Mortdale

10. Chapter 10

Willow

He’d not left the mansion for a week straight since the attempted kidnapping of Piper, and I hadn’t seen him leave his office for that same amount of time. Which had become a hindrance to every single plan I’d been concocting, which all revolved around me accessing his office again.

With some help from the librarian, I’d managed to map out the locations of each red maiden whose husband had died right after their death—the only way I’d managed to locate who’d died out of the list Agnes had given me.

From the society pages, I deduced the red maidens also not often crossed paths with one another at formal events, let alone recently before their deaths.

I’d failed to make any connection there.

Their deaths had been sporadic, not even occurring in the order of the year they’d been married.

Out of nowhere, too, it seemed, because months, weeks, days before their deaths they’d been photographed attending social functions in tip-top shape, smiling ear to ear, clinging to the arms of their vampire husbands.

The mechanical pen hit my temple repeatedly as my eyes jumped around the pin marks I’d made on the map. “What is even happening here?”

Thomas rolled on his back, all four paws up in the air. “The witches do not care. They refuse to speak to me.”

“Maybe they’re just scared.” Maybe.

“We should eat. Makes it better,” Thomas echoed. “We can share the little girl. You can have the eyes. They taste good.”

I gave him a shove with my foot and watched his fat stomach bounce with each step as he rolled all the way down.

Laying back against the stair steps, I covered my bloodshot eyes with my cold palms. There were only so many cemetery trips I could drag Liam to before he’d go and report it to my lord-husband.

And the witches that were alive were not allowed to socialise and consort with another witch without a chaperone.

That was without taking into consideration that Theodora had told me most of the high nobility forbade their witch-wives from fraternising with other witches so as not to draw unwanted attention from the church.

Two witches were a party too many, according to the clergy.

I’d enlisted Thomas in tracking them down the first week I’d arrived in Mortdale.

And I was yet to receive any letter or news or a single reply of any kind back.

They’d all banished Thomas the moment he’d told them about the matter.

Ethel, what did I get us into?

I nearly jumped to my feet when the main doors drew open, letting in blistering rain and two cloaked figures.

Arthur shook the hail off his shoulders, turning to grab the other person’s cloak. The grouchy guard paused and winced when he noticed me curled up on the steps.

A woman stood next to him, maybe only a few years older than me.

Dressed in a tight blood-red dress, her copper red hair was propped against her head in coils with various pins and a patterned crimson scarf elegantly draped around her neck despite the choking summer humidity.

She noticed me standing at the top of the stairs.

Her head tilted to the side as she studied me, from the frizz on my head to my naked toes poking under my nightgown.

“Come on, witch-woman. Let me take you to your room,” Arthur said, coming up the stairs.

“Who is she?” I leaned in to whisper at him.

The man wouldn’t meet my eyes, his mouth parting and closing a few times before giving me a vague answer. “He needs to feed.”

“But we already have a cook.”

Arthur snorted and blasted on a heaving cough. There wasn’t enough time for me to process that look because my attention was drawn to the woman as she pulled the scarf off, revealing a bruised mark just above the crook of her neck. She met my eyes and smirked as she slipped into Logan’s study.

My pulse beat so hard in my throat it was choking me.

“Does he always feed from her?”

Arthur scratched his head. “Mostly. We all have our regulars. Irena is one of Logan’s.”

“She’s pretty.”

“It’s not like that for Logan.”

“Like what?”

“Sexual.”

I could feel the weight of every organ in my abdomen all of the sudden. “Why would it be sexual?”

He just stared at me, and then it must have dawned on him that I had no clue about what he meant because he damn near tripped down the stairs as he darted for the doors.

“Worms and snails, and their gnarly tails,” I recited so loud it echoed, and he did a one-eighty, running back in my direction.

“Saints, Saints!” he muttered to himself, shivering and near gagging. “No hexing, ye witch-woman. Didn’t yer husband tell ye?”

“It wasn’t a hex. It was a poem. I love my hands. Wouldn’t want to lose them just to fill your guts with worms and snails. That’ll happen when you die, anyway. So gag away at your pace.”

He glared at me. “Well played.”

“If you weren’t so terrified of me, maybe this could have been the start of a beautiful friendship.”

