Bled & Breakfast

by Michelle Rowen

“Don’t mention it.” She pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket and flashed me a grin. “Brought these up, too. They’re silver. Should hold him nicely, don’t you think?”

  “You’re brilliant.”

  Silver worked on a vampire like a magical metal. It burned our skin if we pressed against it. It was good for restraints. Not so good for jewelry. Trust me on that.

  It took me a minute to transport Owen onto the bed, and Rose restrained him with the cuffs so I wouldn’t have to touch them. Then I went to the kitchen to fetch a glass and a sharp knife, which I brought back up to the room.

  With only a moment’s hesitation, I held the glass under his arm and made a shallow cut in his skin. His blood flowed red into the glass.

  Master vampire blood. More valuable by the ounce than gold. For a fledgling to feed on a master made the fledgling stronger, more powerful. Masters were very careful about whom they shared blood with.

  In seconds, the wound healed before my eyes. Master vampires had many special skills. Rapid healing—much faster than that of a mere fledgling like me—was one of them.

  “Good luck with the spell, dear.” Rose pulled a wooden chair from the desk up next to the bed. “I’ll stay here and watch over our resident troublemaker. I have more garlic in my pocket if he causes any more problems.”

  “Thanks, Rose.” I gazed down at Thierry’s face for a moment and stroked the hair off his forehead. I exhaled shakily. “He doesn’t want me to see his past. That’s why he got so upset that he disappeared earlier.”

  “He’s ashamed?”

  “I don’t know. I guess. But he doesn’t have to be. When I chose to be with him, I wanted the whole package. I’ve told him this before, but I don’t think he listens.”

  “You really love him.”

  “More than anything.”

  She nodded, smiling wistfully. “I loved someone like that once. He was my past, present, and future. Hold on to that love with both hands, Sarah. There’s nothing more valuable.” Her gaze shifted away from me. “Is there, Thierry?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, and my heart leapt to see the ghostly Thierry standing at the doorway watching us.

  “Nothing more valuable,” he confirmed.

  “You’re back,” I said, breathless with relief.

  “I couldn’t let you do this time travel spell without me.” He glanced at the glass of blood I held. “I see you haven’t changed your mind.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  Thierry’s gaze brushed my throat and his eyes narrowed with anger. “He did this to you.”

  I touched the fang marks, flinching. “He has your thirst.”

  “I was afraid of that. It must be horrible for him, but if he tries to hurt you again, I will kill him—even if he’s still in my body.”

  I tried very hard to put that out of my mind as we left Rose and Owen in the Batberry Suite and went back downstairs. Quickly I snatched up Thierry’s phone and checked it for messages from his contact, but there was nothing.

  A thud of disappointment went through me.

  Heather waited for us at the table where she’d performed the séance. She took the blood from me with trembling hands. The grimoire was spread out before her to the page she needed to read from.

  “I’ve read this over several times,” she said; then her eyes went large. “Is that a bite mark on your neck?”

  I touched it and grimaced. “Maybe.”

  “Owen bit you?”

  “Well, it wasn’t your grandmother. Forget it. It doesn’t matter. What did you learn? Can you do the spell?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so.” She twisted her necklace, as if summoning strength from her mother, the more powerful witch. “It’s spirit travel, not physical. So that’s . . . I mean, I think that’s better.”

  I nodded as if I knew what she meant, then stopped. “Um, what?”

  “The spell, it . . . Well, I’m not really sure how to explain it.” She glanced down at the Latin.

  “Allow me,” Thierry said. His expression was grim. “This spell, with the help of my blood, will rip the spirit out of your body, Sarah, and cast it back through time, hoping that you’ll be returned to your body here in the present once all is said and done.”

  I blinked. “Gee, don’t try to sugarcoat it or anything.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “It is a risky spell,” he said firmly. “And I wish you’d reconsider.”

  Heather was now standing, staring down at the book, as if trying to absorb the knowledge through her eyeballs. “I’ll be very careful.”

  Thierry sent a glare in her direction. “If it feels wrong, then you must stop. Nothing is worth Sarah’s safety. Do you hear me? Nothing.” There was a dangerous edge to his voice now.

  Heather’s gaze showed a glimmer of fear as she looked at me.

  “It’ll be fine,” I assured her. It was a spell. It would work. I had to hold on to that thought and be positive enough for the three of us combined. Heather might not trust her own skills, but I’d seen enough to make me feel she had the right stuff to do this.

  “This blood,” Heather said, her voice stronger now, “I can feel how powerful it is. Exactly how old are you, Thierry?”

  He flicked a glance at her. “Old enough.”

  “The blood is the key to everything. Blood like yours . . . to help with powerful magic like this . . .” She frowned, as if disturbed by her own thoughts. “Many witches would kill for it.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Yes, they would.”

  How many witches had he come across over the years who were interested in him for his powerful blood? He didn’t like even a minor witch like Heather having a sample of it. His blood really was like gold.

  “Are you going to try to talk me out of doing this again?” I asked him.

  There was a challenge sent to me through his gray eyes, which faded only a little at the edges. “No. But please don’t make me regret this.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You better be.”

