Almost Everything (29 page)

There were no other features in the room, except the giant row of windows that looked out to a pine deck and the forest beyond. Chairs had been stacked along the paneled walls, and there was a whiteboard tucked off to the side that still had notes for someone’s spell-working ritual written in purple dry-erase marker. There were two interior doors. One near the kitchenette/bar led to a bathroom. From experience, I knew that the other revealed a cramped bedroom with two single beds, a rickety end table, and a chest of drawers that contained a treasure trove of the weird things the coven members had abandoned over the decades. I hated the one time Bea’s mom had made us sleep over; the room always smelled a bit musty no matter how many times spring-cleaning rituals were performed on it.

When I turned around, Nikolai stood up and dusted off his jeans. Instead of a fire, he’d conjured a tall votive in the center of the fireplace. Its fire flickered and wavered against the walls.

I knew Nikolai could do that kind of magic, but I was still surprised by the candle’s sudden appearance.

When he saw the look on my face, he shrugged. “No point in holding anything back.”

I nodded, wondering
just how powerful a witch Nikolai could be when he put his mind to it.

The grumble of an engine announced the arrival of another car. I took in a deep, steadying breath. It would be my mom, and it meant the time had come.

When the door opened to admit my dad, I nearly fell over in shock, especially when the next person in was my mom.

Of course, it made sense. We needed my dad to teach me the right of passage ritual and to call the hunt, but I couldn’t imagine my parents actually spending the hour together it would take to drive up there.

Elias was the last to walk in, and I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Maybe he’d driven. Weirdly, I had an easier time imagining Mom sulking in the backseat of Elias’s car than her blithely picking up two vampires on the way to the covenstead.

“What is under your shirt?” Mom asked.

“Blood bags,” I said, holding up the extra pair I’d brought in. “I have two more.”

Nikolai pulled her aside to explain his idea about the vampire repellent, and I was left staring at my dad.

“Are you ready, Ana?” Dad asked. I noticed he was a bit shaky. He tried to act casual as he grabbed for a stack of chairs to steady himself. The hunger must be devastating him. I wondered if he’d be able to keep sane. I remembered what Elias had said about how the hunger had eaten at his mind.

I swallowed and nodded, trying to muster up more courage than I felt. “No time like the present.”

As the
others headed out the door, I dashed to fetch my shoes from where I’d left them in the mudroom. Elias hung back to wait for me. Standing beside the bench, he watched as I tied the laces. He seemed to be searching for the right words.

“It was my greatest pleasure to serve Your Highness,” he said.

“Oh, Elias!” I blurted, though I didn’t have other words for my feelings either. Standing up, I wrapped him in a hug.

His arms wound themselves around me easily, fitting comfortably, as if we were two pieces of the same thing. When I looked up into his face to ask him if I was doing the right thing after all and if he was planning to ditch the stupid political alliance/marriage thingy to the creepy Southern captain after punching him … he kissed me.

Elias and I had never kissed before. Not like this.

There wasn’t so much a spark as the fire of unrestrained passion. Elias, usually so restrained and proper, pressed against me in a way I could describe only as sinful.

When he released me, I had to struggle for breath. He’d taken it away from me. I clung to him, panting.

“You tempt me to treason,” he whispered hotly in my ear. “I would have you escape to the South with me and leave behind the kingdom I’ve served so faithfully. But I know you’re too honorable to accept.”

Was I? Actually, at that moment, Elias could have convinced me that jumping off a bridge was an excellent idea as long as he kissed me like that again.

His passion took
me by surprise. We’d never kissed before, and he would have to wait until I finally had an official boyfriend to do it. God, if I didn’t turn into alternate-me, I’d have a lot to confess to Thompson—although I had managed to avoid mentioning Nikolai’s kiss so far.

I pushed those conflicting thoughts aside. Searching for a safe topic, my mind went to a question, which I asked him: “Have you kissed a lot of boys like that?”

