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Niall asked me about my job, and my boss, and my routine, like a real great-grandfather would. Though he clearly didn’t like the idea of his great-granddaughter working, the bar part of it didn’t seem to disturb him. As I’ve said, Niall wasn’t easy to read. His thoughts were his own as far as I was concerned; but I did notice that every now and then he stopped himself from speaking.

Eventually, dinner got eaten, and I glanced at my watch, astounded at how many hours had passed. I needed to go. I had to work the next day. I excused myself, thanking my great-grandfather (it still made me shiver, thinking of him that way) for the meal and very hesitantly leaning forward to kiss his cheek as he’d kissed mine. He seemed to hold his breath while I did so, and his skin felt soft and lustrous as a silky plum under my lips. Even though he could look like a human, he didn’t feel like one.

He stood when I left, but he remained at the table—to take care of the bill, I assumed. I went outside without registering anything my eyes saw along the way. Eric was waiting for me in the parking lot. He’d had some TrueBlood while he was waiting, and he’d been reading in the car, which was parked under a light.

I was exhausted.

I didn’t realize how nerve-wracking my dinner with Niall had been until I was out of his presence. Though I’d been sitting in a comfortable chair the whole meal, I was as tired as if we’d been talking while we were running.

Niall had been able to mask the fairy odor from Eric in the restaurant, but I saw from the flare of Eric’s nostrils that the intoxicating scent clung to me. Eric’s eyes closed in ecstasy, and he actually licked his lips. I felt like a T-bone just out of reach of a hungry dog.

“Snap out of it,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood.

With a huge effort, Eric reined himself in. “When you smell like that,” he said, “I just want to fuck you and bite you and rub myself all over you.”

That was pretty comprehensive, and I won’t say I didn’t have a second (split evenly between lust and fear) of picturing such activity. But I had larger issues to think about.

“Hold your horses,” I said. “What do you know about fairies? Aside from how they taste?”

Eric looked at me with clearer eyes. “They’re lovely, male and female both. Incredibly tough and ferocious. They aren’t immortal, but they live a very long time unless something happens to them. You can kill them with iron, for example. There are other ways to kill them, but it’s hard work. They like to keep to themselves for the most part. They like moderate climates. I don’t know what they eat or drink when they’re by themselves. They sample the food of other cultures; I’ve even seen a fairy try blood. They have a higher opinion of themselves than they have any right to. When they give their word, they keep it.” He thought for a moment. “They have different magics. They can’t all do the same things. And they are very magical. It’s their essence. They have no gods but their own race, for they’ve often been mistaken for gods. In fact, some of them have taken on the attributes of a deity.”

I gaped at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t mean they’re holy,” Eric said. “I mean that the fairies who inhabit the woods identify with the woods so strongly that to hurt one is to hurt the other. So they’ve suffered a great drop in numbers. Obviously, we vampires are not going to be up on fairy politics and survival issues, since we are so dangerous to them . . . simply because we find them intoxicating.”

I’d never thought to ask Claudine about any of this. For one thing, she didn’t seem to enjoy talking about being a fairy, and when she popped up, it was usually when I was in trouble and therefore sadly self-absorbed. For another thing, I’d imagined there were maybe a small handful of fairies left in the world, but Eric was telling me there once were as many fairies as there were vampires, though the fairy race was on the wane.

In sharp contrast, vampires—at least