Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Cora
Cora crossed her arms and glared at Saiden. “It’s non-negotiable.”
They’d been arguing for nearly ten minutes, but she wasn’t about to give in.
Sure, Saiden could just throw her in the trunk of his car, but something about the way he looked at her said he wouldn’t.
He’d been hurt when she called him a monster, and for some reason he didn’t want people to see him that way.
Which made little to no sense given that he was a vampire who apparently murdered other vampires on the regular.
Whatever the reason, her opinion of him mattered to some degree, and she wasn’t going to budge.
If he wanted this road trip to be even remotely pleasant, he would grant her this one thing.
“And what do you think you’re going to say, hmm?” Saiden asked, holding the passenger door to the McLaren open for her.
Now that was something she’d agreed to in a heartbeat. Ten hours in her Mazda with the broken heater that gave off a moldy smell was no competition for his swanky sports car with a leather interior.
“I’ll tell her that you’re an investor interested in my movie, and I’m going to meet with some of your friends to discuss funding.”
Saiden snorted. “Now tell me, Cora, if the roles were reversed and this Jinx fed you that same line of horseshit, would you let her go gallivanting off with a random stranger she just met?”
“Well no, of course not. I’d tell her she was about to be sex trafficked, and I’d chain her to the radiator so she couldn’t leave.”
He wrinkled his forehead. “You actually live in a place with a radiator?”
“Well excuse me, Richie Rich, but we don’t all have treasury bonds that have been maturing for a thousand years.”
Saiden dug his fingers into his temples.
“There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to begin.
But we are getting off track. Again. If you wouldn’t believe your own story, then why would your friend?
I’m sorry, but you can’t go home, and you can’t talk to anyone.
You’ll be back tomorrow, so there’s no point in arguing and that’s that. ”
Cora stamped her foot in the dirt, hoping the action came off as more unyielding and less temper tantrum. “I’m going home first and that’s that.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not,” Saiden gritted out and stomped over to her.
He reached out to grab her around the waist, but before his hands made contact she screeched, “I don’t have my medication, okay?”
Saiden went still for a second then slowly backed off.
She swallowed roughly and forced the excuse out. “I don’t keep my meds with me, and I can’t function without them.”
It was a total lie, of course. She always had an emergency stash in her purse.
She also despised using her condition to manipulate people.
When she’d been diagnosed years ago, she told herself she wouldn’t let it rule her life.
Wouldn’t let it change how she acted around others.
But desperate times needed desperate measures or whatever that saying was.
She simply had to get home. Had to get a moment of privacy to leave herself a note just in case this Marquin refused her request.
Saiden mentioned that triggers could undo compulsion, so she just needed to leave a shitload of triggers for herself. Maybe she could go full Memento and slap up some sticky notes in her bedroom or scrawl reminders all over her inner thigh. Somewhere Saiden would never see.
His eyes flicked back and forth between hers, and Cora could practically see his internal debate. He hadn’t said anything about mind reading, so he couldn’t know for sure that she was lying, could he?
Whatever he saw in her must have passed his inspection, because he finally shook his head and grumbled, “Fine. Get in the damn car. I’ll take you home first.”
The tiny apartment Cora shared with Jinx was only twenty minutes away from the warehouse, but at the rate the speed demon was piloting the sports car they would make the drive in less than ten.
“You’re going to get a ticket,” she pointed out as the speedometer passed 85 mph.
“Unlikely,” he replied, thankfully keeping his eyes on the road. “But if I did, let’s just say I know how to handle those.”
Right, compulsion, she thought. Damn, no wonder he gets away with murder on a regular basis.
As the glowing speedometer inched closer to 90 mph, she gripped the leather armrest tighter. “Not all of us are immortal, you know. If you crash this thing, you might walk away, but I won’t.”
“That would solve my problem,” he muttered, downshifting and taking a tight corner on two wheels.
“Please tell me you’re not serious,” she squeaked through clenched teeth as beads of sweat rolled down her neck.
He must have heard the fearful quiver in her voice, because he turned to look at her. “I don’t crash,” he snapped, locking his dark eyes on hers.
“Watch the road!” she screamed when he left his focus on her face and not the oncoming traffic.
He smirked for a second longer, then faced forward just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a semi-truck.
“Are you insane?” she demanded, suddenly very afraid that she might be locked in a car with a deranged vampire harboring a death wish.
“Depends who you ask,” was his only response.
She didn’t say anything the rest of the trip, hoping her silence would keep his attention on the road. By some miracle, they made it to her apartment in Silverlake in one piece.
