Chapter 37
The shock sends my head smacking into the wooden underside of the chair. When I come back up, Reid’s got a guilty half smile on. “Sorry.”
“We need to get you a bell.” I rub my head, cheeks scarlet. “What are you doing here?”
“Could ask you the same thing.”
His eyes sweep over my bare legs and up to my hair, which is now a crow’s nest after I crawled on my hands and knees across the dusty theater.
A pang of anxiety hits me—a moment in which I debate lying to Reid…
but he helped me with the Kitty part of it all.
It was dumb of me not to tell him my plan in the first place just because we kissed.
I need to get this crush in check. “Lisette mentioned the garden might be hidden up here. Haven’t figured out where. ”
“Yeah, I brought Lisette some new pieces for the archives, and she asked me why a certain student of hers might be sniffing around about asphodels. Told me you could be here.”
“Think how much time we might have saved had we trusted each other.” I’m aiming for a joke, but we both look away in shame.
“Speaking of,” he says, “I have a favor to ask.”
I raise an incredulous brow. Reid digs something out of his backpack and walks down the aisle to meet me. In his hand is a vintage copper charm bracelet. So tarnished some of the trinkets that hang from it have gone seafoam green.
It’s beautiful. “For me?”
“It once belonged to a siren. Imbued with the species’ unique form of echolocation, it allows the giver to hear the recipient if they’re ever in danger. It’s called a lure.”
“So a very pretty deep-sea rape whistle?”
The corner of Reid’s mouth tugs up in that half grin that hits my heart like a supernova. “You could put it that way. After what you told me about your apartment…”
The way I was sure I was being watched. And now, with my concerns about Lisette…
“Thank you.” Slipping the bracelet on, I examine the charms: a sailboat, an anchor, a fanged fish with sapphires for eyes.
When I look back up at him, Reid’s watching me with something almost wistful.
I clear my throat. “I haven’t had much luck. The whole room is just insulation. Why does a school for deviant hunters need a planetarium anyway?”
“We used to focus more of the curriculum on the old lymantrian plane. It’s fallen off over time, but the planetarium allowed students to see where they came from. It informed Underworld Studies as well. I’m sure you’re familiar with as above, so below?”
I nod, eyes rolling. “I went to prep school. So it’s not even used anymore?”
“Not really,” he says, eyeing the space. “It would be a nice spot for date, though.”
My brows rise. “A date?”
Reid strolls farther down the aisle to drop his backpack in the center of the room. The clang resonates through the hollow sphere. “Hangout? Chill sesh?”
“Jeez. You really are old.”
A begrudging laugh. I’m lucky he doesn’t call me out on my hypocrisy. I barely even went on dates with James.
“The last time I went on a date, it was referred to as calling on someone,” he says, walking across the theater floor. “You’d go to a woman’s house and call on her. Usually, her parents were there to ensure nothing scandalous occurred.”
The whole picture of him begins to make even more sense: the brutal Brood parents, the emotional weight of breaking from what they expected of him, the loss of the woman he loved…
Reid probably hasn’t been on a date in two hundred years. Not that I blame him—if my family had killed my partner, I’d be hesitant to jump back in too.
But…he kissed me last night. So maybe he’s not hesitant anymore. “This would really be your date spot?”
Reid looks like he’s fighting a smile. “Subtle.”
“I’m just curious. What would we do?”
“We?”
I nod, pulse thrumming.
“Well, I’d bring a blanket. Some wine…”
I walk down to meet him on the lecture floor. “Sounds cute.”
“Cute?” He mimes shoving a knife into his heart.
“Sorry. Sounds panty-wetting.”
“We’d sit right here on the floor.” He gestures between us to the center of the theater. “And stare at the sky.”
I follow his eyeline. “Does that thing work?”
“No clue. Not a whole lot of places on campus for an instructor to take a student on a date, though. Pickings are slim.”
“Is the date we aren’t on forbidden?” The sensual rasp in my voice is supposed to be playful, but Reid still swallows a bit too hard.
“Kind of.”
“Because you’re a teacher? Or because you have a rep for hating me that you need to keep up?”
“You hate me, remember?”
I fold my hands together. “Those feelings were misplaced.”
He looks down at his own palms. “Well, I never hated you.”
“You know what they say about liars’ pants.”
When his gaze finds mine again, it’s flecked with something heated. “A very sexy huntress will try to pry them off you?”
The laugh that tears from me sounds like HA! I turn as red as my cheeks can go.
