16. Chapter 16 #2
If she only knew how alike we were. If only she knew how much that pained me to know. To know we shared a similar wound that had nearly killed me. It made me wonder if it had ever tried to kill her. And that made me feel sick.
“What about Ronnie?” I asked.
Her eyes went wide, and they finally met mine for the first time since that day in the carriage—at least for longer than a few unbearable seconds. “How do you know about Ronnie?”
From the way she reacted, I wished I’d never even heard of his name. “You mentioned him after the ceremony. Were you two together for long?”
She blinked slowly. “What do you mean together?”
“Was it just sex?”
She snorted, then threw her head back and laughed.
And laughed. And laughed some more. Shaking her feet and everything.
She was pure joy. Not only at that moment, but especially at that moment.
And so close to me. Nothing that happy had ever gotten so close to me.
“Ronnie’s the old orangery celebrity,” she said, wiping her amused eyes.
“A spectre who would frighten everyone who tried to come down there. He was good company. I wonder how he’s doing.
If Ethel has kept her promise to light him a candle once in a while. ”
I was the most ridiculous vampire in the entire three continents. And glad for it.
“Why white peonies?”
She stared at me for a while, so I slid my tie off, handing it to her.
I wondered what part about me made her so nervous. But part of me was too nauseated to want to know.
“It seemed like a reasonable flower,” she said, folding and unfolding my tie between her fingers and looking away from me.
“I never had much interest in anything besides my work. Flowers, food, clothes, games, all those were meaningless to me. I did what others did. Ate what others ate. Dressed how others dressed.”
A reasonable flower. “You weren’t uninterested, Willow. You have the power to give everything meaning. You just wanted to vanish in the masses. But you’re not ordinary enough to blend in, are you?”
“You mean, normal?”
“Why strive to be normal when you’re so extraordinary?”
Her soft lips parted, struggling to find words as her dark eyes paced between mine. “I am not.”
“You’re the most remarkable person I know. Seeing you that day in Alfred’s laboratory was like witnessing the Basilica being painted by the old Gods.”
I couldn’t tell her how much I hated when she shrunk back, trying to make herself invisible.
She took the cigarette from my fingers when I offered it to her, her soft lips wrapping where mine had just been. “Did you take my memorial portrait, by the way? I am sure I put it in the bag with the rest of the things, but I can’t find it.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Why?”
I took the cigarette from her, tasting the balmy scent of cherry on my tongue. “Because I wanted to.”
“I want it back. I liked that photograph.”
“I’m sure you’ll fine me generously for it.”
“I want something more than money this time. It’s getting annoying. You have too much of it.”
“I’m sorry my wealth has been such a burden on you.”
“I’ll be okay. I’ll wipe my tears with the new diamond necklace Piper picked for me the other day.
She’s got quite the taste.” Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth as she hesitated for a minute.
“She’s very gifted, you know. She feels everything on her fingertips.
” She lifted a hand in the wind, tangling her fingers in it.
“Clairsentient witches are pretty rare.”
The word terrified me somehow. Piper would grow up one day. And who was to say the same fate as her mother’s wouldn’t follow her.
“Cassandra used to be the same as her. To my sister, everything had a heart. She was always cautious of things, as if she could hurt them.”
“Why does it seem as if you blame her for her death?”
“I don’t. Not as much as I blame myself for it, anyway.”
She slid slightly closer to me. “Why didn’t you come back when she asked you to?”
“The fleet refused to leave the Eastern Continent until the king gave his order. He wouldn’t comply with any of the thousands of requests I sent him until it was too late.”
She groaned. “Goddess, I hate him so much.”
I laughed, and her head snapped in my direction like I’d cursed her out.
Her big brown eyes had grown even bigger as they roamed across my face. She did that alot. Just stared at me, watching me carefully, almost as if she was studying me. “They look like they hurt.”
“You won’t feel them.”
