Chapter 22 #2
She took the bait nonetheless. “If I’m going to be in love with someone, I would hope they could carry a conversation about something other than sports betting.”
“Oh, is that all?” Bella tightened her grip on Yasmine’s waist. She felt like she was wearing a corset. “Seems like a low bar. Even I could clear that one.”
Yasmine’s eyebrows flew up. She felt like she’d taken the wrong turn somewhere off the highway, and now she was fumbling around in the dark with broken headlights. This is just her playing around again. Even though Yasmine had explicitly told her to stop. Fine, then, she’d play along.
“Well, you’d stand a much better chance than Charlie Smith.”
“Really?” Bella said, eyebrows raising.
“Well, you haven’t turned any humans against their will, have you?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Great. Marry me, then.”
At that, Bella flushed, and smiled that weirdly tragic grin of hers again. She sighed, then drew closer, burying her head into Yasmine’s shoulder. Yasmine felt a shot of pure, stupid happiness as she felt Bella’s smiling lips press to her skin.
“Trust me, marrying me is not a wise decision.”
Yasmine’s heart threatened to burst at the soft way Bella was caressing her back, idly playing with the strands of her hair. This conversation was rapidly falling off a cliff—she had to find a way to wrest control again.
“Well.” She swallowed. “There’s always divorce.”
Bella let out a quiet laugh. It was warm against Yasmine’s neck.
But she didn’t say anything back. They just stood there for several seconds, two tiny figures in a grand hall.
Normally Yasmine would have pushed her away under the guise of there being work to do, but she sensed, somehow, that Bella needed this.
“I’m sorry. I’m being really weird,” Bella confessed quietly. “I haven’t gotten much sleep the past few nights. It feels like I’ve lost my filter.”
She finally leaned back, and took a step away, so they were untangled again. Yasmine felt like a piece of paper that had been ripped in two.
“Why? Is everything alright?” Yasmine asked, trying to get back her bearings. “You got the key I sent you to the new apartment, right?”
Yasmine had taken the past two days off to come up to Albany and prepare for the dinner, while Bella continued working on their research back in the city.
And since Yasmine’s home had gone up in smoke, she’d given Bella a new place to stay in Brooklyn.
They hadn’t talked much between then and now, but Yasmine had assumed everything was alright—that Bella was just consumed by their project.
“Of course. And it’s a wonderful apartment,” Bella said, smiling gently. “It’s really nothing. Just insomnia.” She gestured toward the hallway. “Didn’t you say you wanted to look at something before the guests arrived?”
Yasmine scrutinized her face, but as usual, it was as revealing as the Mona Lisa.
“For the record, I am very aware of your talent for changing the topic. I’m just allowing you to do it this time,” she mumbled. “But yes. Follow me, but please don’t ask any questions about the decor. It was my fault for giving Bruce a credit card.”
***
Yasmine shut the door to her private study with a forceful click. She sighed in relief, happy to finally be done with the torture that was walking through the one corridor in the compound completely dedicated to Red Sox baseball memorabilia.
“I think your doorman might have a mild fixation on Babe Ruth.”
Yasmine gave her an exasperated look. “Trust me, I know. Imagine how disappointed he was when I told him he wasn’t allowed to make the Bambino immortal.”
Bella laughed again, but weakly. It paled in comparison to her usual snorting.
Yasmine watched her with concern as she strolled around the room, examining the bookshelves, the reading desk, Yasmine’s old ink wells.
Yasmine was worried again now; even more worried than she’d been last night.
But she didn’t know how to address it. Or what even to address.
She was famously bad at getting to the bottom of Bella’s emotions, and she’d grown increasingly wary of trying.
“Is this where you stayed back when you worked for the college in Albany?”
“Correct,” Yasmine said, sitting down on the small burgundy sofa. Her feet were aching from running around all day.
“Did you not get lonely?” Bella asked quietly. “Such a big place all for yourself?”
Yasmine went quiet.
Loneliness wasn’t something she really contemplated much. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel it; it was more that she didn’t leave room for it. She was good at spotting it from several paces out, and outrunning it until it gave up.
“I had Bruce,” she said. “And—”
She was about to say Wallace, but she stopped herself.
“—And Rebecca.”
“Your doorman and your personal assistant,” Bella said, looking at her with amusement. “Very close contacts.”
Yasmine rolled her eyes. “And you’re so much better? You have a thousand extra years on me. Where’s your husband? Where’s your kids?”
She hadn’t meant the joke to sound so aggressive. Luckily, Bella was seemingly immune to the charms of her personality. She only laughed.
“Funny you should ask,” she said. “Where are the books?”
Yasmine didn’t quite know what she meant by the first part, but she was anxious enough about the latter question to just wave it off. “Right in front of you.”
Bella’s eyes turned to the oak reading desk. Her face turned curious, then surprised, when she noticed the mountain of books sitting off to the side.
“My god. You really do have everything, you hoarder.”
She picked up the book on top of the rest, laid it out on the table, and started paging through it.
Yasmine snorted when she recognized what was written on the spine. “Does that book actually matter, or are you just being annoying?”
The book in question was a list of marriage records between vampires.
It went back as far as five hundred AD. It was actually one of the least valuable things in Yasmine’s collection.
There was nothing vampires cared more about than lineage and legacy, so books like this were a dime a dozen. Almost every family had their own.
Still, unable to contain her interest, Yasmine walked up behind her. Bella paused, her fingers stalling.
“I see,” she said quietly, with a clipped laugh. “Wow.”
Yasmine’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
Bella pointed to an entry on the page.
Basarab, Sorin (b. 515, Dacia)
Bound in matrimony to human female (name not entered)
“Huh. He married a human.” It was uncommon, but not unheard of.
Usually it was first-generation vampires who had been turned and didn’t understand the implications of it. It was what Bruce would have been if she’d left him behind. Clueless vampires with no knowledge of the supernatural, alone with their fate.
It was what Yasmine was, too, for the first few years.
Bella let out another clipped laugh. Yasmine didn’t understand what was funny. “Are there drawings?” Bella asked. “Portraits of the betrothed?”
Yasmine nodded. “A few. If they were wealthy enough to commission an artist to do them. They’re in the appendix.”
Bella tilted the book, and it yawned open to the appropriate section. Black and white sketches were labeled in a four by four grid on the page.
“Is there someone you’re looking for…?” Yasmine began to ask, before the words died in her throat as she caught sight of the woman drawn opposite Sorin Basarab.
She swallowed hard, as if she was physically shoving the realization down her esophagus; she brought her face almost flush to the old, sweet-smelling parchment, making sure she was seeing it correctly, then, after several moments, slowly slid her eyes back towards Bella, who had her lip bitten guiltily.
So it wasn’t a joke.
Yasmine’s heart hammered.
She wasn’t sure why she was so surprised. Bella was two thousand years old. She was overwhelmingly gorgeous. Enigmatic. A great conversationalist. Intelligent.