I could see him considering his options. “He’ll kill me.”

“And you will go down with honour, I am sure.” Smiling up at him, I blinked sweetly. “Do we need to sit down, hold hands, and braid each other’s hair for this?”

“Maybe,” he muttered, glancing at Logan’s study. After some huffing and puffing, he settled on, “Fine. Saints. It’s like telling a teenager about bees and caves.”

“What’s that?”

He just stared at me wide-eyed and a little horrified, and I blasted into chuckles. “Just pulling your leg there, vampire-man.”

“Saints.”

“They’ve heard you, Arthur. They’re clearly not coming to help you, so stop bothering them.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I will need a drink for this.”

“You’re lucky that I know just the place,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows in the direction of Logan’s smoke room.

It had taken Arthur half a bottle of one of Logan’s expensive whiskeys to tell me about the ins and outs of blood feeding. And it took another half of a bottle for him to let me put a braid in his waist-length hair that was completely wasted on a man who knew how to do nothing with it.

I refilled my glass a second time and handed the rest of the bottle back to Arthur, who’d given up on resisting my questioning and had sunk onto one of Logan’s fancy chairs. “So, he gets turned on,” I mused.

A bitter thing settled in my belly; I could even taste it on my tongue.

I was going to be sick and I couldn’t come up with an answer as to why this whole ordeal was bothering me so much.

Our marriage was only in name. I’d expected him to have lovers.

All men did, especially a lord of his means.

But the fact that he was feeding from her…

that bothered me most, now knowing all that Arthur had told me.

How sacred and powerful the rite of feeding was. What it did to their bodies.

“They both do. The Bloodhouse doubles as a—” He winced.

“A pleasure house.” He cleared his throat.

“If it is agreed upon by both parties, of course. But I’ve known him for twenty years, and he’s never been too enthusiastic about this aspect of it.

And he will take it in a glass any day over direct contact. ”

“Then what’s taking them so long?”

Arthur pressed his mouth shut. “That I can’t tell you.”

“Does everyone feed from these Bloodhouses?”

“Vampires with willing human spouses tend to have the supply at home.” He scratched his cheek that was starting to turn red. “I told you, it feels…good for both parties.”

Good. Good.

My tongue pressed against the back of my throat to smother a gag.

“Having fun?”

We both froze at my husband’s voice, and Arthur immediately shot to his feet, shaking off the haze of the alcohol.

Logan’s eyes traced me from the tip of my head down to my naked feet, which were propped up on the armchair and had caused my nightdress to pull up almost to my knees.

Then they narrowed on his friend’s loose, long hair that had a neat, sweet braid in it.

The corner of his lip twitched while the ring of gold in his eyes vanished into a cloud of black, forcing Arthur to take a small step back.

I tipped my head back against the armchair to watch Irena behind him, walking towards the door. “You?” I asked, taking a sip of my drink. “Had fun?”

His dark gaze slowly rolled back in my direction, swallowing me whole.

After giving him a quick once-over, I nudged Arthur’s leg with my foot. “Sit down, Art. This isn’t a drill.”

My husband’s eyes snapped to me again, pinning me in place. “Leave,” he ordered, and it had not been for me.

I grabbed onto Arthur’s sleeve just before he left. “Thank you, vampire-man. If you need someone’s bloodline hexed and cursed, knock five times on my door and meow twice,” I said, giving him a wink.

His silver gaze widened, pacing between me and his friend. “You want me dead, witch-woman. Is that what this is?” he whispered in a panic, making me chuckle.

“Art!” Logan barked, making me flinch. “Out.”

The crackling of the fireplace couldn’t drown the sound of the organ contained in my rib cage. I could hear it in my ears, feel it on the tips of my fingers holding the now warm whiskey glass, on the top of my lips, my eyelids—everywhere.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, grabbing a bottle off the cellarette cabinet and filling himself a glass.

“Magic trick.” A hair pin and some persistent whisper-yelling from Arthur telling me to hurry up.

“Don’t call him that.”

“Call him what?”

“He’s Arthur to you.”

Irritation itched at my fingertips. “He’s whatever I want him to be to me.”