  I sat down next to Heather. Then she dipped her finger into the blood and traced a symbol on my palm before dragging the makeshift ink over my wrist and all the way up to the crook of my arm. I was glad I’d worn a T-shirt today.

  “Let’s begin,” she said solemnly.

  I nodded, pushing away any doubts that poked their heads up like an invisible game of Whac-A-Mole. I was driven by my search for the truth. If I could catch a glimpse of what might have happened to him to erase his memory all those years ago . . . and, better yet, if I could figure out where the amulet the Ring was after might be—or at least, where it was back then—then that might be enough ammo to keep them away from us.

  “Here it goes,” Heather announced nervously, just before she began to speak the spell out loud, Latin words I didn’t understand. Thierry stood to my right, his arms crossed tightly across his chest, his expression tense.

  “When exactly are we aiming for?” she asked.

  After hesitating, Thierry spoke, “The twenty-third of September, 1692. Dusk.”

  Heather nodded and began to write that date on my other arm with Thierry’s blood. Then she went back to reciting the spell. And I tried to ignore the blood on my arms, which had made my heart start to race.

  Vampires and blood—two things eternally entwined. Blood was life. It fed us, sustained us. Without it we would get a little less civilized, a little more monstrous. Blood to vampires was the beginning and the end of our existence.

  I felt the magic—a swirling sensation of energy, that prickly electricity that raised the hair on my arms—as the room became charged with it. It made my breath catch.

  When Heather finished reciting the spell, she watched me carefully. “Well?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Well what?”

  “Did it work?”

  I blinked. “Is this 1692?”

  “No.”

  “Then it didn’t wor
k.”

  The swirling energy had stopped. The room felt normal again.

  She frowned and looked down at the grimoire. “I did everything it said to do. I don’t know what happened. Is a page missing? I think a page is missing!”

  Or maybe Heather wasn’t the right witch for the job. Disappointment crashed over me. Another failure. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  A buzzing began to come from Thierry’s phone. My attention snapped to it; then I got up from the table and moved toward it to see the call display.

  “Thierry, it’s your contact!”

  Just as I was about to jab the answer button, the room suddenly began to swirl in front of my eyes as if I’d climbed aboard an amusement park ride.

  I grabbed hold of the back of the sofa. “Whoa.”

  “What’s wrong?” Thierry asked, while his phone continued to buzz.

  “The spell—” The phone slipped from my grasp and hit the floor. “I think it’s—”

  But before I could say anything else, the room before me disappeared completely.

  Chapter 11

  For a second, I thought I’d passed out right on Heather’s floor. After all, I’d spent a disturbing amount of time since first becoming a vampire being knocked unconscious, so I was kind of used to it.

  I didn’t think I was unconscious.

  Instead, I was doing an uncanny imitation of Dorothy when her house was picked up by a tornado. Only—there was no house. Only me, in the midst of that tornado, the world spinning and spinning all around me, blurs of color and light.

  But then it stopped.

  I braced myself with my hands on my thighs, then pushed my hair back from my face to glance around, stunned.

  Heather’s living room was gone. Instead, I was outside. It was dusk, the air clear and the moon already visible in the darkening sky. The scent of burning wood wafted past my nose.

  I heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and I jumped out of the way as a wooden cart rolled past on the muddy road.

  “Did it work?” I whispered. “Did the spell really work?”

  There was a cluster of houses nearby, and they certainly didn’t look modern. This definitely wasn’t the Salem I’d left. This was like something out of a movie. One with no electricity or cars. And definitely no Starbucks.

  I was here. Literally here.

  “Excuse me,” I said to a couple passing me, dressed like something out of The Scarlet Letter—the version with Demi Moore (which was the only one I’d seen). The man had long hair and a thick beard. He wore a black hat with what looked like a buckle on it. The woman wore a cloth kerchief to cover her hair and a dull, austere, long dress. Total Pilgrim chic—just like everyone else I could see.

  They ignored me.

  I ran out to block their path. “Hey, can you help me?”

  The next moment they walked right through me.

  Right. Through. Me.

  I gasped for breath, as if I’d just been punched in the stomach, and looked down at myself. My body swirled like formless gray smoke before it slowly took on a more recognizable form.

  “Holy crap, I’m a ghost.” Thierry had said that this would be spirit time travel—and this was the proof. My body was still in the present, but my spirit had been magically transported more than three hundred years into the past.

  I looked down at my arm, then poked it with my fingers.

  Solid, at least to me. If this was how real ghosts felt, then I totally understood why finding out they were actually dead could come as a shock.

  The spell worked.

  I turned slowly in a circle to take in the incredible scene around me. “It worked! Heather, you are amazing!”

  Not wanting to waste any time overthinking this, I began to hurry down the dirt road, which was busy with foot traffic. No makeup. No high heels. No designer labels. No bling to speak of as far as the eye could see.

  I would not have liked living in 1692. I was very fond of all those things.

  “—took her to the jailhouse,” one woman whispered to another as I passed them. Her expression was filled with anguish. “Goody Connolly accused her of being a witch.”

