Or he was keeping me alive so I would be a convenient source of warm blood when he got peckish on our hike to the nearest highway.
“If that’s the case, I think it would be better if we went our separate ways,” I told him. “I need to make it to civilization as soon as possible. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that if I’m only traveling during nighttime hours.”
“So you’re going to hike out of here alone?” he asked, smirking at me.
“I could . . .” I spluttered, glaring at him. “OK, no, there’s actually very little chance of me surviving this scenario on my own. But there’s even less chance of me getting out of here alive if my traveling companion eats me.”
Given the return of that impish gleam in his eye, I really wished I’d phrased that differently.
“Look, you could maybe do it . . . under the right circumstances . . .” he conceded magnanimously.
“Please, pause less,” I snapped at him.
“You’re clearly resourceful when cornered, OK? But it would be stupid to try it alone. You know this. Surely you have some sort of mental statistic about the probability of dying while hiking through the woods unprepared and unaccompanied at night.”
I didn’t have exact figures, but I’d read enough survival guides to know that the probability of surviving “wasn’t good.” And as much as I hated to admit it, he had a point. And he’d said I was resourceful, which was the first time anyone had ever applied that word to me. “Intelligent” or “thorough” or even “fastidious,” sure, but nothing that implied that I was capable outside the research library. It meant a lot, but I wasn’t about to tell him so.
“I give you my solemn promise as a vampire, I will not harm a hair on your head,” he said, in a tone so serious it sounded like a mockery, while holding up his left hand.
“Most people swear oaths with their right hands,” I noted, because I did not, in fact, have a statistic for unprepared solo night-hiking deaths, but I was sure it wasn’t optimistic.
“Sassy. You are sassing me now, aren’t you?” he said, though he did raise his right hand.
“Yes, I am. And I have one condition,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed. “What?”
“I do not set one foot into the woods with you until you tell me your name.”
“We’re wasting time! And we’re already in the woods!”
“You got to ‘accidental’ second base with me earlier—we might as well be on a first-name basis. If nothing else, it’s just good manners.”
He waved his pale hands at me, flinging water at my face. “This from the woman who could barely be persuaded to have a polite conversation with me when I was being nothing but charming before takeoff?”
“Are you seriously not going to tell me your name?” I exclaimed.
“Not until you tell me yours.”
“Anna Whitfield.” I slung my hand up to shake his.
He bent over and looked like he was about to kiss my knuckles but instead hauled me to my feet. “Nice to meet you, Anna. My name is Finn Palmeroy.”
My lips twitched. He did not look like a Finn. A Slade or a Clint or some other hyper-romantic soap-opera hero name but not Finn. And it seemed that his vampire sight allowed him to see my smirk, even in the moonlight, because he sounded none too amused when he said, “Girls with a name like an angry librarian should not throw stones.”
“It’s a family name, but fair enough,” I said, barely restraining the urge to make a rude gesture. “Let’s go.”
My ballet flats slipped and slid on my feet while I walked, and I worried about mud sucking them off my feet as the vampire led me into the trees. I shuddered in my sodden clothes. While the air might have been warm, I still felt as if I were getting a full-body hug from a wet sponge. My only comfort was that Finn looked as miserable as I did.
“What about Ernie the pilot?” I asked. “What if we run into him?”
“Trust me, he doesn’t want to run into me,” he growled, and I could tell by the slight slur to his speech that his fangs had descended.
I dropped back to a safe distance. I’d had very little in-person experience with actual vampires. Not that I had anything against them. We just didn’t move in the same circles. I was still in middle school when a recently turned tax consultant named Arnie Frink launched vampires out of the coffin and onto an unsuspecting human public . . . and then humanity had a collective nervous breakdown. Stakes were purchased and used on a grand scale. Curfews were imposed. Halloween was canceled.