ALICE #2
The room we stepped into was as dark as the rest of the club.
Four booths in black leather ringed a little square of dance floor, two on each side, and a pair of black wooden chairs sat pushed against the wall.
There were no windows. No way out other than back through the curtain.
The music was a little muffled and bass-y since we were technically behind the stage, but still loud enough to hear.
And there was a coppery lemon smell that was vaguely familiar.
I stood there a moment, trying to place it. And then, horribly, I could.
It was blood. Old blood that someone had tried to clean up, but it must've soaked so deep into the leather and wood that no amount of scrubbing was ever going to reach it.
I turned a slow circle in the middle of the floor, looking at the room with new eyes as I realized where I was. "This is where you feed," I said, almost to myself.
"Yes."
I was expecting that answer. Really, I was. Yet I couldn't stop the flood of jealousy that heated my blood when I thought of him in this room with one of those women out there in the club. "How do you get them to come back here? The women out there?"
"They pay for a private dance."
"So you bring them back here, and you dance for them. And then they let you—" I cut myself off. I knew what they did. Why was I torturing myself asking for details?
"They don't know what's going to happen. They're…gently persuaded." His voice had gone flat, like he didn't want to give me the answers but also couldn't refuse me. "But they're not hurt. And they don't remember any of it. They leave happy, they tip well, they think they had a very good night."
I put my hand on the back of the nearest booth as one thing he'd said overrode everything else. I'd completely forgotten about what he could do. Vaguely, I noticed the leather was worn thin along the top. "Have you ever—"
He answered before I finished the question. "No, Alice. I've never messed with your memories or influenced you in any way. And I never will."
I believed him. "Why did you bring me in here?"
"Because it's the only room in this building with no cameras other than the bathrooms." He paused. "And because I didn't want Elias hearing this, so I didn't want to go by the bar."
I turned around.
He stood just inside the curtain, shirt still hanging open, showing off the hard muscle of his chest and abs, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans, thick-soled black boots on his feet.
It was disconcerting seeing him like this.
So serious. The Dae I knew filled silences with jokes and flirted with me while I was crying.
He teasingly bragged about his looks while making me feel like the most beautiful woman alive.
But this male just looked tired.
"Okay," he said, and took a deep, bracing breath. "Go ahead. Give it to me."
Fury, temporarily tampered when I'd first gotten there, rose from the molten core of me. "You let me go."
He didn't move. "You told me to." It wasn't an accusation. Just a fact.
"I know what I told you." Even as angry as I was, I didn't raise my voice. "But you're two hundred years old, Dae. Tell me you couldn't hear the difference between what I said and what I meant."
"I heard it," he said so quietly I wouldn't have known he'd spoken at all if I hadn't seen his lips move.
"Then why—"
"That IS why." His jaw flexed. "Alice…" My name was torn from his throat. "I could've had you right there on that railing with your aunt twenty feet away watching out the door, and you would've let me. And that's exactly why I stopped."
"You decided." I stepped closer. "You didn't ask me anything. You decided for the both of us."
"That's what you—"
"I KNOW what I said, Dae-Jung!"
He stared at me for a long time, but to his credit, he didn't question why I was suddenly so angry about something now when I wasn't angry at the time. Maybe because he understood.
"Would you have said no?"
I blinked. "What?"
"If I'd asked. Right then, when your legs were around my waist and you were moaning my name..." He didn't move an inch, and yet I felt him all around as though he'd suddenly turned to smoke. "Would you have said no to anything I wanted?"
"No," I whispered.
"Then tell me why I should've given you a choice when we both know what I did was the best thing for both of us."
I shook my head. "That doesn't matter. You should've asked me, anyway."
Pulling his hands from his pockets, he looked away, running one hand through his hair before crossing his arms over his chest.
I tried to explain in a way he'd understand. "Nobody ever asks me. Not one person. They love me and they want the best for me, I know that. But they're all wrong about what I can handle, and I've never once been given the chance to prove otherwise." Gods, I wasn't making any sense.
"Alice…"
"And then there was you." My voice cracked on the words.
I hated it when it did that. It made me sound as weak and innocent as everyone always thought I was.
