14. Chapter 14
Logan
My wife was back on the move. She’d not even spared herself another extra day of rest after I’d left.
Which meant I had barely managed to keep my focus on the job at hand.
The urge to drop everything and follow her around town had been too severe.
But the Madness had killed thirty more vampires in the short span of thirty-six hours.
And until we’d raked through every corner of the southern town in Decimere, only an hour's ride from Darkheim, we couldn’t take one step out of it.
Liam was waiting at the door of my study when I stepped inside the mansion, as he’d been ordered to report to me every single detail. “I don’t like doing this anymore,” he said, following me inside and shutting the doors.
“Doing what?”
“Telling you about her every step.”
I folded my jacket on the armchair and loosened my tie. “If I find out you’ve missed telling me something and she’s gotten hurt because of it, so help you God, Liam.”
“I’m just saying, if you’re working together, why still doubt her. That’s just my two cents.”
“Your two cents will be the reason they get rid of pennies.”
“Asshole,” Liam muttered under his breath.
“And I don’t doubt her, Liam. I doubt the people around her.
” It was through sheer luck that Sybil had not made her husband aware of whatever Willow had told her about.
Whatever camaraderie the old witch had with her coven was the only thing that was keeping my wife safe for now.
One moment I’d let her slip through my fingers, and she could have gotten herself killed.
Right under my nose. Keeping her alive had proved to be more difficult than keeping one of Piper’s goldfish alive.
Except, I just couldn’t swap my wife with a similar, yet slightly off-looking wife.
And I was attached to the entire damn aquarium now.
Not a single grass strand in it could be altered.
Liam cleared his throat, turning red as he itched the back of his neck. “She really gave you that?” he asked, pointing at the ridiculous book Willow had given me. Vampires in Furs.
I glanced up at him. “You’ve seen it before?”
He winced. “We haven’t stopped hearing about it.”
My mouth tipped up as I raked through the latest records that had been sent from the parliament regarding the infection numbers.
Another futile hour spent with no result, for certain.
This thing had no pattern and followed no same rule.
It just sprouted out of nowhere without any warning. “Where did you take her today?”
“The library.”
“And?”
He groaned. “If you’re going to keep following her around yourself, why put me up to it?”
“And?”
“A daylight studio. She had some photographs taken with her and Piper.”
I set the pen down and narrowed my eyes on him.
“Saints! Fine. Me, too.” He took a tintype from his pocket and handed it to me. The three of them were standing up straight, grinning ear to ear at the camera.
“I guess I was paying for all of this.”
“You’ve been paying for a lot of things lately,” he mumbled to himself, picking up the photo from my hand and dashing out.
A knock sounded on the door only moments later.
I looked up, meeting dark, endless eyes instead of Christof’s usually nagging ones.
“You’re back,” she quietly said, shutting the door and standing against it for a moment.
I stood. “What’s wrong?”
She’d fainted twice on me since we’d met, and we hadn’t met that damn long ago.
My grandmother had whisked together some ridiculous witch ailment that made no sense whatsoever, and my wife wasn’t being that forthcoming either about her quick recovery.
Not only was I failing to keep her from diving head first into the most dangerous situation she could find herself in, I was absurdly out of my depth on how to help her feel better.
“Can’t sleep,” she said, dropping on one of the two chairs on the other side of my work desk.
She grabbed a cigarette from the box on the table, bringing it to her lips as she patted her hands over the scattered documents for the lighter.
“And your Piper keeps hogging the covers. She also insists on sleeping with Thomas between us and I can’t remember when I even gave a bath to that thing. ”
Her round, warm attention lifted to me when I reached to light it.
“You smoke now?”
“Nope,” she said, coughing as proof. “But I like how the smoke smells. It smells like you.” She blew a cloud of smoke, fanning it away with her hand.
“Why did you meet with Agnes that day?” Resting her feet on my table, she cocked her head in my direction.
“I could smell you there, in her study.” Her bottom lip slid between her teeth.
“The air smelled like a wet forest and burnt cloves. What did you two talk about?”
Her nightgown had pulled back to her knees, and I reached to grab the end and pull it back down over her legs.
Saints.
“You,” I said, filling her a glass of whiskey.
