“Yes, how did you know?” I asked, looking up from the menu. “I mean I told you, but other than that what gave it away?”

“You want to eat in front of me.”

“Oh, no, is it taboo? Can you not, you know, eat human food?”

“No, I can’t, and most people don’t eat in front of me. I don’t really care, though. I picked a place that didn't serve food because I never expected you would want some.” The awe cleared from his face, replaced by the crooked smile which made me like him. “This is stupid. Let’s get out of here and go to a real bar with food. You’ll feel more comfortable.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to eat in front of you if I’m not supposed to. It does seem rude now that I know you can’t. If I had known, I wouldn’t have said anything.” Since I was already embarrassed, I went ahead and finished my drink. The wine went straight to my head, causing a pleasurable heat to spread through me. Even if this date went belly up over me not knowing the protocol, at least I would have gotten a free drink and a chance to smile at a good-looking man.

“It’s fine, really. There’s something appealing about you not knowing the rules. It makes this more like a date and less like a business proposition. There are a crazy number of blood junkies on Cinder. I’ve stopped going out with women who contact me, and I’ve tried to remove the mention of the word vampire from my profile. It’s still in there, of course. I don’t want to mislead anyone, but I also don’t want my being a vampire to be the only reason women contact me.”

He sounded unsure of himself as he spoke. I wondered if he wasn’t sure how I would react. While I was wondering what a blood junkie was, he waved over the waiter, got our bill, and paid it. I made no offer to give him money. Usually, I would try to pay my own way, but somehow I found I just didn’t care. With the bill paid, we made our way out of the wine bar across the street to another, more low key bar. Giant glass windows opened into the new bar, and they were edged in green stained glass. Inside the walls were covered in wood paneling. There were a few booths with red seats and the bar stools were covered in red faux leather as well. A few men were drinking at the bar, while an older white woman off to the side was reading a book and drinking a glass of red wine.

The bartender was a woman with short blonde hair who clearly knew Jabberwocky. She eyed me suspiciously and started to pour him a Guinness before even asking for my order. I asked for one as well. She seemed to approve of my order. I wondered what kind of women he usually brought in. She gave us our beers, and he ordered me a hot dog. When she turned her back, he looked around carefully and poured something red into his beer from a tiny vial.

“What was that?” I asked, but I already had a pretty good idea. It made me feel a bit sick

“It’s well...” He paused. “It’s…you know.” He raised his hand in a helpless gesture while looking around to see if anyone was listening. “I can’t eat, but there’s some stuff I can drink if I add it. Wine works well. So does Guinness, because of the protein I guess? Goat’s milk also works great, but it’s goat’s milk, and who really wants to drink goat’s milk?”

“Goat’s milk?” I asked, taking a sip of my beer. So much better than the wine, at least in my opinion. Better than goat’s milk, too.

“Yup, but just the milk. The cheese is too close to solid food for our systems,” he said with a shrug and drank some of his beer. He looked much more at home here under the lights of the bar than he had in the dark on the velvet couch of the wine bar.

“Do you miss it? Eating, I mean,” I asked and promptly decided it was probably a rude question.

“Yes, I do. Not as much as I did at first, but what are you going to do?” He was interrupted from further comment by the arrival of my hot dog. The bartender had microwaved it. I wanted to ask him a million more things like how he had become a vampire and how old he was, but I figured I had probably pushed my luck enough. I focused instead on eating my hot dog.

He watched me eat it. It wasn’t sexual, but the intensity of his gaze was so powerful it almost had a physical weight to it. Instead of feeling self-conscious and rushing, I found myself slowing down and trying to enjoy the stupid over-processed, over-salted, unevenly heated hot dog for him. Each bite became an exercise in wonder. What would it be like to never eat again? To live in a world, where so much of life revolved around food and not be able to eat any of it? The salt of the meat and the sweet ketchup were delicious when I thought about never being able to have them again.

When I finished the last bite, he was still looking at me and on impulse I leaned over and kissed him, my mouth open and inviting. His cold tongue was strange in my mouth. He licked my lips. His tongue was tasting me everywhere. I reached out my tongue to brush it over his teeth. There they were, his fangs and for the first time, I felt afraid.

I broke off the kiss. He was licking his lips in wonder. “Fifty years without a bite to eat and the first thing I get to taste is a hot dog. Thank you. I didn’t even know we could do that, taste food on someone’s lips. No one’s ever offered before.”

