Chapter 17 #3
I take a long sip of cider and set the glass down on the nightstand.
I look at the ceiling for what feels like a long time. She’s not going to let me wiggle my way out of this conversation.
"Ok," I say, finally. Like I’ve given up the battle.
"Ok?"
"Yeah alright. You win. There are—" I swallow. The words won't come the way I want them to. "There's, ah. There's a—it's possible. That I am, currently. Experiencing. Some…"
"Some?"
"Some. Feelings. Things. I don’t know, feelings inside my—" I gesture vaguely at my own chest with my left hand. "This general area."
Her eyes go wide but she doesn’t laugh. She inclines toward me just slightly like she’s talking to a wounded animal she doesn’t want to spook.
"Ok…" she says. "We can work with that."
"Having a love life is not something I’ve dealt with before, Nell. I'm rusty."
"Take your time."
"Well, actually, there’s three," I say, wincing.
I swear I see Margo and Shandy both stop reading for a second before going back to their respective books–pretending like they aren’t listening.
Nellie’s brows raise and she stills. "…three?"
"I'm not making you say anything. I'm just—" she sits up a little straighter, eyes bright "—processing. Walk me through it. Who are the lucky guys?"
I cover my face with my left hand. My ears are hot.
"Aamon."
The name comes out strange. Like it's not a word I'm allowed to say in the abstract—only as a title with Professor in front of it.
"Mm-hm." Nellie's voice has gone careful. She's keeping her face very neutral.
My left hand is sweaty against my face. I make my mouth say the second one.
"Kage. The… one from last night."
"Mm-hm."
I drop my hand. I swear my cheeks are beat red. I look at the ceiling because looking at Nellie's face right now is more honesty than I can pay for.
"And that's the list."
A small movement, across the room: Margo, without seeming to do anything in particular, closes her anatomy textbook.
She doesn't look up, doesn't speak. Just sets it down on the arm of the chair, glasses still on, and folds her hands in her lap like she’s done pretending like she’s uninterested in what I’m saying.
On the rug, Shandy has set her book face-down on her thigh. She hasn't looked up either, but it’s clear they both want to know more.
"Cal." Nellie's voice has gone smaller.
"Don't."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You look like you’re, like proud. I can feel it. Stop."
"I'm proud of you, Calypso."
"Nellie."
She doesn't stop. She's laughing, soft, tucked against my shoulder—a laugh that's mostly relief. Margo reaches over and pats my shoulder as if she feels my pain. My own best friend, giggling at my stupidity. So rude.
"Wait, three?" Tess's voice comes from the open doorway of her room. I thought she was still on the phone, too tied up to hear our conversation. Apparently not.
"Three!" Nellie calls back, grinning into my shoulder.
“STOP!” I shout but I’m fighting a smile. Because it is as insane as it sounds but it also feels good to get it off my chest.
Tess pads into the common room in her socks, phone tucked under her chin. "I'll call you back," she says into it. "Something's happening." She hangs up. "Cal, I love that for you. I love that for the whole vampire population of this academy, actually. They have no idea what's coming."
"Tess, please—" I whine, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"So when’s the wedding?" Nellie asks between giggles.
"I will leave this dorm."
"Details," Margo says, mildly, from her armchair. Her glasses are still on. She isn't looking up but her textbook is still closed. "Not negotiating with you. I just have a few clarifying questions. Clinical, you could say."
Shandy, from the rug, without looking up from her book: "Mm."
"Don't Mm us, Shandy, you probably already saw this when you read her cards, didn't you?" Nellie says.
"I have not. I would never." A pause. “An honest witch never reads another witch’s card without her consent.”
"Shandy," Nellie chides. “Don’t lie to her! She just met you and will think that you’re a good person.”
I'm laughing. My face is hot. Margo's glasses are pushed up on her forehead now and she's grinning at her own knee. Shandy is laughing into the pages of her book. I haven't laughed like this in—I genuinely don't know.
Nellie, still grinning, knocks her knee against mine. "Okay. Properly. One sentence on each, at least. I want to know what they did to you to get you all tongue-tied."
I take a breath and groan. Ugh. I’m really going to have to spill.
"So Aamon," I say.
I don't know what to say next. The room waits.
"He's frustrating," I say, eventually. "He's so calculated and impossible to read.
He spends most of our sessions calling me Miss Dellaby like I'm a tax form, and then he—he held my hand in the infirmary after I was attacked.
