CHAPTER SIX || BRYAN
T he guy lying on the slab gave me the heebie-jeebies. You’d think that, with my being a vampire and all, I’d be comfortable around death. But I’m not. Before I had been turned, the only dead body I’d ever seen was my great-grandmother when I was twelve years old, and we had gone to her funeral. Her body had been serene and so heavily made up that she’d still looked filled with life, like she might have just fallen asleep.
The body of Lee Chamberlain didn’t look that way. His skin had begun to take on a bluish hue and there were thick purple bruises around his throat. No one would have been able to look at his body and think he’d died a peaceful death.
But there were no telltale marks near his heart, which ruled out it being a revenant. Given the level of spectral activity it was capable of, that probably meant it was either a poltergeist or a wraith.
“He was so young,” I breathed, staring down at him. I hadn’t meant to speak aloud. I caught Tobias looking up at me. I grimaced and shook my head, figuring that I’d already spoken and might as well finish my thought. “I mean, he was, what? In his mid-forties? Maybe?”
“He was forty-six.”
When my eyebrows shot up into my hairline, Tobias gave me an almost sheepish look. “Once I realized what you were up to, I kind of did a deep dive into basically every article I could find on the internet about his death.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged. “I could tell you more, if you want.”
“What I want is for this to not have happened to him,” I murmured, frowning down at Lee Chamberlain’s body. Forty-six was too young—it didn’t seem fair. He should have still had decades in front of him. Plus, he had left behind a wife and a child. He would miss so many things.
Then a thought occurred to me, and I glanced back up at Tobias, my eyes widening as I realized that magic might be able to fix this, after all. “Wait. You’re a warlock. You can do spells. Can’t you—”
“No.” Tobias actually took a small step back from me, going slightly paler. He winced. “Uh, no . Sorry. Magic isn’t super great at bringing people back from the dead.”
The way he said it made me wonder if he’d ever tried that before.
“Right,” I breathed, shaking my head. “If it could, you guys would have just brought back everyone I—”
I swallowed around the sudden burning lump in my throat, and I blinked away the tears that threatened to spill over without any warning at all. If my cheeks could have burned with embarrassment, they definitely would have. The names of the witches and warlocks I had killed echoed in my mind.
Teresa, Phoebe, Dorian, Dawn, Killian, Abigayle—
“Bryan,” Tobias said, bringing me back to reality. And I realized that I loved the way my name sounded on his lips, way more than I should have. “We can talk about it, if you want.”
Something froze solid deep inside me. I blinked away more wetness, before it could spill over. A part of me wanted nothing more than to talk to him. He was my mate and, if I was being completely honest, I knew it. I could feel how true it was. And it wasn’t like I was completely immune to that fact or anything.
But what I wanted from him—what I wanted, in general, was impossible.
I wanted him to make it so that I’d never had my will robbed from me in the first place. So that I had never been forced to take away the lives of innocent people. So that months of my life hadn’t been stolen from me. So that my head wasn’t filled with the horrible memories of the things I had done.
But what then?
Telling him would mean letting him in. It would mean letting him get close to me. And I couldn’t do that. Not just for me. But for him , too. Because, even though I was mightily annoyed with him, I knew that Tobias was good.
He deserved far, far better than me. He deserved someone who wasn’t drenched in blood. Someone who could be trusted. Someone who was still a good person. Someone like him. Not like me.
“There are no marks on the body,” I told him, pulling the sheet back over Lee Chamberlain. “And if you can’t bring him back, then we should at least make sure that he’s the last victim.”
“Right,” Tobias agreed, watching me. I knew he wanted to say more but was biting his tongue. Probably a smart move on his part. He added, “This is your show. What do you propose?”
“Well, I need my stuff back, for starters.”
His expression darkened. “You’re not going back into that house by yourself.”
Relief coursed through me. Because I had just navigated our conversation out of very, very dangerous waters. And I could deal with Tobias when he was all annoyed and protective. But I definitely couldn’t deal with him when he was soft and open and wanting to talk about our feelings.
“No one said I was going in alone,” I replied sweetly. “You’re my bodyguard now, right? So, we’re going in together. Can your magic at least shield me long enough to grab my book?”
He let out a bark of laughter. “ Your book?”
I shrugged. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I’ll give it back eventually.”
Tobias rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, I can cover you long enough for you to get the book back. And you’re damn right, you’re giving it back. Preferably before it gets you killed.”
*
As it turned out, getting the book back took almost no effort.
For me, at least.
Tobias and I walked into the house on Pickery Road together, with Tobias muttering a spell behind me the whole time. Everything was right where I had left it, the book completely undisturbed and still open to the passage on manifesting sigils.
The rest of the house, however, had reset itself. The ashes on the floor were gone, except inside the protective ring I had drawn. The manifesting sigils were still where I had drawn them too. But the furniture was back where it should have been. The knives were nowhere to be found. The kitchen floor looked freshly swept. Nothing looked out of place, except that the coffee table was now missing.
Goosebumps broke out on my arms.
