How to Kiss a Vampire novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Seven Months

Thursday at dusk, I made fish soup.

I had not made it in four years, and my hands knew the whole recipe without me.

Eero was at Berit's again, drawing a pumpkin with a crayon he called Spooky Orange.

At 6:40 the doorbell rang.

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and opened the door.

Torsten stood on the porch with his hands empty and snow in his eyebrows.

He didn't smile.

He had been awake an hour, tense and braced for a hearing.

"Come in," I said.

He took off his boots on the mat.

He had never done that before in my house, and I noticed it, and I didn't say anything.

He sat at my kitchen table, in the chair that was his, where he had sat in March with his sleeves rolled.

I put a bowl in front of him.

He looked at it.

"I can't," he said.

"I know. Smell it."

He closed his eyes.

"It smells exactly like that night," he said.

"Which one?"

"All of them."

I sat across from him with my own bowl and did not eat.

"Ragnar left at dusk yesterday," Torsten said. "Two suitcases. He walked down Skyline with a black hand and the elder watching from the window. Nobody went with him."

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