Page 51 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

I summoned a ball of magic to my fingers; just a simple light spell that cast off a faint golden glow. I flicked it up into the air and caught it, twisting it over my hand and sending it twining between my fingers like I was doing a coin trick. It was a silly little thing Marcus had taught me back when we first started our training, but I found it weirdly comforting to do something so simple without any struggle. Being cut off from my magic had been awful, and feeling the comfortable thrum of it flowing through me again was a massive relief.

Gabriel was watching the little trick with a soft expression. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said quietly. A few weeks ago, I would’ve thought that his tone was brusque, but now I could hear just how genuine it was. I couldn’t help but wonder how differently our first few interactions would have gone if I’d been able to read him as well as I could now. How much of what I’d thought was standoffishness had just been nerves and awkwardness?

“Thank you for helping me,” I said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there. I probably could’ve handled the fight, but… the curse really rattled me, honestly.”

“Understandable,” Gabriel said.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked, glancing out the window. The sun was shining down brightly, glittering off the water in a small fountain tucked into a corner of the garden.

“Around twelve hours,” Gabriel told me.

I let out a low whistle. “You shouldn’t have let me take the bed. I could’ve slept on a sofa or something.”

Gabriel’s brow furrowed, and he tilted his head to the side. “This is the guest suite,” he said slowly. “I have my own bed. Not in the guest suite, obviously.”

“Oh.” I flushed a little, feeling silly. Of course, the fancy vampire house had a guest room. “I just figured, you know, since you were asleep when I woke up…”

“I didn’t intend to drift off.” He seemed sheepish about it. “I had planned to keep watch, just in case some remnant of the curse remained.” I froze, but he shook his head quickly. “There doesn’t seem to be,” he reassured me. “If there was, it would have shown itself by now, so you’re in the clear.”

“Thank fuck,” I muttered.

“It seems as though we both needed the sleep. Especially since the recuperative properties of girls’ night were so rudely brought to an abrupt close.”

I squinted at him. “You’re actually pretty funny, you know that? Just deadpan. Nobody seriously says things like ‘recuperative properties of girls’ night.’”

The corner of Gabriel’s mouth ticked up into a tiny smile. One of his cheeks had creases from where it had been mashed against the bedspread.

“You must be hungry,” he said.

I was suddenly extremely aware that I was completely ravenous. “I could eat.”

Gabriel led me through the twisting hallways of the manor to a sleek, modern kitchen that looked about as lived-in as an Ikea showroom. The countertops were gleaming black marble. A few of the appliances still had the protective blue plastic covering their glass.

“We don’t cook much,” Gabriel said, fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve. While I’d been asleep, he’d changed into clean, non-bloody clothes—a cloudy blue-gray button-down and black slacks. I was jealous. My clothes were starting to feel crusty.

“We?” I asked.

“Me and my chosen family,” he said. “Lissa, Vic, and Theo. They’re away on a hunt right now.”

“A hunt?” I tensed. “Not, like… I mean, it seems like you just do animal and bagged blood. Are they…?”

Gabriel huffed out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head. “They mostly call them hunts as a joke,” he said, pulling open the door of a mostly empty cabinet. “They go into the woods, get some animal blood, then find teenagers partying out there to lecture them about fire safety and camping responsibly.”

“Like if park rangers did Scared Straight?” I asked.

“Pretty much.”

I tried to imagine just how freaked out a group of stoned teens would be if a pack of vampires appeared out of nowhere and started lecturing them like a team of goth Smokey Bears. That would go on the pile of mental images I went back to when I was having a rough day and needed a pick-me-up.

There was clattering from the other side of the kitchen, and the burbling of an electric kettle. Gabriel placed a steaming bowl in front of me. It was full of something alarmingly liquid and beige. When I looked up at him, he shrugged.

“One of Theo’s exes left behind a box of instant oatmeal,” he said. “We don’t tend to have a lot of food around the place for, ah, reasons that are probably obvious.” He placed a few small containers on the kitchen island next to my oatmeal. Dried fruit, mostly, and one plastic tub of slivered almonds.

I was hungry enough that I probably would’ve eaten anything. Right now, worrying about oatmeal was the least of my problems. I loaded it up with dried fruit and the almonds, then went to town. It was way better than I’d expected, but then I’d always had a soft spot for that slightly chemical, fake-maple-syrup taste.

As I ate, Gabriel pulled a packet of blood from the fridge and loaded it into the only appliance in the kitchen that actually looked like it had gotten some use. I probably wouldn’t have recognized it, but I’d dealt with a changeling case a few months ago, and there had been one of those in the family’s kitchen.

“Is that a milk warmer?” I asked. “Like, the kind they make for baby bottles?”

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