She yelped when he slammed his foot on the brakes and cranked the wheel, spinning the car 360 degrees to slide perfectly inside the lines of the visitor space.
She gaped at him for a long moment. “Who even are you?” she asked incredulously.
“I believe we have covered that already, but for the purposes of your question, let’s just say you get really good at a lot of things when you have unlimited time to practice.”
He’s not wrong about that, she thought, peeling herself out of the leather seat and crawling from the low riding car.
She wasn’t sure she would survive a ten-hour trip if he drove up I-5 like it was the Indy 500.
Her chances of dying from a heart attack were already higher than the statistical average, and she really didn’t need to push it.
Saiden’s hand settled on her low back as he stepped up behind her, and she jumped at the unexpected contact.
“I’ll be right back,” she stated, hurrying toward the door of her crappy two-bedroom apartment.
The last thing she wanted to see was his judgmental face if he took in how she and Jinx lived.
“You should probably stay here anyway. A car like that in this neighborhood will be gone in minutes.”
“I’m not worried,” he replied, following close behind her. “I’ll hear if anyone approaches.”
“From inside my apartment?”
When he didn’t even bother with a response, she wondered just how good his hearing was.
Fiddling with the key in the lock, she struggled to think of an excuse to get some time away from him. She’d been planning on Jinx acting as a distraction until she noticed her friend’s car missing from the parking lot.
Shit!
Jinx was still waiting at Tiny’s for her to show up.
Cora mentally berated herself for forgetting about drinks with her bestie.
It wasn’t the first time she’d screwed up plans, nor did she think it would it be the last. She knew Jinx might be annoyed, but would ultimately understand.
Still… the more frequent memory lapses were becoming increasingly frustrating.
Pushing the door open, Cora stepped inside and pulled her cellphone out of her purse. She’d put it on mute for the auditions, and sure enough she had a string of worried text messages from Jinx.
“I forgot that I was supposed to meet my friend at a bar, so I need to message her,” she said to Saiden. “I’m just going to pop into the bathroom real quick, okay?”
Cora glanced up at him when he didn’t reply and stifled a giggle at the horror on his face. She’d known the condition of her apartment would be a drastic change from his usual, but she didn’t think he’d look quite so traumatized.
“You live like this?” he asked in a tone that suggested he viewed her living situation as little better than a refrigerator box under a freeway overpass.
Okay, so maybe her home was a bit messy.
The dining room had been converted into Rick’s workshop for building the special effects devices, and fake blood was splattered across the walls, but getting the spurting action just right took trial and error.
And sure, the living room was covered in costume pieces, black cases containing film equipment, and five tubs of Red Vines—which more or less made up the entirety of their craft services—but that was nothing.
He should have seen her place when it was clean.
The mess on the floor was doing a solid job of hiding the stained carpet, and the assorted movie posters decorating the walls were blocking the peeling paint that had to contain more lead than was legally allowed.
It wasn’t fancy or posh like he was probably used to, but it was hers.
And she didn’t feel the need to explain to him that, thanks to the cost of her medications, it was the nicest place she could afford.
The last thing she wanted was judgment from a grouchy vampire determined to ruin her life’s work.
She waved her hand in front of his face until his eyes focused on hers. “Did you hear me? Bathroom? Gotta text Jinx. I’ll be right back. And don’t worry, there’s no window in there so it’s not like I can sneak out.”
“I would hear if you did,” he replied, not taking his eyes off the chaos before him.
“Of course you would,” she muttered and shuffled her way through the mess toward the bathroom at the back of the apartment.
Plopping down on the cold linoleum floor, she sent a quick message to Jinx’s number before opening a blank email on her phone. With Saiden monitoring her every movement, the chances of leaving herself a physical note had pretty much vanished, so email reminder it was.
Now she just had to figure out what to say that a skeptical future Cora might believe.
She didn’t think ‘you’ve been brain wiped by a vampire so go dig the old version of your script out of the trash’ would quite cut it.
Triggers, Saiden had mentioned. She needed lots and lots of triggers.
She stared at the phone for a minute until an incoming text from Jinx pulled her attention away from the email that was still blank.
The message was long but ultimately understanding.
Jinx was always understanding, and Cora felt awful about lying to the most important person in her life.
Her friend deserved better than a half-assed excuse about how she was feeling overwhelmed lately, but it was all Cora could give right then.
The bulk of her focus had to be on composing an email that she could schedule to be sent to herself every hour starting tomorrow.
Now if only she could figure out what to say.