How was this ghost so powerful?
And if it had always been this powerful, why hadn’t it killed Lee Chamberlain sooner? He and his family had lived in the house for months before it had attacked them. I mean, if it just wanted to kill people, why wait? It could clearly manipulate the physical world with an ease that, according to what I’d read so far, most ghosts were supposed to lack.
The entire time I gathered up my stuff I could feel eyes on me. But nothing manifested and, while the knife drawer did rattle ominously for a long moment, nothing lunged at us. It was like there was an invisible wall between wherever it was and the reality we occupied.
“Well, that was fun,” I said, flashing Tobias a grin as we left the house, determined to put on a bright facade. “Um, I could kind of…” I trailed off, trying to put it into words. “…Sense it? Somehow? Like, it was there watching us. It was trying to get at us, only it couldn’t. Is that weird?”
“It’s not weird at all. That’s exactly what was happening.”
“Either way, the important part was that it couldn’t get to us. Because of your magic.”
He shrugged, not answering me. Then he yawned, twice in a row. His eyelids began to droop and he swayed on his feet.
I caught him by the shoulders before he could fall. He blinked rapidly, seeming to jerk back awake.
“Um. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he replied, too quickly. He flashed me a smile, but it didn’t even come close to reaching his eyes. Something twisted painfully in my chest. “I think I’m just tired. I cast a lot of spells today. This last one really took it out of me—that thing is angry . I just need to get some sleep.”
He said the last part so wistfully that I felt my eyebrows slam together. Why did it sound like he wanted to get some sleep but knew he wouldn’t be able to? That was weird, right?
“Sure, we can put a pin in this for right now and figure out our next steps tomorrow.”
He gave me a hopeful look. “You’re not anxious to get this over with?”
“The house is empty. Another night isn’t going to hurt anything.” I paused. “Are you okay to drive?”
“I’m fine,” he repeated.
I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t press it. I couldn’t exactly act like a concerned boyfriend while I simultaneously slammed the brakes on any emotional involvement. It wasn’t fair to either of us.
“I’ll give you a ride back to your car,” I muttered.
“Sure.” He yawned and stretched, then winced, as though the small movement had hurt him. It was like the tenth time I had seen him do that. He had definitely done something to mess up his neck. Or his back. Or possibly both. I fought the urge to demand, yet again, to know why he was in visible pain every single time he moved. And I didn’t like it. I hated that I didn’t like it. But that still didn’t change the way it set my teeth on edge to see him in any sort of discomfort.
But saying something would mean letting on how much it bothered me to see it. No doubt, he’d trundle happily through all the reasons why that could be and land right back at the mate of it all. Which really wasn’t a good idea for either of us. So, instead, I asked, “Where are you staying?”
“Um…” He trailed off, giving me a deer-in-the-headlights look. After a pause that lasted way longer than it had any right to, he added, “Uh, there’s a hotel in town. I’m staying there.”
He even grimaced as he said it, like he’d heard how unconvincing it sounded.
Well, that was a weird thing to lie about, but whatever. If he wanted to keep secrets, that wasn’t my problem.
Right?
Right. He was my partner for this one very specific and very time-limited situation.
Or, I supposed, he was the bodyguard I had never asked for and hopefully didn’t need. So it shouldn’t have mattered to me one bit where he was staying, or how he’d managed to mess up his neck and back so badly, or how he felt about literally anything at all, including the fact that I had left.
Yet, even as we piled back into my car and I began driving us back to the city hall where he’d parked his car, I couldn’t help but realized that those things did matter to me. They mattered way more to me than they should have.
*
I hated everything.
Back in my motel room with nothing to do, I tried to read the book of necromancy. When that couldn’t hold my attention, I tried to watch TV on the dusty television set that had to be at least as old as me. There were a grand total of six channels. Half of them were playing old romantic comedies and the other half were fuzzy broadcasts of sports games. Even in life, I hadn’t been a big fan of any variety of sportsball. Now, as a vampire capable of outperforming even the best human athletes without half trying, it held even less appeal. And I sure as hell wasn’t watching a kissing movie, since that would no doubt lead to dangerous ideas about a certain warlock I wanted to kiss very, very badly.
In disgust, I flipped it off.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my social media apps, mostly as a habit. I stared at posts made by my old friends from college and high school until my heart split open. The person who had laughed and joked and hung out with those people wasn’t who I was anymore. That guy hadn’t ever hurt a single person in his whole life. He was nothing like me. I closed the apps and put my phone to the side.
It was almost two in the morning. I could try sleeping. But that was probably elusive, too. After all, I hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time in months. I would have to wait until I was so bone-tired that I could barely stand before I tried that. And it would no doubt be accompanied by hours of restlessness followed by horrible nightmares, just like always.
So, for lack of anything better to do, I paced back and forth, unable to relax or think about anything other than him .
Tobias’s presence was causing this. I had been fine until I knew he was right there, only a phone call away. But knowing that didn’t help at all. Because a big part of me wanted to call him. Hell, I wanted him in my arms. I wanted him to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be okay. And if he had, I would have had no choice but to believe him.
