Sebastian Holter thought he owned me. He thought he could just take permanent guardianship of me for life. The excuses that Mr. Roberts sputtered were total bullshit. There was no doubt in my mind that Sebastian pushed that ownership through, and he left it on the evidence video because he wanted me to know it.
"Try to hit me, January, if you think you're up to it."
"Not while you're holding a tablet," I huffed as I continued to punch. Even in the state I was in, I wasn't about to destroy an expensive piece of equipment just for a moment of grim relief.
He threw the tablet to the side and opened his arms.
I looked fully at the guy. In the week I'd known him, Sebastian had resembled Justin and Mitch less and less. His features were too sharp and angular. Even the cleft chin he shared with his brother and cousin was deeper, like a notch had been cleaved out of his chin. Objectively, he was probably the most handsome, but something was lurking in his eyes that made him so very ugly.
I balled up my fist and aimed underhand for his stomach. I expected him to block me, but he didn't. My fist landed right in the middle of his abs. My shoulder jolted at the unexpected contact, and I glanced up to see Sebastian clenching his jaw and glaring down, but otherwise showing no reaction. I reared back my fist and punched him again. Pain ripped through my bones as I hit his hard muscle, but the pain was satisfying, it meant that he was probably feeling it too.
"Maybe you're the sadist, January," he hissed down at me.
"Fuck you." I threw an uppercut, straight up, and my fist smashed into his chin. Bone smashed into bone, and a sickening crack reverberated through the room. Blood sprayed out of his lips, and the warm liquid splattered onto my arm and across the blue mats. He fell back into the bag and toppled to the floor while my hand seared with strikes of pain. I jumped back, cradling my hand.
Damn it.
I tried to move my fingers, but agony pulsed through the back of my hand. My eyes grew hot, and I sucked in a harsh breath, knowing what would happen any second now. "You're right. I'll take the blood."
Sebastian took a moment to climb back to his feet. He walked forward and stopped directly in front of me, watching me with blood dripping down his chin.
“I’ll take the blood,” I repeated when he just stood there.
Sebastian smiled, his teeth bloody. "What made you change your mind, January?"
"I want to be able to punch you harder," I gritted out.
"Not with that hand. It's broken."
I glanced down, only to see that my hand was already swelling. "It's fine," I lied as I dropped my hand to the side. Pain radiated up, and I clenched my teeth to stop from whimpering. "You were right about the blood. Let's do this."
"Plenty of blood right here if you want some." He pointed up to his chin.
"You're my legal guardian now. Don't you think that telling me to lick the blood off of your face crosses a pretty big line?" I winced. "Are you going to get me blood or what?"
"What's your hurry?" He reached for my broken hand, but I jumped away.
"Don't touch me, asshole."
"What's wrong with your hand, January?" He grinned again, showing me his bloody smile.
Panic surged through me as my fingers seared like they'd been lit on fire. The pain flared hotter and hotter, and then ceased. A thumping drumbeat rose in volume before me, louder and louder. The metallic tang of blood filled my senses. My teeth swelled into fangs, cutting into my gums. My own coppery blood spilled over my tongue, but it wasn't even close to satisfying.
My gaze fixed on a fresh source of blood as it dripped slowly off Sebastian Holter's chin. "Get me bagged blood," I managed to rasp. "Now."
"Drink from me, January," Sebastian said.
It would be so easy. I wouldn't feel guilty drinking from Sebastian. I could tear into his neck and drink my fill, and then shove him away from me. But that wasn't me. That would never be me. I would not let Sebastian turn me into that. "Never," I whispered, and I could barely hear my own voice over the rapid tempo of his heart. "Fuck you. I'll go find the blood bags myself."
I turned away from him. Air whizzed past me, and before I reached the other side of the room, Sebastian stood before me with three blood bags.
I bit into the first one. My eyes fixed on the floor as I punctured the plastic and drank in long pulls.
"Never try to hide your powers from me again," Sebastian whispered close to my ear.
