"That's gracious, ma'am. But I'm not a coward. I'm also not so easy to kill." His dark eyes glittered.
"I don't doubt your courage, but they'd kill you with as much effort as swatting a fly and it wouldn't even slow them down on their way to me," she said bluntly. "Good staff is hard for a vampire to find, so we don't sacrifice them frivolously. It's not unheard of for a vampire to slay another and then promptly turn around and offer the dead vampire's staff positions in his own household. After all, you've already worked for one, what's the difference in working for another?" She lifted her shoulder in a casual shrug. "Though I admit, some of them wouldn't give you a choice. There is some danger involved."
The black man removed his cap, scratched his head. There was gray in the close-cropped cotton of his hair. "I suspect a person in your circumstances has to break a few laws to live under the radar. So what I need to know, ma'am, is if you dishonor what I consider one of the more important Commandments. Do you kill?"
At her ironic look, he set his jaw. "I've broken it myself, when I served. Even had to do it once or twice in this job. I know it's not something a person should break lightly, which is why I'm asking."
Lyssa pursed her lips. "An extraordinarily honest question. Are you asking to give yourself time to think your way out of a crazy woman's house? Because if that's the case, the door is there. Neither I nor my dogs will keep you from leaving, and I'll wish you no ill will."
Ingram glanced at the door, then at Jacob.
"He's not yet bound to my service," she said in an even tone. "He's also still free to go. If I decide to keep him, I'm sure I'll regret him for the nuisance he is."
Jacob wisely chose not to comment on that. Ingram cleared his throat, met her gaze squarely. "I knew when you got into my car tonight you weren't human, ma'am. I got a sense for it. You're not the first of your kind I've driven."
That was a surprise. "Indeed. Yet you drove me. Most wouldn't after recognizing it."
"I thought about driving away. But when I say I'll do a job, I do it. Never left anybody who paid my boss for a ride without one."
They studied each other for a few minutes in silence. The night was waning. Lyssa wanted to go to bed. She rarely let physical factors impair her judgment, but it was possible this was one of those infrequent times. She'd made several very impetuous decisions tonight. However, seeing Elijah Ingram's large hands turning his cap in that methodical way as if it represented the cog of his mind, she knew her intuition was sound. She just needed to speed up the interview process and hope the loss of finesse wouldn't lose her the possibility of his service.
"All right then." Perching on the stool at the end of the counter, she took the seat directly across from him. "When I have a human servant, I take blood from him. If he maintains his health and diet adequately, that sustains me and I don't crave additional blood. If I'm somewhere he's not and I need it, I can seduce and temporarily command the mind of a person to draw blood from him. Not in a lethal dose. We prefer to know the history of our donors, though, so that's usually an unexpected event."
She paused, her glance shifting between the two of them. "Once annually, in order to retain my full strength, I have to take a healthy adult in the prime of his life and drain him dry. I take his life," she added quietly, so there was no misunderstanding. "He has to be a good person, not the dregs of society. Blood infected with evil impacts a vampire… negatively."
"Draining him doesn't make him a vampire?"
The question came from Mr. Ingram, because of course Jacob would know all this. However, she saw the forced strain around his mouth, the sharp focus of his eyes. He might know it, but it didn't make hearing it any easier. And she wouldn't dress it up for either of them.
She shook her head. "You do have to drain the body to do that, but to convert a human requires a special secretion from the fangs. You have to prep the person with three different marks, like a servant, and make them drink from the sire first as well."
"You always take a man? For your kill, I mean."
She rolled it over a moment. His generation held to certain moral tenets that he would never dismiss no matter his own circumstances. That suggested not only what motivated the question, but the proper answer for it.
"Always a man. Never a woman. Absolutely never a child."
She didn't add she chose a healthy male because she was a female vampire. As such, the taste of a male was just preferred. Sweeter to her palate.
From Jacob's expression, she saw he understood the nuances in her response in a way Mr. Ingram would not. He wasn't pleased with the revelation. She decided to ignore the ridiculous twinge of lust his possessive reaction sent through her vitals. Obviously a lingering side effect of her medicine.
"I try to pick a person with few ties, but that's not easy when you're seeking a person of integrity. When I go on the hunt, my driver and servant—for it's best to have both to do this though not completely necessary—help me with transportation and disposal of the body."
Had Jacob truly understood what would be required of him during her annual kill? Or like the requirement of sexual submission, had the significance been lost on him because it was so far from what he knew the world to be? If he'd truly hunted vampires, he wouldn't be completely naive about her kind. But she wondered.
Drawing herself up straight in the chair, she spoke unapologetically. "If I don't do this once a year, I weaken. Within ten years I'd become a living corpse, even with regular feedings. It's a form of what you would think of as rigor mortis. Unable to move, I'd suffer an eternity of starvation. It's likely from that state some of the myths about our being dead have sprung. A human, stumbling upon a vampire in that condition, gets too close and the vampire is just strong enough to grab hold and restore some of his vitality by draining him. But he will have lost some of his faculties from the deprivation, and control of his bloodlust will be much harder. Human blood in a terminal quantity from a living donor once a year is the only thing that prevents imbalance in our constitution."
"Are there those who do it more than once a year?"
Apparently, Elijah had kept his wits about him enough to catch the subtle notes of what wasn't being said as well as what was. "Yes." Lyssa nodded. "For the pleasure of it. For the added strength they perceive it gives them, like taking an overdose of vitamins. But I am not one of those vampires."