“Why?”
“He and Em have had sex since she became a vampire. He’s Marked. That should change a few things.”
“Really? But he wouldn’t be bound to her, because he wasn’t a virgin.”
“No, but even then, he should be more focused on her than he is.”
I pointed to my neck. “Is mine there yet, my Mark?”
David leaned over as I rolled onto my back, and gently swept my hair to one side. “Your hair is getting so long now.”
“I know. Do you think I should cut it?”
“God, no. Don’t do that. It’s beautiful.” He smiled warmly, his gaze wandering slowly from my face to my neck, his fingertip running the curve of my shoulder. But his eyes narrowed, lips pursing. “Hm.”
“What’s hm?” I frowned at his frown.
“Maybe it’s too soon.”
“What do you mean?” I cupped my neck and jumped out of bed.
“Ara. Don’t. Please?” He reached for me, but I jerked away and ran for the mirror.
“What!” I gasped, leaning closer, checking both sides.
“Maybe it’s too early. Maybe it’ll show up tomorrow,” David said. “I’ve never Marked someone before, so I just don’t know what to expect.”
I backed away from the mirror, tears welling in my eyes as I forced my mind to see images of Mike—to test it—images I shouldn’t be able to see with a spirit bind in place. David took my virginity. I should be bound to him. “David,” I said, covering my mouth when my voice came out broken. “The bind didn’t work.”
He slid his arms along my bare waist, his soft lips touching my shoulder. “I’m sure it will, my love. It’s probably just not what you expected.”
“No.” I shook my head and, just to test it again, let my heart feel the burn of love for Mike—to really wallow in the desire to be in his arms as well.
David grew taller as he stumbled backward to the foot of the bed. “The only way that’s possible is if—”
“If what, David?’
“If you weren’t a virgin.”
“David! We’ve been through this.”
He rubbed his chin. “Are you sure that when my brother kidnapped you, he didn’t—”
“Yes!” I cringed. “I’m sure he didn’t. Besides, there’s no Mark there.” I pulled my hair away. “See? If he’d raped me I’d be Marked.”
“I know.” He rubbed his head. “And that wouldn’t explain how deeply you feel for Mike, either. Are you sure he’s not a vampire?”
I laughed.
“But then, if that were the case and Mike had bound you to him, you would be incapable of loving me.” He scratched his chin, taking a breath. “You do still love me, don’t you?”
I walked slowly to where he leaned naked against the foot of the bed, and placed both hands on his chest. “I just gave myself to you, and you ask if I love you?”
His lips curved before the smile showed in his eyes. “I guess that was a silly question.”
I pressed my naked body against his, feeling the silky warmth of him all the way down my ribs, my stomach, and knees. “Maybe I didn’t Mark because I died when Jason bit me. Maybe I’m not human anymore,” I said playfully. “I might be an apparition.”
David squeezed my hips with both hands. “Well, you’re a fantastic apparition then.”
“And I’m all yours.”
“Good. Then no more talk,” he said, and flopped backward, taking me down too and wrapping me up in his arms as I fell on top of him. “Make love to me now, apparition.”
20
The sun warmed the heart of my room where I lay beside the love of my life, but when I reached across to touch him, only cold sheets greeted my hand. I sat up, panicked.
“In here,” he called, his voice echoing from my bathroom.
I flopped back down as a wave of relief washed over me, coming to rest beside a rise of giggles when the memory of last night hit. My sheets were ruined again, something I was used to now, and the sticky dried blood that pulled softly on the fine hairs of my neck didn’t seem to gross me out as much as before. I held my shimmering diamond up to the glow of the winter morning and marveled at the pink tone it took above my bloodied fingertip. A blood diamond.
David popped his head around the corner, his face a mess with white cream. “Morning, beautiful fiancé.”
My smile spread from ear to ear, the dried blood around my lips cracking. “Morning.”
“You having a shower?”
I nodded, forcing myself to my feet. “I’m not sure I’ve been left with a choice.”
David popped his razor between his teeth and plucked the towel from his shoulder, holding it out like a gown.
“Thanks,” I said, falling into his embrace, wrapped up safely in the towel.
“Sleep well?”
“Better than ever before.”
“Good.” He rubbed my back and kissed my brow, then wiped a blob of shaving cream off my hair. “Now, take a shower, get clean, and then I wanna make you breakfast.”
Mmm, David’s breakfast. “Okay.” I reached into the shower and turned on the faucet, stepping in once the water blended with plumes of steam. “So, how is it a vampire who doesn’t need food can be such a good cook?”
He tapped his razor on the sink, then wiped his face dry as he turned around, the glass screen leaving me nothing to hide behind. “My taste buds are very sensitive.”
“Oh. Guess that helps.”
“It does,” he said, suddenly beside me in the shower, his towel gone, his naked body against mine.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting the shampoo fall in thick soap mounds down the center of my back. “I had fun last night.”
“Then we shall have to do it again sometime,” he said.
“Sometime? How ’bout now?”
