Ben grabbed his wallet and Tenzin’s hand. “Good to know. We’re walking out the lobby. Put your fangs away.”
“Relax. Sometimes, Benjamin, you have no sense of adventure.”
CHAPTER THREE
They walked through the market after the sun set, enjoying the smell of spices and cooking oil that filled the air. The night market in Ürümqi was a melange of faces, scents, and colors. Children ran about in brightly colored dresses and shirts. Stylish Uyghur women in intricately embroidered hijab surveyed wares with a critical eye. Caps and scarves. Bread and fruit. Everything was for sale in the market that night.
“You fit here,” he said, looking around.
“I fit where? China?” Tenzin asked. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Here here. In Xinjiang.”
It was true. He’d never been able to place Tenzin’s appearance. She was Asian, for certain, but didn’t have the typical features of the Han Chinese who dominated the Western view of China. Tibetan? Mongolian was probably closer. He didn’t suppose those kind of labels existed in her human years.
Her complexion was pale, but much of that had to do with her vampiric nature. Her eyes were a cloudy grey, but that could have happened during her transformation however many thousand years before. There was no way of knowing what she’d looked like as a human, but she’d been turned in her late teens or early twenties. Of that, he was fairly sure.
And in Central Asia—with its fascinating mix of people—she did, somehow, fit.
Tenzin shook her head, lifting the corner of her mouth in a smile. A hint of her ever-present fangs peeked out. “I don’t fit anywhere, Ben.”
“Whatever, oh ancient and mysterious one.” He nudged her shoulder to head down an alley that smelled particularly savory. “You fit with me.”
She raised an eyebrow, and Ben quickly added, “And all the other nocturnal weirdos. You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. This noodle shop is good.” She pointed toward one where a man in a cap was standing outside, cooking skewers of what smelled like lamb over a narrow, rectangular grill. “They have good noodles.”
“Is that rice?” There was a large metal cooking bowl, even bigger than a wok, sitting outside over a concrete oven.
“Polo,” she said. “Kind of like a pilaf. Very common here. Rice, chicken, carrots. It’s good. We can have some of both.”
She spoke to the man in quiet Uyghur and he held out a hand, guiding them inside where a smiling woman motioned them to a table and seated them with menus that Tenzin ignored. She spoke a bit more with the woman who nodded and disappeared to the kitchen.
Tenzin said, “I ordered a few things. You can try some of everything that way. It’s a good thing you like spicy food.”
“But did you order enough?”
She shrugged. “For your appetite? They might have to kill another sheep.”
It was quiet in the restaurant, with only a few tables occupied, mostly by small groups of men. One table was full of children some older women hovered over. They were watching a soccer game on a small television and eating noodles as they laughed and joked. Cousins maybe? Ben knew some of the minority groups in China could have more than one child. Whoever they were, they looked like family and added a cheerful atmosphere to the tiny restaurant.
The walls were decorated with nice artwork in bad frames, but the ceiling was embellished with painted wooden beams that Ben suspected were hand-carved. He and Tenzin drew a few looks, but most of the patrons seemed far more interested in their own conversations.
“This is nice,” Ben said, sitting a moment before a pot of tea appeared at the table. It smelled like honey and saffron.
“The food will be good.”
“How do you know?”
She smiled. “Because it smells good, silly.”
Within minutes, the table was full of dishes. The golden rice dish he’d seen cooking outside, scented by cumin and dotted with raisins and carrots. Noodles topped with lamb and peppers. Small sticks of meat charred from the fire.
“How much of this are you going to want?” Ben asked, his mouth watering.
She smiled. “Not much. Go ahead.”
Vampires never had large appetites, but they did eat. Beatrice said that even though blood was all they truly needed, immortals who didn’t eat lived with a gnawing feeling in their bellies which was as uncomfortable for them as it was for humans. Since their digestion was slower, they never ate much. Small tastes of things here or there were all they needed.
Tenzin ate regularly, but that was partly because she liked to cook. Ben considered it fortunate that he liked to eat, because he was always available to dispose of the leftovers.
“Oh my gosh,” he mumbled around the first bite of noodles.
“I told you.”
“I’ll never doubt you again.”
She smiled. “Really?”
“No, of course I’ll doubt you.” He set down his chopsticks and picked up the spoon to try the rice. “You can barely operate in the modern world, Tenzin.”
She rolled her eyes and took a small bite of a lamb skewer. Ben ignored the eye-roll because they both knew he was right. He might have been young, but he’d assisted Giovanni’s butler, Caspar, for years. There were things that had to happen during daylight, and part of his job in the household was taking care of those things. Dealing with contractors and delivery personnel. Going to the market and sometimes paying bills. He’d been helping to run a household since he was twelve.