I jumped back and glared. When I was finished with my blood bag, I pulled it away from me and said, "I’m not your pet dhampir, and I’m not doing the Senior Hunt—no fucking way. On Monday, I’m canceling my nomination. It was bullshit, anyway.”
His expression didn’t change. He simply swiped his tablet off the ground. He fiddled with it before Hope Springs Recovery Center was framed in the shot. My mother’s rehabilitation center was a squat, one-story structure that looked somewhere between a church and a jail. It was midday in the video, and a flash of something moved through the scene. Sebastian paused the video. When the image was still, it was clear to see that the thing zooming through the air was shaped like a body. A person was jumping from the ground onto the rehabilitation center roof. “Do you know how many attempts the vampires and their scions have made on your mother in the last two weeks?”
My hands immediately started to sweat. “Vampires are going after her?”
“You drew their attention. You put your mother in danger. There have been three attempts. We have a substantial presence on the ground.”
“I thought she’d be safe in there,” I whispered.
“She is for now. You are a priority investment of mine. Meaning I am prioritizing your mother’s and grandmother’s safety so you can remain in good condition for these tests. If you run away or are uncooperative, I will de-prioritize you as an investment.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered, but from his expression, he knew he had me. My mother was in court-ordered rehab. I couldn’t break her out of there. I couldn’t even access her outside of Saturday morning visiting hours.
“You put them in danger, January, not me,” Sebastian said, and his words were the final nails in my coffin. “I am the one keeping them safe.”
"At a price. You're forcing me to hunt a vampire. Why?" My words came out harsh, and I didn’t expect him to answer.
He took his time responding, first pouring his water bottle on a gym towel and mopping up his face. He swished water around in his mouth and swallowed with a sigh. "Because you’re weak. You are supposed to have more powers," he said as he set down his towel. "Speed, strength, agility, and an ability to sense the presence of vampires even when you can't see them. Your father is one of the strongest master vampires that we know about, and you are pathetic. It makes no sense." He handed me a third blood bag. "I think that hunting an actual vampire might spark your powers, and the Blackburn Senior Hunt is the safest, most contained vampire hunt possible."
His forthrightness stunned me. I had expected him to lie, but this really sounded like the awful truth. "I thought you wanted me to hide what I am."
"They’ll just think that you’re an Elite."
"Except ..." I dropped the last blood bag onto the ground. “The moment I get injured, everyone will know I'm definitely not an Elite."
"No, January, they won’t. Your powers are very similar to the Elites’, and the students aren’t going to see your fangs. You won’t let them."
Nothing ever went that smoothly.
I swiped a sweaty arm across my mouth. "How come you know about dhampir powers when other people don't?"
"Oh, I know a lot of things that others don't, January. Perks of being king, I suppose."
I scoffed at that, especially since he sounded serious when he referred to himself as a king. "So, can I go back to punching your face? Because that was the highlight of my week."
"Really?" His eyes sparked with an interest that made my stomach churn. "How about I make a deal with you?" He lifted his dark brows. "You can punch me a
s much as you want, but if you injure yourself and need blood, you have to drink from my neck."
I lifted a finger at him, my middle one. "Never going to happen. How about you tell me why you want me to drink from you so much? Because it's freaking me out."
He scooped up his tablet once more. "I would like to measure if there is any difference in your strength between when you have fresh blood or refrigerated blood."
He just did. I drank from Justin less than twenty-four hours ago, but I wasn't going to tell him that.
"My brother is waiting to pick you up and bring you to your mother's facility," Sebastian said as he held out a fresh towel and water bottle. His words hit me like a backhanded slap.
The biggest bully at Blackburn Academy was going to have access to my mom. He was going to see the most vulnerable part of me.
"Can someone else take me?" I asked as I took the water bottle.
"One Elite is worth ten soldiers, and all other Elites are either out of my control or looking for your boyfriend."