Okay. It wasn’t exactly a safe thing to ask. I think his passion made me stupid.

“I’ve never kissed anyone like that except you, my lady.” His smile was wolfish. He nibbled at my ear. Each little bite raised gooseflesh on my arms.

“I mean, have you had boyfriends?”

Elias pulled back to look me in the eye. He was frowning. “Even though we use the male form of the word, an animus is a genderless thing. When a witch pulls one over into this world, she cares little if it goes into the body of a male or a female human. Let’s just say I’ve loved a lot of souls. And, knowing this as an undeniable fact, vampires care a lot less about what body a soul inhabits.”

Oh, Bea would love this answer.

“This matters at this moment because … ?” he asked.

It didn’t, really. That was Bea’s thing more than mine, anyway. What I wanted to know was the answer to a different question: “Are you seriously still going to marry that creep? You punched his lights out last night.”

“We were establishing a hierarchy,” he said with a slight smirk. “My ‘intended’ now understands that if any pushing around gets done, it will be by me.”

“Uh, gross.”

“Is it?” Elias said. “I’ll be going into an enemy’s camp, living among them. It is important, as they say, to make a good first impression.”

I was pretty sure
the Southern Kingdom was already impressed with him; otherwise they wouldn’t have made the political trade. “Do you have to go through with this?”

“I do if we want to avoid war. Even if the hunt is satisfied, our kingdom will need time to regroup. You saw the prince. He’s barely holding on. It will take time for him to be the ruler he once was. My going south will buy time.”

“Time? You’re not thinking of this as forever?”

He snorted a derisive laugh. “Confarreatio is an unbreakable contract, except, of course, by death.”

Whoa.

“I will always serve
my
prince,” he said darkly, emphasizing the pronoun in a way to make it clear that the prince he meant was my father. Then he stepped back and took my hand in his. He kissed my knuckles lightly. Looking up from his deep bow, he added, “And my lady.”

It was too intense. I broke his gaze and muttered, “Uh, we should get going.”

He let my hand drop, and the heat between us evaporated so suddenly that I felt a chill. “Yes. The others are waiting,” he said.

“Right,” I said, finding my voice finally. I could still feel the ghost of his lips on mine as I headed for the door.

Last time I
walked down the path that led to the sacred oak grove, the entire coven had had a hand in lighting tiny floating tea candles in beautiful containers and placing them along the way. It had created a lovely effect. I desperately missed even the feeble light they provided as I stumbled over tree roots and stones.

Elias steadied me when I banged my toes on a particularly stubborn moss-covered rock. When his hand cupped my elbow, I found myself straining to sense the passion he’d shown a moment ago. If it remained, it was well hidden, replaced by his customary stony efficiency.

When we reached the natural circle ringed by ancient burr oaks, I saw that Nikolai had brought a small bundle of wood and sticks from the covenstead’s firewood supply. He knelt in the grass and arranged the pile in the center of a stone circle that hadn’t been there the last time I’d stood in the grove. Nikolai didn’t bother to produce matches. Instead, a flash of light flicked off his fingertips, and the brush caught. In a second, we had a blazing fire.

Dad stood some distance from the flame or the magic; I wasn’t sure which bothered him more. He’d worn his hair loose, and it hung straight to his shoulders. In a white shirt and black jeans, he looked the part of a vampire prince. Of course, he was barefoot. I was just glad he didn’t feel the need to start shucking the rest of his clothes.

I glanced around the circle.

Elias moved to
stand beside his sovereign. With his military-style cropped hair, he made for an impressive enforcer in a black T-shirt that showed off his well-toned physique and muscular arms.

My mom stood next to Dad. The humidity had made her curls extra frizzy. I couldn’t have looked less like her, with my father’s slim features, dark hair, and pale complexion. She also looked the most like a norm, with her college professor fashion—a blazer thrown over a simple blouse. I could much more easily imagine a chalkboard behind her than the gnarled, twisted trunk of a massive oak.

