American Vampire

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“I’m sorry, I must have missed the Holiday Inn sign at the end of my driveway.” She put her hands on her hips, where she might as well just keep them permanently, they ended up there often enough. “I could always rescind my invitation, you know.”

I’d like to see you try.

“Sorry.” The word left his mouth almost less frequently than please, and it had to make its way past his clenched back teeth this time. “You have to understand, you’ve had five years to get used to this whole ‘being trapped’ thing. I’ve had five minutes.”

“You’ve had an hour. Suck it up.” She went up the stairs. They creaked, and a fine rain of sand fell from each step. “This isn’t permanent. At sundown, you start looking for a new place to live.”

The door closing at the top of the stairs was a judge’s gavel falling, and the scrape of something heavy being dragged in front of the door was the sound of a jail cell locking up tight. He’d been sentenced to living in a basement and putting up with a warden so insufferable, he didn’t even want to eat her.

If she had known that a flimsy lock wouldn’t keep him in, would she have still taken that precaution? Probably. Humans did silly things to reassure themselves when they were frightened, which she most definitely was, with a strange man in her basement.

Still, if she had wanted to make him feel like a prisoner, she couldn’t have been more effective. Graf decided he could bide his time; the thing about caged animals was, they only stayed caged for so long.