Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6

by V M Black

  “Filing clerk,” she said. “But really, that’s half scanning. They’ve got a stuffed file room, and they’re trying to digitize everything.”

  That seemed like a possibility. “Think you could score me an interview?”

  “Sure thing,” she said. “Pay’s good for the work. Like twelve dollars an hour.”

  “Is that regular pay or niece pay?” I joked.

  She stuck her tongue out at me. “Niece pay is fifteen an hour.”

  “So, who’s footing the bill for the clothes?” I asked.

  She grinned. “Daddy, of course. He gave me a five hundred dollar cash card—for incidentals, he said. I still had enough from my job last summer to cover my books, so it’s time for a shopping spree.”

  “Three hours from now, you’re going to regret agreeing to this,” I predicted, looking up at Geoff. He’d let go of Lisette, but his arm was still around my waist. It felt right. It felt good.

  But not as good as Dorian, part of my brain thought. I shut it out.

  “I doubt it,” he said, smiling down at me.

  I ducked my head to hide the blush I felt creeping up my cheeks. “We’ll see.”

  Lisette chattered on, pretending to be oblivious as we were dragged along in her wake.

  “Let’s start here,” she announced. She led us through the wide opening in the Macy’s mall storefront and headed straight for the business clothes. I helped her pick out a few likely-looking blouses, and she pawed through racks of nearly-identical skirts, making gleeful noises at some and turning up her nose in contempt at others.

  “You can probably wear pants, you know,” I pointed out. “It’s not the nineteen-fifties.”

  “Then who will look at my legs?” Lisette demanded.

  “Are you trying to snag yourself a full partner, Lisette Bonner?” I demanded.

  Lisette had curves, and she knew how to dress them. Even when she didn’t seek out male attention, she never seemed to lack it. She rode the edge of the top end of the misses section, and she freely admitted that the lack of fashion choices in the plus sizes was the single greatest contributing factor to her plateauing weight.

  “Nah,” she said. “They’re all too old. Maybe a junior partner. I’ll have law school homework next year, and neither one of you two are going to be there to help me out.”

  “You don’t need any help,” I said. “I’m like your security blanket. You study just fine on your own.”

  “Don’t spoil her fun,” Geoff said.

  Once Lisette had grabbed so much clothing that the hangers covered one arm from elbow to wrist, she said, “You guys might as well wait out in the mall. This is going to take a while.”

  I lifted an eyebrow because I’d never known Lisette to miss a chance to haul me into the dressing room to confirm her strong—and excellent—opinions about each piece of clothing she was considering.

  She just looked back with an expression of innocence that I did not buy for a single moment.

  “Sure, Lisette,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find us.”

  “What else are cell phones for?” she asked, heading toward the dressing room.

  I shook my head at her back.

  “Well?” Geoff prompted.

  “Let’s find somewhere to sit, then,” I said.

  Geoff offered his hand. I took it. His palm was warm and rough from his lacrosse calluses. How different his grasp was from Dorian’s cool, smoother one. I knew who Geoff was in a way that I could never know Dorian, and when he smiled, I felt only the flush of his attention and not any of the conflicted, fearful thoughts that the vampire stirred in my heart.

  We headed out into the main part of the mall again, where a thousand conversations echoed against the hard floor and high walls, swallowing us comfortably in the din and bustle.

  “I’ve got to hit up Auntie Anne’s,” I said. “I skipped lunch.”

  Geoff frowned. “That’s not smart.”

  I knew what he meant. I was still too thin. “It wasn’t planned, believe me. Something just came up.” Yeah, Cosimo the vampire had come up in a luxury car and whisked me away to a supernatural dive bar.

  We checked the nearest map kiosk and started off, still hand in hand through the crush of shoppers. Santa was gone from his wonderland, but Christmas scenes still cluttered the main walkways and wreaths and garlands festooned the walls.

  “I got an acceptance yesterday,” I said suddenly, without planning to.

