Free Sacrificed in Shadow by S.M. Reine

certain that was one ailment to which she was immune.
    With her coffee mug emptied, she felt antsy. She took out a cigarette.
    Lincoln gave her a hard look. “Not in restaurants.”
    Fuck me . Elise put the cigarettes away.
    Poppy returned with a tray for them: two matching pieces of cherry pie a la mode , and two chocolate milkshakes with malt. “On the house,” she said. She refilled their coffee cups and pinched Lincoln’s cheek again.
    Elise was surprised to see that Lincoln’s “usual” had so much sugar. He seemed like a cornflakes and glass of orange juice kind of guy—as wholesome as his crew cut and police cruiser would suggest. There was something distinctly childlike about pie and shakes for breakfast.  
    Lincoln dug into it with gusto. “Are vampires real?” he asked around a mouthful of food.
    “That’s your question? I already told you that I’m not a vampire.”
    “Yeah, you said that, but you’re pale, you avoid sunlight, and I’m wondering if you’re coming after my blood next,” Lincoln said.
    There was something a little too forcibly casual about his tone. Maybe the deputy wasn’t just into cherry pie for breakfast. Maybe he liked to get a little unwholesome in other ways, too. Elise twisted on the bar stool so that her knees touched his.
    “Vampires don’t exist,” Elise said. “Vrykolakas. Succubi. Mara. They’re demons much like vampires. But what you’re thinking of…no. They don’t exist.” She dropped her hand to his wrist, feeling the pulse point throb under his fingertips. “But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t drink your blood, if that’s what you like.”
    It took Lincoln a moment too long to pull away. He glanced around him again, as if afraid that someone had seen her hitting on him. She was a lot more discreet in a sweater than a leather jacket, and nobody in Poppy’s would have reason to think that she wasn’t human, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t whisper about the deputy’s date.
    “Eat your pie,” he said gruffly. “You’ll want fortification before we go to the morgue.”
    “No,” Elise said.
    “No to the morgue, or…?”
    “I don’t eat. That’s the last time I’m telling you before I assume you’re stupid and deaf.” She drained her coffee mug. It was good—it tasted like the beans had been roasted that morning. “Last question, deputy. Why did you offer a reward for people that caught me on camera?”
    Lincoln’s fork stilled. “What?”
    “I saw the email.” All of the flirtation had drained from her tone, leaving nothing but cold annoyance. “Two thousand dollars.”
    She expected him to deny it. She thought a lot better of him when he didn’t.
    “I was trying to keep tabs on you,” Lincoln said. “I wanted to know as soon as you reached town. I thought it’d take longer for you to get here, and that I’d be able to find you before you found me. Waste of money, I guess.”
    “Is your salary as deputy so good that you can afford my fee and pay to spy on me?”
    “You’re out of questions, Miss Kavanagh,” Lincoln said, drinking half of his milkshake like it was a glass of water.
    “Elise,” she said again. He still ignored the prompt to call her by her first name.
    Lincoln slipped cash under his plate, hiding it so that Poppy wouldn’t find that he’d paid for his meal until they were already gone. “It’ll hurt her feelings if you don’t at least try this,” he said, cutting off a big piece of the cherry pie and offering the fork to Elise.
    “Then you shouldn’t have ordered it for me.”
    “One bite, and I’ll let you have a bonus question,” Lincoln said.
    Elise contemplated the ice cream-streaked cherries on the fork, then flicked her eyes up to catch his gaze. She didn’t move to take the fork from him. She leaned forward, closing her lips around the pie. It tasted like over-sweetened shit. Even when Elise had eaten human food, she had hated sweets. But she swallowed.
    He watched her throat