“Why would it get to you?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Because I love you.”
Charlee looked up sharply, No, please no. Don’t say that, not now. Anthony’s face held the same shock she knew hers did, as if it were as much a revelation to him as it was to her. An awkward silence descended. Thunder rolled in the distance, filling in the spaces where the words had died on their lips.
Seconds later the rain poured down on them. Anthony was out of the pool so fast he was a blur, then his hand was outstretched to help her out of the water and back inside.
The sky lit up through the weird thin windows, and the penthouse was flooded in darkness. She heard his footsteps recede into the bathroom. Moments later a thick towel was wrapped around her.
Her teeth chattered as he picked her up and carried her through the darkness. She’d lost sense of what direction they were going in. When she landed on a soft bed, she didn’t know if it was his or hers. Her head was swimming. He’d said he loved her. They’d never even been on a date. How could he love her?
Maybe he could. They’d known each other for months. And hadn’t her journal reflected a similar feeling growing inside her? Could you love someone before you really knew them? If you could read their thoughts and sense their feelings? If you’d drunk their blood?
Hadn’t she suspected he had some sort of romantic feeling for her when he’d said the thing about not wanting her to fear him when he didn’t seem to mind it from others? Her mind kept chanting at her, He’s a vampire. He stole your memory. He stole your life. Could any feelings she might have developed in that other life make up for what he’d done and what he was?
She was under the blankets now still in her swimsuit, though she had no idea how she’d gotten there. In the dark with her mind so jumbled, she couldn’t catalog the physical sensations around her.
She felt Anthony curl his body around hers. She wanted to protest but couldn’t find the words.
“Relax, Charlotte. I’m just warming you up.”
There were benefits to being in bed with a mind reader. She blushed as that thought fully bloomed in her mind. Anthony chuckled behind her.
“Get out of my head.”
The warmth of his skin had shocked her. She’d expected cold and clammy, like death, like a vampire.
“I recently fed. I’ll be cold again soon. Enjoy it for the few minutes it lasts.”
She tensed, thinking of the life he might have taken.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I swear to God, Anthony, if you don’t get out of my head . . . ”
“You’ll do what?”
She sighed. “I’ll be really annoyed.”
“I quiver in terror.”
She couldn’t stop replaying the spontaneous love confession in her head. Anthony hadn’t repeated the sentiment, nor had he denied it. And since he couldn’t seem to give her brain any privacy, he had to know it was running on a loop in her mind. Yet he ignored it, forcing her to say the words aloud.
“Did you mean what you said out there?” She didn’t know why it mattered. She could never love him, not if a thousand years passed. Not now. Still, if he felt for her, she might survive longer.
“I don’t know. I’ve never loved anyone, not since I was turned. I didn’t know I could. I can honestly say I’m fond of you. I’m intrigued by you. I find you attractive. But I’m not sure why I used the word love.”
Well, that cleared things right up. She wasn’t sure if he said it to freak her out less or because it was true. She had to admit, she was a little less disturbed by him being fond and intrigued and attracted. Especially since when he said it, he didn’t sound like he had a shrine built to her or anything.
“I don’t want to be a vampire,” she blurted into the stillness. It seemed like a good thing to get out of the way up front, in case he’d had any intentions in that direction. She didn’t want living inside her the same thing that rippled beneath Anthony. It had unnerved her to see that thing looking out at her from the mirror. Though, if possible, the demon seemed fond of her too.
“I hadn’t intended to turn you into one.”
“Okay.”
As long as that was clear.
When the sun rose, the mystery of which room he’d taken her to was revealed. His. Small bits of light from other parts of the house trickled into the master bedroom, but the windows in his room had been blacked out with paint. She wondered if the management knew about that.
He looked so peaceful in sleep, almost innocent. She’d laid her head against his chest most of the night listening to his slow heartbeat. It wasn’t what she’d expected from a vampire, though he appeared dead now. The stillness of his body was interrupted every few minutes as his chest rose and fell.
“Anthony.” No response. Sammy’s ears perked from his position lying across the vampire’s stomach.
He was like a hibernating bear, and it struck her how completely helpless he was in sleep. He’d said he was immortal and not all the myths were true, but sunlight would obviously hurt him, judging from the blacked-out windows. And she didn’t know of anything that would survive decapitation, no matter how bad ass it was.
He’d said she was only his guest until after the tournament. The seething anger that had curled in the pit of her stomach the night before fluttered to life again at the memory. He almost kills me, then takes my memory, and now I’m his prisoner? Maybe he could chop off my hands or something later to round out the week.
Something inside her screamed to kill him. He was dangerous. There was no way to know what he’d do in the next few days or if he’d keep his promise. And if he did erase her knowledge of the preternatural world and return her to her home after the tournament, what then?
He could come to her and feed from her and do whatever he wanted and then just erase it from her mind. He could violate her in any way he chose, and she’d never even have the knowledge of it. She still found him as attractive as she’d found him in the pages of her journal, but he was the enemy.
She went to her room and returned with a silver cross. His hand was splayed on the pillow next to his face.
Without stopping to think, she pressed the pendant against his skin and jerked it away, disgusted when smoke rose off his hand. Sammy whimpered and darted out of the room, making her suddenly ashamed of her behavior.
She dropped the necklace on the floor and backed away. What was wrong with her? She’d slept in the vampire’s arms all night, and he hadn’t made a move to harm her. As far as she could tell, aside from giving her amnesia, which he hadn’t meant to do, and drinking from her––and hey . . . vampire––he hadn’t threatened her.