He stared at me as if I had put a curse on his entire bloodline—well, logistics aside because neither of us were considering consummating this marriage. “You’re my wife and lady of this house. You will address my men properly.”

“And you’re my husband. Who I seem to share with many,” I said, loudly sipping—slurping—my drink. “You want to talk about laws and rules. Fine.” I gave him a sweet smile. “Let’s start with you, dear husband.”

“How much did you drink?”

“How much did you drink?” I licked my lips, tasting my own stupidity. What was I doing? What was I even saying? “Was she good? Does she taste good?”

Oh my Goddess. It just kept going.

His fingers came under my chin, lifting my attention to his. His thumb brushed the top of my lip, coming up bloodied. “You’re drunk.”

I wiped my nose to the corner of my sleeve. “Maybe just a little.”

“You know I can hurt him for this.”

I sucked my lower lip between my teeth, tasting my blood. “If you want to hurt someone, hurt me. I talked him into it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I’m very convincing.”

His attention was on my lips as he brought his fingers to my mouth. His thumb slid between my parted lips, brushing over my upper teeth. “You have your chance, then,” he said, bringing his bloodied thumb to his mouth, “to convince me not to hurt him.”

A shiver raked down my limbs when he sucked my blood clean off his skin. “Art’s your oldest friend. You’ll not hurt him. And as far as I know, you three love sharing things.”

That ticked him off, it seemed. Because he grasped my chin. “His name is Arthur.”

“I’ll call him Art.”

“You’ll call him Arthur.”

“I’ll call him Art behind your back.”

He reached for the hem of my skirt, pulling it down until it covered my legs. “You plan on seeing him a lot behind my back?”

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. “You smell like her.” And I hate it a little.

He was still holding onto the fabric of my dress. His hands pressed against my legs. “I’ll shower it off.”

I’ll still remember. I reached to unknot his tie, sliding it off his neck and pressing the silky material on my bleeding nose.

“Next time, I ask that you do your business where I cannot see it. I might not have much, but I do have some dignity—which I’d like to keep.

Only if it is okay with you, my lord. Of course. ”

It was ridiculous to even consider this a marriage, and there was really no dignity to speak of; I just didn’t want to see her again. Them together. The images of them my mind kept conjuring—I wanted them gone.

I slid off the armchair, my hip brushing his shoulder as I stood and grabbed a whiskey bottle from the tantalus on the corner. “Put the tie and the bottle on your tab.”

Resisting the urge to run as far as possible from him, I gracefully pulled the doors shut and dragged myself up the stairs.

The door to my bedroom was wide open. Thomas stood at the foot of the bed, red eyed and jaw torn right open as he stared at the little body laying on top of the blanket I’d laid on the floor.

“Thomas,” I hissed, shutting the door and climbing under the bed with Piper. “I told you that you can’t eat this one.”

“Just a little taste,” my familiar rattled like a growling croc. “She keeps picking me up and kissing me. I can’t bear it. She’s all evil bones. They must taste nice.”

“Shoo, Thomas.”

Why did she keep sneaking into my bed?

“Kid, I’m going to take you to your room, okay?”

She turned around, thrust her sticky fingers into my hair and grabbed me to her with the might of a thousand titans.

And then I was caught like a squirrel in a steel-jawed trap.

If I moved, she pulled harder. If I tried to disengage her slimy claws, she brought her feet to my stomach and sank her toes into my ribs.

Breathing out a sigh, I stopped fighting. “I hate your uncle,” I murmured.

“Maybe you should let me eat the vampire,” Thomas groggily rattled.

“He’ll choke you and kill you.”

He crawled over my chest. His stinky paws rested against my chin as he offered, “I’ll bite slow.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, and not because of his fetid breath. “You’ve said even bugs taste better than the vampire you ate that day.”

“And Thomas stands by it. But Thomas will eat the vampire. If you ever offer him to me.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, my eyes drifting shut as I felt him curl up against my neck.

I am not sure how, but I managed to fall asleep like that, with Piper’s tiny yet mighty strong feet pressed flat to my stomach, her chocolatey, sour breath on my face, and a fistful of my hair sticking to her slimy fingers. And my rat’s gurgly snores in my ear.