hopefully today wasn't that day. Hopefully.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE BUILDING WAS an old Victorian house that had been divided into apartments. The one that Bernardo led me to was empty, all pale empty walls, and that slightly sharp smell of fresh paint. Bernardo went in first, his broad shoulders and back blocking most of my view. Edward walked into view, face grim, and then they both stepped aside so I could see Olaf.
He stood at the far side of the room, to one side of the bay window. He was watching the street, or watching something. The ten-foot ceilings made him seem shorter than he was, but he was only bare inches from seven feet. In the heeled boots he probably was seven feet. He was the tallest person I'd ever personally known. But unlike a lot of really tall people, he had some bulk to him. It was hard to see in the black jeans and black leather jacket, but I knew there were muscles under the clothes. His head was as smooth and free of hair as ever. Since he had to shave twice a day to stay clean-shaven, I always wondered if he shaved his head, too, but I never asked him. It never seemed important once he looked at me.
Two things startled me when he turned around. One, he was wearing a white T-shirt when all I'd ever seen him in was black. Two, he had a narrow black Vandyke beard and mustache. The color matched the eyebrows that arched thick and graceful over his deep-set eyes. He was too tall, but I could admit that he was attractive until you got to the eyes. The truth of what he was always stared back from those eyes, at least to me. I knew that other women seemed not to see it, but he never hid his eyes from me. When I first met him it had been because he wanted me afraid of him, and later I think he, like Edward, enjoyed that I was one person he didn't have to hide the truth from. I knew who and what he was, and hadn't run screaming. I might be the only woman he'd ever met more than once who knew the truth and still managed to have some sort of "normal" relationship with him. Maybe that was part of his attraction to me. I knew.
"So is this the good Olaf, via South Park, or the evil Olaf as in the old Star Trek," I said.
He smiled; he actually smiled, though it left his dark, dark eyes almost untouched. They were black to begin with, so it was hard to make them shine. The well-trimmed facial hair framed his lips nicely. It reminded me of one of our vampires, Requiem, who was now second banana to the Master, or rather, Mistress, of Philadelphia, and her main squeeze.
"You like it?"
That he asked my opinion, any woman's opinion, was real progress for him. He'd been one of the most misogynistic men I'd ever met a few years back, and I met a lot of them. It was progress, so I answered as if he weren't scary.
"Yeah, I do." I realized I did. It added definition to his strangely bare face. Most of the men in my life were like Bernardo, all shoulder-length or longer hair.
He moved toward me, still smiling. He moved like he did most things, in a graceful lope. For such a big man he was surprisingly graceful; if I hadn't thought he'd take it wrong, I'd have asked if he had ever had dance training, but I doubted that would fit his ideal of macho.
He stopped about halfway to me. I wasn't sure what was going on until Edward touched my arm. I looked at him, and he gave me a look. Oh, I remembered this part. Olaf saw it as weakness to come to me. That he'd met me even halfway was again a lot of progress.
I started walking toward him. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, what was I supposed to do once I got there?
I offered him my hand, even though the last time I'd done that he'd done the double-hand grab up my arm and reminded me of the one and only kiss we'd had, over a body that we'd just cut up. It had been a bad vampire and we had needed to take its heart and head, but he'd acted as if the blood on both of us were an aphrodisiac.