“How ’bout I go get the coffee pot on?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but as usual, he was already gone. So I finished up, towel-dried my hair and threw some clothes on, stopping by my bedroom door for a second. He was making an awful lot of racket in the kitchen for this hour of the morning.
“It’s not David,” Emily said.
My head whipped up to the vampire sitting on the arm of the couch in the lounge room, hidden by the early morning shadows. “Who is then?”
“Mike.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s cooking.”
“Sounds more like he’s playing the Pots’n’Pans.” I laughed.
“Well, he’s not. He’s just mad.”
“Mad? Why?”
She folded her arms and looked past the entryway. “You know why as well as I do.”
“Is it—” And then I realized. “He’s mad because I had sex last night?”
“More like because you did it before you got married, and—”
“There is no and.” I folded my arms and stormed past Emily. “Mike! What’s the deal?”
He slammed a pot into the sink, aiming his finger to something behind me. “Shut up, David. It’s not funny.”
David laughed louder. I hadn’t even seen him there. “You can’t control her, Mike. She’s a grown woman now.”
“Yes. I saw that.” Mike rested his palms on the edge of the counter, his shoulders sinking.
“Mike, you can’t be mad because I slept with David.”
“You were supposed to wait, Ara.” He turned to me. “I can’t believe you did that, and worse, you let him bite you. After you promised me—”
“Hey!” I stepped forward. “I promised I wouldn’t let Eric bite me, not David.”
Mike turned away and started filling the pot with water.
“Don’t do that.” I grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Don’t deflect. If you’ve got a problem, say it.” I flicked the faucet off.
Reasonable Mike appeared in the eyes of the angry man before me, but as he opened his mouth, David burst out laughing again, appearing on the opposite side of the room when Mike shot h
im a death glare.
“Don’t hide behind me,” Em said, shifting away from David. “I am not getting in the middle of this.”
But David grabbed her shoulders and ducked behind her anyway, pretending Mike and all his human strength was something to be afraid of.
“David, stop laughing at him,” I ordered. “Can we get a moment here please, guys?”
Em and David evaporated.
“Why is David finding this so funny?” I looked at Mike.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because, when he asked me the other day how I’d feel when you guys made things final, I told him I’d be fine.”
“You’re not fine?”
“No. Ara. I’m not.” He walked closer and looked down at me. “I’m really not. All this is just too sudden for me. I’d prepared myself to spend the rest of my life with you. Now, we’re talking eternity, and I don’t even get to be with you. I…”
“Mike?” My voice glided slowly from my lips, my fingertips massaging my temples.
“It’s okay, Ara, really. It’s not like I want you to break up with him, and it’s not like I wanna leave Emily. I just wasn’t prepared to see you—” He wiped a hand down his mouth, pinching his bottom lip.
“I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“I just—David should’ve been more careful. He could’ve killed you last night.”
“Only if he drained me.”
“He bit you, Ara! How can you not see this?”
“Because obviously his bite has no effect on me!” Like other things. I rubbed my palm across my neck where my Mark should’ve been.
Mike studied me carefully. “Are you a vampire?”
“What?”
“Answer me. Are you a vampire?”
“No. God, Mike, you know that. You know I—”
“Do I? I can’t hear your heart. For all I know, when that demon bit you last year, he—”
“Nothing happened. Look!” I grabbed his hand and placed it to my breast; he tensed but stayed there. “See? Heartbeat.”
“Okay. Fine. So you’re human.” He stuffed that hand in his pocket. “So what’s the deal then? David told me you didn’t Mark; that you’re not bound to him—”
“We don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you die last night when he bit you?”
I shrugged. “If I have the gene, there’s no reason for the venom to poison me.”
“It poisoned you last time,” he stated.
“Maybe I built up immunity to it?” I suggested, hands out.
“Yeah, but if you did have the gene, why haven’t you changed?”
“Because you can’t just bite someone to change them. You know that.”
“That’s all Jason did to Emily.” Mike pointed to her room.
“Are you sure? He locked you out. Are you sure he didn’t do something else?”
Mike went to speak but stopped. “I don’t know.”
“Look, David and I will figure this out, okay. When we go to Paris, we’ll talk to his friend—see what she knows.”
“Good. Because something isn’t right, Ara. Ever since vampires came back into your life, you’ve changed.”
“How so?”
“You’re more emotional, you—”
“I was depressed—”
“No, this isn’t depression, Ara. This goes way beyond,” he said with a nervous laugh. “You’re erratic, melodramatic, prone to extreme sadness and then alternating bouts of explicit joy. And then there’s the lake—what we did there. Ara.” He leaned a little closer, his voice singing with reason. “That was out of character for both of us. You know I would never do something like that, and I know you never would—”
“I know.”
“So what’s wrong with us other than the fact that we’ve both been exposed to blood?” he asked. “Because when I came in the room after your little argument with David a few weeks ago—over him going out to kill—I…”
“What?”
