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IMPOSSIBLE TO SCARE
Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day It seemed like just another Monday, innocent but for its essential Mondayness, not to mention its Januaryness It was cold, and it was dark—in the dead of winter the sun didn’t rise until eight—but it was also lovely The falling snow and the early hour conspired to paint Prague ghostly, like a tintype photograph, all silver and haze
On the riverfront thoroughfare, tra the day in the twenty-first century, but on the quieter lanes, the wintry peace hostlight, Karou’s own footsteps and the feather of stea, and she was alone and adrift in hts: school, errands The occasional cheek-chew of bitterness when a pang of heartache intruded, as pangs of heartache will, but she pushed them aside, resolute, ready to be done with all that
She held her coffeein one hand and clutched her coat closed with the other An artist’s portfolio was slung over her shoulder, and her hair—loose, long, and peacock blue—was gathering a lace of snowflakes
Just another day
And then
A snarl, rushing footfall, and she was seized froainst a man’s broad chest as hands yanked her scarf askew and she felt teeth—teeth—against her neck
Nibbling
Her attacker was nibbling her
Annoyed, she tried to shake hi her coffee, but some sloshed out of her cup anyway, into the dirty snow
“Jesus, Kaz, get off,” she snapped, spinning to face her ex-boyfriend The laht was soft on his beautiful face Stupid beauty, she thought, shoving him away Stupid face
“How did you knoas me?” he asked
“It’s always you And it never works”
Kazis, and it frustrated hihtest rise out of Karou “You’re i her the pout he thought was irresistible Until recently, she wouldn’t have resisted it She would have risen on tiptoe and licked his pout-puckered lower lip, licked it languorously and then taken it between her teeth and teased it before losing herself in a kiss that ainst him like sun-warmed honey
Those days were so over
“Maybe you’re just not scary,” she said, and walked on
Kaz caught up and strolled at her side, hands in pockets “I ah The snarl? The bite? Anyone normal would have a heart attack Just not you, ice water for blood”
When she ignored hi a new tour Old Town vampire tour The tourists will eat it up”
They would, thought Karou They paid goodherded through the tangled lanes of Prague in the dark, pausing at sites of supposed hosts” could leap out of doorways and host herself on several occasions, had held aloft a bloody head and hter It had been fun
Kaz had been fun Not any ahead, her voice colorless
“We could use you,” Kaz said
“No”
“You could play a sexy vampire vixen—”
“No”
“Lure in the men—”
“No”
“You could wear your cape…”
Karou stiffened
Softly, Kaz coaxed, “You still have it, don’t you, baby? Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, you with that black silk against your white skin—”
“Shut up,” she hissed, coht How stupid had she been to fall for this petty, pretty street actor, dress up for hiive him memories like that? Exquisitely stupid
Lonely stupid
Kaz lifted his hand to brush a snowflake froet this coffee in your face”
He lowered his hand “Roo, Roo,me? I said I was sorry”
“Be sorry, then Just be sorry somewhere else” They spoke in Czech, and her acquired accent matched his native one perfectly
He sighed, irritated that Karou was still resisting his apologies This wasn’t in his script “Coh and soft at the saravel and silk “We’re ether, you and me”
Meant Karou sincerely hoped that if she were “meant” for anyone, it wasn’t Kaz She looked at him, beautiful Kazi her to his side And that had seehter there, sensations more profound It had also, she’d discovered, been a popular place, other girls occupying it when she did not
“Get Svetla to be your vaot the vixen part down”
He looked pained “I don’t want Svetla I want you”
“Alas I am not an option”
“Don’t say that,” he said, reaching for her hand
She pulled back, a pang of heartache surging in spite of all her efforts at aloofness Not worth it, she told herself Not even close “This is the definition of stalking, you realize”
“Puh I’ this way”
“Right,” said Karou They were just a few doors froh school housed in a pink Baroque palace where fa Czech nationalists had slit the throat of a Gestapo commander and scrawled liberty with his blood A brief, brave rebellion before they were captured and iate Now students werefor friends But Kaz wasn’t a student—at twenty, he was several years older than Karou—and she had never known him to be out of bed before noon “Why are you even awake?”
“I have a new job,” he said “It starts early”