  At the word “witch” I froze in place and spun around to face them. Of course, they didn’t see me, although they did glance around as if fearful that someone more corporeal might overhear.

  The woman’s companion paled. “You must have nothing to do with her. Do not visit her. Do not even speak her name. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you. But . . . but I don’t understand. Why can’t she free herself? Her magic is powerful.”

  “Shh.” The second woman cast a furtive glance at the common area. “They could hear you.”

  “The witch hunters.”

  She nodded gravely. “They have ways of keeping those gifted with magic detained and helpless.”

  “Do the hunters also work with magic?”

  “They would never call it that. But yes. They have enlisted witches to help them imprison others of their kind.”

  I listened with a sick, sinking feeling in my gut. I did know enough about Salem and the outlying towns that had the trials, mostly thanks to my tour of the town and its historical sites with Thierry yesterday, to understand what they were talking about. Two dozen people had died here in less than a year, either put to death or dying in captivity. The colonies were incredibly religious and afraid of anything they thought might be the devil’s work—and witches definitely fit the bill.

  I hated to think what they might do to a vampire.

  As sickening as it was to be here at the time of such a horrible injustice as the witch trials, I couldn’t let myself get distracted by the sights and sounds. I didn’t know how long this spell would last and I needed to find Thierry. If this was the date he’d told Heather—and if the spell worked as it should have—then he was here. Somewhere.

  And so were the answers I needed to find to help him unravel the mystery of his disappearance—the one that happened on this very day.

  It was like a really scary Easter egg hunt.

  I started jogging through the town, past the small brick houses with thatched roofs, past the people out with their children. Past the church. The edge of the ocean was nearby, with ships with tall white sails docked there. The early evening air felt cool on my incorporeal face.

  Finally, I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. A very familiar, handsome man dressed in black—black hat and a long black coat. His dark hair was longer than it was now, and he had a short, well-groomed beard. His sharp gray eyes scanned the town and the people he passed as he swiftly moved down the road.

  My breath caught. “Thierry.”

  I started to follow him, catching up enough to be right next to him. I couldn’t stop staring.

  “It’s amazing,” I managed. “I’m here. Can you see me?”

  He didn’t reply or give any indication he felt anything but the evening breeze.

  “Okay, fine, you can’t see me or hear me, but I’m here. I found you.” Giddy excitement swept through me. “You look really good in those clothes. I see black is not a recent fashion choice for you. No Hugo Boss suits in the seventeenth century, are there?”

  Thierry still had that intimidating air about him, that cold and cutting gaze that looked right through anyone he passed as if they, too, were ghosts. Those on the road parted like the Red Sea to let him pass, eyeing him with uneasiness as if they guessed there was something threatening about this new guy in town.

  He was intent on something, some goal, and his steps did not slow until he reached a tavern that was close to the meeting hall where others gathered out front. He entered the tavern without hesitation, his gaze traveling over the men there. Candlelight and lanterns lit the establishment. After a moment, he approached a wooden table in the far corner. A man watched him, a ready smirk on his face. The man was blond, his eyes green and sparkling.

  He stood up and clasped Thierry’s hand before he sat down across the table fr
om the man. “You’ve arrived.”

  “I have.”

  My heart leapt at hearing his familiar deep voice.

  “Was it a pleasant journey?”

  There was no friendliness on Thierry’s face. “Three months in a stinking, overpacked ship to bring me here. To say it was pleasant would be a lie.”

  “That is too bad.”

  Thierry’s lips thinned. “Indeed.”

  He scanned the tavern again, his gaze watchful, shrewd, appraising. That was my Thierry—this attractive, untouchable man who let go of his tight hold on control only on rare occasions. He currently seemed as if he expected a team of deadly ninjas to burst into the tavern at any moment. Still, I looked on through this window into my husband’s past with barely restrained glee.

  And really, he was rocking that beard. So hot.

  The man gestured for someone to bring over a beverage for Thierry. A moment later a glass was delivered filled with an amber-colored liquid.

  Thierry passed the glass under his nose. “Ale?”

  “The water here is questionable at best. Ale is therefore readily available, although public drunkenness is frowned upon.”

  “I can imagine.”

  The man grinned. “Don’t worry, Thierry. It’s not poisoned.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if it was.” Thierry set it to the side anyway. “It’s not my beverage of choice.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it is.” The man cocked his head. “I’ve heard some recent rumors about you, Thierry. That you have difficulties with your thirst, more so than any other vampire your age.”

  “Rumors are usually started by those who wish ill upon their subjects.”

  “You deny the truth of it?”

  “That I drink blood to sustain myself? I can’t deny that. I am a vampire.”

  “No, that you are a danger to any human—or even any vampire—that you come across since you are always at the very edge of your control.”

  Thierry’s expression darkened. “Does that concern you?”

  “Not particularly. I just like to be as knowledgeable as possible about those I choose to do business with.”

  “My thirsts were sated on the ship. Several who began the journey in England did not make it to this shore. A desire for blood is not my concern at this moment.”