I'm no wizard with such things, but I knew enough to know that Reikah would never need more than a little to look amazing. Her skin was fantastic, and her eyes were already dark-lashed. All we did was add a little shadow to the lids and gloss to the lips.
For myself, who had no clue where I was going, I wore my nicest pair of jeans and a turtleneck in the same not-quite-blue and not-quite-green color as my eyes. I went a little heavier on the make-up, but I needed to cover up the circles beneath my eyes from lack of sleep.
God, I really wanted to sleep.
With a quick sweep of my brush through my hair, I decided that I was ready enough when the door knocked. It was too early for it to be Zane.
"Will you answer it?" Reikah asked, pulling out a few pins for her hair.
"Sure."
I wandered to the living room, a ghost cat in my wake, and opened the door for Jenny. She looked nervous, beautiful as always, but nervous. She peeked over my shoulder as I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame.
"So," I said, raising my brow, "when were you going to tell me you were going on a date?"
She looked sheepish. "It's not a date, not really."
"Funny, because I just spent forty minutes helping her get ready. I don't do that when friends, or bicker buddies really, are just going to hang out."
"I thought she might want to see the Christmas Pageant."
I nodded. "I heard. So, this is just fun, then? Should I go tell her to change out of the vintage dress?"
"Don't you dare." Jenny charged up one step until the two of us were eye-to-eye. "Shoot, am I making some kind of mistake?"
I shook my head. "No, but talk with her before things go too far. Lots of talking."
She grinned. "What's a relationship without some kind of communication?"
I was going to have to accept that. Reikah chose that moment to come out of the room. I knew Reikah had come out because Jenny's eyes went wide and she seemed to completely forget that I existed. I was a little offended; then, I turned and realized that I couldn't blame the girl. Reikah looked amazing.
"H-hi there," Jenny, who always knew what to say and brimmed with confidence, stuttered.
"Are you ready?" Reikah asked.
"Oh, yes."
I got a series of goodbyes before they piled into Jenny's car and headed off into the evening. I wished them all the best. Maybe if they worked out, the rest of us stood some kind of chance.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and a shape began to form in front of me.
"Wow, that was prompt -- oh." I cut off abruptly when I realized the vampire forming in front of me was not Zane; it was Wei.
He was wearing what I referred to as his workout clothes, better thought of as a martial arts uniform, but not the terry cloth ones they had in modern shops, but older and more...I don't know...real. I looked him over; in each hand, he held a short staff.
"Lorena?" he asked.
"Yeah, what are you doing here?"
"I thought...we would continue your lessons."
I blinked. Right up until our random make-out sessions, Wei had been teaching me martial arts. I had never thought of myself as the kind of person who wanted to learn Kung Fu, but Wei was an excellent teacher, and it made me feel kinda powerful to learn how to move my body in a fight. Not that I had any expectations of getting into a hand-to-hand battle, but you never really knew.
"Tonight?" I asked.
His eyes traveled over my outfit. It wasn't a flashy getup, but it wasn't my normal jeans and a gamer shirt either.
"You have plans."
"She does."
Oh, this was good, I thought to myself as Zane appeared a few feet behind Wei. I nearly laughed. We were dressed similarly. Both of us wore slacks and a turtleneck, but he had added a vest to his. Wei's face went completely blank.
"I see."
I should have bit my tongue. I even told myself I didn't need to say anything. But my mouth had its own ideas. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means nothing. I am glad to see that you are taking my advice." His lip curled ever so slightly before returning to that perfect empty mask.
"Advice?" I spat the word back at him. I wasn't sure why I was so angry. No, I wasn't angry. I was pissed. I knew he was mad. Oh, he could hide it with his face all he wanted, but I was a necromancer, and I could feel his thoughts swimming against my skin. He wasn't okay. He was upset. What right did he have to be upset? "Is that what you call flat out telling me that I should take Zane as my prophecy partner?"
Zane stayed quiet, folding his hands neatly behind his back as he watched us. He might have been a tall dark statue. Wei's fingers tightened hard enough on the staff to make the wood creak.
"What would you call it?" he demanded.
I fumbled. I knew words. I was okay with them. I read a lot, but I couldn't think of a single term for what he had done, I just knew that I was mad about it. "I'd call it the weirdest ultimatum ever. Have this guy or nothing; that's pretty much what you did."
"It is your best choice."
"It's not my choice if you are the one making it."
His eyes flamed, but his face remained utterly impassive. I was so mad about that. Tears, for reasons I couldn't explain, were popping into my eyes, and the only thing keeping them back was the knowledge that I would ruin my half an hour’s worth of make-up.
