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I don’t know.

I feel like I’m missing something, like maybe something is messing with my mind. But the book, my own spells—they don’t reveal a single thing. To be honest, whenever I try to understand anything it almost seems as if I’m encountering a wound where a knife went in.

And now the knife is out, and the wound is healing.

I can’t explain it. All I can really say for sure is that it makes me want to do some absolutely terrible and completely irresponsible things. Why not just go ahead and drink from each other’s body parts all fucking night long, I think. Then have to pull the waistband of my jeans away from my belly, and blast freezing-cold water directly into the space I’ve opened up. And it does help a little. I see some kind of sense. I manage to finish this weird shower and put on some pajamas and a robe and then another robe for good measure, and go back into the living room.

Plus I have a plan, too.

“Okay. So. Here is the thing: just because we have figured out one issue does not mean we have figured out all issues. That library door did not slam on its own. Someone did that and we need to work out why they did, and who they are, and possibly hunt them down and give them a stern talking to. Agreed?” I say, nice and fast and without paying much attention to what’s going on, just in case he tries to derail me.

Then I do pay attention, and he immediately derails me anyway.

And not even by objecting, really. He’s just standing there, paused in the middle of what he was doing, clearly unsure of how to react to what probably sounds like a mental breakdown. Though it’s what he has in his hands that really stops me in my tracks.

Plates full of food.

Lots and lots of food.

Way more food than I had in the kitchen, for certain. I think I had about three eggs, a stale loaf of bread, and an old lettuce in there. But he’s got mounds of fried chicken and weird fruit platters and pizzas, and what looks like about twelve different beverages. There are coffees and juices and milkshakes. A jug of milk, a boba tea, something that looks like it’s mostly foam.

Oh, and I think that’s a cheesecake in the middle of it all.

A really, really fancy cheesecake, of the sort you get from that bougie place just outside town. It has a whole floating tier, and edible swirled gold all over it. I don’t know what to say. But I have more of an idea after he speaks. “I did not know what you would like, or what was appropriate to feed a modern-day human. Therefore I selected a feast based almost entirely on meals found so enticing by the people on Friends that they would eat them off the floor, or from buckets. Save for the suckling pig, which I chose in haste thinking only of my own former preferences.”

He points to the sideboard, and sure enough, there it is.

The entire animal on a platter.

“Okay, never mind why you chose these things. How did you choose them?”

“Phone aided me in contacting the chariot called Uber Eats, which rode directly to the door with everything I had selected,” he says, and holds her up to show off the app he’s clearly been pressing every single button on.

“And did she also tell you this was an unhinged amount of food for one?”

“Hey,” she chimes in at last. “He just ate some of you. You need to eat.”

But she is ridiculous and probably just trying to get him into trouble.

“That tiny nibble he had does not require the entire meat section of Costco, Phone. Christ, where did you two even find all this stuff? How did you even pay for it while we’re at it? The last time I magicked up stuff I could sell was two months ago. My bank account is empty.”

I look from one to the other, waiting for an answer.

One hand on my hip, expression set to irritated. Like I have two naughty children, and one of them better confess. But Halsten doesn’t look nervous—he just looks baffled. He glances at Phone, and Phone puts up an image of someone shrugging, and then finally he answers. “Well, my gold vault has lots in it,” he says. “So I just used that. I used the magic card that was his to make it happen.”

And he holds it up.

A Platinum Mastercard under the name Johann Strausberg—his modern-day alias, I’m assuming. “Oh, he is going to kill you if he ever finds out,” I say, half laughing as I do.

But he doesn’t. He takes it pretty seriously. “Well, I do not see how he ever could, considering we are one person. And also that there are three hundred and twenty-seven million dullards somehow in this little rectangle.”

“It’s dollars. He has that many dollars.”

“Yes, indeed. That is the word,” he says, as he returns to sorting out the food.

I don’t stop him this time, however. I’m too busy feeling inexplicably dazed by the news that Halsten has that much money. I mean, I knew he was probably rich, considering all the designer gear. But even so—most vampires are not well-to-do like they are in stories. I know one who lives above the garage of an elderly couple from Toledo. He calls them Mom and Pops.

Though I suppose Halsten is smarter than the average bear.