Vampires Can't Have Children, So I Left Carrying the King's Triplets novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man in the Diner

Merrick finds Elspeth in a human diner, she keeps beyond arm's reach, and he says the king has been dying since she signed.

On the fifth morning I ate eggs in a diner full of people, because a vampire will not start a fight in front of forty humans with phones.

That was my whole plan.

I sat at the counter between a trucker and a man reading the sports page.

The trucker smelled like diesel and the sports page smelled like coffee, and I was happy to be small and ordinary between them.

The bell over the door rang.

I did not turn around.

I did not have to.

A cold spot settled onto the stool two seats down from me.

"Morning," a man said.

I looked at the mirror behind the pie case.

He had gray in his brown hair and a long canvas coat, and a face you would forget by the parking lot.

I knew that face.

Merrick Wingate was the king's tracker, and the one man at Hollin Hall who had always said good morning to me by name.

"I'm not here to take you, Mrs. Ravenhurst," he said, very quietly. "If I wanted to, you'd already be in the car."

"There are forty people in here," I said.

"Thirty-eight. Two went out to smoke."

"Then you know I can scream."

"I know you can."

He stirred the coffee the waitress had set in front of him.

He had not touched it, and he did not drink it.

"Gerard's hunters had your bus ticket on the second day," he said. "I got here before they did, because I didn't tell them where I was going."

My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.

"Why would you do that?"

"The king asked me to find you first."

"The king asked every hunter in the Court. I read it."

"Gerard asked every hunter in the Court," Merrick said. "The king asked me."

I put my fork down.

The trucker next to me turned a page of his newspaper with a snap.

"Tell him," I said, "that I'm keeping the money."

Merrick nodded slowly.

"He said you would say that."

I stared at him in the mirror.

"He said what?"

"He said, 'She'll keep it, and she should.'" Merrick took a long breath. "He doesn't want the money, ma'am. The headline is Gerard's."

That did not fit.

Nothing about this fit.

"He signed the papers," I said. "I saw his name."

"I know he did."

"Then he can't be heartbroken, and he can't be coming to save me. Pick one."

Merrick was quiet for a moment.

"I can't tell you which," he said. "I'm only the tracker."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

The waitress glanced at me over the coffee pot.

I lowered my voice.

"He didn't sleep in my bed for nine weeks, Merrick. Nine. He never said why. Not once."

"I know."

"You knew?"

"I'm the man who watches the tower door." He turned the cup a quarter turn on its saucer. "I'll tell you what I know, and then I'll leave. Will that do?"

I nodded.

"Ever since you signed, the king hasn't left the tower. He doesn't eat. He doesn't sleep. He coughed up something dark on his desk, and he asked me to burn the cloth."

I felt cold from the inside.

"Vampires don't get sick," I said.

"No, ma'am."

"Then he's pretending, to get me to come back."

"Does that sound like him?"

It did not.

Bastian had never begged for anything in his life.

He had asked once if I wanted the window open, and I'd said yes, and he had opened it, and that was a whole day of conversation.

"I'm not going back to that house," I said. "Gerard says the rule at me every night. Honoria pats my hand while he does it. The one time I tried to tell the king, he was already out of the room."

"I know that, too."

"Then you know why I signed."

"No, ma'am," Merrick said. "I don't."

He stood up.

The cold shifted toward me.

Two stools was an arm's length, and I could feel exactly where it ended.

He stopped at the edge of it and kept his hands in his coat pockets.

His head tilted slightly, and his eyes went still.

I put my hand over my stomach before I could stop it.

"Does he know where I am?" I asked.

"Not yet. Gerard's people are four hours behind me, and I'm slow when I want to be."

The waitress set down my check without being asked.

I left a twenty on it, because my hands needed something to do.

"I won't come closer," he said. "I'll say one more thing, and then I'll go."

The trucker cleared his throat.

The sports page rustled.

"Since the day you signed," Merrick said, "something has started in the king's chest that I haven't heard in a hundred and seventy years."

"What?"

His eyes met mine in the mirror.

"His heart has started to beat."

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