Chapter 24
Carter rests his head on my shoulder blade as we both catch our breath and wait for the final tremors to subside.
“All right?” he asks against my skin.
I’m not sure if he’s asking about me or the sex, but either way my answer is the same. “Hell yes.”
He carefully pulls out of me, leaving behind a sense of loss, emptiness.
I slide over and fall across the bed sideways, legs shaking. My back gives a mild protest but that’s all.
He disappears down the hall, presumably to the bathroom to dispose of the condom. Water runs, and when he returns a few seconds later, he has a glass of water and a folded wet washcloth.
He hands me the water, which I gulp down greedily, while he pulls his boxer briefs back on.
Then he tips his head toward me, holding up the cloth. “Can I?”
Oddly this, in some ways, feels more vulnerable than what we just did. But I raise my knees and part my legs, giving him access, as he kneels by the side of the bed.
He is gentle, and the cloth is warm and soothing.
“You’re so pink,” he marvels.
“Someone was very enthusiastic,” I remind him.
Leaning down he blows a breath across me, and I squirm at the sensitivity.
“I’m not sure if I can…”
“It’s okay, I just want to,” he murmurs against my belly.
The washcloth goes by the wayside as he trails open-mouthed kisses across my skin. His tongue flicks lightly, teasing, against my clit and my hips arch upward involuntarily. Heat that I didn’t think I was capable of in this moment pools between my thighs. A moan escapes me.
“That’s right,” he murmurs. “Such a good girl.”
He braces an arm across my abdomen, holding me open as his tongue delves inside.
I cry out, instinctively clutching at his hair. I’m not sure if I’m pulling him closer or holding him still. “Please,” I beg.
Carter shifts his attention, withdrawing from me to focus his tongue and lips on that sensitive bit of flesh until I’m writhing under him. It’s right on the edge of too much, and goosebumps flare to life up and down my arms. I’m close.
“I feel like this hasn’t been fair to you,” I gasp.
Carter gives low chuckle, and the vibration makes me shiver. “You have no idea what’s fair to me.” He closes his mouth over me and sucks.
I draw in a sharp breath, and soft waves shatter me once more.
Closing my eyes, I let it roll over me.
“We have time, you know,” I say to him a few moments later, when I’ve somewhat recovered.
I open my eyes but his gaze darts away from mine as he stands up. “Yeah,” he says.
“You don’t think so?” My heart sinks. Why does this suddenly feel like a goodbye?
The haze of lust fades further, bringing details into clearer view. I’m going to fuck you so hard you’ll never forget me. That’s what he said to me. Why would I forget him?
Carter wipes a hand across the back of his mouth. “You didn’t see what I saw. You were … so small, flying through the air from this invisible force.” He shakes his head, broad shoulders slumped.
I sit up sharply, ignoring the twinge in my back. “I am not giving up. I’m stronger than you think,” I say, offended.
“This isn’t about doubting you,” he says fiercely, sitting next to me and taking my hand in his. “Just … I wish I could talk you into leaving. I don’t like this.”
My reflexive hurt eases. Of course he doesn’t. I just dropped him into a whole other world.
“This is new to you, I get that.” I draw my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs. “Unfortunately, this is the way it works. And I can’t leave.”
He reaches down and pulls his shirt from the floor, holding it to me. “Jocasta, you can do whatever—”
“I think it’s my father,” I say softly, and somehow, hearing the words out loud make it real in a way that it wasn’t before.
Carter’s hand, still holding the shirt, drops. “What?”
I bite my lip. “I don’t know. It’s just … a feeling. My father, Death, it feels like him. I don’t know why he would name me as his successor and then try to kill me. It doesn’t make sense. Nor would he bother with hiding himself. He likes the attention, the fear, too much.”
I glance up at Carter and his face has gone back to that blank mask that I suspect hides big emotions he doesn’t want to reveal. Someone, somewhere taught him that feeling is a weakness. I hate whoever that is.
“The Old Ones, they’re not big on subtle.
They just don’t see the point of it,” I explain.
“It’s like, I don’t know, trying to sneak up on a cow.
Humans are just food to them. It’s only when you’ve got a bunch of them stampeding that there’s a danger.
” I pause, remembering how my father taught me to feed.
The Ferris wheel at Navy Pier is anything but discreet.
But he made sure that we were distant enough that the deaths would not, could not, be associated with us.