He bowed. "It was wrong of me to arrive without announcement." His shape began to lose form.
I shot my hand out and grasped at that magic that made him the undead. My own particular power surged through me and coiled around him, locking him in place. "Oh, no you don't. You aren't pulling that disappearing crap on me again. You've done that to me twice already, dammit. You are going to stay here, and you are going to listen to me.
You love me. I know it. I don't understand it, but I know it. I can feel it every time you look at me, but you won’t let yourself have it because you are so afraid of losing it. Well, I got news for you buster; fear is a part of love. You are always afraid that you might not be good enough, that you might screw it up, that you might lose them, but for the love of crap, that's just the way it is. You want me...say so."
He gave me a look that was half heartache and half anger. Those tears I'd been holding back ran down my cheeks and ruined the perfect wings of my liner. Damn.
"You don't love me."
I wasn't entirely sure about that. "You haven't given me the chance."
I dropped him as suddenly as my magic had scooped him up. "You are so afraid you won’t even give me that. You know what? No. I'm done with this. I'm done with you. You kiss me, you touch me, you light my whole body on fire and then you leave me because I make you afraid. I could forgive you the first time, maybe even the second time, but this? Now...no. Yes. I choose Zane. I choose him, and you can go home and tell the others."
Wei opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. He bowed once to me, and began to vanish. I was almost sure I saw a tear run down his face as he left.
I crumpled to the ground and started to cry.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Zane and I wound up sitting on the couch while I just let it all out. I know it's pretty declassee or whatever to talk to guy B about guy A, but I couldn't help it right that moment. I was so upset. How dare he. How dare he just show up here unannounced and get that cold face thing going. I wasn't down for that.
Crap, I wished he had stayed. I wished, just a little, he had fought to stay.
Zane, surprisingly, wasn't upset.
"Go ahead," he said, "cry it all out."
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I laid my head on the firm line of his chest and stretched my legs out. "This is not how I thought tonight was going to go."
"It's okay. There are other nights. Just let it all out."
So I did. I told him everything. Heck, I went all the way back to the very first moment that I had walked through the front door of my grandmother's house all the way up unt
il this most recent sob session. I don't know why I did. All I really needed to tell him was that Wei was a jerk and I wasn't sleeping well. I think the only thing I left out was the unknown sender texts. They weren't all that important anyway.
"When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep?"
I laughed, and laughing through my tears caused me to hiccup. "I don't even know."
"Alright, new plan; we are staying in tonight."
He patted my hip and got up, going to my fridge to see what was there. The next thing I knew, he was pushing a glass of orange juice into my hands. I love orange juice. It's the elixir of life. I took a sip and felt a little better.
"You need a plan," he said evenly.
I nodded. "That's true."
"But you need a good meal and a good night’s sleep first."
"You think?"
"I know."
He pushed some things around my fridge. "When was the last time you went grocery shopping?"
"What's a couple weeks short of never?" I asked, taking another sip.
"Okay, finish your juice. Then, we are going shopping."
I raised my brow at him. "We got dressed up all cute so that we could go shopping?"
"You think I'm cute?"
I rolled my eyes. "You know you are cute."
"Do I?"
I sighed and took another long sip of my drink. "You aren't like Alan, who wears his attractiveness on his velvet sleeves for all to see, but no man wears a turtleneck and a silk vest on a first date unless he is very sure of everything beneath those clothes."
He laughed and shook his head. "It's a second date, but you aren't wrong. I know what I look like, what women think of me. But more than that, I want you to have a full fridge."
"Why?"
He hesitated. "Perhaps you forgot, but you just stated that you had picked me. Your health, all of it, means something to me."
I had, hadn't I? I waited to feel something about that. I should, right? I should feel nervous or relieved, or maybe a mesh of the two. I didn't. The only feeling that I felt was exhaustion.
"Oh."
He raised his brow, crossing his arms over his chest. "Oh? That's what you have to say? Oh?"
I ran a hand over my face. "I'm a terrible human being, but yes. That's all I've got right this moment. I don't think it's all sunk in yet."
"Did you mean it?" he asked.
My mouth clapped closed, and I thought about it. Had I meant it? Well, I had certainly meant it in the heat of the moment, when all I could think was that I was done with whatever was happening between Wei and myself. That I was done with the other guys and all of their melodrama. My only option was Zane, and he wasn't a bad option.
He was attractive, of course; all of the Sons of Vlad were. He seemed kind-hearted enough. And I liked the honesty that he had shown me so far.
"Yes," I said after a moment, "I did."
