Chapter 25 Danni
Danni
I sit on the bed, wrapped in Knox’s fluffy bathrobe, sulking.
I’m so done with this man and all the shit that comes with him. The guy is like whiplash. One minute he’s caring and sweet. I’ll even go so far to say it seems like he wants me as much as I want him. Then the next, he’s cold and spoiled and I want to murder him.
I don’t like being toyed with.
Now I have to get all dressed up and go to a ball and party with a bunch of ridiculously well-dressed psychopaths. Oh, and keep pretending like I actually want to be here. This is all one big fat mess.
The bedroom door swings open, pulling me from my irritable thoughts. I hardly recognize Celeste as she enters the room. Dark circles encase her eyes, and her skin is too pale and gaunt, even for her kind.
“What happened to you, Blondie?” I ask as she sits at the end of the bed. At the sound of her nickname, her eyes roll so far back that the crimson disappears entirely.
“Trust me, I don’t want to be here as much as you don’t want me here.”
She snaps her fingers, the sharp sound echoing in the space between us.
A silver plate and pitcher appear out of thin air on the small console table to her left.
I try to look unimpressed and ignore my stomach’s screams, but the steaming plate of food beckons me like a siren’s call.
The strawberries in the bathtub were nice, even if they were fed to me by the biggest asshole in the world, but not enough to actually provide me with any nourishment.
“Don’t be a stubborn idiot. Eat.” Her eyes are hard, her expression an unwavering force of nature. I do as I’m told, grabbing the tray and putting it on the bed in front of me.
“It’s not poisoned, is it?” I wiggle my eyebrows playfully at her.
To my surprise, she bursts into a fit of giggles, like it’s the first time she’s ever heard anyone tell a joke. Her shrill voice scratches a sensitive part of my brain, and I cringe from the sound. She may be laughing, but it almost feels like knives in my eardrums.
“Of course not. Also, don’t go blabbering about me using magic to everyone. Only The Five and their successors are supposed to be able to harness the power of the city. If everyone could do it, we’d plunge into utter chaos.”
I frown as I slice through the chicken.
“What do you mean, ‘power of the city’?” My knife scrapes across the plate, the sound almost as high pitched as her voice.
“I’ll let your lover boy explain that one. Speaking of, he’s asked me to help you prepare for the ball tonight. It’s a masquerade, the first one we’ve had in about twenty years. Should turn out to be a fun night.”
My bite of chicken turns to ash in my mouth. I glance up at her, knowing our definitions of fun are not the same.
She huffs. “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be on Knox’s arm the entire night, so you’ll be fine.
And I’ll be there. Apparently, I’ve been promoted to ‘Familiar’s Bodyguard’ now.
As if I have nothing better to do with my time.
” She examines her nails with a bitter scowl.
Her passive-aggressive tone agitates me.
“Well, fuck off if you don’t want to be here.
I don’t need a bodyguard who is a pathetic know-it-all doing nothing but pining after her ex-boyfriend every five minutes.
” I slice through a roasted potato, and the butter glaze oozes onto the plate.
Before I can I stab a potato wedge with the fork, Celeste tosses the plate to the other side of the room.
I don’t even flinch. Nothing in this hellhole surprises me anymore.
“How dare you! Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” Her teeth bare, and if looks could kill, there’s no doubt I’d be dead right now.
I should stop, extend apologies and beg for forgiveness, because that plate of food was the best fucking thing I’ve eaten in the last God-knows-how-many days.
But my tongue can’t seem to keep itself in check today.
Perhaps it’s the knowledge that Blondie can’t actually kill me which gives me the confidence.
I mean, she could, but that would mean upsetting her beloved Knox.
“Lucky?” I scoff. “You think being bound to that monster makes me lucky? Jesus, you’re delusional.” The over-analytical side of me—the side that makes me a good journalist—does joyful backflips as I watch Celeste go through every single emotion a person could feel, all at once.
Bingo, bitch.
I’m going to bait the vampire into spilling all of the secrets this place holds. Well, not all of them all at once. I only care about finding out more about Knox right now, since a part of me is certain that if I can understand his motivations, I might have a better chance of escaping.
“He’s not a monster,” she growls.
In a split second, the ethereal beauty of her face vanishes, replaced by the increasingly familiar heavy-set brow bone and wrinkled skin. Just like Egor’s face had changed when he fed on Megan.
“Oh, poor me. I wanted to be a vampire so bad that I signed my life away to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then he tossed me aside for a different human when he got bored, and now I do nothing but follow him around all day, licking his ridiculously shiny shoes.”
Her grotesque features darken, and I know that my impression of her is spot on enough to piss her off.
“You ungrateful little swine. You have no idea what we’ve both been through or the risks he’s taken to keep you safe!”
“That’s the thing, Celeste. I don’t know anything about him. One minute he’s hot, the next he’s cold. If he keeps playing with my emotions like this, then of course I’m going to believe he’s no better than Damon or Egor.”
Her angered expression softens, but her sharp teeth still gleam in the dim amber glow from the fireplace. Her eyes grow distant as her face transforms back, as if she’s lost in another time.
“When I met Knox, he was just like the others.” She clicks her fingers, and the plate of food she’d thrown at the wall moments ago reappears in front of me again, fully intact as if her tantrum had never happened.
