“Now, what do I do with you?” I asked him. He couldn’t respond since he was still under my compulsion, but he blinked rapidly, one hand pressed to his wounded throat. “I can’t have you on these streets, but I’d really prefer not to kill you. I don’t want to lose the bet I made with my brother.”
He cringed against the wet street. Now he was afraid. That I could work with.
“You’re not going to remember what happened,” I told him, taking out my wallet and drawing out a few bills and a business card. “You’re going to find the nearest hotel, clean yourself up, and sleep. In the morning, you will check into the Fremont Free Clinic and give them the name Rousseaux. You’ll stay there until you are clean. Then, you will call this number and take the job the man offers you. No questions asked. You will never take another drug recreationally in your life as repayment for my mercy.”
Not that he had any choice. I tossed the money into his lap along with the card.
“Go,” I commanded. “You can speak but you may never raise your voice to me.”
He scrambled onto his feet with a frightened look. “Th-th-anks.”
But I was already climbing into the BMW. I was getting soft. There was a time when I would have been content to drain him and rid the world of another lost soul. Maybe Thea was right. Maybe I was old.
Inside the BMW, I smelled Thea everywhere. Venom pooled in my mouth, my fangs still lengthened from my quick feed, and I felt a magnetic pull tugging at me. Every inch of me wanted to get back out of the car, run back inside her building and knock down her door. So much for taking the edge off. Instead, I seemed to have made it worse. I hadn’t felt blood-lust this strong since I was a teen.
I punched the ignition switch so hard that the plastic cracked. A second later, I swerved onto the rain-slick street. The back end of the car kicked out behind me as I sped onto the streets of San Francisco. The city rushed past in a spectacular rainbow of color. I crested a hill, the BMW lifting off the pavement for a moment, and drove, wanting to put as much distance as I could between myself and the woman I’d left behind. I was halfway across the city when a call came over the car’s speakers. A name flashed on the navigation screen, and I groaned. There was no escape for me. Not tonight. Not with the Rites enacted. Not with Thea’s scent lingering in the air around me.
“What?” I answered.
“I need to talk to you now.”
“Not even a please?” I bit out, but she’d already hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEA
Going to bed wasn’t in the cards. Not if my roommates had anything to say about it.
“Who was that?” Tanner asked, dragging me toward the living room. I knew better than to try to resist their curiosity.
Olivia had vanished the moment they’d ambushed me at the door. She returned and plopped down on one end of the couch with a pint of chocolate peanut butter ice cream. She patted the spot next to her and held out a spoon. As soon as I sat down, Tanner took the seat on my other side. I was the meat in an awkward sandwich.
“Is that from the emergency stash?” I asked. Ice cream was well-established as a luxury in our apartment. Fortunately, we all shared a favorite flavor, so we split the cost of two pints every month to keep in the freezer just in case.
“I’d say this is an emergency.” Olivia pried off the lid and took a spoonful before passing it. She must have been asleep when I came home with Julian because her hair was up in a wildly messy bun, and she still had one foam earplug in.
“It’s not. I just got a ride home.” I passed the pint to Tanner, not bothering to take a bite. I didn’t feel like ice cream. The taste of Julian’s kiss lingered on my tongue, and for reasons I didn’t care to consider, I wasn’t ready to wash it away.
Tanner shot me a sideways glance and shook his head. He was fully dressed. He had probably been up playing games online and heard me come in. “A ride that delivered you all the way to your bedroom, shut your door, and stayed for twenty minutes?”
“You timed it?” I said casually. “That’s pathetic. It’s not like it’s a big deal.”
“Um, excuse me.” Olivia turned her body, folding her legs gracefully under her as she shook an accusing finger in my direction. “When was the last time you had a man in your room?”
I shrugged, even as my cheeks began to burn.
“I think it was...” Tanner paused, so Olivia could join him.
“Never,” they said simultaneously.
They had me there. The only way to get them to let up was to give them some juicy details to gnaw on. But that was a little complicated given the circumstances. All I could think of was the things I couldn’t tell them. There was no way I was going to admit Julian was a vampire. They would think I’d lost my mind. And not telling them that meant I couldn’t tell them about Carmen or the vampire who’d attacked her or the gig being cut short. But the biggest issue was that I was a terrible liar. Anyone who’d known me more than a few hours knew that.
“He brought me home because he felt bad.” I’d stick to the truth, I decided, but be careful to only give away parts of it. “There was an accident.”
“Oh my god.” Tanner nearly dropped his spoon as he searched me for signs of trauma. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I forced a smile. “My cello isn’t.”
“Oh, Thea.” Olivia confiscated the ice cream from Tanner and forced it into my hands. “I knew this was an emergency.”
Now that she put it that way, I had to agree. I dug into the pint until I hit a chunk of frozen peanut butter and then shoveled the spoonful into my mouth. I’d met both of them my sophomore year at Lassiter. Tanner had been a year ahead of Olivia and me, but we’d all wound up in the same history class from hell. The bonding experience had turned into a friendship, so when they suggested we rent a place together and avoid the cost of the on-campus dorms, I’d jumped at the chance. Tanner had stayed after he graduated. I didn’t plan to do the same, and they both knew it. I saw my cello as a ticket to a better life–somewhere far away from San Francisco or the small town I’d grown up in.
“That doesn’t explain why he walked you all the way to your bed,” Tanner said dryly.
“Don’t be a dick.” Olivia threw a pillow at him. “She’s in mourning.”
“I’m fine.” At least, I needed to believe that I was, and convincing them was a step in the right direction. “I ran into him and dropped it. He wants to pay to have it fixed.”
“Good.” Olivia sounded relieved at the news.
“And you thanked him for his assistance by...” Tanner waggled his thick, black eyebrows suggestively.
“Nothing happened.” But my voice cracked, giving the fib away.
“What? Oh my god!” Olivia shrieked and grabbed my hand, almost knocking the ice cream out of the other in the process. I clutched the pint protectively to my chest.
“Seriously, nothing happened. Not really,” I added, pleased that I sounded much more convincing that time.
