demeter lipped his finger and nickered at him. Thor bit her flank, and received a swift rear hoof to the chest in response.
    “Stay,” he repeated before turning back to Io. The horses followed him, just as he knew they would. He sighed yet another martyred sigh. When had anyone, his horses included, ever done as he ordered? “What is the matter now, woman?”
    “The town is the matter!” Io wailed, her lower lip quivering. “It’s not right! It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, and even if you guys were some weirdo reenactment group, you couldn’t duplicate an entire town, could you? I mean, I can see that it’s right where it’s supposed to be, but it’s not right, not right at all!”
    He put his hands on his hips and considered the town. “I don’t see anything amiss. It is not a large town, but it does have three inns, and four wells. I do not know of another of this size that has those amenities.”
    She quivered for a few seconds before wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s…it’s…oh my god, it’s true, isn’t it? It really is 1703. You’re not pretending to be an Austrian duke.”
    “Baron,” he corrected.
    “I haven’t lost my mind. Well, except for the voices talking to me, but maybe that had something to