by Cate Corvin
Càel didn’t appear when I showed up on the outskirts of Clouded Court territory, and for some reason, I found myself nervous about running into Rhianwen or Morgrainne without him if I lurked too long. I didn’t know if I could take the smaller vampire crying pink tears as she hugged me again. Once was nerve-wracking enough.
So I went on my journey without him.
Mister Thornton wasn’t what I was expecting. Pennywick Apothecary was a narrow little shop with pale wooden floors, white-washed walls, and frosted glass windows. Before I even opened the door, the sharp tang of fresh herbs and the muskier scent of incense tinged the air outside the apothecary.
I’d been anticipating an older man. Instead, a dark-haired man in his late twenties looked back at me over the counter, wearing a dark suit that was entirely out of place in the airy store. It would’ve looked more appropriate on an undertaker. “Can I help you, slayer?”
So, Thornton might be tougher to crack than Madame Lobelia. Still, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.
“Have you sold any incubus saliva recently?” He looked like the kind of man who might respect blunt questions more than beating around the bush.
“No.” Thornton’s eyes were a cold, deep gray. “Prince Sitri placed a temporary moratorium on the trade and sale of his children’s bodily fluids back in June. We’ve been out for months.” At least he didn’t try to convince me he didn’t deal in demons, unlike Lobelia. Any decent apothecary worth their trade had a line to the infernal dealers.
“So, nobody has fresh incubus saliva. Is there an expiration date on it?”
Thornton inclined his head, his shoulders loosening a little. I wondered how many people got confrontational instead. “It’s most efficacious if taken immediately, but it degrades within a week. Sunlight hastens the degradation, obviously.”
I frowned, gazing somewhere over his shoulder. The saliva they’d dosed me with had hit me like a train. There was no way it was more than a few hours old.
“Someone bypassed Sitri’s moratorium and sold it to them. Either that, or they set up a demonic summoning circle inside Libra, which I really doubt. The shit they drugged me with was fresh, I’m sure of it.”
Thornton’s cold gaze narrowed and I realized I’d spoken my thoughts aloud. “Someone gave you the saliva?”
I met his look with a glare of my own. “Yeah. What of it? I’m not a junkie, I just want to know who’s trading in it around here.”
“Obviously.” He rummaged under the counter, glass clinking, and held up a tiny vial on a chain, with a faintly-glowing yellow liquid inside. “Belphegorian ichor. The only substance that can counteract an incubus’s salivary properties.”
I stared at the vial he held pinched between his fingertips. It was strange to think such a tiny amount of innocuous liquid could’ve saved me from total humiliation. “What would it do to me?”
Thornton wiggled the vial, but the fluid was so dense and sticky it barely moved. “Belphegor is the Prince of Sloth. You’d probably find a nice, quiet corner to slump in for several hours, but it would sap you of all energy you’d otherwise put towards wanton behavior.”
“‘Wanton behavior’?” I repeated with a snort, but the thought was sobering. Actions, not words. Apologies meant nothing if they still had access to a dealer who was breaking Sitri’s laws, and no doubt they could buy more saliva. “How much?”
Thornton named a price that had me rolling my eyes, but honestly, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I hadn’t realized how desperately I wanted that tiny vial until it was out of reach. “Do I look like I’m made of money?”
“You are matriculating at Libra Academy,” Thornton said in clipped tones, nodding at the silver-embroidered image of a scale on my leather jacket. “Which leads me to believe that you are, in fact, made of money.”
“If only it were that easy,” I muttered, then remembered my wallet in my jacket pocket. Specifically, the black metal card in the wallet in my jacket pocket.
As much as I disliked Percival Godalming on a personal level, never let it be said about the man that he sent me out of his house without a life-line, even if it was against my protests. I hadn’t wanted his money- his charity- then, and I still didn’t want it now.
But if any of them decided to pull the same shit, the Belphegorian ichor could potentially save my ass.
