Schroder didn’t disappear the next day. He spent the morning in the basement—painting. I sat on a stool behind him and watched him work. With nothing else to do, it was kind of entertaining. He knew what he was doing and he worked so quickly it was hard to believe he had the stamina, especially with the thick blue fishing line keeping the cuts in his fingers closed.

“I didn’t come after you for revenge after I healed from being burned and decapitated,” he said, suddenly giving his third piece of evidence late that morning.

“That’s true.”

“And even now, I’m not keeping you here for revenge’s sake.”

“I know. If you wanted to kill me, you could have done it twelve times over.”

“Are you beginning to believe me?”

I snapped my fingers impatiently. “Even if I do believe you, it doesn’t change my feelings for you.”

“So, tell me. How do I make you feel?” he asked, turning his back on me and concentrating on his painting. 

“I don’t want a vampire lover. I want a human.”

“Like Tate?”

My head nearly spun off my shoulders, but I managed to collect myself. “Technically, he was the one who killed you.”

“Yeah, he was a little shit.”

At this point, I realized that maybe Schroder didn’t see Dudley the other night. He was outside. Maybe Schroder thought I was the one who had shot him. Also, he bothered to question London about Dudley’s whereabouts. Luckily, London didn’t know I had met up with him. Maybe Schroder was still looking for him—for revenge.

“Did you go after him?” I asked quietly.

“Are you worried about him?” Schroder asked, cleaning out one of his brushes.

“Well, yeah. He was a friend of mine.”

“That kid may not have been a vampire, but he always looked hungry whenever you walked by. I wanted to kill him long before that fateful night. I didn’t want to do it with you watching, so I was stuck with him hacking my head off. Actually, I had forgotten all about him. That was why I had to ask London who he was. You know, to jog my memory.”

I exhaled heavily. So, that was how he thought with all those bullets in his head. “So you haven’t found him?”

“No. He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. But you don’t have to be so happy about it. What was he to you anyway?”

“A good friend. I don’t want you to murder him, so if you have a shred of affection for me—don’t go after him.”

“Do you have good memories of him?”

“Not really, but he did save me when I was in too deep with you. Here’s a question for you. What would you have done with me if he hadn’t interrupted?”

Schroder started cleaning his brushes. Then he took off his apron and mumbled, “I have no idea.”

***

That evening I sat by the setting sun and sipped a bottle of cream soda. Schroder had brought me a whole crate of it. Watching the sun go down across the water was something I’d never experienced before. I relaxed. The next day Schroder would tell me his last reason. I planned to reject him and then it was just the ticking of the clock until I convinced him that there should be a fifth reason to prove he really loved me—he should let me leave. If you love someone, let them go and all that crap. I hoped he fell for it.

The sun went down. The sky turned deeper and deeper shades of crimson until it turned navy. Then Schroder came in and took a seat next to me. He was carrying a black leather bag with him.

“Is that the last reason?” I asked cynically.

He nodded and set it down beside the couch out of my view. He turned and looked at me. Not a word passed his lips. Not a greeting. Nothing. He just looked at me with his probing blue eyes and searched my face.

Talk about unnerving!

“Is there something on my face?” I finally blurted.

He didn’t answer immediately but kept staring at me. Finally, he said in low tones. “You know, I don’t think the woman I see right now is the version of you that I’m in love with.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m serious. The Sweeper I’m in love with wouldn’t have acted the way you have. She would have taken up the brush and paints and shown herself in them. She would have run out to the water like a maniac and played until the sun came down. Windsurfing? Have you ever tried it?” He read his answer in my blank expression. “All the equipment is in the shed out by the water. I like to do it at night, but you would do it during the day when the sun was at its hottest just to show me what you could do that I couldn’t.”

“You must have a lot of strange ideas about me,” I said caustically. “I’ve never had the slightest interest in windsurfing or painting.”

“You’re missing the point. I don’t want the Sweeper that sits in front of me. You need to grow up.”

“I am grown up!” I cried.

Schroder shook his bald head like he wasn’t even hurt. “You are a baby, but don’t let that get to you. I know why it happened.”

This maniac was really losing his grip on reality talking about me like he knew everything. “Really?” I asked crossly.

“London.”

Now I was pissed off. Why did he keep ragging on her? “Stop it! My life has not been lacking because she’s been in it.”

“Of course, it has been. We’ve talked about this before. You just don’t see it,” he paused, “but my plan is perfect. Not only will you grow up, but you’ll change into the woman I love.”

I shuddered. “Are you waiting until midnight to tell me your last reason?”

“I was. Would you rather we got on with it?”

“Yes.”

He opened the bag in front of him and pulled out a rolled-up piece of black fabric. Then he undid the string holding it together and unrolled it, exposing a grand selection of shiny surgical tools.

“What are those for?” I asked—my voice toxic.

“The last reason. I’m going to let you remove all five bullets from my head.”

I was on the verge of snapping if I didn’t take things slowly. “What?” I whispered. “There is no way I can do that.”

“You can do it,” he said briskly. “Doing surgery on a vampire is nothing like doing surgery on a human. We’re not delicate. There are only two things you need to worry about. One is not causing any more damage to my brain. The second is managing blood loss. I don’t know if you’ve figured it out by now, but blood loss is the only way to actually kill a vampire and fire helps our blood clot.”

“You should have let The Scissor Man take them out, rather than asking me to do this. I’ll bet he has a steadier hand,” I said thinking of his hand tremors.

I was half hoping Schroder might say something about how he went berserk that night or whether or not The Scissor Man was still alive, but he bypassed it completely.

“You’re missing the point of the exercise,” he said. “When anyone—human or vampire—allows someone to do surgery on them, a tremendous amount of trust is involved. I imagine it must be easier for humans because usually there is nothing to be gained from murdering the patient on the table. In my case, you could easily kill me and sell my blood for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Maybe more, if you got an interested buyer. Usually, a full dose of vampire blood procured by draining the vampire to zero will provide half the needed blood to turn a human. I wouldn’t really expect you to sell my blood, but if you wished I were dead badly enough—you could kill me and let my entire blood supply spill onto the floor.”

“How would I leave the island then?”

He clasped his fingers into a steeple and said, “That’s the question. Do you think you could leave without my help? Do you want to kill me badly enough? Could you kill me when I’m intentionally lying at your mercy?”

I sucked in my breath. This was a risky game to play. If I did the surgery, would he let me leave? What if I screwed it up? What if I injured his brain even more and made him crazier? Then what would he do to me? Or what if I accidentally killed him and was stuck on his island forever? Crap!

“What if I refuse?”

“You can’t. You shouldn’t. You should accept this experience and move forward. This is the only way you can shake off the slave you are and become everything I dream of when I look at you.”

“So, I’d be doing this for you?”

“I’d consider it your first act of love for me.”

“Then I can’t do it,” I groaned. “I don’t love you.”

He licked his lips and shifted his position. For a moment, I thought I was making him desperate. “There are a lot of reasons why you should team up with me. I’ll let you think them over.”

With that, he got up, leaving all the tools on the table, bright and shining and terrifying.

***

I lay in the upstairs bedroom while Schroder went away. I was starting to understand what he meant and I didn’t like it. He meant that if I played by his rules he would give me something I wanted. He said he didn’t want blood, which was good, but if he didn’t want blood, what did he want?

Control over me.

I rubbed the back of my neck and looked out the window at the night sky. The moonlight was glimmering on the surface of the water. A red sail skimmed through the white road of water. That was Schroder—windsurfing.

Did I really have a choice?