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“Absolutely not. Do not do that under any circumstances,” I say, and draw a line through the air with one hand, just for good measure. Though he still seems dissatisfied. I have to add, on the end, “I am aware, I just know that you’re not.”

“Then the man I was has told you as much.”

“Yes. No. Sort of. Kind of. I mean. Maybe.”

“He has not even resolutely done so.”

“Well, we don’t usually talk about how gorgeous we are.”

“So you believe that he is. You believe that this face and body are.”

He gestures at said face and body—the same ones he’s always had, and yet suddenly are so easy to call bodacious. (Thank you, Madison.) I have to do my best not to look directly at them.

“Now, hang on, I didn’t say anything about bodies.”

“So then my features—they are pleasing to you.”

“No. No, all right, no, just stop this, none of this is even the point,” I snap. “The point is that it’s preposterous that you just learned English from the television. There is no way for me to possibly believe that.”

“If it helps, I was also aided by the Intended Witch.”

He says the words grandly, as if their meaning will just be self-evident. But I haven’t the foggiest fucking clue what he’s talking about, until he sees my confused expression and picks it up from the dresser on the side of the room. He cradles it gently, like it’s something remarkable and precious.

Even though it’s actually my Nintendo fucking Switch.

“I swear it was under duress. He made me,” it says.

So I guess now I’ve got to deal with supernaturally sentient game consoles, too. And him arguing with said supernaturally sentient game consoles on top of it.

“You said you would be happy to do so if I petitioned the sorceress for coins that would aid you on your quest to save Pearl from peril. And which I will still do, for I am a man of my word, though you may not be a woman of yours,” he says.

Much to my frustration.

“Stop arguing with my Switch. Or claiming her help was enough.”

“But that is the truth. There is nothing else I can tell you.”

“Even though what you’re telling me sounds deranged.”

“Well, I confess, I did find it strange that my mind moves with such speed. But as I can also fly and have fifty times the power I once possessed, it seemed like the least of the aberrations I should question,” he says.

At which point, two things I should have really grasped before sink in.

That being a vampire is obviously how he was able to do this, because all ancient vampires can learn that fast and process things so quickly. Most likely for the same reasons they can fit seven million memories in their heads.

And:

He very clearly no longer understands that he is one. It’s even possible, I suppose, that he barely knows what a vampire is. I’m pretty sure he’s watched things other than Friends, but that doesn’t mean it’s extended to anything on the horror side of things.

And so now I’ve got this to deal with.

“You don’t know what you are.”

“I feared to ask, in truth.”

“Then you have some idea.”

He gets this faraway, slightly haunted look in his eyes. “There are tales of the men who are not men, who walk in darkness, and make their homes beneath the mountains, their time numbered not in days or years but centuries, their sustenance the souls of beautiful women,” he says, in so sonorous a voice I can see why he was into storytelling. I bet he was a big hit around the giant fire I assume they had in the center of the village I’m picturing from every show set in the tenth century.