I slid my hands in my pockets, unable to tear my eyes away from the demonic fluid. Percival would never know. He’d given me the credit card of his own free will, for whatever I wished, and after Samhain, this seemed like a pretty damn good time to break my personal limits on using other people’s money.
My hand clenched around the wallet. He might never know, but I would know. The day I’d slid the little metal card in the wallet, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t take it back out again unless it was to return to him.
I’d broken too many promises to myself already. “Would you be willing to drop that price a little?”
Thornton gave me a disdainful look. “Do you think Belphegorian ichor grows on trees? It takes six years for the imps to mature, and several wranglers to milk them for enough ichor to fill just one of these vials. It is literally worth more than its weight in gold.”
Ew. Imp-milking? I resisted the urge to make a face, no matter how much I wanted that vial. “I’ll have to pass, thanks. So, you have no leads at all on anyone who might be willing to bend Sitri’s moratorium?”
The ghost of a smile passed over Thornton’s lips, and he lowered the vial to the countertop. “None. No apothecary would’ve sold such a substance to students. Libra has made their stance on selling infernal, celestial, and Fae drugs to their students very clear to every apothecary, herbalist, and dealer in this city. Wherever these enemies of yours acquired it, they had a private source.”
I squeezed the wallet one last time, wavering between handling this myself or relying on Percival’s indulgence. “Thanks for your help, Thornton.”
He raised a hand in a silent farewell, watching me all the way to the door. I stood on the steps outside, taking a deep breath, but I wasn’t entirely sorry to leave without the ichor. Odds were good they wouldn’t repeat the same stunt twice.
And I didn’t feel a new phantom obligation to my stepfather. Trying my damnedest to impress him and Mom was already enough weight on my shoulders.
“What a prick,” I muttered, striding down the street. Wanton behavior, my ass. Wasn’t like I made a habit out of exposing myself to ballrooms full of slayers.
The walk back to Libra alone was good for clearing my head. My step stuttered when I reached the pink stairs of the Caitland-Moore, half-expecting Will to be waiting outside to accost me with more bullshit, but this late at night, the museum was deserted. Lux had probably formed into cozy little study-groups, and doubtless Tenebris was out having a great time in Club Bathory.
I kinda hoped Càel found one of them and sucked them dry. It’d serve them right.
I was so lost in my own thoughts, contemplating the nature of Will and Sura’s dealer, working through the new and frightening complication of possibly being one of the Morrígna, that I didn’t hear their footsteps until hands were on me.
As always, they worked as a team.
My only thought before I jumped into action and elbowed Lydia’s throat was that I was glad I hadn’t bought the Belphegorian ichor. It would’ve sucked to have spent so much on it only to have the chain ripped off my neck.
Apolline, Lydia, and Beatrice worked in relative silence. Only the odd grunt as a knee or fist met flesh broke the quiet scuffle between us, but the three-to-one odds weren’t in my favor.
I ended up dangling in Lydia’s chokehold, feeling my face turn plum as Apolline let out a breathless laugh. Her pupils were dilated, and gold dust sparkled at the corners of her mouth. “Take her to Will’s room,” she instructed, and the trio dragged me down the hall.
Part of me hoped my stepbrother was in there to put a stop to this, but no dice. As soon as Lydia’s
grip on my neck loosened, I tried to thrash away, but they’d come prepared for their next shitty little joke.
Beatrice looped a braid of rough rope around my wrists, tying it to the bedposts. Lydia took my ankles as Apolline sat perched on my stomach. “Is this about Will?” I asked. Well, it was more of a wheeze, since my lungs had been thoroughly pummeled. “You can have him. Seriously. He’s all yours, bitches.”
Lydia tied the rope off so hard I hissed. My foot was already falling asleep.
“No.” Apolline ran a finger over the corner of her mouth, catching the gold pixie dust, and sucked the tip. “I just don’t like you.” She gave me a radiant smile, teeth glittering with dust.
Lydia was silent, but her sneer told me everything. It was definitely about Will for her.
“He’s not going to like you any better for this,” I told her, but she pulled a gold tube out of her pocket and held it up. It took me a second to place the innocuous object: it was a tube of lipstick.