“I thought you got past that. You guys had been through that before, so I couldn’t understand why you were suddenly so emotional about it.”
“It was mainly because he’d been drinking my blood,” I admitted. “I just thought that it was all he needed now. Assumed. And he didn’t tell me otherwise. He never said I couldn’t be enough, so how could I have known—”
“Were you jealous?”
“Jealous?” I repeated the word to avoid having to think about it because, in truth, I was. Like letting your partner go off to have sex with a stranger, this hugely intimate exchange required a lot of trust in that person to be okay with them getting it somewhere else. But I could see Mike understood that on a personal level. “Do you get jealous when Em goes to feed?”
He tucked his hands under his arms, also not willing to admit it.
“Look, it wasn’t like I explicitly restricted him from going out to kill,” I added, thinking back to that night. “I just… I didn’t think it was necessary, and it came as shock that it is, that’s all.”
“But you were so cut over it—”
“I know.” I hugged myself. “I guess I do react more emotionally now to things than I did in the past—”
“And you don’t think that’s suspicious? Like there’s something going on?”
“Probably. Okay, yes. I do.” I threw my hands up. “But like I said, there’s no way we can find anything out until we go to Paris, so—”
“Fine.” He raised both hands. “I’ll stay out of it. Just… in the meantime, promise me you won’t let him bite you.”
“Mike. Stop it. You can’t protect me all the time. I’m going to get hurt, I’m going to get bitten, and bite. It’s a part of it. If you want to be my friend, you just have to accept that.”
“I do accept it, Ara.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.” He softened. “I just got scared, is all.”
“Aw.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek to his chest, listening to the strange sound of his heart thudding under his breath. He still smelled like home, like Mike—familiar and constant. Despite his broken heart, I knew he’d always be here, always side with me, always want me, and I knew the smell of him would always make me feel safe and loved. Even my attempt to bind myself to David hadn’t changed that.
“Ha!” He looked down at me. “It’s funny. You’re still just as short as you’ve always been. You really weren’t gifted with height, were you?”
“Among other things.” I cleared my throat, taking a step back from him. “So, on another note… I think you need to talk to Emily.”
“Why?”
“Because she may be supportive of your old feelings for me, but she’s still human. Okay, well, not human, but she still feels things like a human. You being mad about this—about David and me—it’s hurt her. I can tell.”
“I know.” Mike took to a lean against the counter. “I just don’t really know what to say.”
“Yes, you do.” I took another step back. “Mike, you’re good with words. Just tell her the truth—from the heart.”
“I’m not sure I know what the truth is.”
“Sure you do. And, really, there’s only one truth that matters to her, you know—it’s all she wants.”
“What?”
“For you to love her back.”
“I do—” He combed his hand through his hair. “I do love her.”
“Then tell her. You haven’t even said it yet, have you?”
“No.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know.” But his tone said otherwise.
“I think you do know.”
“Maybe.” The corner of his lip quirked upward. “It’s silly, now I think about it.”
“What is?”
“I loved you for so many years, Ara. And it took everything in me to work up the guts to tell you.” He stood fro
m his lean, turning to face the sink. “And when I finally did, everything changed until, eventually, I lost you.”
I swallowed the lump of guilt in my throat. “Then tell her that. Tell her you love her but you’re afraid she’s going to leave you, like I did.”
“I can’t tell her that.”
“Why not? Nothing beats the truth.”
“You’re right.” He seemed to blow all his anger out in one breath, folding his arms and looking at me with a great amount of consideration, his eyes getting smaller. “I hate it that you slept with him.”
“I belong to him, Mike. I’m his to love.”
“You belong to you.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean, and you know it.” I leaned on the counter. “I’m David’s fiancé. It’s only right for us to make love.”
“Love, huh? So that’s what you’re calling it.” He turned away and opened the fridge, then stopped. “I’m sorry, Ara. I didn’t mean that.”
“Then you shouldn’t have said it.” I bit the inside of my lip to stop from crying, feeling this friendship slowly shape into something else: something I wasn’t sure I could handle anymore.
“I know,” he said, closing his eyes, and before he had a chance to add another hateful remark, I stormed from the room, hearing only a sigh as I reached the front door.
* * *
The morning burst through the clouds above, a single beam pouring down onto the tree at the far side of the field. In the daylight, this dream looked different: the wide, golden plains of knee-high grass seemed to whisper tales untold, and in the distance a lighthouse sat proudly marking the edge of a cliff I couldn’t see. I folded my arms across my body and walked into the wind, my long hair whipping out behind me. Somewhere nearby, soft giggles lilted among the warmth of day, growing louder with each step I took.
“Hello?” I called ahead, but the two under the tree didn’t even look up. They lay on their bellies, face to face, twisting grass and wild flowers into a chain between them. I stopped under the shade of the leafy boughs, staring right down at them. The girl in the yellow dress kicked her legs back and forth lazily, her dark brown hair falling over her back, wisps dancing on the breeze, while the boy focused on his task, his head down so I couldn’t see his face.
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