I get a text from Jonah about an hour before the end of my shift telling me to meet him at the laundromat downtown when I get off. Connor is all too eager to drop me off at Iris after our shifts are over and I’m relieved when I see that the pink mo-ped is just as I left her, despite having stood in a mall parking lot all night and all day.

Well, just as I left her minus a mirror.

When I finally arrive at the Suds n’ Scrub, I find Jonah sitting in front of the dryers reading a book—wait, I take that back.

“Is that a comic book?” I ask, unimpressed.

Jonah looks up as I slide into the orange, plastic seat next to him, pointer finger sliding down to bookmark his page as he shuts it to show me the cover.

“You’re kidding. Vampire Knights is a comic too?”

He just shrugs. “How was work?”

“Same ol’, same ol’.” I sigh and settle into the chair, my back aching from being on my feet all day. “How was your day? Do anything exciting? Or did you just stick to exploring the depths of the Vampire Knights’ world.” I gesture towards his comic.

He frowns. “You say that like they’re mutually exclusive.”

Now it’s my turn to shrug.

Silence falls and my eyes find the dryer, rumbling lightly as it rotates through its cycle.

“Is that the comforter off the bed?” I lean forward and peer more closely at the window in the machine.

Jonah closes his comic properly and sets it down on the chair on his other side. “Yeah. I grabbed your clothes too. The ones I could find in the room, that is. I hope you don’t mind...” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye as if anticipating a potential confrontation.

I suppose if I were any other person—any normal member of society, it might actually bother me that this boy I barely know, and even find mildly attractive, fondled my panties without my permission. But frankly, I’m not normal, and I’ve never much cared for doing laundry. So, if the man can find it in himself to wash a strange girl’s underwear, then who am I to say anything other than, “Thank you.”

He looks relieved. “You’re welcome.”

Jonah picks his comic book back up and silence falls again.

I find myself growing increasingly uncomfortable.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the look on his face this morning when he told me we needed to talk. I want to ask him about it. I want to ask him about Dair too. And the woman who was dying…

The elevator music sounds tinny coming from the speakers in the ceiling.

The dryer continues to rumble.

“Jonah…?”

“Hm?” He doesn’t look up from his book. Comic. Whatever.

“Did you… I mean, were you wanting to talk about last night?”

He looks up then, his green eyes meeting my gold ones as if unsure if now is the right time to talk about it.

“I mean, there’s no one else here. I just figure that was why you wanted me to meet you here instead of at home… So we could talk…?”

“I asked you to meet me here because you don’t have a house key.”

I blink. “…Right.”

“—But,” He sets his comic down on the seat next to him again. “I suppose you’re right and now’s as good a time as any.”

He angles toward me slightly in his seat.

“What happened last night… there’s more to it than you just giving me some of your blood. It’s…” He wrinkles his nose. “More complicated than that.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

He chews his bottom lip as he thinks about how to explain.

Under the dull lights of the Suds n’ Scrub his skin looks slightly green, and his eyes have an almost yellow tint to them.

We both look sickly, I imagine. Though, given the condition I started the day in, no doubt I look loads worse.

“Do you know why the revenant never leave their victims alive? You being the exception, of course.”

“I just assumed it was because of their blood lust. They can’t control themselves, can’t stop.”

“I suppose that’s part of it. But the main reason is to avoid blood bonds.”

My brow arches. “…Blood bonds?”

He continues. “When a revenant drinks directly from a host, a blood bond is formed between the revenant and the host, binding the two until either one or the other dies.”

My hand finds the marks at my neck, and the look Jonah gives me says he can tell what I’m thinking.

“Don’t worry. Once a bond is broken, you’re completely freed from whatever effects it had over you.”

“And what kind of effects are we talking about, exactly?”

“Nothing too serious. A blood bond mostly serves to allow the revenant to look out for its host—keep tabs on them.”

I give him a dead-eyed look. “…Why would a revenant want to keep tabs on its victim?”

“Well, I suppose a revenant wouldn’t. And that’s my point. Revenant have no desire to be bound. They wish to take blood from any- and everyone they come across.” He gestures vaguely to the air as if to encompass the whole of the world. “For them, a blood bond only serves as a restriction and when they are deep into the blood lust, restricting their blood taking is less desirable to them.”

His gaze finds mine again, more serious now.

“This is why they leave no survivors. As long as their victims die, they are free to feed openly and without inhibition.”

“Okay… but what does this have to do with what happened last night? I mean with us?”

“Lillian… Last night…” His jaw works, then he sighs and continues. “When you gave me your blood, it formed a blood bond between us. It was why I was so adamant about not taking anything from you.”

“Jonah!” I screech, suddenly appalled. No wonder he kept pushing me away. Why didn’t he say anything earlier. “You could have just asked me to get a cup!”

He grimaces. “I didn’t want you to feel like you were responsible for me or owed me anything. You were already weak from the revenant attack, I figured I would be fine. I just needed some time.” He turns to watch the clothes spinning endlessly in the window of the dryer and idly runs a hand through his loose curls. “I guess I was wrong…”

“So…what…we’re bound now? What does that even mean?” I can feel myself starting to hyperventilate. ‘Till death do us part’ sounds like a really long time.

“Blood bound,” he corrects, glancing my way again. “It means that I can’t take blood from anyone but you.”

“What!?” I look at him incredulously.

He flinches. “I mean, there are other aspects of it too… I’ll be able to track you more easily, and sense any extreme emotional states if you’re nearby. You, on the other hand, become less desirable to other vampires and revenant.”

“Less desirable?”

“Yeah, like, you don’t smell as good. Or, like, they’re less inclined to feed from you.”

I sit in speechless silence for a moment as I let it all sink in.

Blood bound?

From one bite?

Really?

“…Anything else?” I ask finally.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, you can, like, sense where I am and shit. So, what do I get?”

“Well, it feels good, right?”

“Well sure, but if last night was anything to go off then it feels good for you too, right?”

He looks away. “Uh, yeah.”

“So you get to ‘feel good,’ track my location, and read my emotions and I get to ‘feel good’ and smell bad?”

“The emotion reading is more of a safety thing—”

“I should at least get some sort of awesome, superhuman ability. Like super-healing, or laser beams that shoot out of my eyes when I’m mad. I mean, something to make me less weak!” I cross my arms and stick out my bottom lip as I contemplate my future as Jonah’s blood bitch. “Otherwise, I just get to be a weak anemic human instead of just a weak human.”

“I don’t actually need that much blood from you—”

“Also, why is it that it felt good with you but felt like I was literally burning alive when the revenant fed on me?”

Jonah clears his throat and when I look over he’s blushing slightly. “I’m told that the bloodletting feels better when done willingly.”

“…Ah.” It’s only after I see Jonah’s blush that I realize how intimate the conversation has gotten. God damn my habit of putting my foot in my mouth. Thankfully, it’s at this moment that the buzzer on the dryer goes off and Jonah stands to check the laundry.

He ruffles through the warm sheets, pulling out about a yard of the blue fabric and frowning at the large brown stain across its surface. “It looks like the blood didn’t come out. Guess we’ll have to get new sheets.”

Unfortunately, just moments before Jonah utters those exact words, an older woman, maybe mid-fifties, walks into the laundromat. With no other souls in the establishment, Jonah’s words ring out like a dinner bell.

The look she gives us can only be described as ‘aghast.’

My face is in my palm before he even turns around.

“Oh,” He adds, turning to face me as he starts folding the warm, stained sheets. “Also, my brother wants us to come over for dinner tomorrow.”

My elbow slips off my knee and I only barely manage to catch myself before I fall out of my chair.

“You have a brother!?”