Page 14 of Eternal Devotion

“Sure. All right. I forgot about the time difference. You must be jet-lagged.”

Mordecai didn’t respond, but he was back to examining me with the same subtlety as he had multiple times over the course of the evening.

Feeling ten kinds of awkward but unwilling to let an opportunity pass, I took a chance. “Is this your first time in Owen Sound?”

“First time in America. In fact, I’ve never crossed an ocean before now.”

“Wow. Welcome to Canada.” I shifted my weight, considered my approach, and bit the bullet. “If you’re interested in a tour of our small city or want to know where all the cool kids hang out, feel free to drop me a text. Hang on. I have a card somewhere.”

I patted my pockets, then leafed through the folder until I found one. I took a second to scribble on the back and handed it to Mordecai. “That’s my cell.”

He accepted the card and stared at it for a long time. “Thank you… Ensley.” The adorably shy smile that followed showed another glimpse of his pronounced eyetooth.

Mordecai extended a hand to shake, and I accepted, jolted again by the frigid temperature of his skin. He clung for an extra beat. I didn’t pull away and had to resist the temptation to rub warmth into the poor frigid extremity.

“You should get the heat turned on before you freeze to death. Not sure what it’s like where you’re from, but October in this part of Canada can be cold.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Well, I guess I’ll take off.”

“It’s been a pleasure.”

His odd vocabulary made me smile. “It really has. Good night.”

I departed then, leaving Mordecai alone in a crumbling mansion, deep in the woods at night. It felt wrong, but I’d given him plenty of opportunities to change his mind.

Only as I pulled onto Side Road 15 and aimed for the city did I recall the odd fear that had struck while viewing the bathroom on the upper level. I hadn’t been able to pinpoint the cause at the time, but upon reflection, I had the uneasy feeling that I’d seen something in the mirror.

4

Mordecai

Seamus claimed that my obsession with humanity and the impulsive way I’d studied their customs and behaviors over the past several centuries would be an asset when it came to accomplishing my task. He was wrong. Mimicking what I observed seemed simple in theory. In practice, I floundered.

Of course, who was to know that the first human I was required to converse with would be utterly gorgeous, thus testing my resolve?

My awkwardness showed during the tour, and I feared Ensley suspected my… abnormalities. They hadn’t given me enough time to prepare. My mannerisms and speech were radically different than other men my age, and adapting new patterns on the fly left me feeling ridiculously inept.

Although my kind lived among humans, integration was usually inadvisable. I used usually in the loosest sense, since I was likely the only one who abided by the old rules.

In the beginning, we existed on the outskirts of society. Segregated by choice. Forgettable by design. We moved among the humans, manipulating their memories and actions, so they didn’t remember us. We fed indiscriminately off their mothers and fathers, sisters and cousins. We were never meant to befriend them, for it was dangerous. We were never supposed to invite them into our world.

We were myth and legend. We were a bad dream you didn’t remember. A fable passed along through the ages.

At least that had been the case hundreds of years ago. Times had drastically changed. Full of hubris, many of my kind grew careless. Rebellious. As a result, awareness among humans had grown. Our existence was no longer a secret.

When Valerius usurped the throne fourteen months ago and banished the Great Elder Iulian, he raised an army of human hunters to systematically destroy us.

We were no longer a curiosity and wonder to humans. We were an infection to be eradicated.

I’d been led to believe that the threat in the Americas was less profound, but the casual way the handsome agent had spoken of hunting the undead made me leery. He’d called it a game. The notion of wiping out an entire species for sport made my skin crawl.

Was Ensley one of them? He’d implied as much. Yet, his demeanor didn’t fit my preconceived notion of a hunter. He was too calm. Too kind and companionable. Too afraid of his own shadow.

His jumpiness in the dark humored me.

But what if I was wrong?