The slightest colour tinted her cheeks. She licked her lips. “The venom, right?”
I nodded, bringing my fingers to her slender neck, feeling her pulse shiver against me. “It numbs the skin. It also acts as an antiseptic. The incisions heal pretty quick, too.”
Drinking blood was more than feeding to many; it was a ceremonial celebration of consuming pure, unalloyed life, shared pleasure and pure agony at the same time. To me, it was repulsive in many ways.
At least until I’d thought about how it would feel to mark her throat, her thighs, her breasts, her lips. Until I’d tasted her blood. Until she’d licked mine off her lips as if she’d been relishing its taste. Smoking, drinking, nothing had helped to contain the urges.
Saints.
“How often do you go to the Bloodhouses?”
“Once every other day.” A long while ago now. But I’d survived on worse things than stale blood.
“What about Piper?”
“Since she’s only part vampire, she can sustain her body with food, but she does experience blood thirst once in a while. She has her cocktail in a glass and through a straw.”
She smiled. “Yuck.”
“This is what finally disturbs you?”
Her fingers twirled around the fabric of her nightgown. “Every woman has her limits.”
“I don’t think you have limits, Willow. I think it fascinates you, but you’re too aware of yourself to say so.
Constantly cautious of what is accepted and what is not.
You’ve spent a long time studying what is normal—you know the rules of that game better than anyone.
I think you’d love to pull me apart right now just to figure out how I function.
I see how you look at people you find interesting, smart, strange, new.
Anything that doesn’t fit the ordinary is a curiosity to you. ”
Her heart started chasing the metronome set at presto again. “Do you think I’m weird?”
I got up. “I’ve wanted to pull you apart, too. In my own way. Does that make me weird, too?”
“Maybe.” Her chest rose fast as she looked up at me. “A little.”
“Then we’re both weird.”
Her head tipped all the way back to look at me when I reached out a hand for her. “Let’s go and see if you’ll burn in those Hells of damnation, shall we?”
Her cold hand slid into mine. She didn’t pull away even as we went inside. Even when I brought her to sit on my lap.
The urge to bury my face in her hair was severe, but I focused on the matter at hand.
She scooted back on my lap when I pulled the Chronicle out of my shelf and I set it on the table.
This close, I could feel her heart beating as if it was pressed against mine; lined up perfectly against each other.
It was the closest they could ever get, but it wasn’t even nearly close enough.
“What’s this gibberish?”
I brought her closer to me as I leaned forward, over the book. “The Old Vampiric Languages. I’ll translate. What part did you want to know?”
“The story about Sankta Katerina.”
“The Old Creation,” I said, searching for the section.
She was doing it again—watching me. And the urge to perform for her grew severe, to please her enough that she wouldn’t look away. “You’ve read it before?”
“You can’t hate religion if you’ve never read their gospel. It was between these pages full of saintly prejudice I found it—my hate for it.”
I tapped a finger on the illustrated page. Painted in gold was a veiled woman on her knees, holding the dead, bleeding body of her lover.
“Sankta Katerina and Lamuel, the first vampire,” she said, running her fingers down the painting.
“Sankta Katerina fell for a human man called Lamuel of the Grey, a traveller from the Far Isles. He was killed by an enemy of his family in a dispute over trade. They were pirates,” I told her.
“When she returned home from giving her blessings to the realm, she found him dead. In grief, she fed him from the Ewer of Life. A goblet said to have been made of pewter from the arm of Nestor the Immortal, He Who Brings Life, whose body was said to have been all earth and mineral. And filled with his blood which was the fountain where all life had begun. But those who drink from the ewer of the immortal must always feed on the fountain of life. Forever. With no cure but to exist hungry and deranged from hunger.” I paused, looking at her.
“Hence why Lamuel needed to drink blood to continue living. And so on and so forth.”
Her finger ghosted over the silver-painted ewer. “Why would Katerina curse a dead man like this?”