Five thin lines marred his skin, all gone silver. More proof he was a young vampire. An older one would have healed the damage by now. Unless whatever toxin made Linus’s healing complicated also held the power to affect the undead. Anything that potent would explain why his wounds hadn’t wanted to close.
“We have more,” Barb said. “Photos, I mean. That’s the last of the video.”
“I can sort through them,” Linus said from the doorway. “Grier, it’s your turn.”
The vampires watched us like we were a nature special on the mating habits of necromancers.
“We got filthy earlier.” I made a confession. “We were down in the basement.”
“We figured.” Benny chuckled. “We didn’t want to say anything, but the smell…”
All that lovely shadow-cat feces. “Don’t show him all the good stuff while I’m gone.”
Getting to my feet, I turned to face Linus, and every train of thought in my brain station derailed.
He had come downstairs wearing a crisp white shirt undone with no undershirt to be found. His fingers moved over the buttons, but no progress appeared to be made. The result was I got an eyeful of tattooed skin damp from the shower.
I was not amused.
Crossing to my husband, I narrowed my eyes to slits. “This was cruel.”
He knew how much I loved his body, what an eyeful of the gorgeous ink curving over the planes of his chest and abs did to me.
Leaning down, he brushed my ear with his lips. “This was payback.”
“I’m a terrible influence on you.”
“Yes,” he agreed, his teeth catching my earlobe. “You are.”
The Linus who first kissed me would have died from embarrassment before pulling shenanigans of this magnitude in front of an audience. Scratch that. The thought never would have entered his head. I would have done the instigating, and he would have flushed every Pantone shade of red. Years of PDA exposure therapy had worked wonders on him.
Though, seeing as how I was in desperate need of my own cold shower, I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
Working to keep my glower on, I sashayed past him into the hall. I made it halfway up the stairs before a goofy smile overtook me. I could get used to this. Being teased by Linus was almost as much fun as teasing him.
About to step onto the landing, I startled when a black smudge coalesced on the runner in front of me.
“Hi there.” I kept my tone light. “Are you the little guy who likes to scratch people?”
The creature blinked yellow eyes then charged at full speed.
The twerp was trying to knock me down the stairs. “Not today.”
Just before its paws hit my chest, I stepped down and over, giving it room to sail past.
Too bad a second one had been waiting behind me.
I stepped on it, yelped when it swatted my calf, then stepped up on instinct to escape. That might have worked if a third hadn’t come to roost on the topmost step. It waited until all my weight balanced on the leg its shadowy friend was busy slicing and dicing then hit me square in the chest.
Arms windmilling, I couldn’t regain my footing. There were too many of them, darting under my feet and throwing their weight against me in vicious pounces that left bloody pinpricks where they landed.
I couldn’t help my scream as I fell, and I yanked on my bond with Cletus on instinct. He might not be corporeal enough to catch me, but he could slow me down, maybe keep me from breaking my neck. That would be nice. I would hate to go out on such a lame note. The obituary would be humiliating. After all I had survived, I would roll over in my grave if the Society papers reported this as my exit strategy.
Grier Woolworth, Potentate of Savannah, tripped over a shadow cat on the stairs and fell to her death.
As my life flashed before my eyes, I tumbled through a pocket of cold air with bony fingers that clawed at my shirt, my pants, my hair.
Cletus.
But I had built up too much momentum. He couldn’t catch me. He didn’t have that kind of strength.
Stick a fork in me, I was done.
A wall of cold muscle hit me from behind, and the air whooshed from my lungs. Tendrils of night spilled over my shoulder, and when I tipped my head back, I brushed the edge of Linus’s tattered cowl with the top of my head.
“Hi,” I gasped. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Not one of my wittier one-liners, but Linus didn’t smile. Neither did Cletus, who somehow ended up clutching my ankles.
“This was a bad idea.” Linus hugged me close. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“Oh, come on.” I wriggled out of Cletus’s grasp and got my feet back under me. “You can’t call it quits after one itsy-bitsy attempted murder.”
“This makes two.”
“Ah.” I lifted a finger. “But from two different sources.”
Hrm. Yeah. In hindsight, I hadn’t helped the situation by reminding him of that. This was supposed to be a low-key haunting, but someone had cranked the dial as high as it would go.
“I wanted to indulge your interest in haunted history,” he said, “not allow you to become a part of it.”
“Oh dear.” Barb rushed up the stairs to help, but Linus growled at her from the depths of his cloak. “Are you all right?”
“I’m good.” I stood under my own steam, which didn’t impress Linus much. “Those shadow cats are tiny bastards.”
“That’s what did this?” She slapped a hand over her heart. “Oh, dear. They’re escalating then.”
The vampires had the inside track on this haunting, so I took their word for it.
“Question.” I leaned against the railing. “Has anyone or anything else ever attacked you here?”
“Goodness, no.” She tugged on her necklace. “Just the cats.” She eased closer. “What about you?”
With the library in smoky ruin and the wannabe arsonist at large, I didn’t feel great about admitting our B&E had precipitated an explosion or that someone—possibly them—wanted us dead.
“No,” I lied. “Just curious if there are any other surprises in store.”