"You told me I was strong, and then you put me back on the shelf like I was nothing but a fragile little doll.
" I lifted my chin. "But first you teased me with your hands on my body and your lips on my mouth, so I knew what I'd be missing when you left me there. "
His silence was painful.
A moment of anguish crossed his face so fast I nearly missed it. He turned his face away, shoulders coming up to hide from me, and for a second I thought he'd walk out and leave me there.
"??," he said, so quiet I barely caught it.
"What?"
"Nothing." He dragged a hand down his face. "Yeobo, that's not — that's not what that was."
"Then what was it?"
"Alice, please. Don't ask me to try to explain."
But I needed to know. "What was it, Dae?"
"I watched my friend die the other day!" The words were full of pain as they ripped out of him. They filled the room and rang off the walls, and then just as suddenly they were gone, and it was only Dae again, standing eerily still. Like saying the words out loud had taken his own life with them.
It took me a moment to find my voice. "Dae…"
"The night I left you," he continued, quieter now. Controlled. "Elias's heart stopped. Twice. Did you know that? He went down in the front room and I watched his aura fade right before my eyes."
"I know," I told him. "Alex told me. But he's fine now…" I swung my hand toward the curtain where Elias was tending bar on the other side.
"You don't know the worst part," he continued. "The worst part is that he wouldn't take the one thing that would save him, because that would mean admitting what he is now."
His eyes caught mine, and the grief I saw there shocked me.
"And do you know what he is now? Do you?"
I shook my head.
"He's still tied to Talin by this damn bond.
By her blood and whatever's left of his soul.
And that tie doesn't ask him what he wants.
Whatever else he is now—human, vampire, or something else entirely—the bond is rearranging him from the inside and he doesn't get a vote.
And when it decided he still needed her blood or he'd die, it didn't care how he felt about it.
He laid there half dead and he begged, Alice.
He kept saying 'I got out.' Like a man who dreamed he'd escaped a cell only to wake up back inside of it. "
My throat went tight.
He took a step toward me. Stopped before he got too close.
"That's what's happening to me," Dae said.
"With you. There's a thing in my chest," he slapped the middle of his chest with one hand, "pulling me toward you every second I'm awake.
And I didn't choose it, and I can't stop it, and I'm terrified it's going to finish whether I want it to or not and there'll be no escape for either of us. "
"That's not—"
"If you die, I die." He said it plainly, and the words landed like a slap across my face.
"Not the other way around. You'd bury me and go on living.
But if something takes you from this world, I go with you.
There's nothing I can do about that." He spread his hands.
"You don't really know me, Alice. And yet, you want me to tie my life to yours. "
I didn't understand why he was attacking me like this. I didn't make any of this happen. "I never asked you for this! And I would never ask you to do that!"
"You wouldn't have to ask. That's the whole—" He stopped. Pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes before dropping his arms back to his sides. "That's the point. Nobody asks. It just…happens."
I stood there and let what he was saying settle into me.
Because he was right.
And because he was also missing it by a mile.
"Is that all of it?" I asked.
"What?"
"This fear you just told me about. Is that all of it?" I watched him. "Because I think there's more to this than that."
He went very still. "Don't," he said, then lowered his voice until it was barely above a whisper. "Please."
"I'm not asking for details…"
He stared at me, and the tension was back in his jaw. "Good. Because you're not getting them." His eyes clashed with mine, a glow starting behind the brown, faint as a coal. "Not tonight."
"But I think I deserve to know some of it."
He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't tell me. But then he started to speak.
"A long time ago," he said, "some people found out what I can do.
What I can see in a person." His voice had gone strange and flat, like he was reading it off a page in another language.
"They found my gift," he spit the word out, "useful, and they used it until there was nothing left of me.
" He paused for a moment, like he was trying to decide how much more to say.
His dark eyes watched me intently as he said, "And many people died because of what I saw. Including a girl I cared about."
The music thumped through the curtain, and I heard faint applause. Onstage, somebody's set was ending.
"That's it," he said. "That's all you get tonight."
"Okay," I whispered.
He blinked. "Okay?"