“Me?”
“I wanted to know about my bride. Make sure she wasn't some psychopathic murderer.”
“I could be.”
“I’d be very impressed.”
“Hey!” she coughed. “I can do anything when I put my mind to it.”
“Why choose occult pathology out of all the things you could do?”
She studied her hand, tracing the length of her fingers.
“I have always been a little obsessed with the human body. The complexity. The fragility. The resilience of our anatomy down to the most microscopic level. The first time I held an anatomy book, I was thirteen. Curious to understand what happened to us when we died. My faith only gave me vague answers. Science was concrete. I needed something concrete in my life. Something certain.” Her chest rose faster, eyes staring lost in the distance.
“You should have seen me back then.” A small, longing smile played on her lips.
“Studying it for years in books like a glutton that could just never fill up. And then I saw an autopsy up-close for the first time—it was an unexplainable high. My scope of the world just expanded from there. It became infinite.”
“So, you’re curious by nature.”
Her attention drifted off in the distance again, and it might have been the furthest she had gone from me since we had met.
“It was my nature that made me curious. Why I am the way that I am; I’ve always wanted to understand it.
At first because I couldn’t accept it. In truth, I’ve pulled my body apart so many times over the years.
I am the slowest-rotting corpse I’ve autopsied.
” And like that, her attention returned back into the room, meeting mine.
“We all want to know ourselves,” she lightly said, wiping away a tear that had settled on her cheek.
“Have you never not wanted to tear your chest apart and hold your heart in your hands just to see how it beats?”
“The less I know about myself, the easier it is to live with myself.” The things I’d done, said, been to become who I was today; they all left a mark inside us. If I opened my stomach up, would I see rot there? Maggots already infesting my heart?
She got up and waltzed to my side. The proximity was suffocating. There was nothing else I saw when she was in my vicinity. It was hard to pay attention to anything else, which made her the most dangerous thing to be around.
The soft smell of jasmine and violet entered my lungs when she pressed her ear to my chest.
“I think I can hear the ocean,” she whispered.
“Like harsh waves crashing against rock.” She pulled away, and I mourned the loss of warmth against my chest. “And if I close my eyes,” she said, drawing them shut.
“I can smell the forest. I can feel the sun on my fingers, streaks of light peeking through the pine trees.” Her lips pulled in a soft smile as she reached to brush her palm softly against my hair.
“At the very end, there’s a meadow and it is summer, and the tall grass is pale and soft.
” Leaning in, she pressed her face against my neck.
Electricity slipped through every nerve in my body when she inhaled and then exhaled over my skin.
“In the middle of it, a warm cabin smelling of dry cloves.” Her lips rested softly against my neck in a gentle kiss.
“A burning fireside glowing against my skin. Closer and closer until I can feel my eyelashes burning, my nails aching from the heat.”
Saints.
She pulled back, her long pale hair falling against my chest. The smell of jasmine was heavy; torturous. And the creamy notes of violet that had blended on her skin were warm; so warm.
Bracing a hand on my chair, she ran a finger down my chest, stopping over my heart. Her head tilted to the side, her eyes widening just a little as she smiled to herself.
“Thinking about cutting me open?”
Her eyes rose to mine, and her smile fell immediately. “Only if you were dead. Which you aren’t.”
I had to bite down on my tongue not to laugh. “I hate how often I disappoint you.”
“It’s alright. I’ll spend some of your money to make myself feel better.”
“Never enough necklaces, huh?”
“Never.”
I tipped my head back to look at her. “I’ve not seen you wear any of them. Where are they?”
She bit her inner cheek. “In my room.”
“You sure you didn’t hand the Darkheim orphanage headmistress a bag of rubies on your last journey there?”
She smothered a small wince. “Children love rubies.”
“I’m sure they loved your diamonds, too.”
“Especially the diamonds.” Her dark eyes nearly swallowed me whole. “You’re not mad?”
“You can spend our money however you like.”
Her smile was shy, reserved. “I will need that in writing.” Her nightgown had slid down her shoulder, the front tied loosely and revealing the soft lines of her breasts as she picked up the flat silver pendant resting against my chest. “A star,” she murmured, brushing her thumb over it. “It’s pretty.”