  Geoff’s expression got very still, his hand tightening fractionally around mine. “Where to?”

  “University of Chicago,” I said.

  His broad face split into a grin. “Your top pick.”

  “Close to yours, too,” I prompted.

  “Yeah. Chicago, Berkley, and Harvard. And I just got my rejection from Harvard.”

  “So you’re in at two,” I said.

  “Yep. It’s going to be either Chicago or Berkley,” he agreed.

  “When do you decide?”

  “Deadline’s in May, after the fellowships and assistantship offers go out.”

  “Plenty of time, then.” Plenty of time to find out exactly how serious we were going to be.

  “Plenty,” he agreed.

  We reached the back of the line at Auntie Anne’s. I got three sesame pretzels and a Coke, pulling my hand reluctantly out of Geoff’s to take my food. I wolfed down the food as we headed back toward Macy’s. Geoff waved me over to an empty bench close to the store.

  “So, you really are recovering,” Geoff said as I shoved the last wax paper wrapper back into the bag. “You already look a ton better.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded with pretend outrage, setting my drink at my feet.

  Playing along, he held up his free hand as if to ward me off. “Hey, hey! You know what I meant.”

  I laughed. Geoff was always good at making me laugh.

  “Anyhow, it’s good,” Geoff said.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  There must have been some unintentional sarcasm in my response because Geoff frowned at me and caught my free hand in his. “I really mean it, Cora. I’m glad you’re getting better—more glad than I can say. More glad than I probably have any right to be.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, struck by the peculiarity of his phrasing.

  “You’ve been a good friend. A really good friend for three years now. But I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I want you to be more than that. And to be honest, I already consider you to be more than that.”

  His eyes were unusually serious, their puppy dog liquidity as charming as it ever had been. I dropped my gaze to our entwined hands. His skin was golden against mine, golden, warm, and entirely human. I turned my wrist slightly so I couldn’t see the bond-mark on it.

  I had a choice. I had chosen life. Now I could choose which life it was that I wanted.

  “I feel the same,” I said.

  He treated me to a boyish smile. “Good. ’Cause I just kinda put myself out there just now. And it would have been pretty awkward if we’d had to sit here for the next half hour while Lisette was pretending not to be giving us time apart if you’d shot me down.”

  “Our goodbye didn’t convince you of that?” I returned.

  He laughed, a bright sound. Geoff was, I thought, exactly what he appeared. Simple, direct, uncomplicated. As smart as hell, of course, for all his casual approachability. But he was day to Dorian’s night, a world away from angst and moral complexities.

  “Well, I did sort of initiate that,” he said. “Maybe you were just being polite.”

  “Polite?” I demanded. I punched him in the arm with my free hand. “Polite stops with me long before your tongue is in my mouth.”

  His laughter stopped abruptly, and he gave me a look that I knew too well.

  “Here?” I said. But my breath was already coming a bit fast.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Maybe because we’re in a mall,” I sa
id. “With thousands of after-Christmas shoppers all around.”

  “You aren’t ashamed of me, are you?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m just not that into PDA.”

  “Just a peck, then,” he said virtuously. “On the cheek.”

  “All right,” I agreed, smiling despite myself.

  He bent forward. I felt his breath on my cheek. I couldn’t help it. I turned into the kiss, catching his mouth full-on. His lips were hot against mine and tasted like mint toothpaste. My heart sped up, my belly growing pleasantly warm and my head light by the time we broke off.

  It wasn’t like Dorian’s kiss. Nothing at all. It wasn’t deep enough to lose myself inside. But it was still sweet, sweet and true.

  In Dorian’s world, I never knew what was true and what was delusion.

  He smiled at me, and I smiled back ruefully.

  “Cheek, huh?” he said.

  “It’s close enough, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Regrets?” he asked.

  If he only knew....

  I shook my head. “Not about this.”

  “So,” he said, “about the whole ‘next semester’ thing. Mind if we get a bit of a jump on that?”