Was that the fated connection at work? Was the pull I felt toward him due to a mystical bond? Or was it simply because it was him ?
Waking up from the mind-control curses Giles had placed on me had been traumatic. And I had gone straight to the vampire king’s headquarters to turn myself in, the moment that the memories started coming back to me and I realized what I had done. At the time, I had been completely terrified and a not insignificant part of me had wanted them to blame me for everything and drive a wooden stake through my heart and make the guilt and pain stop .
But then Tobias had been there. And suddenly I hadn’t wanted that at all. In his presence, even during one of the worst moments of my whole life, I had felt calmer than I could remember feeling since… well, ever. And in that moment, I had wanted to live after all. And when he had told me that I would be okay, I had believed him completely.
But once that wore off, the bad set in. I couldn’t stand to have him look at me like I was something special. Like I was some kind of good and complete person. Because it wasn’t true. I was broken. And Tobias probably would have spent however long it took to put me back together again if I had let him. But I didn’t deserve his love.
I wanted it, though. I wanted it so badly that even thinking about it felt dangerous. It left me feeling far too raw and emotional for my own good. He was my mate and I hadn’t done a fucking thing to deserve him.
And even now, with him so near, I couldn’t lie to myself that I wasn’t at least a little bit happy that he was close by. More than a little, really. This was a tangible reminder that, impossibly, someone like him cared about me. That he knew the things I had done and he was still here, hell-bent on protecting me.
He had seen my death, though. And I should have felt more afraid of that. After all, Tobias was a powerful warlock. If he said he saw a vision, he saw a vision. And I’d already gathered that he didn’t lie—not about the important stuff, at least. And he never would have put himself in my orbit after I had asked him not to unless he truly felt he had no other choice. So, if he was here, it was because what he had seen had freaked him out.
Was I really destined to be killed in this town?
Maybe I had been. But Tobias had proven himself to be annoyingly competent at pretty much everything so far, and I figured he could pull off basically anything he put his mind to. So, if he’d put his mind to making sure I was protected, my money was on him succeeding.
He had lied to me, though. Earlier, when I had asked him where he was staying. He had told me that he was staying at a hotel in town. Real cagey on the details. Because there was no hotel ‘in town.’ I had done my homework before coming here, when I had been trying to decide where I would be staying. There were three motels, all of them on the outskirts of town. There wasn’t exactly a lot of town here, and the downtown corridor was home to the dozen or so idyllic boutique shops meant to trap visitors into spending their hard-earned money on specialty soaps, candles, and other locally sourced handmade crafts.
There was no hotel on Main Street.
Which meant he didn’t want me to know where he was staying.
Why?
Why was I so obsessed with that? Was it because I wanted to know, down to the foot—hell, if I was being honest, down to the millimeter—how near he was to me?
And why in the hell had he promised to leave?
Was he just here out of some misguided sense of responsibility? Maybe, deep down, he didn’t think that a relationship with me—mate or not—was any better an idea than I did. Maybe he was eager for us to part ways once he’d done the whole hero song and dance?
And, like an idiot, I had nodded all serious-like and basically told him, ‘Oh yeah, sure bud, you can totally vanish from my life, no problem’ when what I had really halfway wanted to do was to grab him by the lapels and shake him for even suggesting it in the first place.
But it would be the best thing for both of us if he did leave. Because I didn’t trust myself around him. Not one bit. What if my body reacted to him, like muscle memory, and I wound up doing something I couldn’t take back?
Eventually, I might hurt him.
I hadn’t been a vampire for very long—three years—but I had always been able to stop myself from feeding too much. I’d never hurt anyone before, apart from what Giles had forced me into. But then again, I hadn’t fed from anyone since I’d woken back up from the compulsion. What if I was different now? What if I couldn’t stop? What if I couldn’t make myself want to stop?
The mere thought of feeding caused my teeth to sharpen again. My throat ached with sudden thirst and my stomach literally growled.
“Shit,” I muttered. I grimaced, forcing my fangs away.
But my throat was still burning. I needed something to drink. I didn’t have any blood on hand, and I didn’t really trust the tap water here enough to drink it. But there was a vending machine on the ground floor, over by the office, that sold soda.
It wouldn’t help with my real thirst, of course, but it would be wet, cold, and at least somewhat drinkable. And it was something to do, besides torturing myself by thinking about Tobias nonstop.
So, I made my way downstairs, making sure to lock the door to my room behind me. I made it down to the vending machine, pulled a crumpled dollar bill from my wallet, inserted it into the slot, and then pressed the button for Dr. Pepper.
I grinned to myself, feeling a little spark of joy for the first time since I had dropped Tobias off at his car. It had been ages since I’d bothered to drink soda. But when I had been human, I’d basically lived on the stuff.
I popped the can open, took a long chug, and then turned around. And promptly spit my soda onto the ground.
Because Tobias’s car was parked in the lot, facing my motel room door.