Sebastian’s words brought me no comfort.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mitch waited in the garage in an old muscle car. His vehicle looked like it jumped out of the movie Grease. Lightning bolts were even painted along each side, a shock of yellow on an otherwise black finish. I pulled open the passenger door and leaned down to look across red leather seats, and I reeled back.
Mitch’s face was a mess of dark bruises. He had sunglasses on, but puffy purple skin showed on all sides. Mitch’s lip was split, and he had an angry red welt on his chin.
Swallowing hard, I settled onto the seat beside him. Something crinkled under my butt, and I lifted up and felt around, finding there was a receipt there. Words were written on the inner fold.
This car is bugged. Don’t say anything about Justin.
“Reading my receipts, Dirtbag?” Mitch growled, actually sounding upset about it.
“Yep. Riveting.” I wadded the paper up in my hand and tossed it onto the floor. We drove out of the garage and into downtown in silence. I tried my best not to look over at Mitch's face, but it was hard as we were the only two people in the car.
"I gave Sebastian a bloody smile," I said as we took the on-ramp to the freeway. It was an educated guess that Sebastian was the one who beat the crap out of Mitch, but Mitch confirmed it when the corner of his lip twitched. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close.
"I got him a couple of times in the gut too,” I added, “But only because he didn't fight back."
"Obviously. If he did, you'd be dead." Mitch sighed. "My brother probably has a tally running too now."
"Maybe," I said on a sigh as I leaned back into the supple leather seats.
"Don't get comfortable," he said. "You stink, and I don't know if that'll ever come out of the seats."
For some reason, a laugh burst out of me at his words. Maybe it was because, for the first time ever, it didn't actually sound like he meant them. He sounded more like he was going through the motions of being an asshole. I needed that laugh, that moment of levity after spending the last twenty-four hours in a near-constant panic.
"Wouldn't it be the biggest joke ever if you and I ended up being friends?" I muttered to myself.
Even though he was wearing sunglasses, I could feel his attention fixing on me. Mitch bopped his hand on his radio knob, and Irish punk music filled the car. I glanced over at him as a very familiar voice bellowed out one of my favorite ballads. I sang along with the song quietly, finding the familiar words comforting. After that song finished, the next song began with the high note of a flute before the guitar and drums joined it. The song was in Gaelic, and I did my best to sing along. I didn't know what every word meant, but I'd looked up the lyrics in the library a while back and did my best to memorize them.
Mitch pressed the skip button on his radio.
"Rude." I rolled my eyes.
He turned onto an off-ramp. "I couldn't listen to you butcher the Irish language that way."
"You speak Irish?"
He uttered a long stream of words with lots of "sh" sounds. It sounded beautiful, but of course, he ruined it by saying, "It means that you should go to the bathroom and wash yourself."
"My choice was to stink or to take a shower in your brother's apartment. Which one would you choose?" I gave him a straight-lipped smile.
Mitch nodded, like maybe he was conceding my point.
We parked before my mother's treatment center, and I hopped out of his car and gently closed the door. "I'll be back in ..." I trailed off as he stepped out of his side of the car. "Please, stay in the car, Mitch."
He turned toward me fully, and with a softer voice than he'd ever used with me before, he said, "I can't do that."
My eyes heated and chest tightened. I pointed into his face. "You're going to treat her with respect or I'll ..."
Or I'd what? Give him a third black eye?
I just shook my head and headed into the rehab center.
My mother was still in her room when we headed in. I found her under the light of an open window. Paint coated her shirt from where she'd been wiping her brushes off on her belly. The long, languid tones of a violin played from a radio on her desk. The woodsy scent of turpentine mingled with the chalky smell of paint in the room. She leaned close to the canvas and used a thin brush to apply blue shadows under a nose that looked suspiciously like mine. My cheeks heated a bit as I took in the canvas, only to see that, yep, my mother was using me as a model, as she so often did. And in this painting, I was a mermaid with a long green tail that splashed over the surface of the water. The painting was half underwater with a rainbow of tropical fish and half above water with a prince crouched down on a rock, looking at the mermaid. The prince wore a doublet and hose, and his face was very familiar.