Nikolai poked the fire one last time with a stick and stood up to stand by me. His hair was tied loosely at the nape of his neck. The T-shirt he wore was dark and promoted some band’s concert tour. The Celtic knot tattoo was barely visible on his bicep underneath the sleeve. Maybe it was all the casual magic he’d demonstrated, but I thought he moved with a particular liquid grace that marked him as a witch to contend with.

That just left me, feeling small and stupid and way out of my league.

And, of course, everyone stared expectantly at me.

So, I cleared my throat nervously and looked to my dad for some help. “What do we do first? Call the hunt or start the rite of passage?”

He seemed to shake himself out of a dream before answering. “I will call the hunt. When you’re on the brink of passing over, we’ll begin the rite.”

Passing over? I didn’t really like the sound of that. Neither did Mom or Nikolai, from the looks on their faces. “Wait, do you mean ‘dying’?”

“That’s
unacceptable, Ramses!” Mom said, taking a threatening step forward, which Elias matched almost unconsciously.

“Okay, so you’re ruining the best part of my plan, Dad,” I said. “If you’re saying I have to be close to death for this thing to work, um, we need to talk more. And”—I pointed to the bumps on my chest meaningfully—“I can take these stupid things off.”

Ramses stared at the lumps under my sundress. “Are those really bags of blood?”

“I didn’t suddenly become a D cup.” I rolled my eyes. Then, more seriously I added, “Yes, see, that’s part of the whole I-don’t-really-want-to-be-bled-to-death thing. I even brought extra, you know, in case we could just toss them a bag or two.”

For a panicked moment I thought I left those behind in the mudroom when I set them on the bench to tie my shoes. I looked around frantically, but Elias lifted his hand to show me that he’d thought to grab them.

“You want my people to feed on prepackaged blood?” My dad sounded offended, as if he’d been expecting caviar and I’d substituted an Egg McMuffin.

“You want your people to drink me dry instead?”

“I just don’t think it’s going to work,” my dad said. He squinted at me as if using X-ray vision. “It’s not even warm.”

“It’s going to have to work,” I said. Turning to Nikolai, I said, “What about the vamp repellent?”

He, in turn, looked to my mom. “What about an illusion, Amelia? Couldn’t we cast a desire spell on the bags? And double that up with an aversion scent on her skin?”

With effort, my
mom stopped glaring at Dad. She pushed her glasses up on her nose. They caught the firelight as she considered. “That could work, if the vampires can be satisfied by bagged blood.”

My dad started to open his mouth, and I could tell he was going to deny it. “They can,” I interjected quickly. “Mrs. Kirov told us they can be fooled by day-old corpses.”

My mom looked at my dad as if scandalized by his poor judgment. He shrugged. “News to me,” he said.

“I guess it’s a Ukrainian thing,” I responded.

At that, everyone looked dubious, as though they figured the vampires in Ukraine must be extra shabby or stupid, but no one offered a counterargument.

“That would suffice,” Dad said, “I suppose.”

“If there is a question of preference, perhaps a protection spell would be in order,” Elias suggested with a quiet yet firm authority.

Mom stared at him contemptuously, as if she considered him an inconvenient obstacle. How had I ever thought she liked him? Eventually, when it became clear that his suggestion was the best option, she grudgingly conceded his point. “Yes. I suppose so.”

Nikolai stepped closer to Mom to confer quietly. I caught only snippets of their conversation. They seemed to be discussing the most effective choice. Mom seemed to think a binding spell was a good idea. Nik shook his head. He didn’t like anything that kept me immobilized, unable to defend myself.

“Amen to that,” I muttered.

Elias laid the blood
bags in front of me. He gave me a smile as he stood up. “You’ll make an excellent vampire,” he said.

I grabbed at his sleeve. “Will I? How do you know?”

“Because you’re brave and loyal to the kingdom already.”