His eyes are warm. “If anything, it’s your rep I’m trying to keep intact. Students don’t get gold stars for dating deviants.”
“Don’t worry about my rep,” I tell him. “It’s been mutilated for years. I’ve made peace with it.”
“What are you talking about? You’re the badass self-taught huntress from Astera. Bested a werewolf and a strzyga in her first year.”
I wrinkle my nose at the idea. “I’m not talking about here at Harker. I meant in my real life.”
“This is your real life.”
“You know what I mean.”
“The work you’re doing here is more real than your pet—”
“Whom I dumped—”
“—or your cruel mom or fake job—”
“Hey, I like that fake job.” The defensiveness in my voice surprises me as much as it seems to surprise Reid.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Reid heads toward the back wall of the theater.
“If I wasn’t a hunter, maybe I wouldn’t even be an assistant anymore,” I admit, following after him. “I could photograph the exhibits. But being a student here full-time doesn’t leave much space for a promotion.”
Reid stops short of whatever he was striding toward, seeming to mull this over before he turns to face me. He looks like he’s debating something until he says, “Let’s start this date over.”
Embarrassment seizes my stomach. “I didn’t know we were on one. Am I doing that badly?”
Reid’s mouth curves to one side and he shakes his head. “You’re not a huntress. You’re a photographer. And I’m a…”
“Planetarium expert,” I say, catching on.
“Sure. And this is our first date.”
“Okay.” I can’t help the grin tugging at my cheeks. Reid smooths his hair back and a laugh slips out of me. “Do planetarium experts not have unruly bad-boy curls?”
“I don’t know what a planetarium expert has. I’m just trying to roll with it. Where’s your attempt at human photographer?”
“Oh, I’m on it,” I tell him, pulling my hair back into a low bun. “There. Classic photographer look.”
“Perfect,” he says, eyes skating over my face. He lingers long enough that I wonder if he might kiss me, but then he adds a husky “Ready?”
I nod eagerly.
“Reid Graveheart.” He sticks out his hand. “Planetarium expert. This is my planetarium.”
I slip my palm into his and try to not shiver at the warmth. “Viv Abbot. I’m a photographer. I’ve never stabbed anything to death before.”
Reid wipes a hand across his mouth to stave off a laugh, and it’s a rush I want mainlined into my veins. “That’s actually what I look for in the photographers I date.”
“Then we’re off to a good start, aren’t we?”
Reid takes me by the hand and guides me to sit on the floor like he described. My skin prickles with the anticipation of further contact, but he doesn’t do more than look into my eyes. “Tell me about yourself, human photographer Viv.”
“Let’s see.” I inch a little closer. “I grew up in Lethe. I never had to move to the Hesperides after the tragic death of my father. My mom and I are supertight—we get mani-pedis every weekend, and I teach her how to use the internet. How about you? Close with your family?”
He nods. “My father adores me. We used to throw a baseball in the backyard while our golden retriever chased us around the bases. Me, my father, and my brother, we’re as thick as thieves and unlikely to inflict physical harm on one another.”
“Just like Norman Rockwell intended.”
“Now I’m employed here. An expert on all things planetarium.”
“Which means…?”
Reid seems to think seriously on the question.
“I teach young minds about the solar system. Study the stars and the moon. I don’t crave souls.
I’m not struck daily by the memory of taking a human life for my own physical pleasure.
I never accidentally gouge the flesh of a girl I’m hoping to kiss.
I work from nine to five and go home to a simple NTC apartment with a deep-cushioned couch and a view of the park that would strip you right out of that little skirt. ”
It takes everything in me not to choke on pure air. “Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s something else.”
“Well, I work nearby. At the Windsor.”
“And what do you do there?” His voice has grown low and rough. His hand crawls over to brush mine. Electricity crackles.
Who would have thought the best date of my life would be with a creature born of the underworld who I’ve been biologically designed to kill? There is no happy ending here, and I know it. But if that means I’m supposed to be holding back or playing it cool, I missed that part of hunter orientation.
“Um…” I know if I look him in the eye, I’ll drool, so instead I study my fingers on the curve of his wrist. “I get paid a very healthy salary to photograph the exhibits. But I also have gallery showings of my own work down in Babylon from time to time. I do Pilates in the mornings and have long dinners with my friends after work, and I wake up every day actually grateful to be who I am. I never sit in the bathtub with no lights on, wishing I’d been born someone else. ”
“Viv,” he says faintly. His hand leaves mine, and I feel his finger slide under my chin. “Don’t say that.”