When several seconds later JJ’s body relaxed and went deathly still, I had to force myself not to panic. He was a vampire, an undead. He didn’t breathe and didn’t dream. It only made sense that a sleep stripped from its all living-related parts would look like death. He did call it ‘small death’ for a reason, apparently.

Still, despite all my logical reassurances, at that moment, I couldn’t help but worry. What if JJ didn’t wake up in the morning? What if I wouldn’t be able to wake him up? I had an impulse to wake him right now, but I squashed it. He really needed that sleep.

I will have all the time to panic in the morning. For now, my job here was done.

Instead of leaving immediately, though, I sat next to his bed for a while longer, studying the planes of his face. Right now, devoid of the charisma that made his entire being glow when he was awake, he didn’t look like Casanova he appeared to be.

He just looked… dead. I shuddered. An image of my mother’s corpse, freshened and preserved by mortuary’s workers for her wake, appeared in my mind, and I had to look away from JJ to make it disappear.

I couldn’t keep watching him any longer, so I had to leave. I sighed, against my better judgement, gave JJ one last glance, and left the room.

⠀⠀ ⠀

My alarm woke me up next morning just in time for me to grab something to eat, meet Panda and, together with her, open the store. As I put on my usual set of clothes—I rarely had a problem of choice because most of my clothes were almost the same anyway—I wondered if JJ was up already or if I will have to panic after I deal with the store.

I wanted to check on him, but my stomach nagged at me, telling that I have no time to panic right now because I have to fill it. That, and I had to open the store too. Panda knew the procedures, but I had all the keys, so without me she won’t even be able to enter.

If I was out of the store in the evening, JJ had to close it. Not that I didn’t trust Panda with the keys, but I didn’t come up with safety rules. They would’ve applied to JJ too if he couldn’t just break the door if he really wanted to.

With that in mind and panic put on hold again, I cleaned myself up and went to the kitchen in search of yesterday’s leftovers I could reheat.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

An unexpected sight stopped me before I could reach the fridge.

In the middle of the round kitchen table stood a vase with a lush bouquet of fresh flowers in it: three pink roses and several branches of clusters of small flowers that reminded me of lilacs. Next to the bouquet lied a note, my favourite mug filled with milk and a plate with a couple of small pastries.

Curiosity and anticipation filled me as I inspected the arrangement closer. The flowers smelled as nice as they looked. Milk was still cold, just as I liked it, so it wasn’t standing there for too long. The pastries came from a grocery store—they were the same kind that I bought myself sometimes. My favourites, in other words.

The note read:

[Thank you again for yesterday, ma chèrie. I wish I could cook you a better breakfast, but I don’t trust my skills in that regard. Hopefully, this small arrangement will suit your tastes. I would have thanked you personally, but I had to leave to find my own breakfast. Later I would love to talk to you more.

—Jean-Jacques]

I smiled and sat down at the table to drink and eat my fill. So JJ woke up on his own—that was great. And he knew about my favourite foods, or at least some of them, which was… flattering.

Flowers were just a cherry on top. I normally found gifting flowers impractical and a waste of money, but in this case I could feel the sincerity behind them. Maybe I was just imagining it, but I had an impression that JJ might have even known their meaning in flower language. He lived in the times when it was a popular thing.

After all that, I chose to close my eyes on JJ’s need to find someone to have breakfast from. Everybody had their faults. It was much better to suck literally than metaphorically.

I finished my food, threw the note away, and went to the first floor to open the store. In just a couple minutes Panda came in, just on time. I helped her to make sure the shop hall and the antiquities on the shelves were clean.

Since I at last had time for that, afterwards I went to the office to check at the inventory. There were still enough items, but I didn’t buy anything serious in a while, and the stock of big cash items for big cash buyers was growing thin. It was bad, especially since these items made the most profit.

I hummed to myself as I stared at the lines in the inventory table. Flea markets almost never had items this valuable, and private collectors rarely sold them into small stores like mine. For items like these, I had to go to galleries and auctions.

Rita would give me good hints about places where I could get it sometimes, but if I wanted to reach real success I had to come up with an even better source. Maybe something absolutely special…

A ringing of my phone startled me. For a moment I feared it would be Andrey, despite not hearing from him ever since our last meeting, but when I saw Yakov’s name on the call, my apprehension changed into excitement.

“Hello, dear Diana. I hope I’m not calling too early.”

I looked at the time. Almost ten. “No, not at all, Yakov.”

“That’s great, that’s great. I had just finished talking with the last member of our coven, and they all are keen to meet you. Will you be free for a gathering tomorrow at four, at my place?”