He didn't have to, but he did. And he keeps—he keeps doing that.
Shutting the door and then opening it for like half a second when he thinks I'm not looking, and then shutting it again.
Slamming it in my face actually. Like he's afraid of something.
Like there's something on his side of it too.
And I don't know if I'm imagining it or if he's actually—" I stop.
I do not have a word for the thing I am trying to name.
"He puts it away every time. But he puts it away like it costs him. "
A pause.
Margo, from the armchair: "Hmm."
Nellie's eyes are on me, and her face is no longer teasing. "Okay. Now Kage."
I blow out a long breath, my cheeks blowing wide. Now this one’s a toughie.
He killed somebody for me, I think, and don't say.
"He's an asshole," I say. "He's actively, intentionally an asshole. He calls me Hex, and I swear he pushes me on purpose. He says things to get a rise out of me, he purposefully avoids eye contact like just looking at me will turn him to stone. He's the most aggravating man I've ever spent time with. And I can’t get him out of my system. There’s some kind of pull there, and I—I think about him constantly. I’m trying very hard to convince myself it's the blood, because the alternative is—"
"The what?" Margo's voice. Sharper than I've heard her use yet.
I look at her. Her glasses are off her forehead and back on her nose. Her hands are no longer folded in her lap. She is, in fact, sitting forward.
The entire room is dead silent. I swear the music scratched to a halt.
"The—the blood." I look at Nellie. Nellie's mouth is open. "I—he gave me his blood once. Healed me with it. After—after the… whatever. I drank it. And I think it created some kind of pull.” I move my hands back and forth, miming the way my magic curls and years for him when he’s around.
“An attraction or—I don't know what to call it. I can feel where he is in a room."
The silence is so loud I check Nellie's face. Then my stomach drops.
"Calypso Dellaby," she says.
"What?"
"You drank a vampire's blood."
"I—yes?"
"You drank it."
"Yes, Nellie, that word only has one meaning."
She exaggerates a nod, her eyes about popping out of her head. "And you mentioned it like it was a footnote, Cal. You buried I drank a vampire's blood in the middle of a sentence about your love life."
Tess: "You totally buried it."
Shandy, from the rug, mildly: "She did bury it."
“So?” I murmur, fear starting to trickle in and heat up the back of my neck.
"It's—" Margo is choosing her words carefully.
The healing-track, professional voice is on.
"Cal. Blood-sharing isn't a small thing.
It's intimate. There's a reason most witches won't even talk about it in mixed company.
You take a vampire's blood into your body and you’re not the same kind of separate from him after.
He can feel you. He knows where you are.
He knows when you're scared. He has a piece of your interior in his interior, and you have a piece of his, and that doesn't go away just because the wound closed.
Some witches consider it more intimate than sex.
A lot of older covens consider it the next thing to marriage.
" She pauses. "The fact that he gave it to you without explaining any of that to you is—" she stops.
"It's a violation, Cal. He should have at minimum told you what it would do. "
"Oh. I mean—I knew. I guess I kind of knew it was a thing. I knew it created a pull. I just—I don't actually know what the rules of it are, I don't know what it does in the long run, I—"
"Wait how long ago did you drink," Shandy asks, from the rug. Calmly.
"…like twelve days."
"Twelve days?" Margo's voice spikes.
"That's actually good news," Shandy says, still mild.
"Cal. A single drink fades. Two weeks, three at the outside.
He'll feel you for a little while longer, you'll feel pulled toward him for a little while longer too, and then it'll dilute out of your system on its own.
The body handles it. The only way it deepens is if you keep drinking from him. "
"…oh."
"What makes a bond stick is repetition. Blood over and over again, on a regular schedule.
That's when a healer can't undo it. Witch-vampire couples who want a mate bond drink from each other deliberately, sometimes daily, for months.
That's how the permanent version gets made.
One drink in a one-time situation is like a bruise. A bad one, but a bruise."
"So the twelve days—"
"You're already most of the way through the worst of it." Shandy tips her head. "If you haven't drunk from him since."
"I haven't,” I blurt out.
"And he hasn't asked?"
"He… offered. But I declined."
"Then it'll fade. Margo can speed it up with an unbinding, which I'd recommend, because active fade is more reliable than passive. But if you did nothing else, it would go on its own,” Shandy says.
Margo: "I would strongly recommend the unbinding regardless."
"Cosigned," Tess says.