My cheeks heated even more as I looked up into a face that was so clearly Justin's.
"Hey, Mom," I said.
She jolted upright, hissed in a breath, and pulled her paintbrush away. "You know better than to startle me," she scolded as she leaned in to inspect the canvas. "Now you have a blue freckle on your nose." She shot a disapproving look over. In the month my mother had lived at Hope Springs, her cheeks had plumped, and her skin gained a healthier tone. Mom was only in her late thirties, but she looked about ten years older than that. Her once lustrous hair had thinned, and wrinkles creased her brow and gave her a permanent frown. Mom and Nana could be sisters at this point, looks-wise, and it would be a toss-up on which of them appeared the oldest. Mom’s gaze slid past me, and she stood straight. "Justin, what happened to you?"
"That's Justin's cousin, not Justin, mom."
Mitch moved, and I flinched, only to realize that he was offering his hand. "Mitchel."
My mom smiled and splayed out her paint-covered fingers. "Are you sure?" When he nodded, they shook hands. "I'm January's mother, but I guess you know that. Buy vitamin E cream for your face. It’s expensive …" she widened her eyes for emphasis. “But it’ll help you heal twice as quick.”
“I heal really fast, Mrs. Moore,” Mitch said with a nod.
"So, Mitch." I held out my hands. "I'm safe. We're just hanging out here."
"Well, I'd like to go get a bite to eat in the cafeteria." My mother put an arm around my shoulders, immediately dripping paint onto my arm. She didn't notice.
"You're welcome to join us, of course. I’ll just be a minute." She set to cleaning her brushes and scraping off her palette.
Damn it. I needed to talk to my mother alone.
"Can I take a photo of your painting?" Mitch asked as he nodded to the canvas.
Oh, hell no. Mitch wanted to snap a photo of me as the Little Mermaid and Justin as Prince Eric? The blackmail would be endless.
I spun and glared at the huge guy hulking in the doorway. "No," I mouthed the word. "Don't you dare."
"Sure, but it's not finished," my mother said as she wiped off her fingers with a towel. "No flash and keep back at least two feet, please
. That's wet paint."
"Don't," I mouthed at him, but of course, he ignored me.
Mitch stepped around my mother and snapped a photo with his phone before pocketing it.
Anger surged up in me, but I tamped it down. I only had two choices, pretend like Mitch was a nice guy in the hopes he'd act that way or treat Mitch like the asshole he was and definitely get him to act that way.
Before seeing the Blackburn Academy cafeteria, I'd thought my mother's state rehab cafeteria was nice. It had a hot bar, rich foods, and individual tables that were clean and comfortable. In true Mitch fashion, he'd piled macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, biscuits, and corn on the cob onto his tray. He finished it quickly and was eyeing mine as I attacked my fried chicken.
My mother was listing off her complaints about the facility, needing no response from either of us, and I realized there was no escaping Mitch.
"Mom, I've been thinking a lot about Dad," I said as soon as she paused in her tirade.
"Your father?" My mother turned and blinked in clear shock. Her mouth hung open, and even her pupils were wide. She shook her head. “He died when I was pregnant.”
She wasn’t lying, but she was far from telling me the truth—not that I wanted her to in present company.
“Did he have any family or connections in town?” I asked.
“What’s this about?” my mom asked. I could have been imagining it, but it seemed as if my mother’s hands were shaking. She pulled them under the table.
“History project.” The save came from a very unexpected source. Mitch nodded. “We’re all supposed to do a family tree.” Maybe in payment for his save, Mitch reached forward and grabbed my last piece of fried chicken, dipped it in my mashed potatoes and gravy, and took a big bite of it.
“Dude,” I grumbled as I picked chicken breading crumbs off my potatoes. “Next time spoon the potatoes on. I don’t like my food to mix.”
He responded by reaching forward, scooping a mass of potatoes and dumping it on top of the remainder of his chicken leg. “Better?”
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