Chapter 9
Today’s bruise was on Bella’s neck. A large, stretchy one. Bright blue.
She sighed. Anywhere on my body, and it just had to be there.
She’d been staring out the window of the train when she noticed it.
She never looked at her phone during her commute.
To her, looking away from the tracks was tantamount to missing a baby’s first steps.
There was always something new and exciting to see in the subway.
New graffiti on the faded white tile, new exposed wiring dangling from the ceiling, new faces and new outfits and new shoes, hundreds of completely new people from the day before, all standing on the platform in horizontal lines, like sardines from a tin she’d just peeled open.
It didn’t matter how long she had lived in the city, she never got bored of it.
She imagined an Arctic penguin might feel the same way if he took a trip to the .
The concept that so many people could exist next to each other, that the average individual became completely anonymous—it filled her with an excruciating longing, even though she theoretically had it herself, now. That freedom.
But the bruise was a reminder of the contrary. She frowned as she trailed it with her eyes. It traveled from the back of her ear to the center of her collarbone. It was an unpleasant one. Enough to catch the eye of the woman standing next to her.
“You’re sure everything is okay…” The concerned citizen lowered her voice, her eyes scanning suspiciously around the train car. “...At home?”
Bella let out a light laugh as the train screeched against the tracks. They were rapidly approaching her station. How sad. She could have easily gone another loop.
“You’re sweet,” Bella said. They usually were. This happened to her all the time, especially when her symptoms were flaring. “But I just have a condition.”
Pent up air shot out from under the tracks. Tightly packed bodies shifted and grunted, elbows nudging into her side as she grabbed her leather bag from between her legs, the fabric of it sweating from the heat.
“Are you positive?” the woman asked, narrowing her eyes.
Bella noted her scrubs. A doctor, maybe. Or a nurse. She probably dealt with a lot of bullshit artists.
And as far as bullshit artists went, Bella could qualify for an Olympic medal. People actually had a harder time believing her whenever she told them the truth.
“Well, honestly, home life could be better. But Mom hasn’t hit me in at least fifteen years, so the bruise is probably unrelated,” she said, shining her award winning smile. The woman’s mouth dropped open. “Have a good afternoon, alright?”
“Wait!”
Bella shouldered her way out onto the platform. The train car doors slapped shut, and she sighed as she caught her reflection again in the puddle of mystery liquid that she just narrowly avoided stepping in.
She grimaced. Thank God Yasmine worked late hours. She’d need to stop by Sephora.
***
Four extremely expensive bottles of foundation later, she was home.
Home.
Funny way to describe Yasmine’s apartment. Calling this place home was a lot like calling your coworkers your family. It was the only place she had in New York state with a bed she could sleep in—that was a far better definition.
She closed the door to the bathroom and methodically placed her new bottles on the counter, tossing the empty ones into the trash can, which was already overflowing. Basically her entire post-doc salary was in that garbage pile.
Good thing you have your own Daddy Warbucks now.
She let out a small, mirthless laugh at her own joke, before catching her reflection again and wincing. The discoloration on her neck was even worse up this close. No wonder the woman on the train looked so alarmed.
She twisted the cap off the concealer and grabbed her makeup sponge, dabbing at it until it faded into a muddy tan color.
It looked fine now. But what if Yasmine had seen it first?
Her chest clenched. She was lying to Yasmine enough as it was—about her other “apartment,” about her terrible and nonexistent roommate. About her hometown.
But how do you explain away something so visible?
She let out a sigh. After taking inventory, she picked up the one re-usable bottle in her collection. The word Suppressive was scrawled in black ballpoint ink on the lid. It was a cream. Bella’s own scientific creation.
Unscrewing the top, she stared at its milky white surface with derision. She had a love-hate relationship with this particular part of her beauty routine.
This cream was, in fact, what caused all her bruising. But not applying it would create an even larger problem. It was essentially an analogy for her entire life. Constantly stuck in the middle of two bad decisions.
Taking a breath in, she placed the bottle down, and focused on something she could control. She opened the cabinet behind the mirror, and grabbed her tweezers. Keeping herself pretty: that was a problem with an actual solution. What a refreshing change of pace.
Her phone buzzed on the marble counter, nearly falling off. The tweezer dropped from her hands as she moved to catch it. She could not afford a new phone.
Gorgeous: Oh my god. My students are completely lobotomized.
Gorgeous: Heading out now. Do you want dinner?
Bella’s heart clenched. A stupid grin split her face.
She was so lucky Yasmine hadn’t spotted her contact name for her yet.
With the bruise addressed, Bella shut off the bathroom light and headed down to the living room. She used the railing to keep her from falling as she stared at the text, unable to stop grinning like a giddy teenager. This was awful. Awful.
Her chest only tightened further when she passed by the couch, memories from yesterday rushing back.
She was such a fool.
Why on Earth had she told Yasmine that she was attracted to her? Why? Okay, she knew why. Two main reasons. One, because it was true—Yasmine Sokolov had the looks of a redheaded Aphrodite and the personality of someone’s German grandmother, and two: because Bella loved to sabotage herself.
