He grins up at Bella.

"You look like you're having fun. Have you even got the bullet out of your shoulder yet?"

"No," he says cheerfully. "Should I, d'you think?"

"Will it otherwise remain open forever or will it just heal around the slug?" Bella inquires. "I suppose removing it is wise either way, but I'm curious."

"No idea," he says. "Never been shot before. I suspect the latter, however."

"Then you should take it out unless you want to have a chunk of metal in your shoulder forever or reopen the wound at some point, shouldn't you?"

"I suppose so, yes," he says. "But it is likely to be an unpleasant job, and I would much rather just lie here and giggle to myself."

"Well, I can't get it for you. It hasn't been a week yet," she says reasonably.

"If I wait a week for you to get it, you will have to dig it out with a knife, which will be even less pleasant," he says. And sits up. "Ah, fuck it. Will you be staying in tonight?"

"Yes."

"Luck," she calls.

"Good or bad?" he calls back.

"At least one of the two, depending," she laughs. "G'night."

Bella carries on with her usual routine. Attend school and pay about thirty percent attention, read, cross neighborhoods, patrol, follow and eventually shoot anyone who flinches, read more, try any small spells she finds with results that appeal to her and fail at them. Only now she does all of this - after sundown, anyway - with a shadow. He is pretty good about keeping his distance.

And then one night he shows up at her house after sundown, per usual, with a large, full backpack, not per usual.

Bella peers out of her upstairs window. "What's in the backpack?" she asks him.

"Blood," he says, grinning. "My regrettable little hotel room's regrettable little refrigerator coughed its last this morning, and I need somewhere to keep the rest for now. Any space available in yours?"

"All pigs' or something?" Bella inquires.

"Pig, some cow," he says. "I am trusting the labeling system of the butcher I stole from. None human, in any case; I'd notice that."

"There's fridge space for that much volume, although I'll have to rearrange the vegetable crisper. Unless you want to drink it cold, there'll need to be a drop point and a time of night picked out, at least for the next few days."

"You can bring some out to me when I arrive to go about my bodyguarding, can you not?"

"Yes, but handing it to you is not happening, yet, and ideally it would be warmed - how long in the microwave? how much per day? - when you arrived, so we didn't waste time that could be spent patrolling. I'm not sure where you're staying or how long it takes you to get here or whether other things sometimes come up in your - undeath - actually, that's nonsensical, you are clearly a walking-around intelligent thing and pulse-based definitions of life are comparatively uninteresting and I don't think the scientific community has had a chance to rule on vampires anyway yet - whether other things come up in your life between sunset and your appearance here."