  “I think we just did,” I said.

  “Want to go out, I mean? We could go to the National Harbor for New Year’s Eve.”

  I felt a pang of guilt. “Sorry. I already promised a friend I’d go to a party with him.”

  “Him?” The pronoun did not go unnoticed. “Anyone I know?”

  “No,” I said evasively. “Just somebody I know from the clinic.”

  “How about tonight, then?” he asked lightly, utterly secure in his knowledge of my attraction to him. Secure in his trust of me. “Better get a jump on that him. Dinner and a movie?”

  “Sounds good. Let’s see what there is.”

  I freed my hand to use my cell phone, flipping through the movie listings.

  “I don’t do chick flicks,” I warned him. “So if you want to see the newest Jennifer Lopez whatever, you’ll have to take Lisette.”

  “What if they were showing The Princess Bride?” he challenged.

  “The Princess Bride is not a chick flick,” I said frostily. “It’s a classic. And if you don’t know that, then we definitely shouldn’t be going out at all.”

  He chuckled and snagged the phone out of my hands. “Okay, what do you want to see? Explosions and chases? Or superheroes?”

  “Don’t superheroes come with explosions and chases?” I countered. “If I have to pick...eh, let’s skip the comic book one. Sarah will probably want to drag us all to watch it later. She’s kind of crazy about those.”

  “All right, then. Arundel Mills, eight p.m. showing, and I’ll pick you up at six-thirty?” he asked.

  “Ooo, like a real date,” I said.

  “It is a real date.” He made a face at me. “It’d better be, or I’m downgrading you to McDonald’s and a matinee.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, it’s a real date.”

  Lisette came into view with a garment bag over her arm. “One hundred fifty dollars down! One hundred to go,” she announced as she drew near. Her eyes burned with curiosity, but she pretended that she was thinking of nothing but her clothes.

  “Saving a bit for the school year, are you?” I said.

  “Well, everyone needs pizza money, right?” She grinned. “You two ready to go?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Geoff stood up, and I grabbed my phone back and pushed to my feet.

  “Nordstrom’s next.” Lisette gave me a broad wink and strode off, leaving us to follow as we would.

  Geoff extended his hand again, and I took it, glad for its warmth.

  Chapter Three

  “That was good,” I said four hours later, zipping my jacket up to my chin as I shivered.

  We stood outside The Cheesecake Factory, a short walk from the Arundel Mills theater. I’d expected some level of awkwardness at dinner—it was only our second attempt at something resembling a real date, after all. But everything had been easy and natural, the way it always was with Geoff.

  The way it never was with Dorian.

  I pushed that thought out of my head.

  Geoff playfully tugged my hood up over my head. “We can wait inside the mall until it’s time to go inside the theater.”

  “Nah. Let’s walk,” I said. “It’s quieter out here.”

  I took his offered hand.

  “Your hands are always so cold,” he observed.

  “Maybe yours are just warm,” I countered.

  He shoved our clasped hands into his coat pocket. “There,” he said. “Now they’ll both be warm.”

  I put my free hand into my other pocket. Together, we ambled across the parking lot toward the theater entrance. There were a couple of small, dirty piles of snow where the snowplow had pushed them, melting slowly on the islands of grass, but the rest of the parking lot was bare and dry.

  Reflexively, I scanned the windswept expanse. I didn’t know what I was looking for—another assassin, Cosimo, or maybe Dorian himself. But there was no one in sight except a mother pushing a stroller one-handed as she held tight to a toddler with her other hand.

  Everything was perfectly, completely normal.

  “So, your windsurfing story,” I said, picking up the thread of conversation that had been dropped when we’d wrestled with our coats outside the restaurant.