She just needed to know what would work against him. If he were to turn on her, how could she protect herself from someone so strong? How could she survive him?
The burn flared bright red against his pale skin. She bent to pick up the cross and slipped it into her pocket, then paced back and forth, eyeing the burn. How long would it take to heal? Would it heal before the sun set? And if not, what then?
She shuddered to think what he might do if he found out she’d been experimenting with ways to end him while he was incapacitated. He’d trusted her not to hurt him during his sleep. And she’d betrayed that trust.
A voice whispered in her mind, The motherfucker erased your entire life. He was out of control. He could have killed you that night. He didn’t care. He’s not the victim here.
A tear slid down her cheek as she looked down at him. “I’ll never love you.” She had to hear herself say it out loud. He had ridiculous amounts of power, and he could get inside her head. “I don’t want this.”
The vampire slept on, oblivious to her words. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and clutched the cross, then released it, comforted by its presence. She had to get out of there.
On her way through the lobby, the front desk clerk stopped her. “Ms. Devlin.”
She was shocked he knew her name. “Yes?”
“You’re Ms. Devlin staying in the penthouse with Mr. Burgess?” He looked to be in his late forties. He was wiry with thinning hair and glasses perched on his nose. An olive green sweater vest was buttoned over a linen shirt.
She hesitated. “Um, that’s correct.”
“Mr Burgess left instructions for you to be given this, and also to remind you to be home by dark.” He paused for a second and met her eyes. “He would find you, you know.”
Charlee knew the person behind the desk couldn’t possibly be a vampire, as he wasn’t hibernating. But what exactly he was, she couldn’t be sure. The look in his eyes was too knowing. She wondered why, if he suspected what Anthony was, he didn’t just go upstairs and kill him while he slept.
She took the crisp ivory envelope from his extended hand and opened it. Five new-from-the-bank one hundred dollar bills. She blushed, wondering if the front desk clerk thought she’d done inappropriate things to earn it. She quickly shoved the money back inside the envelope.
He continued to give her that smug, knowing look.
“You don’t care if he hunts me down?” She asked.
“What matter is it to me?”
“You know what he is?”
“Of course. Vampire.”
A young couple milled about the lobby, and she looked for their reactions but found none. They hadn’t heard. Or else they themselves lived with or were guarding vampires.
This conversation was becoming surreal. “What are you?”
“A guardian.”
“You’re human?”
“No,” he said very slowly as if talking to the mentally deficient, “A guardian. I look human, I can walk around during the day, but my entire purpose in this realm is, as it sounds . . . to guard. So I wouldn’t go getting any funny ideas, Ms. Devlin.”
Charlee slipped the envelope into her purse and backed out the door into the bright sunlight, for the first time unsure she was safe in the day.
She wandered down the street taking in everyone that passed. Probably there weren’t hundreds of guardians running around during the day. Right? And they seemed mostly passive anyway. Just . . . guarding, as he’d said. What else?
How many witches, wizards, and sorcerers were there? How many werecreatures like Greta? She couldn’t help wondering if every person she passed was as human as they appeared, or if they were something else altogether.
She’d spent the previous day thinking sooner or later her memory would return and everything would be back to normal, whatever normal was. She was now faced with being a twenty-six-year-old baby in a world much scarier than the one she was supposed to know. She knew who the president was and all about current events; she just couldn’t pull a personal memory out of her head.
Was this what death was like? All that time spent scurrying around doing things, only for it all to be gone with no matter that it had happened?
“Watch where you’re going!” Charlee looked up to find herself nearly colliding with a teenage girl in all black with a nose ring and bright pink hair.
“Um, sorry.”
The girl continued on, then Charlee said, “Hey wait, do you know where Lawson’s Bookshoppe is?”
She turned, an annoyed expression painted on her face and pointed down the street. “Five blocks that way.”
“Thanks.” But the girl had already disappeared into Anthony’s building.
Charlee had planned to track down Greta, but she couldn’t stop herself from following the strange girl back inside. The guardian at the front desk merely raised an eyebrow, then went back to the stack of papers in front of him.
She ran toward the elevator. “Wait!”
One scuffed Doc Martin slid between the closing doors.
“Thanks,” Charlee said when she got in.
The elevator’s other occupant nodded and moved to the corner, leaning against it with her arms crossed, chewing gum. On closer inspection she looked to be early twenties. Not much younger than Charlee. She’d taken on a bored and disaffected look, her eyes going to the little numbered circles, watching them light in turn as the elevator lurched upward.
“Do you live here?”
“Do you?” She retorted.
“I, I’m staying here for a few days. In the penthouse.”
The girl raised an eyebrow, then let out a low whistle. “Nice. I’m staying on the fifth floor. We’re just in town for the tournament.”
“So, are you a . . . guardian?”
The girl snorted. “Haha! Yeah, no. Though I guess I serve the same purpose. I’m with Gregory Michaels. He’s competing. I’m Jane, by the way.”
She’d worked hard to live above the plainness of her name. She was dating a vampire.
“How old is he?”
“Like a hundred and eighty. Or something. They preserve well don’t they? I keep begging him to turn me, but he gets all emo about it and says in this dark brooding voice, ‘ Trust me, you do not want this curse.’ Yeah, sure. Curse. Let me know when the curse part kicks in, right?”
The elevator stopped on five. “You want to come in?” Jane asked.
“Sure,” Charlee said, not at all sure. But if Jane’s vampire was anything like Anthony, he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.
“Help yourself to anything in the fridge.”