Barb’s expression smoothed, but a stubborn line between her brows hinted she might not believe me. That suited me fine. It’s not like I bought the yarn she was spinning either. Not all of it. There were too many frayed ends for me to pick at to trust their aw-shucks routine.
“I’m going to help Grier to our room,” Linus clipped out in a firm tone. “We would prefer to remain undisturbed the rest of the evening.”
“We’re happy to trade if you decide you’d rather have ground-floor accommodations.”
Aching from the knees down, I shot her a thumbs-up, but Linus didn’t so much as blink in her direction.
Wisps of cold air licked my skin as he scooped me up into a bridal carry. Cletus circled us the whole climb, but the shadow cats had scattered after attacking me.
Linus didn’t set me down until we entered our room, and he shut the door behind us, Cletus on guard detail in the hall.
“Can you stand?” He set me on my feet. “Did you hurt anything?”
“Ouch.” I twisted my leg with effort to show him my calf. “They got me pretty good.”
The blue in his eyes had long since darkened until black pools stared back at me. “Grier…”
“I’m not chickening out yet.” I touched his cheek, his skin like ice. “Things are just starting to get good.”
“Near-death experiences aren’t what I would call good.” He went for the button on my jeans, his fingers raising chills, but he kept his movements clinical. “We need to treat your wounds.”
I helped as best I could, but the jeans were ruined, torn to ribbons and saturated with so much blood that it wouldn’t be worth scrubbing out the stains. I almost told him to toss them, but I could turn them into cutoffs. Maybe. And bleach them.
Gah.
The curse of being cheap—I mean, frugal.
“How do you want me?” I eye
d the bed, but I was still gross. “Do we have another comforter?”
“No.” He did the same math as me, paused to draw a sigil on the doorframe, then entered the bathroom and started the hot water for a shower. “Do you think you can stand long enough to get clean?”
A tub would have been more welcome, but I didn’t want to soak in shadow cat-poop stew.
“I’ll make it happen.” I limped to him. “I don’t want to risk contamination on top of the toxin.”
A sigil could seal the wounds, sure, but that didn’t mean it purged them. Magic acted weird on me on a good day. Already I was experiencing pain where Linus hadn’t felt a thing. Better safe than sorry when mixing magic with a goddess-touched necromancer had become our golden rule.
Linus, ever the gentleman, stripped down to his boxers and stepped into the shower with me.
“You could have taken those off.” I was all too happy to slump against him. “We are married now.”
“You’re hurt, and I’m not allowing distractions.”
Hooking his arm around my waist, he held me upright to keep pressure off my calves while I washed my hair and upper body. Then came the fun part. I wasn’t sure how I would manage until he scooped me up—again—and sat me on the floor of the stall. He knelt in front of me, water tugging his hair into his eyes, and began to slowly clean and examine every mark.
“You’re staring,” he murmured, his fingers light and careful.
“I can do that.” I tapped the ring on his finger. “You’re all mine.” I flicked bubbles at him. “Mine, mine, mine.”
“You sound like Lethe when she sings her donut song.” Scraping the dark auburn curtain away from his face, he smiled at me with so much love and surprise and hope it physically hurt. “Am I your donut?”
“Don’t put ideas in my head.” I pouted. “You’ve already said no funny business.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not much.”
“Enough.”
“I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”
Linus shook his head. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Nah.” I touched his cool cheek. “I like you too much.”
“Come on.” He lifted me, carried me out, and bundled me in towels until I was the envy of every well-dressed mummy. He forgot to turn off the water, which made me smile. He had grown used to Woolly helping us out too. “Don’t move.”
“I wouldn’t…” I wet my lips when he dropped his soggy underwear. “Oh.”
“I mean it.” He wrapped the last towel around his hips. “I’m going to get my kit.”
“You never let me have any fun,” I pouted when Linus returned fully dressed. “You could have at least played doctor with me naked.”
“I’m not that strong.” His grip tightened on the knot. “Resisting you is hard enough as it is.”
“You say the sweetest things.” I cuddled against him, drenching his shirt. “You make it sound like you could Hulk out and ravage me at any moment.”
When Linus turned his gaze on me and his eyes were black from corner to corner, I couldn’t help my smile. You might say that unraveling his self-control had become a hobby of mine, one I practiced often.
“I’ll behave.” I crossed a finger over my heart. “Promise.”
His gaze dipped, black tendrils unfurling around him, and he growled low in his throat.
“Sorry,” I whispered, folding my hands primly in my lap. “I really will behave.”
Linus sat me at the foot of the bed then helped me turn onto my stomach and stretch out my legs.
“I’m going to try closing these with a healing sigil,” he murmured, his voice rough. “We’ll go from there.”
The magic took the sting out of the wounds, but it didn’t accomplish much else. I hadn’t expected it to, given how Linus had reacted, but it was worth a shot.
Testing his patch job, I gave an experimental flex that set my leg on fire. “Want me to give it a try?”
He raked a calculating glance the length of my thigh. “Can you reach?”
“Good question.”