I sigh. “But then again, my father’s never been afraid to change things up. ”
Fury breaks through the blankness, tightening Carter’s whole face. He stands, tossing me the shirt. I snatch it out of the air. “Let’s just go,” he says, moving around the footboard to find his jeans and pull them on. “My family is fucked up, too. They won’t miss me.”
I gape at him. “Carter, what are you—”
A thunderous thumping at the front door echoes through his apartment.
We both go still, heads turning in that direction.
“Devon?” I ask.
Carter shakes his head tightly.
He’s right; that’s someone who’s pissed.
Fabulous.
Without waiting for me, Carter pivots, stalking out of the bedroom.
“Carter, wait.” I scramble after him, searching for my underwear and then throwing his shirt over myself, swearing when my fingers catch on the twisted, inside-out sleeves.
“We still don’t know how Lennie was lured to Branwick.
” But he doesn’t stop, striding down the hall toward the door, like he plans to rip it off the hinges.
Still fumbling with buttons, I manage to reach the door at the same time he yanks it open without even bothering to check the peephole first. Damnit, Carter!
Instinctively I brace myself for whoever’s on the other side.
But to my surprise, it’s a familiar face—Chessa, glasses freshly cleaned, her phone in one hand along with a stack of ragged notes that appear to be written and ripped from various sources of paper, including a menu.
“Chessa,” I say with relief. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay—”
She glares at me. “Did you kill someone in Chicago?”
I blink at her, startled. “What?”
She charges into the apartment, past a bewildered Carter, holding her phone up, like Exhibit A. “Answer the question, please.”
Chessa in lawyer mode … that’s not good.
Her whirlwind entry reveals Devon leaning against the doorframe. He waves a hand in Chessa’s direction. “She was pacing in the lobby. Insisted on following me up here.” His glance takes in my outfit, or lack thereof. “Nice shirt.”
I wince. “About that…”
But he doesn’t seem angry, at least not at me. He straightens up, glaring at Carter, his mouth flattened into a thin line. “Couldn’t give her a chance to heal?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I protest.
But Devon ignores me, strolling into the apartment, leaving Carter to shut the door after him.
I look to Carter and he exhales sharply, shoving the door toward the frame.
“You made it very clear that you feed without fatal side effects,” Chessa says, turning on me as soon as the door is closed.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “All right, counselor.” I take a deep breath. “Yes. I have killed.”
The whole room goes quiet.
“Before I understood what was happening, when I was eight. My father took me out and taught me to feed. I thought it was a game. I didn’t understand that the man on the Ferris wheel was dying because of what I was doing.
” I pause. “And his wife died as well when she accidentally fell out of the carriage trying to signal for help.”
Chessa scowls at me. “That’s not—”
“I know. You’re talking about when I was fourteen,” I say calmly.
Her eyes widen in surprise, presumably at my forthrightness.
She glances at whatever she has pulled up on her phone.
My name was kept out of the official reporting because I was a minor.
But that didn’t stop blogs and podcasts from speculating.
And it wouldn’t be that hard to figure it out, if you know me, where I went to high school—and yeah, that I can drain the life out of people.
“I’m not proud of it, but it happened.” I shrug but my shoulders are too tight to pull it off as casual.
“My class took a field trip into Chicago to the Lyric Opera House. I was feeding on the sips of emotion, just like I’ve done here, only I didn’t realize I was in someone else’s territory.
He was Sanguine.” I pause. “That means he feeds off the water, blood, usually, in humans.”
Chessa’s jaw drops.
Devon makes a soft noise of surprise, no doubt thinking of Maggie this morning. I nod at him. “That’s why I wasn’t sure about her,” I say to him. “I thought it might be a revenge tactic.”
I still vividly remember the cutting breeze off the river as I crossed the bridge, the shudder of the metal walkway beneath my battered Chucks as cabs and buses fought for space in the narrow lanes. And the sheer magnitude of the city and the pulse of life just beneath the surface.
Despair, rejection, and failure floated freely around me—a woman striding across the bridge in the opposite direction, carrying a box of her office belongings with a sad and wilty looking plant poking its head over the cardboard edge.
A man on the phone, just ahead of me, arguing with someone, begging them, “Please, Angela. Just listen to me. It wasn’t like that!
” A girl swiping tears off her face with her free hand, the other lugging an oversized art portfolio, carelessly zipped, pages flopping out the edges.