The idea he had gone fifty years without eating freaked me out. Coming on top of feeling his fangs, I was starting to wonder what I had been thinking. There’s a reason normal people like me stay far away from magical creatures. They live lives that aren’t compatible with ours. There was no way to surmount the difference between. Not only was he fifty years older, but he didn’t eat. It wasn’t like he was a Yankees’ fan or even from another culture. Once he had been like me, and now he wasn’t. And he would never be again.

As he sat there licking his lips, I felt sorry for him, which probably wasn’t real smart of me. There was something attractive about pity, not pity of the weak, but the pity of true tragedy. Just something about a man who is irrevocably damaged and dangerous drives me wild. If he had been just dangerous, I would have had the sense to stay away. He seemed completely broken, too. I couldn’t help myself.

I covered his hands with mine. He turned his hand over, cupping mine in his. His fingers around mine were cold, and I tried to rub them warm. My hand looked tiny and pale compared to his much larger, darker one with its thick fingers, not fat but strong. He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles, and the soft, cold touch sent a thrill up my spine. I moved my hand against his in response, enjoying the over-stimulated feeling of the millions of nerve endings in my hand being excited. It was sensual and just bordering on erotic.

We held hands through our second beer intertwined under the bar, like high school kids on a date. It was such an innocent pleasure and such a rare one. It was the thrill, the idea of a first date and the promise of more. When he asked me if I wanted to get out of there, I didn’t even have to think about it. I said yes, and he paid the bill. We walked for a block in the cool night air, and I snuggled into his arms.

When we got into the cab, his hands were freezing. I slid one between my thighs, closer to my knees than anywhere else, waiting to see what he would do. He held his hand perfectly still. Even when I moved against it, sliding it a little higher he didn’t move it. I kept waiting for it to move. I wanted it to move.

I sat there in a cab driving through the dark streets snuggled against a strange vampire. There was nothing terribly sane or sensible about what I was doing. For a moment I felt so afraid I wanted to jump from a cab. I’d never even gone home on a one night stand with a man before, let alone a monster, but I was thrilled, too. This was something new, something I had never done before, and I found I wanted it very badly. I wanted to know what this man had to offer and what it would be like to be wild, take a risk, and live dangerously. To do all the things I had wanted to do but never had the nerve to. Being sensible had only gotten me a lousy ex-boyfriend, a shitty apartment, and a dead-end job. It was time to try to do things differently.

We stopped outside of stone apartment building in an older part of the city. He paid the cab driver. We walked up the wide stone steps and stepped into the light of the vestibule of his building. It was elegant with marble and subway tile. This was my last chance to turn and run. I didn’t think he would follow me or hunt me. I didn’t run. Instead, I stood next to him as he unlocked the door and followed him up the stairs.

His apartment was warm, filled with a golden lamp light and light brown wood. It was also slightly messy with books stacked on the table. He had a large TV in one corner, but what surprised me the most was two large framed paintings of R2D2 and C3PO.

I plopped down on his couch, slipped off my shoes, curled my feet under me, and tried to look sexy, like I knew what I was doing. It seemed like all I managed was to look a bit unwell because he asked me if I felt okay and if I wanted some water.

“No, I’m okay. Do you have anything else to drink? Like beer or wine?” I asked hopefully. From where I sat on the living room couch I could see into his large kitchen. The cabinets matched the wood in the rest of the house.

“Yeah, I have some wine, but...” He looked slightly embarrassed.

I blurted out, “Oh, God, it’s not already dosed with blood is it?”

“Oh, no,” he said in horror, holding hands up and shaking his head in denial. “It’s just…it’s box wine.”

From the distaste in his voice, you would have thought he was offering blood wine. Of course, he would have probably been happy with blood wine.

“If you don’t like it, why do you keep it around?”

He opened the refrigerator and filled up two wine glasses. I didn’t see him put anything like blood into his drink, but he could have done so subtly. I assumed he didn’t dose mine since there wouldn’t be any point.

“Because it keeps forever and it’s cheap. I have to admit I don’t usually have people over. Not women people. I had my fantasy league here last week, but it’s not the same, not really.” he said casually.

“Forgetting if I believe you or not about the never having dates over thing, you play fantasy football? For real? Isn’t it a little too mainstream or something?”

He smiled, brought me over a glass of wine, and sat next to me on the couch. I didn’t feel afraid of him anymore. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not, but here in his house, with its warm wooden floor and nerdy artwork, it was hard to think of him as a monster. He just seemed like a normal, good looking guy. He started to tell me about his fantasy team and his past championships as if I cared at all.