Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Two (Midnight Harbor Book 2)
Hot Vampire Next Door: Episode Twenty-Six

“What is this?”

Bran moves around me and starts grabbing things from the kitchen. Bread. Butter. Slices of cheese.

“Bran. Hello?” I go over to him as he dumps everything in a bag. I wave the deed for his house in his face. “What is this?”

He holds out his hand for me to take. I look from it to his face.

“We’re going to return to my house—” he says.

“My house, apparently.”

“—and I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich, pour you a drink, and tell you everything.”

“Where have I heard that before?” I say with a bit more venomous sarcasm than I initially intended.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t force. Bran Duval knows the art of patience and he knows exactly when to use it.

I huff out a breath and take his hand. He leads me out of the house and across our yards and inside his house. He dumps the ingredients on the kitchen counter, then fills a glass with water from the fridge and hands it to me.

“Go check on Kelly,” he tells me. “While I heat up the pan.”

I leave him in the kitchen and return to my sister upstairs. She’s still sleeping soundly in Bran’s spare bedroom despite the glow of the bedside lamp. There’s just enough room on the bed beside her so I sit down on the edge and give her a soft nudge. “Kels?”

She stirs and her eyes flutter. “Jessie?”

“Hey.”

“Where…ughhh.” Hand to her forehead, she winces and then kneads at the space between her brows. “Wine headache. What time is it?”

“It’s late.”

She sits up and looks around. “Where am I?”

“We’re at Bran’s.”

She frowns. “Our neighbor? Bran Duval?”

“The one and only.”

I can just picture him down in the kitchen being all smug about that.

“Why are we here?”

“It’s a really long story.” I put my hand to her forehead. She’s still hot to the touch. “Here.” I shake out two pills and hand her the glass of water. “You have a fever and we need to bring it down.”

“What? But—”

“Just trust me. Please take the medicine.”

With another wince, she manages to sit upright to down the meds with a swig of water and then collapses back against the pillows. “I’m glad you’re here.” She smiles sleepily up at me as she drifts off again.

“Me too.” I give her hand a squeeze and push the hair from her face. Now that she’s with me and I know she’s safe, I can feel a phantom knot releasing at the center of me. I hadn’t realized until this moment just how important it was to have my sister at my side.

And maybe deep down I always knew she wasn’t exactly safe at Julian’s side.

When I’m sure Kelly is resting again, I make my way back downstairs. Bran is just tossing a butter-coated slice of bread into a hot cast iron pan. The butter sizzles. Despite the fact that he doesn’t eat mortal food, he seems at ease in the kitchen.

I slide onto one of the stools at the counter. “Did you guys have grilled cheese sandwiches back before you were turned?”

“We definitely did not.” He lays out two slices of cheese and then covers it with the second slice of buttered bread. “Grilled cheeses weren’t mainstream until the 1920s when sliced bread was first invented.”

“Is it weird that I feel sorry for you? Because you haven’t eaten mortal food since the 1700s? I love food.”

“I know you do. And yes, it is weird.” He flips the sandwich.

“Grilled cheeses are the best. When the cheese gets all gooey and the bread crusty and—” Something occurs to me. “Hold on. Is that why you call me mouse?”

He glances at me over his shoulder. “I’m shocked it took you so long.”

“Honestly, I am too.”

A glob of cheese melts from between the slices and pops when it hits the hot pan.

“So,” I start. “You were going to purge all of your secrets. How long do I have to wait?”

Bran slides the toasted sandwich onto a plate, then cuts it in half. The bread crunches loudly beneath the bite of the blade.

He puts the plate on the dining room table. “Come sit, mouse,” he tells me and then goes to the bar and pours us each a drink.

I have the distinct impression he’s taking extra steps to prepare for this conversation and it leaves an unsettled feeling in my stomach.

I know he’s been keeping things from me and I know that even when I demanded his honesty, he was still reluctant to give it. I’d be an idiot to believe otherwise. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t starting to weigh on me.