  He grinned at me. “Okay, so Dale and I were out a few hundred yards from shore when we hit this patch of jellyfish. You’ve seen a jelly or two washed up on the shore before—but nothing like this. I mean, they were everywhere, and you could feel it when the finbox hit them. You have to remember that these boards were like twenty or thirty years old—something Dale’s dad had gotten as a teenager that lived in their garage. They were cheap to begin with, cheap and battered, way worse than any of the stuff you find at the rental places at the beach. But they were free.”

  “Sounds like a start to a really great day,” I said. It felt so good, walking side-by-side with Geoff, our shoulders rubbing as we stepped. I clung onto the sensation, writing it into my brain with the fervency of someone who was afraid of losing it all.

  “No kidding. So here we were, plowing through this raft of jellies, Dale wearing nothing but board shorts. Our boards shook a little every time we sliced through one. And all that shaking loosened Dale’s mast from its base, and as it flew off, so did he.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “Oh, yes. I’d been wondering if those were stinging jellyfish. I found out about half a second after Dale hit the water. He started screaming and thrashing, struggling to get his board back together. I wasn’t as good at windsurfing as he was, so it took me a while to circle back to him, and by the time I got there, he had his mast back in its base and was back on the board after a waterstart, still cursing.”

  “Crap,” I said.

  “When I got close enough, I could hear what he was saying. ‘They stung me in the mouth! The freaking mouth!’”

  I groaned.

  “Anyhow, we went straight back to shore, and after a visit to the hospital, Dale spent the rest of the weekend watching TV and slathering on the medicated cream he got. And I never went out again without a long-sleeved rashguard.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. “Wasn’t much of a Memorial Day weekend, was it?”

  “Well, it was memorable,” Geoff said, waggling his eyebrows to let me know the pun was deliberate.

  I jostled him deliberately with my shoulder, and we kept walking.

  “So, this friend of yours, the guy from the clinic,” Geoff began. “What does he look like?”

  My chest tightened, and I felt suddenly colder.

  “Why?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light. “Jealous?”

  “I was just asking because I wondered if he was the same guy I met while I was waiting for you to come downstairs tonight.”

  I fought down a wave of panic.
Clarissa could have told Dorian, and if he knew about Geoff, he’d never let me go. He couldn’t afford to, could he? He’d come and he’d get me and I wouldn’t come out of his mausoleum of a house again until I was truly and utterly his.

  And how far away was that point now, really?

  “Tallish,” I said around the strangling tightness in my throat. “Black hair. Blue eyes.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I guess it’s not him, then.”

  Not him. Not Dorian, come to stop me.

  My hand had tightened around Geoff’s, and I forced it to relax. “Why do you think he had anything to do with me?”

  “Because he came up to my car and knocked on my window. When I rolled it down, he said, ‘Waiting for Cora?’ That kind of gave me the hint.”

  Not Dorian—but who, then?

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said, ‘Maybe.’ Kind of a dumb answer, but I was so surprised, I didn’t really know what to say.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “‘You’ll be good for her.’ Just like that. Then, ‘See that you treat her right.’ And then he was gone.”

  Not someone Geoff knew, so almost certainly from Dorian’s world—and only one other agnatic man had been lurking about, one who would be happy that I’d have a human date.

  I asked, “Was he a little shorter than you? Light brown hair, sunglasses, brown leather blazer, a D&G t-shirt?”

  “Yeah, that was him,” Geoff said. “Well, I don’t really know how tall he was because I was sitting in the car, but that seemed to be him.”

  “That’s Cosimo,” I said. “Not my friend. But I met him at the clinic, too.”

  “Is there something I should know about him?” Geoff looked grave. “Like, is he stalking you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He showed up today on campus, wanting to talk to me. He’s overly interested in my love life, but I think mainly it isn’t that he wants to date me but that he doesn’t want my—my friend to,” I finished a bit lamely. I had almost called Dorian my agnate. That would have required a bit of explanation that I wasn’t ready to give.

  “But he isn’t,” Geoff said. “Dating you, I mean.”

  I closed my eyes for a second, and all the sensations washed over me, Dorian holding me, kissing me, his mouth and hands all over me....