“This is your whole genius plan?” Despite Apolline’s dead weight on my stomach, I choked out laughter. “Hogtie me in Will’s bed and paint me up? Let me guess, you’re probably going to take a picture and send that around too, right? Is there a single original brain cell between the three of you?”
Apolline was sucking her pinky finger now, staring into the distance with glazed eyes. “Does originality matter as long as it hurts?”
She slid off my stomach and I took a deep breath, filling my lungs at the exact moment Beatrice yanked my shirt open and sawed through my bra with her knife, leaving my breasts completely exposed.
Okay, so they were a lot more vicious than I thought.
Then the tip of the blade dimpled the swell of one breast, stinging as it threatened to break flesh. “I don’t think Dolorum’s ever had to heal a sliced-off tit, has she, Lydia?” The mousy girl shook her head at Beatrice’s question, her lips twisting in a quick, vicious smile.
They wouldn’t dare. “If you cut me, I will do so much more than see you expelled.” My voice came out in a whisper, made breathless with the sudden surety that Beatrice was in fact fucking nuts enough to do it.
Beatrice pressed harder, running her tongue over her teeth in anticipation, and a bright red bead welled up on the blade.
It was her funeral.
“We’re not slicing off tits,” Apolline said. “What the hell, Bea? Just do what we agreed to. One more stunt like last time and she’s out.”
Beatrice grimaced, but the blade- thank fucking Christ- left my skin. “You’re just desperate to go lick up more dust,” she said, giving Apolline a glare. Will’s bitchy ex didn’t bother to deny it.
Then Lydia stepped in with the lipstick, twisting the tube to reveal the stick of bright scarlet.
She wrote across my breasts, then rubbed the remainder of the stick all over my face, mashing the powdery-smelling wax between my lips and into my teeth.
Apolline raised her phone, took a picture, and laughed. “Let’s get to Bathory before the pixies are all danced out.” Beatrice waggled her knife at me in farewell and yanked the door shut behind them.
I jerked against the ropes, my wrists screaming as the rough hemp tore at my skin, but they held fast. Then I looked down, reading what Lydia had written on me. “Brotherfucker?” Oh, hell no.
But as much as I wanted to fuck Lydia up, expulsion or not, I remained firmly where I’d been planted despite my escape efforts. In said stepbrother’s bed, my ankles and wrists stinging, and full of seething hate. They were in for so much more pain than I’d planned.
It was gonna be a bloodbath when I got out of this.
7
Tori
I only had to wait an hour for rescue. Unfortunately, said rescue came at the hands of my nemesis.
I jerked when I heard the key rattling in the lock, hope bursting into life in my chest… followed by a spike of black rage. If it wasn’t for Will, they wouldn’t have found the balls to do this.
He stepped into the room and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me, closing the door like an afterthought. “Tori?”
“Who does it look like? Obviously it’s me,” I snapped, my cheeks flaming as crimson as the lipstick coating my face. His gaze dropped downwards, taking in my bare breasts and the insult written across them.
“Who did this to you?” Will crossed the room in only two long strides, his fingers fumbling at the buttons of my shirt.
There was nothing that I wanted to feel less than his skin touching mine. “Leave it, Godalming. Don’t touch me. It was your three harpies, who the hell else? Just untie me.”
Will’s eyes became that pale crystal shade they always turned when he was contemplating doing very bad things. He left my buttons alone, but pulled the leather jacket together and zipped it, covering me again.
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to move to my ankles and wrists, but instead, he sat down next to me. “What are you doing?” I tried to jiggle my hands, waving my fingers in the air as much as I could, but they were so numb they barely moved. “See this? Untie it.”
“No.” Will’s tongue darted out, running across his lower lip. “Not until you hear me out.”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. “No. You can release me, or I’ll report all of you to Headmaster Burns.”
He gave a tiny shake of his head. “We both know you’re not going to Burns, Tori. You want to do this yourself.” I let my wriggling fingers curl in on themselves. There was adamant steel under the softness of his tone. “It’s one of the many things I admire about you.”
