found several bags of blood pushed into her arms. “You carry those and I’ll bring the food.”
She arched an eyebrow, not at all fooled. Allie knew he was trying to get her out of there to prevent her asking what Victor had meant by “something like that.” But she let him get away with it for now and trailed him back up to her room. Or was it their room now? She wasn’t sure.
Magnus urged her to sit on the bed, helped her bring on her fangs, and then popped another bag onto her fangs before moving away to put the rest of the blood in the cooler. Once that was done, he grabbed the tray he’d set on the dresser when they entered and carried it back to join her on the bed.
“We have cold fried chicken, cheese, bottled water, and a couple of bananas,” he announced as he settled cross-legged in front of her with the tray between them. “And your bag is empty.”
Allie tugged the bag from her fangs, and handed it over when he held out his hand.
Magnus tossed it on top of the cooler next to the bed and then turned back to survey the food he’d gathered, muttering, “Hopefully you like something here.”
“I like it all,” she assured him, reaching for a drumstick and a napkin from the small stack he’d also included. “Thank you.”
They were silent when they first started to eat, but then Allie said, “So, you know all about me. Now it’s your turn.”
Magnus was silent as he finished chewing and swallowed the food in his mouth, but then he asked, “What would you like to know?”
“What you’ve been doing the last twelve hundred years,” Allie said dryly, and then asked, “Did you go home after you were finished turning and learning how to survive as an immortal?”
Magnus shook his head. “No. That was not possible.”
“Why?” she asked at once. “You were only fourteen, so the nanos wouldn’t have changed you that much. I mean, it’s not like they had turned you from an old man into a young stud.”
He smiled at her words, but said, “Age is not the only thing they change. I had been in battles and had scars. Those, of course, were gone and that certainly would have been noticed. Aside from that, however, the whole village knew I had gone a’viking with Erik and the others. Their first question would have been to ask after the fate of the other men and I could not explain that.”
“Right,” Allie said slowly. “So you don’t know how your family fared after you left?”
“Actually, I do,” he admitted. “While I did not go back right away, I did visit my village twenty years later.”
“Did anyone recognize you?” she asked at once.
Magnus shook his head. “I did not actually talk to anyone. A stranger would have been noted and confronted, so I approached at night and more or less skulked around spying on everyone to learn what I wanted to know.”
“By that you mean reading minds and such?” she suggested, and when he nodded unapologetically, she asked, “And what did you learn?”
“My parents were both still alive but very old. My sister had married and ran the farm with her husband, while my parents looked after her children. They all seemed content.”
“And the girl you wanted to marry?” Allie asked. “The one you went raiding to win?”
“Ah.” He smiled wryly. “It turns out I made a lucky escape there. A friend of mine had been more successful with his viking efforts. He sailed out with a different group just days after we left, but they made it back alive. He returned with enough gold to convince her to marry him . . . and came to regret it.”
“Why?” Allie demanded.
“Because it turned out that Sassa was as rotten inside as she was beautiful on the outside,” he said with a grimace.
“That was her name? Sassa?”
Magnus nodded. “From what I read from their minds, while he had done his best to make her happy, nothing would. She, on the other hand, delighted in making him miserable.” He grimaced. “My old friend was by that time resolved to simply drinking himself to death so he need not deal with her further.” Smiling wryly, he added, “As I said, I made a lucky escape.”
Allie nodded silently, but was oddly pleased that his young love had turned out to be such a disappointment. She didn’t look too closely at why, though. “So, what did