Chapter 1

Camillus Gangrel had been acting weird lately.

We were snuggled up on the couch, watching some cheesy old vampire movie.

On screen, the pale-faced vampire lead was practically flashing his fangs, dying for a taste of the heroine's blood, when Camillus suddenly leaned in and asked a totally random question, "If I weren't human, could you still accept me?"

I was totally into the movie, so I blurted out, "Of course. You're my boyfriend, after all."

His eyes lit up, and he hugged me, nuzzling and sniffing my neck like an excited puppy.

I hugged him back, my imagination going wild. "If you weren't human, I'd want you to be the fluffy kind, with cute animal ears and a tail, or maybe something with tentacles, that'd be fun too. As long as you're not a vampire, I'm good."

With every word that left my lips, I could feel the possessiveness in his gaze growing thicker. He asked me cautiously, "What's wrong with vampires? Aren't they handsome?"

"They are overgrown mosquitoes, really."

His face twisted for a second, and he defended, "They stay young forever, never die. Isn't that amazing?"

"So immortal mosquitoes." I thought for a moment and then nodded, sticking to my original thought. "That's worse."

He wouldn't give up, and kept pitching vampires to me. "Vampires can fly. Regular people can't catch them."

"See? Total mosquito vibes."

"They're tough to kill. Normal people wouldn't stand a chance."

"But if you stab them in the heart with a stake, they're dead. That's kinda lame."

He got flustered. "Seriously? Getting staked in the heart would kill anyone."

Seeing him so desperate to defend vampires, I finally started to get suspicious. "Wait, are you..."

He sucked in a sharp breath.

"A vampire stan or something?" I finished my words.

He nearly choked on air.

I didn't think much of it. I figured he was having one of his nerdy moments.

Camillus always looked so put-together, and honestly, he had got that whole devastatingly handsome thing going on. Actually, scratch that, he was drop-dead gorgeous.

But deep down, he was a total kid at heart. He'd challenge me to endless rounds of rock-paper-scissors to win the side of the bed that didn't get morning sun.

But after that night, he kept hyping up vampires to me nonstop. "Look, vampires can turn into little bats. And you love anything fluffy, right? Plus, vampires are so loaded that they would toss gold around for fun."

Listening to him talk nonsense with a straight face about vampires, I finally put down my phone one night and looked him straight in the eye. "Camillus, are you hiding something from me?"

He froze for a second, his eyes darting away. "No, of course not."

"You know what? You never blink when you lie."

"I... I didn't know that."

"See? You're doing it again, not blinking."

Then he started blinking, rapid-fire, like a strobe light in the dark.

I let it go. Because suddenly, something popped into my head.

Camillus and I had been together for almost a year, but he never wanted to hang out when the sun was out, always insisted on evenings, nights, or at the very least, a super cloudy day.

He wouldn't go near my garlic bread, and whenever I chopped garlic, he'd stay as far from the kitchen as possible.

He never took photos, not a single selfie on his phone. I actually thought his front camera was busted.

One time, I tried to sneak a pic of him, but in the photo, his spot was a weird, blurry glow, like a glitch in the Matrix.

And his skin was unnaturally pale, not in a healthy porcelain kind of way, but genuinely bloodless, like a blank canvas.

But here was the kicker. I'd never seen his shadow.

Or wait, maybe I had. Under streetlights, wherever he stood, was always just empty.

I used to blame it on the angle of the light, but come on, how many weird angles could there be?

But I didn't call him out. Not because I was scared, but because it hit me that if Camillus really was a vampire, how hard must it be for him, trying so desperately to act normal for me?

Would he eat the food I'd laced with garlic, pretend everything was fine, and then secretly throw it up in the middle of the night?

While we were queuing for outdoor rides at an amusement park, did he claim he was allergic to UV and hide under an umbrella, because he couldn't handle the sun?

Maybe he even practiced a whole routine to cover up the fact that he didn't have a shadow.

Thinking about it, I suddenly felt a lump in my throat.

My silly idiot.

For the next few days, I pretended I hadn't noticed anything, kept laughing and messing around with him like always. But he kept trying to get me into vampires, making it harder and harder for me to brush him off.

Everything was chill until I got my tongue pierced.