"Now do you know what I mean?" he asked.
"That, um...that was something you shouldn't have done, was it?" He and I both knew where the law stood on matters, but quite aside from that, there were societal pressures to do the right thing.
Not just in wartime, but men of my age were expected to find a nice girl, settle down, carry on the family name. My landlady wasn't the only one who had voiced such expectations. "I mean, besides lying down in the middle of the road and ---"
"Nathan, Nathan, Nathan," he sing-songed, as if tonight was the first occasion on which he'd used my name, and he was just getting used to the sound of it, the feel of it on his tongue. "That was just me being a little cheeky. That's far from the worst thing I've ever done."
"I can only guess."
"Oh? Would you care to?"
I lowered my voice still further when I spoke again. "Black marketeering?"
"Oh, pfft." The vaguest shadow of black on black; I presumed it was him waving a dismissive hand, casting off my worries and pseudo- accusations as if they meant nothing to him. "Can't you see, Nathan?"
"Not in this darkness, no; I---"
"Not literally. Honestly, for such an intelligent man, you can be unbelievably obtuse. I've been trying to tell you about me for an age."
"I got the message loud and clear tonight, don't you worry."
"The kiss? Oh, no; that was only part of it. That's only part of what I am. There aren't many men like me around. And no; I don't mean that. I mean lying in the middle of the road. You couldn't hear me breathe?"
I nodded, wondering if there'd be any way for him to see, or detect my agreement in any other way. To emphasise the point, I said, "That's right."
"That's because I wasn't. Nathan, I wasn't breathing because I was dead before I even hit the ground."
The words buzzed around in my head. I heard him but couldn't arrange them in the correct order so that they'd make any sort of sense.
"I was dead before the car hit me. I was dead before you finished work this evening. I was dead before we met. I was dead before you were even born."
Chapter 7
OF COURSE, I DIDN'T JUST ACCEPT it straight away. I didn't listen to Adam saying, "Oh, by the way, you know vampires? They exist, and what's more, I'm one of them," and blindly accept it. I'd witnessed proof, but it wasn't enough. He'd let himself be run over by a car, but it wasn't enough.
He stabbed himself in front of me one evening ---nailed his hand to a table with a kitchen knife while I threw up quietly in the corner. By the time I'd finished emptying my stomach into a bucket, he'd pulled the knife out, freed his hand, and was well on his way to recovery.
Self-repairing flesh and blood ate up the hole in his hand like magic while I watched.
I didn't have to come up with too out-there an excuse for Mrs. Hudson; the blade had penetrated Adam's hand but not gone too far into the wood. "I dropped a knife, blade down," did the trick. Not that she came into my room that often; she trusted me to keep things clean and tidy, and my army status afforded me the privacy given by respectful observers---"I don't want to interfere in your work, dear. I know you're supporting king and country." She worshipped George and despised his profligate brother and that woman.
"If she had a daughter, I'd suspect she wanted me to marry into her family," I commented to Adam one evening. My rooms---a small sitting room and even smaller bedroom---were at the opposite side of the house from Mrs. Hudson's.
She gave her tenants---me and another gentleman of approximately the same age---all the privacy we desired. She was the perfect landlady. Fussing and feeding us at mealtimes was as far as her interference went.
I appreciated that, but it scared me. I knew there was no chance of anyone walking in on Adam and me even before the time we began getting up to anything. After that car "accident," after that very deliberate kiss, there was a tension between us I would have been a fool to deny, just as I would have been foolish to deny we were destined to go somewhere. It couldn't stop at one stupid kiss.
I'd been nervous of bringing Adam here but had gotten over those nerves enough to invite him across the threshold. It was either that or let him remain loose on the streets. Lord knew how many cars he'd throw himself under just for jolly. I wondered if he'd ever read Anna Karenina. I hoped not. He might get some nasty ideas.
"You must have wondered why you only ever see me at night," Adam said one evening.
My sitting room consisted of a two-seater sofa, an armchair, a table---the one he'd speared his hand to---and various knick-knacks. It was the sofa Adam commandeered. From the moment he'd first entered the room, he marked it as his by planting his body firmly on it. There was room for me too, a fact he pointed out many a time, patting the seat beside him like an invitation, but I favoured the armchair, which was where I sat now.
"I assumed it was because I'm at work all day." Tapping the arm rest, I couldn't bring myself to look up at Adam. I'd seen amazing things, wrought by his hand, but the most difficult thing to see was the look in his eyes when he stared
