The Vampire King by Heather Killough-Walden

herself a little, and cringed. Her head started to hurt.
    And then the air around her shifted. It felt like a sudden charge, as if lightning were about to strike. Evie straightened and turned to glance over her shoulder.
    “You. Leave. Now .”
    Evie’s heart slammed hard against the wall of her ribs and then skipped as if it had hurt itself. Her jaw felt slack, her eyes wide. Her body flushed warm and the breath stilled in her lungs.
    A man stood beside the table with the trio of teenagers. All three boys seemed frozen, unable to move as they stared up at him despite the order he’d just given them, and Evie could see why. She could scarcely believe her own eyes. What she was seeing was impossible.
    Oh my God, she thought.
    Because the man was the same man from her flashes and dreams.
    He was so tall, Evie would place him at six and a half feet. His eyes were like midnight skies, endless and deep. His skin was slightly tanned and touched with olive, unblemished and smooth. His bone structure was strong and perfect, his physique honestly reminiscent of a Greek god’s. His thick, short-cropped hair was the color of a raven’s feathers. It brushed the top of what looked to be a dark gray silk and cashmere blend sports coat, the starched white shirt beneath it open at the collar.
    She swore internally. He was sex incarnate, the entirety of him nearly breathtaking in its promising temptation. She somehow took a breath anyway, and when she did, she caught a hint of expensive cologne.
    Just like she remembered.
    No , she thought. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be that she’d clearly and perfectly imagined a living, breathing man that she had never before met – because that would mean that she was magic or something. Or that he was. What was happening had a logical explanation. She was going nuts. That was all.
    Suddenly, all three boys at the table jumped into sporadic motion, their lanky bodies scrambling to push out their chairs. Without a single sound of protest or contempt, the boys rounded the table, rushed through the coffee shop, and filed out through the exit.
    The tall, dark stranger watched them leave, but every other set of eyes in the coffee shop was on him , Evie’s included.
    In the fresh silence, Evie could hear her own heartbeat. At long last, the man looked away from the shop’s door and turned around.
    His dark eyes found hers at once and the rest of the world receded. Evie felt herself go very, very still, as if he could shackle her with no more than a look. Thoughts flew from her mind.
    She heard her mouth speak without any conscious thought and could only hope it wasn’t saying something damningly stupid.
    “Thank you,” she said, her voice a thousand miles away. “That was… pretty incredible.”
    The stranger’s dark, dark eyes seemed to sparkle as if she could suddenly see their stars, and a second later, he smiled a smile that once more left Evie feeling breathless. His teeth were perfect, straight and white, and the expression softened his starkly handsome features into the visage of some Michelangelo angel. She felt, in that moment, as though one of the sculptor’s statues had come to life and entered the coffee shop.
    “May I join you?” he asked, gesturing gracefully to the empty seat across from her at the small round table. His deep, smooth voice was like black velvet.
    Evie opened her mouth again to reply – no, yes, of course you can, oh god please do – but nothing came out. Stupid , she thought. Stupid! You were able to speak before! At least smile at him!
    Instead, she nodded.
    Great. You dork.
    *****
    As he always did, Roman allowed the invisibility around him to slip with a deep, subconscious gradualness. People in the shop imagined that he’d just walked in, or perhaps that he’d been there all along and they hadn’t noticed him until now. Dropping the shield was something he’d done a million times around humans, and that now came as second nature.
    He stood slowly