Chapter 13 #3
"Venom dependency." She says it and then winces.
"It's—vampire venom, when it's not predatory, it's—" She pauses, searching for the right words.
"It feels good. Really good, apparently.
And if someone keeps coming back for it, keeps getting bitten, the crash gets worse each time.
You start needing it to feel okay. Skipping meals because nothing tastes right.
Not sleeping because nothing's—" She stops.
"There are students who get into these arrangements.
A vampire, a non-vampire. It looks like a social thing from the outside. Usually it's not."
I sit with that. “Is she–”
“What?”
I shake my head. “I mean, do you think she’d actually get into one of those types of arrangements with a vampire?”
I think back to the girls’ collective reactions to me admitting my developing feelings for my own vampires…
Nellie shrugs. “I really don’t know. But she'd be furious if I said it to her face and I was wrong," Nellie says. "And if I'm right—" She doesn't finish it.
My magic shifts against my sternum, slow and uneasy. I press it still.
"Come over tonight," Nellie says. "Margo's stress-baking again and Tess found a new horror movie she's convinced is actually good this time, so." A pause. "Just—come. Be there. Tell me if you notice anything I'm missing."
"Yeah," I say. "I'll watch."
She smiles.
We chat for a bit longer before she heads to her next class and I begrudgingly head to the library. I have too much work to catch up on and the last place I want to spend any free time is in a big house with my overbearing jailer.
∞∞∞
I spend the rest of the day in the library.
Seven hours, give or take. Three weeks of reading doesn't compress easily and I'm still behind when the light through the windows goes from amber to dark, but it's the good kind of tired—the kind that comes from actual work and not from treading water.
I almost feel like a student again. It's alarming how much I've missed it.
By the time I get to Nellie's it's past nine and Margo has already produced two dozen snickerdoodles and a look that says she would have made more if she'd known I was coming.
Tess is thirty minutes into a horror movie that is not, by any measurable standard, actually good.
Shandy is on the floor with her cards, same as always.
I watch her without watching her. The way Nellie taught me to look at plants—not staring, just present, letting the details come to you.
Shandy laughs at the right moments. Reaches for a cookie. Pulls her sleeves down twice without seeming to notice she's doing it.
Maybe nothing. Maybe Nellie is borrowing trouble.
But Nellie's gut is not usually wrong.
I don't stay late. I plead the library and the pile of reading still waiting and Nellie walks me to the door and doesn't say anything about Shandy, just squeezes my hand once before she lets go. She doesn't have to say it. I caught what she needed me to catch.
The north path back to Vassard’s Mansion is pretty enough that I almost forget to hate it. Old oaks, Spanish moss, lamplight going gold through the dark. I'm tired enough that I’m almost relieved to be back–trying my hardest to make the best of my new situation.
I come through the front door and almost walk straight into someone.
There's a woman at the foot of the stairs.
Not staff—no grey, no house livery. Just a coat and heels and a handbag held loose at her side like she's forgotten she's holding it.
Her eyes are blank, and when the door shuts behind me she turns and blinks, slow, the way you blink when you're trying to remember something that keeps sliding away.
"Oh," she says. "I was just—" She stops. Looks at the door behind me. "I was leaving."
I feel my face scrunch as I try to make sense of the situation. "Are you alright?"
"Mm." She smiles, vague and warm, like she's had a glass of wine. "I'm fine. I'm good. I just—I need to—" She moves toward the door, unhurried, like her body knows the way even if her mind is somewhere else. "It was lovely," she says, to no one in particular. "It was really—yes."
She moves past me toward the door, unhurried, and that's when I see it—two small marks on the side of her neck, already bruising at the edges, and a thin smear of red on her collar she doesn't know is there.
The door clicks shut behind her.
My stomach turns as I realize…
Someone fed from her.
I take the stairs fast.
My room is as I left it. I close the door. Lean against it.
The magic presses at my sternum, agitated, and I breathe through it—in, count, out—until it settles.
When I open my eyes there is an envelope on my pillow.
Heavy cream. My name in embellished, old handwriting. I pick it up and flip it over.
The card inside is the same cream, thick as folded skin. The ink is dark. The hand deliberate.
Miss Dellaby—
I would be pleased if you would join me for dinner. Not this evening; I know you've had a long day. Two nights hence. We'll eat properly and talk without an audience.
Just us.
—L.V.
I read it twice and roll my eyes. Fold it back along the original crease.
Just us.
Yeah, how about hell no. I set it face-down on the nightstand.
But the dread creeps up the back of my neck anyway. I can refuse, I can plan to not show up, but at the end of the day–I can’t really get away from him.
And he knows it.
He’s betting that my curiosity outweighs my own preservation instincts.
I blow out a breath and sink down onto the edge of the bed.
He’s… correct.