Inhuman Heritage Read Online Free PDF Page B

public?”
    Jesus! I thought. Where was that coming from?
    “It’s nothing like that. Don’t think that. I’m not bothered at all by what other people think of you and me. There’s just bugger all for us to go out and do.”
    “We could go to dinner!”
    “With only me eating, it’s a little weird.”
    “The theatre?”
    “I don’t like going to the Swan because you know why and you only want to take me there because you like rubbing it in his face. I would be happy to go to Birmingham to see something but you were against going so far in case you were needed here. And when I suggested the cinema you turned your nose up at it.”
    “I do not care for modern theatre, all bangs and explosions and ludicrous stories about vampires who do not drink blood. How about we just go for a walk? Or talk?”
    “We’re talking now aren’t we?”
    “That is not what I meant, Cassandra, and you know it. I want us to have a love that is known to the world, not just hidden here in this tiny little room.”
    “I’m not hiding,” I said softly knowing that when he got really cross was when he started to call me Cassandra. He glared at me. “I’m not! This is just what it’s like to be with me, to be with a human, we’re boring!”
    “Maybe we shouldn’t be together then,” he said snorting a laugh like it was funny. “I’ve got to close up so you’d probably be best off going home like usual now.” He walked out.
    I sat in awed silence with the sheet wrapped tightly around me; then I was abruptly enraged. How dare he? How dare he pursue me for years, to get exactly what he wanted only to declare that I was boring and unsuited to him? I was mad, madder than I had ever been. The only problem was that when I got mad my power tended to flex and things caught fire. It took me a minute before I smelt the burning and saw the edge of the bed canopy was on fire. I swore and started trying to pat out the flames with my bare hand. Fire didn’t burn me, it never had. A whoosh of white foam startled me and I jumped back. Jareth stood by the edge of the bed, a fire extinguisher in his hands. I made sure I had the sheet tightly hiding my body.
    “I’m sorry,” I said automatically. He didn’t say anything so I started to ramble. “I’ve gotten better control over it than I used to but it’s still got its own pros and cons, I no longer get starbursts over my eyes but I still seem to set things on fire when my mood gets really...dark.”
    “It is okay,” he said setting the extinguisher down. “I understand how what my brother said might make you feel.” When Jareth said brother he didn’t mean in a vampire solidarity way, Aram and Jareth when alive had been brothers. Jareth was the elder and had in fact been the one who had turned Aram.
    “Of course you would.” I had to admit that my voice sounded just a little bit snippy. Vampires have talents and Jareth’s particular talent was empathy. He could feel my emotions and even make me feel his. Aram had told me. It made sense of his long glances at people, that he would study their body language more carefully when he felt their emotional state shift. He was the vampire equivalent of a mood ring. He took a seat on the edge of the bed and I naturally shifted away from him-because I was naked-but unable to go too far as he had sat on the sheet and it was straining to both cover me and be held down by him.
    “I do not think my brother knows how to be in a modern relationship. In our day when you cared for a woman you either married her or made her your mistress. He wants you to be his bride; brides must be courted in his mind. However, mistresses you just buy the occasional gift for and have sex with. They were often secret and neither party acknowledge each other in public.”
    “So I’ve fallen into the wrong end of his outdated spectrum,” I said gruffly not really having anything to say to that. Jareth chuckled.
    “He loves you and he is an old fashioned romantic.