Eric recognised the rap on the door. He opened it wide enough to not appear suspicious, but not wide enough to appear inviting. As he had expected, Pam was standing outside, her Gucci overnight bag in one hand. She was wearing tightly-fitted black leather jacket and, unusually, flat shoes: she was obviously about to leave.
"The super at my place in Shreveport just called. The apartment over mine had a leak, he thinks I need to come back and check it out, just in case I need to contact my insurance. So I'll be in our favourite little shithole for a couple of days and I can swing by Fangtasia while I'm there – why do you look so weird?"
"Weird?"
"Yes, all kind of – " She twirled a red fingernail in his face. "- all kind of this."
"This?"
She leaned in and smelled him, then pushed him roughly aside.
"No!" she cried. "No, no, no, no, no!"
Eric quietly closed the door and watched her march around the suite, barely able to suppress a smile.

Pam came marching out of the bedroom and spied the sofa, cushions askew and scattered on the floor.
"This place reeks of the Kennick!" she shrieked. With a dancer's grace, she dipped and picked up a cushion and flung it at Eric's head, hitting its mark squarely. "You moron!"
He shrugged, still smiling.
"Take that smug fucking smirk off your face, Eric," she cried. "Did you two fuck? Did you?"
Her blue eyes glittered with rage beneath her long black eyelashes and her nails were clenched into her hips as she stood squarely before him.
"No," he said. "We didn't. We just kissed."
"Kissed?" Pam spat.
"I told you I wanted to woo her," he said stubbornly.
Pamela covered her eyes with her hands.
"I literally – literally – just vomited in my mouth," she declared.
Eric laughed and started picking up cushions and pillows, straightening the cashmere throw that usually lay folded across the back of his sofa.
"So you two are, what? Back together again? All lovey-dovey?" she sneered.
"No," Eric said patiently. "I want to win her over. I want her to come back to me of her own accord, completely and fully."
Pamela made vomiting noises.
"And then," he continued, his voice low and brutal, "I want to catch the vampire Corbyn and sue Texas till his balls bleed. Simple."
He punched a cushion lightly to fluff it up and threw it on the sofa.

Pamela stared at him.
"So you ... you what? You invite her over for a bit of fooling around, pretend to take things slow? Did you give her your blood? No? She refused, right? And she wouldn't let you have hers. I bet you didn't demur: oh, of course, min älsking. Whatever you like, min älsking. How delightfully chaste of you."
She slow-clapped him and picked up the bloody glass from his desk, holding it aloft like a trophy.
"And as soon as she had walked out that door, you went to the freezer and warmed yourself a nice big ol' glass of her blood. I bet our brainwashed little dimwit also doesn't remember the fact that she donated a few gallons of it way back when you two were lovers. You are a piece of work, Eric."
Eric shook his head.
"I told you I would get her back," he said. "This is what I have to do so I'm doing it."
Pamela shook her head.
"Or – here's another option – or you just send her back to Ireland and get on with your fucking life."
"No," he said stubbornly. "She belongs here."
"Your relationship," she said, viciously air-quoting relationship with her crimson nails, "was fundamentally flawed. Remember? Remember the whole: I-want-you-to-be-my-wife thing? And the no-I-don't-want-to-be-married-to-a-vampire thing? I don't want to go all fucking Dr Phil on you, but..."
"Maybe she's changed her mind," Eric said. He picked up a couple of files from his desk.
"She's been glamoured," Pamela said, "not lobotomised."
"Pamela, my darling," he said. "I have a meeting to go to and you'd better get moving if you intend to be in Shreveport before dawn."
He held the door open for her and she sailed past him.
"Fundamentally flawed!" she called as she walked off.

Two years previously

"Maggie!"
He could hear her moving around outside the bedroom.
"Maggie!" he called again and pushed the blanket off, stretching himself, divesting quickly his shorts, his t-shirt.
No answer.
"Magdalena!" he barked.
She opened the door, her wet hair in a towel.
"Yes, my lord and master?" she asked coldly.