“He was selfish, egotistical and… hungry for power. I’d never met someone so sure of themselves.”
She gestures for me to eat. Without hesitating, I pick up the knife and fork.
“I first arrived here in 1922: the age of jazz bands, flappers, and gin. It was a sordid era, full of secret clubs hidden behind the doors of libraries—every bit as decadent as it’s written about in the history books.
” She smiles fondly at the memory, and it’s like I see her truly for the first time. I see the humanity she gave up.
“I was nineteen when the circus came to town. Three weeks before I was due to be married off to a famous investment banker. He had a yacht and a thick moustache. Nice enough, but I can always see the type behind the eyes. Ray had a mean side, and when I first saw that flash of a temper directed at a poor waiter, I decided that I didn’t like him. ”
She continues. “My relationship with Ray was complicated. He adored me, took care of me, but also treated me like I was some kind of fragile doll about to break. Whenever I’d sneak off to attend secret parties with my friends, he’d scour the city to find me, drag me back home, and demand my father to increase my dowry.
He said I was a ‘problem child’, spoiled rotten and needed fixing.
The least my parents could do was make the effort worth it.
“I tried my hardest to fight against my parents’ wishes, but they were the wealthiest socialites in New York at the time, so it was hard to say no to them. In the eyes of everyone in the world, this was the most ideal match for me.” She sucks at her teeth, keeping her gaze on the fire.
“I had it in my head from a young age that I was going to be a movie star. Everyone always told me my looks were good enough even if my talent wasn’t.
But it was hard for women back then, to be looked at as nothing more than a prized piece to be owned by men in suits.
After one particularly bad argument with Ray, one that resulted in my very first black eye, I decided the only thing to do was run.
“So, I stole the money he kept hidden in his safe and left New York, never looking back.
I hitched rides all the way to the back end of nowhere—Hillsview.
The town where nothing bad ever happens to anyone, where everyone is good and kind and knows each other.
I took up the name Celeste and forgot about my old one.
I buried my dreams of stardom, cut all ties with my affluent parents, and ended up helping an old lady run a flower shop just so I could make ends meet.
“She was the one who told me about the Circus of Dreams. Without the threat of Ray finding me and dragging me away from a good time, I was eager to have a little fun again. The invite was delivered in the dead of night, well before the morning post. Nobody thought it was strange because most illegal parties were pretty secretive. I headed with a new group of girlfriends to the field where they pitched the tent. We were too dumb and stupid to understand that we were being lured into a vampire feeding ground.”
She pauses as if the memories and emotions are dragging her back to that time and place. I wait for her to continue, my plate now empty and set aside.
“I passed the training with flying colors. The promise of stardom dangled in front of me like a goddamn carrot and I swallowed every fucking lie they told. I trained with Knox, the same as you, but it was far less dramatic. I will spare you the details, but my dreams were a lot tamer than your own. Knox was besotted with me, but I’m ashamed to admit that it was one sided.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t charming or that he wasn’t good-looking enough for me; I simply couldn’t see past my own vanity and ambitions to understand what love even meant. ”
Celeste sighs. “What you need to understand is that I had entered a realm where everyone seemed to want me or want to be friends with me. I was a star, just like I always dreamed I would be. Together, Knox and I attended countless lavish dinners and fancy balls. Back then, the magic was strong, truly a marvel. The city was mine to take, to shape and mold it into whatever I wanted it to be. I never wanted any of it to end. So when my year was up, I tricked Knox into a promise of an eternity with me. Then I… betrayed his trust.”
Tears fall from her face, landing in her lap soundlessly as she stares down at her hands.
“I was cruel to him. And because of my own selfishness, he refused to let me have what I wanted. He let the magic die in this place just to spite me, once he’d found out what I’d done.
All of this is one big eternal punishment. ”
I hardly know what to say. Right now, I don’t see a vampire capable of murdering me. I see a broken woman who’s been punished for a hundred years by a man who claimed to love her. So that’s why The Five all harped on about how strange it was that he’d forsaken his modern views about Familiars.
“To answer your original question,” Celeste adds, “Knox was very different back then, and he’s very different with you now. With me, it was teenage puppy dog love. Like a toddler with a shiny new toy. He loves it and cares for it for about a week, only to dump it for the next shiny new thing.”
Celeste laughs humorlessly. But I fail to see the funny side of this at all.
“It doesn’t sound like that to me, Knox condemning an entire city of vampires to live without magic because you didn’t want to be with him.” The bond wants me to rip her fucking head from her shoulders, but I tamp it down.
He’s not that into her now.
“Knox is spiteful just for spiteful’s sake,” she says plainly. “He wasn’t bothered by me after a few months. We became close after a decade or so; the best of friends, in fact. Now he’s like an older brother.”
I furrow my brows. “Then why did he not take another Familiar for so long? If your relationship had changed and he didn’t care what you did in the past, why carry on the charade?” I don’t think I’ll ever begin to understand Knox’s motivations.
“I’m not the only one who needed punishment,” she says darkly. She vanishes the empty plate with another snap of her fingers, then rises from the bed to cross the room towards the wardrobe. “Now, enough chit-chat. We need to get you ready for the ball.”
I groan out loud. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready…