A Girl's Guide to Vampires

"Geez, I though you'd never get here," Roxy said with a sour look. "I know I told you to have fun, but I didn't expect you to have that much fun. I'm surprised to see you can still walk."

I waited until I had ordered breakfast and took a few sips of life-restoring coffee before answering her.

"You know, I'm going to be so glad when you find Mr. Right and I can tease you for a change."

"You're grinning," she accused me, a frown wrinkling her brow. "You should have snapped my head off for that comment, but you didn't, and you're grinning to boot. Oh, Lord, don't tell me you've fallen for more than just his pretty crotch?"

I sipped my coffee and admired the view of the mountains and forest in the distance. "Isn't it lovely here? I like this area."

"Dammit, you have, haven't you? You've gone and fallen in love with him!"

"It's a little brisk this time of year, but sometimes brisk is good. I like the feel of fall in the air."

"Joy, you idiot, don't you know that you're just a fling to him? Holiday romances never last!"

"And the people are so nice here. Don't you think the people are nice here? I think the people are nice."

"Once the festival here is over, he'll be off to Italy with the rest of the fair, and you'll be flying home. Have you even thought about the future?"

"I thought the language would be a problem, but you know, it's really not. Everyone speaks German or French."

"You don't know anything about him! You can't just throw yourself on someone you don't know anything about. How can you think about getting serious with a man who keeps secrets from you? Doesn't it bother you in the least that you don't really know him?"

"It's a romantic area, too, what with all the history surrounding us."

Roxy tossed her hands up in a gesture of defeat. "I give up. You just go right ahead and head for Heartbreak Hotel. I'll try to pick up the pieces of what's left of your heart after Raphael stomps all over it. I won't say another word about the fact that you're making the greatest mistake of your life."

"Thanks. You're a doll."

"However—"

I groaned and grabbed a roll from the basket, reaching for the butter and preserves.

"—if I was to say something to you, it would probably be to point out that although you've had more experience with physical relationships than I have, you've always had worse taste in men than me."

"Mmmf mmf mmmf mweamfam moo."

"What?"

I swallowed my mouthful of roll. "La la la, I can't hear you."

"Sure you can, you're just too stubborn to admit I'm right. You two deserve each other. Hey! Do you realize that you and Raphael just took the fifth step of Joining?"

"Fifth?" I thought about it. Roxy was right, if the third step was the first passionate kiss we shared, the fourth would have been Raphael revealing his secret to me, only—

"He didn't tell me his secret," I objected. "So the fourth step is void even if we did do the fifth step. Repeatedly. With much enjoyment."

"He told you he had a secret! That's almost the same thing as telling you what it was."

"No, it's not."

"Sure it is! Trust me, it counts as the fourth step."

"Regardless, the point is moot. Raphael is not a Dark One."

"My point exactly! You should be thinking through this relationship a bit more before you throw away your whole life for him."

And on it went. Unfortunately, Roxy didn't keep her word, taking periodic opportunities to point out the idiocy of falling in love with a man I knew nothing about. When I reminded her that she'd been perfectly happy for me to bind myself to him when she thought he was a bloodsucking soulless wonder, she waved that point away with the statement that Dark Ones never ran off with another woman while their Beloved was left pregnant and penniless adrift in a strange land.

I had to admit that she had a point, but it didn't dim the strength of my blossoming emotions one bit. They might not be rock solid yet, but I felt strongly that Raphael and I had taken steps down the path to something a bit more serious than a holiday fling. As for the wisdom of falling in love with a man I knew little about… well, I squelched that niggling worry with the reminder that everything important, everything that truly mattered about Raphael—his character, his morals, the fact that he wasn't the undead—was already clear to me.

Roxy and I visited the museum, poked around two nearby towns, and returned to the hotel for an afternoon nap.

"The fair's late hours and your insistence on being a tourist are playing merry hell with my beauty sleep," Roxy grumbled an hour and a half later when I woke her.

"You don't have to stay out until two A.M. every night, you know. What did you and Christian do all that time?"

She groaned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "He left at about one. I hung out with a group of people from Portugal. Did you know there were Portuguese Goths? There are. They're kind of cute, too. None of them speak English, but we had a good time dancing. I think maybe we should go to Portugal before we go home."