His body might be thin, but his spirit was pure tungsten.
He nodded, and Stefan set him down on his feet, steadying him a little when Chad swayed.
"I've never seen anything like that," I admitted.
I could see inside Chad's room to the water that ran down the rapidly clearing window.
I looked at Stefan.
"I thought ghosts avoided you." He was staring into the room, too.
"So did I.
I ..." He looked at me and stopped speaking.
He tilted my chin up and looked at my neck, at both sides of my neck.
And I realized that I'd been bitten a second time.
"Who's been chewing on you, cara mia?" Chad looked at Stefan, then hissed and used his fingers to make a pair of vampire fangs.
"Yes, I know," Stefan told him--signing it, too.
"Vampire." Who knew? Stefan could sign; somehow it didn't seem like a vampire kind of thing to do.
Chad had a few more things to say.
When he was finished, Stefan shook his head.
"That vampire isn't here; she wouldn't leave the Tri-Cities.
This is a different one." He looked at me, angling his face so Chad couldn't see what he said.
"How do you do it?" he asked conversationally.
"How do you go to a city of half a million and attract the only vampire here? What did you do, run into him while jogging at night?" I ignored the panic in my stomach caused by being bitten twice by some jerk I'd only met once.
Calling him a jerk made him less scary.
Or it should have.
But James Blackwood had bitten me twice while I slept through it ...
or worse, he'd made me forget it.
"Just lucky, I guess," I said.
I didn't want to talk about it with Chad right here.
He'd be a lot safer if he didn't know James Blackwood was a vampire.
Chad made a few more hand motions.
"Sorry," said Stefan.
"I'm Stefan, Mercy's friend." Chad frowned.
"He's one of the good guys," I told him.