He set aside the few measly remnants of food that he had found in the fridge and reached over to me, taking my hands in his. He brought them up to his lips, kissing one set of knuckles and then the other.
"You will not regret this choice."
I hoped not. I was still of the mindset that making a child, no matter how the parents felt about each other, created a bond. In some people, that bond wasn't all that great, but in some, it could be the beginning of something good.
Oh god, I thought to myself, did he mean that I wouldn't regret it right away? Maybe he did. Oh boy. I was so not ready for that right this moment.
His grin was sudden and bright. "I'm not going to throw you over my shoulder and take you to the bedroom, Lorena." He gave my hands a gentle squeeze. "We can take this as slow as you need to."
I blushed hard enough to make my head feel a little light. "I wasn't thinking that. Okay," I amended, "I wasn't thinking that exactly. Actually, I was thinking about how you used your vampire mojo on me."
He dropped one hand and took my chin gently between two cool fingers, lifting until my gaze met his. His eyes were so golden. I'd always thought of them as hawk’s eyes, but now that I was looking, they were more like pieces of polished amber, with all the brightness of those precious stones. There was such depth there, such warmth and strength too.
"I will never make you do something you do not wish to do. I will only use that power on you to keep you from harm, as long as you, little necromancer, promise the same."
No, I said to myself, he was not a bad option at all.
I nodded, cleared my throat, and took a step back. The moment had too much heft to it, and what I didn't need more of right this moment was another reason to feel like the weight of the world was existing solely on my shoulders.
"Okay, I can promise you that." I answered, shoving my hands in the barely existent pockets of my slacks. "So, you said something about the grocery store?"
He nodded. "You need to take care of yourself, Lorena. You need to eat well, sleep well, and relax. Yes," he said, holding up a single hand when I opened my mouth to argue, "I know that your work and your studies matter to you, but that does not mean that you can ignore the basics of caring for yourself. I will step in if your actions cause you harm."
There was something about the way he phrased those words that left a sour taste in my mouth, but I was too tired to really analyze why.
"Okay."
We, and by “we” I mean I, pulled on some cold weather jackets. There wasn't any snow on the ground yet, but the sky was the particular shade of gray that promised it. The ground was frozen beneath my boots. If it did snow, it would stick.
We climbed into my car and drove the half a dozen miles to the grocery store in silence. Sometimes, silence was a bad thing, a heavy, sour silence that said that people were mad or uncomfortable. Then there was the lighter silence of comfort. This silence was somewhere in between. I wanted to talk to him, ask him questions, but I didn't know what to ask.
So, being me, I decided to go for broke and ask the most awkward thing I could ask. "How did my sister get you to the compound since she isn't a necromancer?"
He didn't blush. I don't think that vampires could blush. But there was a tightening to his cheeks that told me that he was embarrassed by the question.
"I don't mean to pry, but it's been hanging on my mind for a while."
He swallowed. "I...we..."
I hadn't known Zane for very long, but hearing him stumble over his words had me glancing over at him.
"Zane?"
"She offered me a taste of her blood."
I blinked. "Really?"
He ran his hands across his knees. "Every vampire has a weakness to a certain kind of blood. Something that tastes a little better to us. I do not know what it is for the others, but for me...for me, mages have the sweetest flavor."
"Oh," I said, swallowing. "She used her neck as bait."
He was quiet enough that I knew there was more to the story that he wasn't telling me.
"Spill it," I said, navigating into a space in the parking lot. "What happened?"
"Lorena, I-"
I shook my head. "Listen, I just promised that you and I are going to end up making a life together; I think that's a fairly big deal. The least that you can offer in return is honesty."
He sighed. "I had tasted from her several times. We had been..."
A thought hit me. A really terrible thought. One of those thoughts that, once it happened, did not just disappear. "Oh...Oh, Zane. Say it isn't so."
"We had been intimate. I thought, perhaps, that we were lovers."
"You slept with my sister?"
It bothered me. I knew it shouldn't. He hadn't known me when he'd been nibbling on her. There was no logic in me mentally flinching away because of it. Yet there I was, trying really hard not to imagine Zane sinking his fangs into Connie's freckled shoulder.
"You asked for honesty."
I turned the key in the ignition, and for a minute, we sat in my car in complete silence.
"Did you...care
about her?" I asked.
He hesitated for a moment. "I did."
Ugh. Why did I have to ask for honesty? Honesty sucked. It was full of hard truths and harder facts. I didn't like it. Give me a pretty lie any day. Wonder Woman would be really disappointed with me.
I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to the top of the steering wheel. "Ugh."
House Of Vampires 2 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 10