I walked around the room, allowing the last traces of sleep to leave me. As they did, I became suddenly aware of the absence of the acute hunger that had been plaguing me before. I still felt thirst—but it wasn’t even half as uncomfortable.

I entered the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. When I glanced up at the mirror, my eyes had returned to their normal vivid green color.

Perhaps more time has passed than it feels like?

I held my breath, unsure of what to think. I wondered whether this was just my wishful thinking carrying me away—making me read signs. I didn’t want to get my hopes up even in the slightest that something might’ve changed.

I left the bathroom and walked back into the main room. I continued pacing up and down, paying close attention to the level of hunger in my stomach and my general state of being. Perhaps this was just the effect of having rested for a long time—my body was rejuvenated, but soon the effect would wear off and the pangs would grow strong and loud again.

I kept pacing the room, waiting for the agony to strike again. But it didn’t. All I felt was the type of hunger that a human might experience—uncomfortable, but not unbearable. Not anywhere near the level I had gotten used to experiencing as a vampire—the type that could make me lose my mind. Or make me start biting into my own flesh…

I still didn’t dare voice my hope inside my head, because reading the signs wrong would only make the disappointment all the more crushing.

But after several hours of monitoring my level of hunger, and paying close attention to the way I was feeling in general, there was a test that I wanted to carry out.

I brushed a hand against the snake’s head on my wrist band and waited for Nuriya to appear. She arrived after a few minutes.

Her eyes widened as she looked me over. “You’re looking better,” she said.

I winced internally at her words, still so tentative about letting myself entertain the idea. I just wanted to focus on the test—which would give us a hard result either way without speculation or false hope.

“I want you to feed me some animal blood,” I said.

Nuriya moved toward the dining area in one corner of the spacious room and turned her back on me. She pulled down a glass and a jug from one of the shelves. When she turned around, the jug that she was holding was filled with red liquid.

She handed me the glass, and then filled it to the top.

“What kind of blood is this?” I asked, raising the glass to my nose so I could sniff it.

“Snake blood,” she replied.

I remembered the last time I’d tried to drink snake blood. I’d gone into the snake room in the upper atrium. I had ended up throwing up all over the floor.

Gingerly, I raised the glass to my lips and took my first sip.

I felt like gagging the moment the liquid entered my mouth. It was so repugnant, so eye-wateringly bitter to my palate after the rich, luxuriant human blood The Oasis had afforded me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I vomited from the taste alone.

But I managed to hold it down. I downed another gulp, larger this time, holding my nose as I swallowed. And then I took a third gulp. A fourth. A fifth. Until I had finished one and a half glasses of the blood.

I hurried to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth out in an attempt to get rid of the disgusting aftertaste before returning to the main room and sitting down on the edge of the bed.

The jinni was watching me closely. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

I held up a hand, breathing deeply. It was too early for me to say. When I’d last tried to drink blood, it had taken a while for my body to expel it—at least a few minutes. During those minutes I had allowed myself to hope, falsely. I wasn’t about to do that again.

“Ask me again in fifteen minutes,” I said, eyeing her diamond-encrusted wrist watch.

She took a seat on the sofa, opposite from me, and the two of us sat in intense silence. I leaned forward, resting my elbows against my knees, and closed my eyes, trying to feel what this animal blood was doing to me. I hadn’t vomited by the time Nuriya told me that fifteen minutes had gone by.

I tried to remember how many minutes it had taken for me to throw up before. If I remembered right, it was certainly less than five.

I moved over to the dining table and tipped the blood remaining in the jug into the glass. Slowly, I knocked down the rest of it. Every last drop. And then I waited again for another fifteen minutes.

Despite the taste, I was still showing no signs of expelling the blood.

“I’d like to drink some more,” I said. I wanted to fill myself up with as much blood as I possibly could, so that there could be absolutely no doubt in my mind as to the conclusion of the test.

“Why don’t we return to our kitchen then?” she asked. “You can sit there and drink as much blood as you need, my child.”

I agreed. She made smoke surround us and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of the jinn’s huge kitchen. It was empty now, the fragrance of a recently cooked meal flavoring the air.

She pointed to a table and chair in one of the corners, upon which stood a large round, steel container of blood, a label hanging from its edge. Nuriya reached up to one of the shelves and took down a tall glass. As I took a seat at the table, she set it down in front of me. She squeezed my shoulder. “Drink to your heart’s content, Benjamin.”

“But stay with me,” I said. I wasn’t ready for her to leave just yet.

I began making my way through the vat of liquid—but I only managed three more full glasses. I’d consumed a lot more human blood than that in one go before. I hoped that this was just something normal for vampires in general—they couldn’t hold in as much animal blood as they could human blood—and not specifically a problem with me.