Forty-One
“ W ho was he?”
I decided not to let the bath go to waste. Every nerve in my body was alight, buzzing with the same energy a deer must feel in the face of its killer. Marcel had shaken me, even if he had not touched me, and my body responded by readying to run—however futile it would really be.
Sinking into the water, murky with lavender and citrus oils, steam rising and swirling, I inhaled deeply, relaxing every muscle, letting the heat seep into my skin.
Vince sat upon a stool, elbows propped on his thighs, hands falling between his knees. At my question, he breathed in deeply, straightening in the chair. His gaze turned to my body, obscured in the milky water.
My racing heart had yet to calm. And he knew it.
Running out of time .
“An old acquaintance,” he said begrudgingly.
“That much was obvious,” I muttered, propping myself on my elbows. My knees rose like mountains in the water.
But how? It could not entirely be a coincidence that I’d had drinks with him, and here he was again, now a vampire. Had he been a vampire this whole time? And—how had Dixon not picked up on it? Knowing what I knew about Dixon now, I couldn’t believe he’d just sit by while I dined with a predator.
And there was no doubt that Marcel Brancato was a predator.
He told me his name. “He should not have seen you,” Vince said, his jaw clenched tightly.
“And yet he did.” I leant my head back against the rim of the tub. “What did he want?”
I knew one part of the answer—me. He had looked at me with a hunger that not even Vince had displayed. His irises had been rimmed with red, pupils so large they took up nearly his whole eye. And he kept smelling the air, as though my blood perfumed the room. He had joked that it was a shame I wasn’t served to him. But I knew the truth underneath. If he had gotten to me, and the others had been preoccupied, I’d be dead.
He wanted to drain me dry.
What if he had found me in the garden? What if it had been his strong grip pulling me away, not Séra’s?
I shivered, despite the burn of the water.
I didn’t tell Vince I knew him, that Brancato knew me . Something told me to keep my lips sealed. That if Vince knew, I’d never leave this suite again.
His hands came to rest on the edge of the tub. He still wore his shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie gone. He had run his hands through his hair so many times in the last hour it fell in his eyes, his pomade ruined.
“He wasn’t meant to see you. I will kill him.”
Vince had been called away to the city. They were all gone. What if Brancato came while I was alone—was Brancato the reason they’d gone at all?
The air of the bathroom was thick like fog, settling heavily onto me, onto Vince’s form. His back bowed in his chair. “He… was Made by my Sire. Not long after I was.” His gaze dropped to the water, studying the swirls of the oils.
He’ll be glad to hear you’re doing so well.
The Sire. Marcel had brought a message from the Sire.
You’re running out of time. For what? What was Vince running out of time for? What was he running from ? He hadn’t left because the war was over, hadn’t returned to New York just to find me.
But was I enough to stay for?
His eyes were haunted as he sat deep in thought, no doubt running through their conversation over and over again.
The suds of the water lined my chin. “What did he want?” I asked again.
With a glance, I saw he wanted anything but to tell me, to have to expose whatever trouble he was in. I sat up, water sluicing off my chest, goosebumps pebbling my skin. There was so much I didn’t know, so much being hidden from me, and I was tired of it. “Don’t do that.”
His brow twitched upward.
“I can handle whatever it is.”
In a few short weeks, I had found out my lover was not dead, even though I’d wasted six years believing so, six years drinking, kissing men I didn’t care about. I’d run away from Lucas and his iron fist, from Mother’s expectations, from Wright Highsmith and his English money. I was making peace with the fact that there were monsters walking amongst us, blood-sucking creatures, and that Vince was one of them, that I was in love with him.
My fear was shrinking the bigger the world seemed to grow. But it was still there, holding onto my heart, tight.
He studied me, scanning my face. “He frightened you.”
“I just—wasn’t expecting that.” I reached for his hand, dripping water on the tile.
He needed to know I wanted to help; he needed to know that I was there for him, that we were together in this. I had not accepted him, accepted this strange new world, just to let him take it all on on his own.
“I will kill him,” he repeated, anger curling his lip. “The fact that he knows of your existence has damned him. Half the vampires that walk in these halls don’t deserve to look upon you.”
I squeezed his fingers, bringing him back to me. “He didn’t come just to antagonize you,” I said.
“That’s all he wants, is to antagonize me.”
“Why?” I whispered.
I touched his cheek. I accept all the dark parts of you.
He took another breath, coming to some conclusion within himself, and covered my hand with his. A look of annoyance. “He is the heir of our Sire, and it has gone to his head.”
“Your Sire has an heir?”
I was realizing just how much I still had yet to learn .
Vince nodded, then bit his lip, holding back once again, before he shut his eyes. I swore I felt him press against my hand even harder, as though to cement my touch upon his face. To prove to himself I was there.
“When I was Made, the Sire’s entire coven was decimated by the war. Many had wanted to join the fight for their land, as they saw it, to protect what was theirs. And many died, in the firefight, or in suffocating under dirt, or by gas. So the Sire made me.” He peeked up at me through his lashes. “I was the first, Made to replenish his coven. He must have seen something, to—to ‘save’ a young man dying.”
The Sire… Vince’s creator. And Marcel was second?
If Vince was first, did that mean—
He swallowed, saying aloud what I was beginning to suspect. “I was Made so that, should he die, one day, I would rule over the den.” He let go of my hand, letting it slide back into the water. He reached for my face instead, brushing a wave behind my ear. “I was gone so long, because I was not allowed to leave.”
Anger burst forth, blooming in my chest. “And now Marcel is the heir.”
And I had dined with him .
He nodded once again, his features hardening. “And now they know about you. About why I ran.”
“Is it so bad?” I asked, moving to sit on my knees in the bath. I was face-to-face with him, my water dripping onto his clothes, my bare body reacting to the cool air. “That you left?”
His hands found my waist. “It is a crime to run,” he said. “My leaving was against his wishes. If he finds me, he can do whatever he wants to me. ”
I should have expected it. Knowing what I did about how Vince operated here—Making vampires, ruling over them, taking over. It was as though to be Made placed a permanent leash—a noose—around your neck, and the person with the ability to tighten that leash, to pull until air was blocked off, was the Sire.
But maybe not when an ocean separated you.
“And Marcel—he knows where you are.”
My stomach dropped. If Marcel knew, then the Sire did.
The gravity of it was clear in the grim expression on his face, even if he tried to hide it from me. It was the slight frown, the furrowing of his brows.
His mind was tumbling, jumping from one thought to the next, trying to anticipate their next move.
He was unsure. He didn’t know how to proceed.
And it made my breath falter. I had never seen him like this, never seen him in a check-mate, even when Lucas found out about us, forcing him to run. Even as a young man, a poor printer’s apprentice, he was so sure of himself. So sure of his wanting, of his feelings about me.
Marcel Brancato’s appearance was an omen. He was the harbinger.
I stood, the cooling water splashing against the rim of the tub, over the edge, spreading on the tile. Vince reached for a towel, wrapping it around my body. The air was frigid with the ghost of our visitor, with the untold future hovering nearby, waiting to unspool.
You’re running out of time.
And how much time did we have ?
I set back my shoulders. Pulled the towel tight. “We should strategize. Talk with the others.” Veronica, especially. I knew hardly anything about the woman, but if our few interactions assured me of anything, it was that Veronica figured shit out.
His eyes flashed. “I—”
“Do not exclude me,” I said, letting the shallow fear I still felt harden my voice. “Do not shut me out. Hiding me from the problem is not going to protect me. It only makes me more vulnerable.” Today was proof of that.
His chest rose with a breath, and he leaned forward and kissed me. “As you wish.”