Bran sharing his collected information with me would be a sign that he trusts me. And I desperately want it.

I don’t think Bran trusts very many people.

But beyond all that, these secrets…they’re about me. And I deserve to have them.

I sit and he takes the chair across from me and leans back in it languidly, his tumbler of liquor clutched in his hand.

He looks relaxed. I know he’s not.

He waits for me to take a bite.

“If you’ve never had a grilled cheese, then how do you know how to make them?”

“It’s just buttered bread with cheese between it.”

But when I take a bite, the bread is the right bit of crunch, the cheese the right bit of melted. I don’t know if it tastes better because of the novelty of it being made by a vampire, but it’s the best damn grilled cheese I’ve ever had.

“Mmmm,” I say as a string of cheese stretches from my mouth to the sandwich. I break it with my fingers and then eat it like a length of spaghetti.

Bran watches me the entire time with the look of a starving man. He takes a long pull from his drink. “I need you to know something, mouse.”

I suck the last of the cheese from my fingertip. “I’m listening.”

He takes a deep breath. “There is nothing more valuable in this world—in our world—than secrets. There’s always more money to make, but secrets are finite and they always retain their value so long as they remain a secret.

“Kingdoms have fallen because of secrets.” He turns his glass on the table, his gaze on it instead of me. “I need you to know that when this began, I wanted the secrets and nothing more.”

I hold the sandwich between my hands, suddenly not so hungry. “Okay.”

“I need you to know that what this is now”—he gestures between us—“was not what I intended, but now that I—”

He frowns and takes another swig of the liquor and tries again. “I would die for two people in this world—Damien and Jimmy. I thought that would always remain to be true. Two people and no more. But lately, the way I’ve felt when you…when someone—”

I hold my breath.

He sighs and sits forward.

“When someone what?”

“If I found you the way we found Kelly?” There’s a new heaviness to his expression, a new tightness around his mouth.

“I will do anything for you, mouse. That’s what I need you to know.” It looks like it pains him to say it. Like he’d rather be admitting anything else.

A lump wedges in my throat. I try to swallow it back, but tears burn in my sinuses, only making the lump bigger.

Is he saying…

Is Bran Duval saying he would die for me?

Tension comes to his jaw again. “I need you to know that how it began and how it is now are not the same.”

I give him a quick nod. “Okay. I hear you.”

He laughs, low and beneath his breath, takes another swig from the glass. “And now that you know that… I have been keeping a great many things from you, mouse. And now it’s time I come clean.”

My stomach churns. I can’t eat now. How can I?

I wash down the taste of cheese with a swig of the bourbon. It burns down my throat and warms my belly. I think the alcohol hits my bloodstream immediately because I’m buzzy and hot.

“I’m ready,” I say, a little breathless from the booze.

“Are you?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Promise me you won’t run.”

“I think that depends on what the secrets are.”

“I didn’t murder anyone.”

I laugh nervously. “I guess that’s a good sign.”

“Promise me, mouse. Because I will chase you and it won’t be fun for either of us when I catch you.”

The buzziness in my stomach sinks between my thighs and I’m suddenly throbbing.

It might be fun.

I might want to tempt fate.

Bran frowns at me. “Mouse.”

“Okay, yes. I promise.”

“Do you remember how I told you I bought that lakeside property just to spite Julian?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like him. I’ve never liked him and I like doing things to spite him.” He inhales through his nose then gets up to refill his glass. With his back to me, I notice the tension in his shoulder blades, the sweep of bone rising beneath the expensive material of his t-shirt.

“It’s been well known in the vampire houses that you were not to be bitten.”

“Why? Says who?”

“Julian.” Drink poured, he turns back to me. “So to spite him, I bit you.” And just so it’s clear when he means, he adds, “Last year.”

I laugh. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

A creeping chill rolls down my spine. “No, you didn’t,” I repeat, but I’m less certain this time.