“Strange,” I said, refusing to look away from him. “A month ago, I might’ve believed you. Now I think the only thing you admire is how gullible I was. I made it so easy for all of you.”
Will’s gaze wandered over my face, drinking up every feature with a look I might’ve called hunger if I didn’t know him for the snake he was. “I wish there was a word to explain this,” he began. “Sorry doesn’t cover it. Not even close.”
I shook my head mutely, rage bubbling through my veins. He was really going to make me lay here, tied to his bed with lipstick smeared all over my face, while he flapped his gums with useless apologies?
“I could’ve made it easier on you. I could’ve done what Father asked and told everyone you were a Godalming, whether you claimed it or not. But I hated you so much I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”
My breath caught in my throat. It was the first time Will had ever openly admitted that he hated me. Obviously, he hated me. His actions on Samhain said as much, but I liked a plain-talking villain.
“I’ve already told you why, and honestly, I don’t expect you to care. Michèle was my mother. My burden to deal with. It was Father’s sudden switch that made your presence so hard to swallow.” A tiny, bitter smile crossed his face and he snapped his fingers. “Like that. One day it was screaming about how I should just go kill myself and join her, and having knives thrown at me across the dinner table. The next day it was asking me what I thought a new sister would like in her bedroom. Her training room. Would you want the pool updated? How the fuck was I to know? I’d never met you, and when I did, you made it clear you didn’t want to know me, either. All I knew was that Father changed into a different man overnight when he met Constance Holmwood.”
I watched him speak, the ropes around my wrists forgotten. His dark lashes fluttered downwards, and his thumb ran over my side like he wasn’t aware of what he was doing.
“Some people might say it was for the better. Maybe I should’ve gotten down on my knees and thanked you for your presence. He went from a monster to a man all because of you and Constance. But that’s where you don’t see the trap, Tori. The same way Mother didn’t see it, and I didn’t see it until it was too late.” He leaned forward, the bed shifting under our combined weight, and began gently scrubbing lipstick off my face with his sleeve.
“What trap, Will?” My words came out muzzy against his hand as he worked, his brow creased
in a frown. Against my better judgment, I was burning with curiosity. If I was honest with myself, I couldn’t stand anything about Percival. The guy gave me the creeps, but he was the quickest way to stabbing Will in the heart.
“You think he’s the best way to hurt me.” Will wiped my cheek, turning my head with gentle fingers. “And you’re right. He’s all I have left, even if I hate him. But you don’t see the person he is on the inside. He’s using you just as much as you’re using him, Tori, maybe even worse. I don’t think he married your mother because he loves her. She’s everything he wanted in a wife- submissive, quiet, timid- but the thing is, she came with a beautiful, powerful daughter. And every time you call him Dad to twist the knife in my heart, he’s going to get closer to you, because he can’t help himself. He’s a taker. He hurts the things he wants, but he doesn’t care as long as they belong to him.”
The metal credit card in my wallet flashed into my mind. Percival had showered me with gifts, regardless of how uncomfortable they made me: money, credit cards, a beautiful bedroom, a diamond necklace he’d fastened around my neck himself. I’d left it in my jewelry box in Godalming Manor.
Nausea churned in my stomach. “If you think telling me about your messed-up family absolves you, you’re wrong.”
He released my face and started working on my wrists, gently sawing through the ropes with his knife. Maybe it was a testament to how much I was drawn to Will despite my hatred for him, or how desperately I wanted to know more about the man who had my mother in his thrall, but once I was released I didn’t spring to my feet and run.
I shifted, dropping my numb legs over the side of the bed and rubbing sensation back into my wrists. Will just sat next to me, his hands slumped in his lap.
“I don’t expect it to. I just want you to know that I know your plan. You’re going to take the only family I have left entirely. But the more you impress Father, the more dangerous a position you’ll find yourself in.” He glanced at me from under his eyelashes. “He will go out of his way to charm you with everything you could want, so you don’t see his fingers closing around your throat.”