“You can still cook?” That sounded much smarter in my head. Because every single thing about Milo had improved upon from the way he was before, it’d be silly to think his cooking skills magically dissolved.

“Yes! And I’m making your favorite.” He went over to the fridge and rummaged through it.

“Hey, can you eat food?” I asked, and again, it sounded smarter in my head.

“Well, yeah, I can eat it. I just can’t digest it.” Milo turned back to face me, his arms overflowing with food. “Jack dared me to try an orange last week, and it tasted terrible. Like eating acidic salt or something. I don’t even know how to explain it to you. But I ate it, and then like five minutes later, I felt terrible and threw up. So that was the end of that.”

“Gross.” I hopped off the counter and took some of the vegetables away from him so I could wash them up.

“Food isn’t appealing anymore. The only thing that ever sounds good is blood. And you know what else? Blood tastes different!” Milo said this really excitedly, like he was shedding light on something for me.

“You mean like from how it tasted when you were human?”

“Yeah, but that’s not what I meant. Different kinds of blood have different flavors. It’s just really weird cause I’ll find myself craving different types. Blood from women tastes different, and Asian blood is different, and then the types, like O or AB positive taste different too,” Milo went on, and he was talking the same way he used to talk about ingredients for a new recipe he’d just learned. “There’s a whole cornucopia of flavors out there!”

“Good to know,” I replied, unsure of what else to say to that.

“I bet your blood tastes really good.” Milo stared at me intently, enough to make me nervous, and I moved away a little bit. “It smells sweet and… rich.”

“Thanks. And I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re kind of freaking me out right now.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head and went back to slicing a tomato. “I just can’t not smell you, you know?”

“Well, try not to fantasize about eating me at least,” I grimaced.

Milo managed to not eat me while he made the rest of my meal. He sat down and watched me eat, but it still felt nice, like we were eating together like we used to. Even though he didn’t really look like my brother, and he wasn’t really anymore, we were still family.

We were just turning into a whole different kind of family.

- 17 -

Vampires needed oxygen, just not as much as people. Living on minimal oxygen was an important skill vampires could add to their arsenal, if only they could master it. That’s pretty much a direct quote from Jack, right there. Maybe not all of it, but the word “arsenal” was definitely in there. That’s the explanation he gave for today’s exercise.

“Exercise” was another word he used, and I hadn’t realized how seriously he took everything with Milo. When he had texted me earlier, he said that I could come over, but he’d be pretty busy with Milo. Ezra had gone somewhere, so Mae could use the company.

Jack picked me up, giving me the briefest of explanations before he and Milo changed into their swim trunks. That only made it harder for me to understand things because Jack shirtless was captivating.

Not to mention how distracting Milo was. Obviously, I wasn’t attracted to him in anyway, but I had spent all summer seeing him in swim trunks, and he had looked nothing like he did now. He was all muscle and chiseled abs.

Milo didn’t need to breathe as much as he did, but his body didn’t realize that yet. The best way to train his lungs would be to put him somewhere he wouldn’t be able to breathe. Jack’s idea was to submerge him underwater, the same way Peter taught Jack not to breathe.

Apparently, it’s terrifying the first couple of times he did it, since his mind didn’t understand that it wasn’t about to die. So Jack recommended that I stay in the house while he went out with Milo, lest I get freaked out.

I stood at the French doors, staring out at the black lake behind the house. There wasn’t a moon in the sky, and a rather eerie cloud cover had swept over, blinding all the stars.

The back deck lights were off, making it easier for me to see the dock and lake, but I couldn’t really see much of anything. The water was like a black abyss, and every now again, I would catch something shimmering off it, but Milo and Jack were completely lost in it.

Matilda sat next to me, whimpering with anticipation. Jack left her inside because, like me, she had the habit of getting nervous and freaking out. I knew Milo was perfectly safe. Almost nothing in the world could hurt him, and certainly nothing in that lake. But that’s where he had almost died, where his blood still stained the end of the dock, and my heart felt cold and tight in my chest.

“They’re going to be fine,” Mae reassured me for the seven-hundredth time that night.

She stood behind me, leaning against the doorway into the dining room, with her arms crossed loosely over her chest. In the other room, I heard Nina Simone playing, and I imagined that Mae was curled up on the couch, reading a book. Or at least that’s what she was doing when she wasn’t busy checking on me.

“I know.” I thought I saw something, but it was gone before I could even make it out.

“You’re just going to stand there all night then?” Her words came out soft and disappointed.

“I don’t know.” I wanted to pull myself away, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I looked away, something would happen. As if the lake somehow had it in for Milo, and it was just waiting to finish the job when I wasn’t paying attention.