“Your birthday last year,” he says and leans against the bar. “You wore a tight summer dress the color of deep forest ivy. You smelled like amber and roses. You looked like sin and regret.”

My breathing quickens as my heart kicks up.

“I wanted to devour you the second I saw you. I couldn’t explain it then and I still can’t explain it now.” His eyes flash briefly as his gaze goes distant and his memories return to that night.

It’s a tradition in Midnight Harbor to throw a big birthday party the year before your Pledging. It’s like your last hurrah before binding yourself to a house. Your year of going out.

I did wear a deep green dress. And the amber-rose scent was a perfume Sam bought me as a present.

All of this is true, but—

“I didn’t see you there.”

“I know,” he says. “I wasn’t planning on being there, but Damien and I are partial owners of the Harbor—”

“You are?”

“—and there was an issue with the boiler. Damien sent me because he had other things to attend to and I begrudgingly went.”

He takes another sip. “I’ll admit, I was in a foul mood. One, because I had to deal with something as mundane as a boiler and two, because I knew it was your party and the fact that Julian had a moratorium on you annoyed me.

“It was petty. I’ll admit that much.”

He smiles to himself as he raises his glass again. “I was coming up from the basement and you were stumbling out of the bathroom, drunk. You tripped. I caught you. It was a real cinematic moment, mouse.” He drinks. Looks over at me.

My cheeks are burning red.

I don’t remember any of this and yet, when he describes it, I sense shadows shifting on the walls, ghosts that I should know the shape of.

“‘Bran Duval,’ you said to me and laughed. Your lips were swollen like you’d been kissing someone and it immediately made me envious of whoever it was. ‘Jessie MacMahon,’ I said back and you smiled up at me. ‘I like it when you say my name,’ you said. ‘It sounds hot on your hot face.’”

“Oh god.”

He laughs. “You’re cute when you’re drunk.”

“Shut up.”

“‘You should stop drinking,’ I told you. ‘Why?’ you asked. ‘Because of vampires like me,’ I’d said. ‘Someone might take advantage of you.’”

I have a feeling I know what drunk-me might have said.

“‘So why don’t you?’ you said. ‘I’m a tasty snack.’”

Yup. That sounds about right.

“‘And you’re also drunk,’ I pointed out. ‘So?’” He shakes his head. “Such a brave little mouse.”

His gaze darts back to me, to my mouth. “I kissed you first, bit you second. Not my finest moment,” he admits. “Immediately, I could tell there was something off about your blood. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. It was something nagging me in the back of my head.

“‘I’m going to tell everyone I just got bit by Bran Duval on my birthday,’ you said to me. I couldn’t let that happen. There was the taste of your blood and the smell of the witch amulet around your neck. One odd thing about a mortal girl could be brushed off as a coincidence. Two odd things smelled like a secret.” He takes another pull from the glass and sets it down. “I compelled you that night. Made you forget.”

Even though I knew that this would be the conclusion to the story, it still pains me to hear it. I think that’s the worst part about living amongst vampires. At any moment, they can steal something from your head. Bottle it up and make you forget.

I want to punish him for it, but what would be the point?

“It wasn’t long after my birthday party that you moved in next door.” S~ᴇaʀᴄh the FindNʘᴠᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

He nods. “You asked me why I left Duval House. That’s why. Because I knew there were more secrets to uncover and being closer to you would allow me to get them.”

“And? Were there?”

Guilt hardens the sharp lines of his face. “Yes.”

I inhale deeply, then chug back the rest of my drink. “Rip it off like a bandage. Go on.”

“I started to wonder about your blood. Why it tasted off. You were presented as mortal, living with a mortal family. But Julien was trying to keep you from others. So I started to wonder about your origins. I started digging into your past.”

I lick my lips.

“I went to the hospital and looked up your birth certificate.”

My breathing quickens. “And?”

The fine lines around his eyes deepen as he frowns at me. “There’s no record of you being born in Midnight Harbor.”

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