The single most promising opportunity of her life was dangling right in front of her, and she was playing with it like a cat pawing at a fishing line.
It’s not either of those things though, is it, really?
It’s the one you refuse to actually think about.
Bella’s mood turned sour as she opened the fridge. Yasmine kept it exceedingly stocked: zucchini, peppers, cantaloupe, blueberries, four cartons of 2% fat milk.
It was the milk that gave it away. No single person needed four cartons of any perishable liquid. At least one would go bad before you could get through them all.
Yasmine was smart, Bella certainly knew that, but the thing with smart people was that they tended to overthink things.
Stock the fridge with milk. That will seem human.
“Classic vampire,” Bella sighed, slightly adoringly, and pushed all of it aside to reach into the compartment at the back of the fridge.
The compartment, of course, was the second thing that gave it away. What average person needed an area of their fridge locked with a pincode? Well, probably some people. But Yasmine didn’t seem the type to be neurotic about food, and Bella had never seen her drink more than a single glass of wine.
Bella entered the code—4321—and the compartment sprung open, revealing four glass bottles of red lying on a curved metal rack. Bella carefully extracted one, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and poured two inches of blood in.
She brought it up to her nose and sniffed.
Urgh.
Horrible quality. Yasmine was this rich and still drank like this?
It was confounding. But it also made complete sense.
If she was one thing besides rich, she was almost annoyingly principled.
She only drank excess blood donations. Bella had noticed Yasmine’s personal assistant waiting outside the blood bank on multiple occasions.
But it wasn’t like the quality really mattered. The blood didn’t do anything for Bella except bandaid the bigger issue. It was enough to keep her system from totally losing it, but it was just as temporary a measure as the cream.
She swallowed it down in one gulp, and grimaced.
Then she reached into her back pocket for the food dye she’d bought from the grocery. She filled her now empty glass with an equivalent amount of water from the sink, poured the food dye in, and stirred it with a spoon.
Then she carefully poured it back into the glass bottle.
She let out a breath as she shoved it back inside and closed the fridge.
Leave no trace.
At first, she worried supplementing the blood with water would noticeably affect the taste, but she’d seen the way Yasmine drank her blood. She mixed it every morning in a blender with a bunch of fruits and vegetables.
Understandable, given how bad it was.
And honestly, even if Bella was careless about how she went about it, the best thing she had working on her side was that Yasmine didn’t suspect her.
Well, okay, Yasmine suspected her of a lot of things, but being a supernatural entity as old as Christ was not on that list.
That was by design. Classic red herring strategy.
She washed up the dishes, then she sank into the couch. She tried to keep her foolish smiling to a minimum as she re-read her texts.
Bella: Yes pls. Do you like sushi?
Gorgeous: Urgh. Raw fish?
Bella snorted. She really badly wanted to text back you’re a vampire, everything you eat is raw but she was mildly dedicated to her own charade, so she didn’t.
Bella: Um, yes? It’s delicious.
Gorgeous: I’m sure it is. I’m just kind of vegetarian. What about curry?
Bella: sure.
Two vampires who technically didn’t need to eat any food debating dinner plans to avoid outing themselves to the other. If it wasn’t so stupid, it would be hilarious.
As she waited for Yasmine to get home, she ran her hand over the fabric of the couch, letting her fingers dip into it, thinking about how hard Yasmine had pressed her into that fabric.
If she was actually human, it probably would have broken a rib. But Yasmine had no idea; she probably didn’t touch other people much. Not like that, at least.
Look at that. You’re special to her.
“Shut up,” she said to no one but herself, then groaned.
She’d hate you if she knew what you really were.
She frowned. Her eyes began to sting. She covered her betraying tear ducts with her hands and groaned.
You might as well kiss her now before she finds out.
Annoyed with herself and her life and her circumstances—a daily occurrence with seemingly no end—she threw her phone across the couch, and put the tv on, numbing herself with an hour of The Exciting Private Lives of Lemurs from the Natural History Channel until the front door creaked open.
That noise used to terrify her. Now, her heart leapt just at the sound of it. A few seconds later, tousled red hair and a horribly endearing frown were piling three boxes of takeout onto the living room table. The boxes had different restaurant names on them. One was an Indian place, the other was…
Yasmine flicked open the paper box, revealing a seventeen pack of salmon layered over rice. Bella had never seen so much sushi in her life.
“I had no idea how much to order,” Yasmine said, rubbing her face.
Bella blinked at her, confused. “I thought we were getting curry.”
“Well, you said you like sushi, so,” Yasmine said with a shrug, blowing a hair out of her face.
Oh. Bella’s heart ached horribly in her chest. That’s why she’d taken so long.
“But you don’t,” she said quietly.
“So?” Yasmine fell into the couch, mindful—Bella noticed—to keep a few centimeters between them. “Just think of it as your reward, if that helps.”
“My reward?”
Yasmine grinned, slinging her arm over the cushion as she turned to Bella with an open, waiting hand.
“For your passport. Pretty please.”
Bella rolled her eyes, her chest aching.
This was going to end very badly.