He indicated his naked body.
"Come," he said.
Maggie rolled her eyes.
"I'm late, Eric," she said. "We're hosting the Governor of Massachusetts tomorrow, I have a thousand things to do tonight."
"None of which are more important than me."
"All of which are more important than you."
He sat up in bed.
"Your first duty is to me," he said. "You're mine, my human. If I need you, you come."
She snorted. "Seriously, Eric, your lines come straight from a cheap paperback romance. Who did that kind of shit ever work on?"
"I'm trying to put it in a way you will understand," he said. "Because you seem to have difficulty grasping the concept."
She hissed, a sharp intake of air through her teeth.
"If you continue to refuse to have sex with me," he continued insouciantly, "I'll find someone who will."
He leaned over and pulled his t-shirt back on.
Maggie pretended to reel.
"I'm sorry – what?" she cried. "As in: what the fuck? Refuse to have sex?"
"This is the third night in a row," he pointed out.
"BECAUSE I'M BUSY!" she shouted. "I'm fucking stressed out, Eric! Visits from out-of-state governors that get covered by every fucking news network in the country don't just organise themselves, you know."
"Your first duty is to me," he repeated stubbornly.
"Well, I'd have more time to do my duty, if you didn't leave all this crap to me."
"Are you saying I don't pull my weight?" he said. "I sit on that damn throne every night. Does that look like fun to you?"
"You could delegate a lot of that to Pam," she argued. "All of those petty little squabbles – let Pam handle them."
"You could delegate, too," he countered. "Why doesn't Montgomery take over some of your tasks?"
"Because sometimes one of us needs to be there," she said icily. "You or me, one of us has to be present because the buck stops with us." She laughed drily. "What am I saying? With you. The buck stops with you," she corrected. Magdalena shook her head. "You're right," she said. "I don't even know why I'm doing this. I'm just your consort."

She tossed her wet towel on the bedroom floor, something she knew he hated.
"You're just my consort because that's all you want to be," Eric said. He stood up and padded over to her, light on his feet. "I've asked you often enough to be my wife."
She shook her head in disbelief.
"Like that would change something," she said bitterly.
"It would change everything."
"Has it never occurred to you that I mightn't want to grow old by your side? To feel my body age and sag while you stay the same, stay like this? To have to allow you to be with other women, to have you mind me when I'm elderly and infirm? To have you bury me? To put my wedding ring in your collection so that some day you can say, Oh yes, that was the redhead. The Irishwoman. The carrier. I was fond of her."

She was crying now, covering her face with her hands. Startled, Eric wrapped his arms around her but she tried to push him away.
"Leave it," she said, but he squeezed her tighter.
"What collection of rings?" he asked softly into the top of her head.
"I found them when Texas abducted you. Pam and I went through your desk to find your address book and I found the hidden compartment. Fourteen rings, fourteen wives. I don't want to be number fifteen, Eric." She looked up, her eyes red and swollen. "It is ... it is so inexorably sad. I really don't think I can do it."

Eric pressed her close, resting his chin on the top of her head, her red hair darker now that it was wet.
"Some of those women were chosen for me," he said. "Some I chose for expediency, for their wealth or for their standing. I choose you because I like you, Magdalena."
She snorted into his t-shirt. "Bowl me over with romance, why don't you."
"I love you, then," he said. "And I hope you will consider a ceremony of symbiosis. Perhaps of marriage – here or in Dublin, whatever you wish."
She nodded her head slowly, as if she was thinking it over, then pushed him gently away.
"Please put on some pants," she said with a watery smile. "It's hard to have a conversation with you with that thing ... waving at me."
Eric laughed and she picked up her towel and folded it up, a peace offering, before she leaned in to stroke his cheek and kiss him.
"Meet you here at five a.m.?" she said shyly. "We should have a little time before dawn?"
He returned the kiss and she left.
It was only when he was buttoning up his shirt that he realised that she hadn't said she loved him in return.