I would have offered to give him my blood and let him do it, but goddess-touched magic worked only for goddess-touched necromancers, as far as I could tell. That didn’t make it any safer for my blood to fall into enemy hands. There was always someone clever, ambitious, or desperate enough to figure out a workaround for most anything.
With effort, I got myself sitting on the foot of the mattress, back where we started. “Knife?”
Linus passed me my pocketknife and hovered as if unsure how best to help.
The combination of our stress must have summoned Cletus, who arrived with a downcast head and linked hands. He looked…guilty. Even his moan of inquiry came out higher and tighter than usual.
The sight of my blood on the bedspread wasn’t doing Linus’s blood pressure any favors, so I let the wraith off the hook for the moment and focused on how best to position myself with minimal ouchiness. In the end, there was no way to avoid more pain as I crossed one leg, bracing that ankle over my knee.
The quick bite of my blade drew blood, and I used it as ink to draw on the healing sigil that had worked on Linus. Magic filled my hands, and I sank it into the furrows, leaving my skin glowing and my pores sparkling.
“Your palm.” Linus caught it in his. “You’re still bleeding.”
“The sigil didn’t work on my calves, either.” I uncrossed my legs. “Ow.”
“Lie down.” He rifled through his kit. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
“Goody.” Used to the drill, I spread out again. “I wonder what’s up with my hand.”
“The toxin might have an anticoagulant in it. It could be stopping your blood from clotting.”
“Ugh.” I held out my hand to him since it was making the bigger mess, and he cleaned it, smeared his own antibacterial concoction on it, then bandaged it up tight. “The claw marks didn’t bleed this much.”
“You cut hard when you’re healing.” He pressed his lips to the bandage, kissing my boo-boo. “The scratches aren’t as deep.”
“They feel like it,” I grumbled. “They sting like you’re pouring peroxide on them.”
“I am pouring peroxide on them.”
“Oh.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Well that explains it then.” His soft huff of laughter told me we were over the hump. “You want to watch a movie and make out when you’re done?”
“Yes and no.” He gave me a stern glance that held too much heat and amusement to sting. “You’re going to rest and heal. We can make out tomorrow, if you’re a good girl.”
“Sex has really changed you.” I sighed dramatically. “I remember the days when you were innocent…”
Heat crept up his throat. “You have only yourself to blame.”
“True.” I had trouble containing my smile. “I will gladly take the credit for corrupting you.”
The wraith touched my shoulder, moaned unintelligible words, and left us alone.
“He’s acting weird.” I drummed my fingers on the mattress. “Do you think he’s okay?”
“Cletus is a singularity, so it’s hard to say.” He finished cleaning and medicating my calves then wrapped them with bandages. “Most likely, he’s worried about you or still upset about your fall.”
“Hmm.”
When Linus finished, he helped me turn over and propped me against the headboard. “Are you hungry?”
“Use your best judgment.”
“That’s a yes.”
“Yes, that is a yes.”
“Do you need anything else from the kitchen?” He made zero progress toward the door. “I’m going to lock you in from the hall while I’m gone so you don’t have to get up again.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a bottle of water.” I flexed my toes, which didn’t help with the itching under my bandages. At all. “My throat feels like I swallowed all the dust in the basement.”
He left,
eventually, but he didn’t look happy about it.
Since I had time on my hands, I checked my email. I had a message from Bishop but decided to wait on Linus to read it. With that decision made, I dialed up my bestie to see what trouble she had been getting into without me. “Hiya.”
“Hi yourself.” A tick, tick, tick filled the background. “Your honeymoon was a total bust, huh? Must be if you’re calling me twenty-four hours in instead of making sweet, sweet love to your hubby.”
“There was an accident,” I confessed. “Sweet, sweet love has been put on hold.”
“What kind of accident?” A growl entered her voice. “Do I have to eat someone?”
The temptation to make a cat and dog joke was there, but I managed to swallow it with minimal choking. “How much do you know about our honeymoon plans?”
“Everything.” She scoffed. “Do you really think we’d let you out of our sight otherwise?”
“I haven’t been kidnapped in years, and no one hardly ever tries to murder me anymore.”
“Until tonight.”
“Okay, fine. Until tonight.”
And the night before, but who was counting?
A masculine voice murmured what sounded like directions, and brakes squealed in my ear. “Are you and Hood going somewhere?”
“You could say that.” She hissed at him to be quiet. “Don’t worry about us.”
Call me crazy, but I didn’t like the tone of this call. “How’s Keet?”
“He’s been watching an anime series about a dragon egg or a dragon prince with our little diva.” The ticking noise resumed then switched off. “He tried to incubate the boiled egg from her breakfast, so we gave him an Easter egg from last year, one of the tiny decorative ones. He’s been sitting on it ever since.”
“As long as he’s happy?” I exhaled. “Let’s cross our fingers they run out of episodes before he realizes his egg will never hatch. Switch to The Lion King if he starts getting depressed about it. Nothing cheers him up like making farting warthog noises.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tires screeched, and Hood swore, but Lethe’s breath didn’t so much as catch. “I know the drill.”
The call ended without another word, and I pulled back to look at my phone. Almost immediately, it rang, and I answered, “Hello again.”
How to Survive an Undead Honeymoon (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 8) Page 6