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determined cheer, “Right. Sorry. Renfield then.”
    â€œYou don’t need a Renfield,” he assured her. “Like I said, we don’t bite mortals anymore. It’s not allowed.”
    â€œOh? Why is that?” Holly asked, with feigned interest, her gaze sliding sideways to the door and back.
    â€œIt was too risky,” he explained. “There was too much chance of drawing attention to ourselves that way.”
    â€œHmmm.” Holly nodded as if she believed him and sidled toward the door an inch or two under the pretext of shifting her feet. “So how do we feed? Do we buy pig’s blood from the slaughterhouse? If so, I guess I need to arrange for that instead. Lots to do. Must get to it.”
    â€œNo, we get our blood delivered now.”
    That startled her enough to draw her full attention. “Delivered? Like pizza?”
    â€œPretty much,” Justin admitted on a laugh. “We have our own blood banks and whatnot.”
    â€œ ’We’?” she queried.
    â€œThere are a lot of us. Not like millions or anything,” he added quickly. “We try to keep our numbers low. We wouldn’t want to outgrow our food source.”
    â€œ ’Food source’?” she queried carefully. “You mean ­people?”
    â€œMortals, yes. We even have laws and rules to ensure we don’t turn too many.”
    â€œLaws?” she asked with feigned interest, managing another sliding sideways step. “What kind of laws?”
    â€œWell, we’re only allowed to have one child every hundred years, and we can turn only one mortal in a lifetime.” His expression turned serious and he said, “Most save it to turn their life mate.”
    Holly frowned over the having-­one-­child-­every-­hundred-­years bit, which seemed to suggest he believed he would live hundreds of years after all, but then the last bit stuck in her mind and she asked, “Life mate?”
    â€œIt’s the one mortal or immortal we cannot read or control, and who cannot read or control us.”
    â€œYou can read and control mortals?” she asked dubiously.
    Justin nodded. “We all can. Immortals can control every mortal, except for the crazy or their life mates. It’s how we recognize our life mate. That inability to read or control them is why they can be a proper life mate, the one we can live happily with for our very long life.”
    Holly shifted another step to the side, alarm beginning to creep up her spine as she absorbed what he was saying. Swallowing, she said, “And you used your turn on me.”
    He nodded solemnly. “You’re the one, Holly. You are my life mate.”
    â€œOh wow,” she said weakly and thought, You poor, crazy, deluded sap. She’d started out thinking he was harmless enough and had helped her when she lay unconscious and helpless. She’d sort of convinced herself, if only subconsciously, that he wasn’t a danger to anyone and not to bring the authorities down on him. But he’d built a whole vampire world in his mind, with blood deliveries and supposed other vampires wandering around. More important, he’d developed an unhealthy fixation on her as his “life mate” . . . and all without exchanging a word or even a smile with her. The guy was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and this was getting pretty creepy. She was starting to have visions of being locked in a cellar and forced to sleep in a coffin, maybe even raped in that coffin by this man who had decided she was “the one.” He needed help. And she needed to get away from him as quickly as she could.
    â€œI know it’s a lot to take in,” Justin said sympathetically. “But it’s really all a good thing. Being a life mate is like . . .” He struggled briefly, obviously looking for something to compare it to and then finished with, “Well, it’s like winning the lotto or