Bite Me if You Can by Lynsay Sands Page B

greatly prolonged and you won’t age, or get sick, or even get cavities.”
    “Yeah?” she asked with interest. “No cavities?”
    Lucian shook his head.
    “Hmm.” After a pause to consider that, she asked, “What about a reflection?”
    Lucian glanced over with confusion. “Reflection?”
    “Will it fade now? And if so, how long will that take to happen? I don’t wear much makeup, but I do wear lipstick, and I don’t want to walk around with it lopsided, or on my teeth.” She frowned. “And what about spinach?”
    “Spinach?” He had just grasped her concern about a reflection, but she lost him again with the spinach bit.
    “Well, you know how when you eat a spinach salad? Or cooked spinach? And a bit of it gets caught between your teeth? And you walk around all day looking like an idiot until you see yourself in a mirror and see it caught there?”
    “No, I don’t know about that,” he said dryly, but her eyes had already widened with thoughts of a new horror.
    “Without a reflection you could walk around with that bit of spinach caught in the corner of your teeth for years, even decades, or—”
    “Your reflection won’t fade,” Lucian interrupted before she worked herself up further.
    “Oh... good.” She looked relieved. Lucian shook his head and went back to what he was doing, only to have her ask, “Can I turn into a wolf, or a bunch of rats, or bats or—”
    “No,” he interrupted, wondering where mortals got these ideas. Unfortunately, he knew where. Movies and books, all of which could be traced back to that damned Bram Stoker. If Jean Claude hadn’t—
    “Can we fly?” Leigh asked, interrupting his musings.
    “No.”
    Leigh was silent long enough that Lucian glanced her way. Her expression was disappointed.
    He cared less that she was disappointed than that he finally had respite from her questions.
    He pushed the mop absently around as he peered at her. She was swinging her legs back and forth like a child as she considered what she’d learned so far, and her terry-cloth robe was parting at the knees, revealing her thighs halfway up her legs. It was sexy as hell, and for some reason that irritated him. Scowling, Lucian turned back to his mop, telling himself his irritation was because she was driving him crazy with her questions. He was starting to recall why it had been so long since he’d helped initiate a new turn. He simply didn’t have the patience for it.
    “What can we do, then?” Leigh asked finally. “I mean, I know the downside; no sunlight, stay out of churches and avoid crosses, because I’m now cursed and soulless, but—”
    “We are not cursed,” Lucian said shortly. “We can go in churches without bursting into flames and we can touch crosses. We can also go out in sunlight, we just have to drink more blood to make up for it.”
    Leigh blinked in surprise, then frowned. “Are you sure? I mean it’s not that I believe every movie I see or anything, but until Morgan bit me, I didn’t believe in vampires either, and the movies all seem to suggest churches and sunlight aren’t healthy for vampires.”
    “Immortal,” he corrected automatically.
    “And Morgan and his people all slept in coffins,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “If the rest of it isn’t true, why the coffins? Do I need to keep a bit of the soil of my homeland in the coffin with me?”
    Lucian grimaced at the memory of the more than twenty coffins in the basement of the house, resting places for Morgan and his turns. It had been a long while since his people slept in coffins to avoid exposure to the sun. Some had done it as a protective measure in the days when homes were drafty edifices with cracks that allowed the sun in, but that was long ago. Still, it was common for one of their kind who had gone rogue to use the old mythology brought about by books and movies to control their followers. They usually claimed they were their sire, could read their minds, and know whether