At another time the offer might have tempted me, but she was only a means to an end.
“I am not as perverse as my brother,” I said in a low voice. “This will suffice.” I drew my finger over her vein, and it sliced cleanly open. Lifting it to my mouth, I drank for a moment. Her blood tasted like ash on my tongue, and I resisted the urge to spit it out. I swallowed, but only so I didn’t hurt her feelings. I wouldn’t wreck two women’s days in one morning. Biting my bare finger, I drew a drop of my own blood and wiped it across her wound. The bleeding stopped instantly, and she sighed with pleasure as the venom-tinged blood found its way into her system.
But the venom had other effects. She moved closer to me, batting her lashes. “I will go to bed with you.”
“No, thanks.”
Her mouth fell open. She shut it quickly and regained her composure. “I know what to expect, and I want–”
“No,” I said with deadly finality. “Thank you. You’re dismissed.”
She huffed out of the room, still cradling her healed wrist. I hardly cared what she thought of me. There was a reason why I never called upon the cortège. They had a tendency to get excessively generous with the wealthier patrons. But I wasn’t interested in anything she had. Even her blood had failed to please me.
But her blood had cleared my head enough for me to see what I had done. Why had I allowed Thea to leave thinking I’d changed my mind about her? I found my keys and phone and rushed toward the garage. One of my old cars had to be down there still. I’d swipe one of my brother’s if I had to. Nothing would stop me from what had to be done now. It was my only option. Something I hadn’t done in my entire nine hundred years on this planet.
I had to beg Thea to forgive me.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THEA
The Rousseaux family driver delivered me to my apartment with a few polite words, but little conversation. Considering I didn’t trust myself not to burst into tears if he asked how I was doing, I was grateful.
I climbed the stairs up to my flat and paused at the door. I couldn’t stomach the thought of facing my roommates. Yesterday, Olivia had polished and painted me into a goddess for my first official date with Julian. Since I hadn’t come home from that date, she was likely waiting inside to ambush and demand details. Only an hour ago, I would have giddily told her all about the night, leaving out the vampires, of course. But now? Now I didn’t want to think about it ever again.
I didn’t want to think about him ever again.
And the worst part was that I was probably just another broken heart in a string of broken hearts dating back nearly a millennium. All the things that Julian had seen, the history he had lived, the women he’d gone to bed with, I was little more than a blip on his time line. He’d probably already forgotten about me.
It felt like an invisible hand was squeezing my chest, and any minute now, I would break. I took my house key out and slipped it into the lock. If I was going to break down, I wouldn’t do it in the hallway. I had a scrap of pride left.
I held my breath as I opened the door, but it was quiet and dark. My phone had died hours ago, so I didn’t know exactly what time it was. But Olivia was already gone to the studio or classes. Tanner was asleep or out. At least, the universe had granted me this one small mercy. I didn’t have to surrender the last bit of dignity that I had, explaining how spectacularly stupid I had been.
Of course, he didn’t want me.
We barely knew each other, and it wasn’t like I had a lot to offer, no matter how much he liked how I played the cello.
Cello. The word struck me like a thorn, puncturing through my rationalizations. He’d given me a half-million-dollar cello. How did I explain it to people? Far more worryingly, what was I supposed to do with it?
He’d been the one to reject me, which meant I was pretty sure I could keep it. But I hadn’t fulfilled my half of our arrangement. I hadn’t spent the year at his side, pretending to be his girlfriend. I couldn’t keep it. I wouldn’t keep it.
I stomped into the living room and found it waiting in its case. I would sell it. He had broken my cello, and I needed a new one because it looked like I was going to need my original five-year plan, after all. I’d buy a decent cello to replace mine and send the rest of the money back to his filthy rich family in a huge envelope. An envelope filled with glitter.
The best revenge.
I smiled, thinking of what Sabine would think about getting glitter-bombed. Maybe it wasn’t the most mature plan–and I’d probably chicken out–but for now, it was enough to relieve the raw ache in my throat.
Picking up the case and wondering exactly how to go about selling an item with this kind of value, I couldn’t resist the urge to take a look. I took out the cello along with the bow and settled onto a kitchen stool I used for practicing.
The instrument was exquisite. I’d been too afraid to really touch it yesterday, but now, knowing that my time with it was short, I let myself appreciate its craftsmanship. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever had between my thighs, except maybe–
“Don’t think about him,” I ordered myself, wiping a renegade tear from my cheek with the back of my hand. “Just play.”
Music was my escape. It was when I was little and Mom was barely keeping food on the table. It was when I didn’t fit in during my high school years. It was when Mom was so sick the doctors told me to prepare myself.
Nothing could touch me while I played. I could play the notes of a seventeenth-century genius in my twenty-first-century apartment. Music was timeless. It was boundless. When the cello was at my fingertips, I was free.
I found myself playing Schubert again. The piece had a whole new meaning. Without the other instruments to support my part, the piece felt hollow, as though it was searching for its soul. The lonely notes I played chilled me to the core, but I couldn’t stop. I doubted Schubert had written it about a vampire. Then again, maybe he had. The music felt like it belonged to me. I was the maiden, and now I knew the darkness of death. I tried to run from it. But darkness had played with me, coaxed me into trusting it. I had let it touch me.
I wasn’t sure I would ever be the same. I wasn’t certain I wanted to be.
I didn’t realize I was crying until I reached the final notes. It seemed I had finally found something music couldn’t help me escape.
Him.
I lingered with the Grancino. Some selfish part of me wanted to keep it. It was all I had to prove I hadn’t imagined his dark touch. It was all I had to prove that–for a moment–I had belonged to Julian Rousseaux.
It was a depressing enough thought to snap me out of the melancholy the music inspired. I stood up and put the cello resolutely back in its fancy purple case. I could say I played it. That was enough.
Determined to gather up the broken pieces of my last two days and put it all back together, I found my charger and plugged in my phone. It flashed a battery warning symbol, and I left it to charge while I went to shower. Our bathroom was cramped and perpetually cluttered with Olivia’s tights and Tanner’s hair crap, but it had one spectacular feature. Good water pressure.
I stripped off Camila’s clothes, wondering if I should just throw them away. In the end, I left them in a ball in the corner. Olivia would never forgive me for tossing vintage cashmere. Stepping into the shower, I turned the heat up until the water practically singed me. I stood under it, willing it to wash away all the insane choices I had made since I stumbled across Julian. When that didn’t work, I found a bar of soap and a loofah and tried to scrub him away. In the end, my skin was pink and tender. But he wasn’t quite gone. I turned off the water and reached for a towel. That’s when I heard it.
Someone knocking on the door. No, banging.
It sounded like the door was going to be knocked off its hinges. There were only two explanations for it. The first was that someone was breaking down the door with a battering ram. The other...
“Crap on a cracker,” I muttered to myself.
