Page 25 of Sore Throat, Slight Fever

“Maybe. I’ve never met my father. Or my mother. I was raised by my grandma. She always told me that she didn’t even know about me until my mother showed up one day with a baby, left me there and took off again.”

“So, it’s possible,” says Kane, neck twisted in a seemingly impossible way to peer up at her.

“I suppose so.” She smiles slyly, looking down at Rory through her eyelashes. She pokes his shoulder and says, sweetly, “Since I’m not a typical vampire, does that mean we can take the cuffs off?”

“Not yet,” he says gently.

“Oh, almost forgot.” She rifles through the pocketsin her skirt and produces a piece of paper. “Martha called while you were out. Your order is ready.”

“Right. Thanks.” He stuffs the message in the pocket of his flannel shirt without looking at it.Martha can wait. “First, we need to get some blood in you. Come on.”

14

An Agreement Is Struck

Rory

Rory pops open a bottle. He can feel Calliope’s hungry gaze on him as the smell of blood blooms in the air, but when he turns around to hand it to her, her facial features are impassive, almost dismissive of his offering.

She accepts the glass, but doesn’t move to drink it. Instead, she looks up at him through lowered eyelashes and smiles sweetly, the corner of her mouth just tucked into a delicate dimple. “Can I sit on the stairs for my…meal?”

They’re sitting outside on the back porch, protected by the small bit of overhanging and shade from the tall oak tree that stands to the right of the porch. Rory sits on the rickety metal chair, and arches an eyebrow at Calliope. “Sure.”

Even before he finishes speaking, she’s making her way down the steps, her hair bouncing around her shoulders.

“Not too close to the lake” he calls after her. “And don’t sit in direct sunlight.”

She pauses on the middle step and looks back, eyebrow raised.

“It makes us…sick,” he offers. “Direct, prolonged exposure at least. You won’t burst into flames, but…”

She nods. “Understood.” She then slides to the right so that she is in the shade of an oak tree, looking up for his nod of approval. She sits primly on the step, folding her dress underneath legs, before twisting at the waist, so that she can look easily between the lake and Rory.

He sips his drink as he looks out at the smooth surface of the water, his thoughts, as they have done so often of late, returning to its cool, dark depths and the shadow that rests at the bottom. The cow’s blood slides down easily, though it tastes a little earthier than he’d prefer. In the distance, he sees Kane flying circles around the lake. But then his gaze wanders down to Calliope. The Spanish moss hanging above her sways with a hot breeze, as he watches her drink. She does so delicately, holding the jar with the tips of her fingers as if it’s porcelain, and raising it to her lips like a cup of tea. She dabs politely at the side of her mouth.

From this angle he can see the thick scar that circles her upper arm. He doesn’t buy the accident excuseone bit. He saw the tension in her shoulders, the spark of fear in her eyes as he approached her in the library yesterday morning, his own fear grumbling out of his body like anger. She was afraid, but not necessarily of him. It was a conditioned fear, a learned response, and he found his own emotions deactivating quickly, like wiping away dust on a counter.

It’s interesting that she noticed his ability to do so, though. It’s a skill he’s always had, even before he became a vampire: picking and choosing his emotions. It’s just taken centuries for him to be able to pick the most appropriate emotion for any given situation. He quickly cataloged the fear in her body and changed what he could about himself so thathisactions, at least, would not factor into that fear.

She looks up at him, only to give him a questioning look as he stares dazedly at her.

He jumps slightly, clearing his throat and blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind. “Why are accidents a part of being married to a warlock?” The words have barely left his mouth when he cringes. His emotions may be in check, but his mouth is another entity altogether, it seems.

For her part, Calliope takes the question with a grace he doesn’t deserve, in his opinion. “What do you know about warlocks?”

“Are they not the same as a witch?”

“No.” She shakes her head, her frizzy mane framing her face and trailing down her back. “They aren’tborn with magic. They use tools and artifacts that do have magic though and, in some cases, they harvest the magic from other…sources.” She glances out at the lake and, if he wasn’t a vampire with preternatural hearing, he wouldn’t catch what she says next. “My husband, Maddox Grey, is…was…a warlock. The scar is a ritual. A sacrifice. He asked for help and I…helped.”

“He did that to you.Willingly?” He doesn’t realize he’s curling his hand into a fist until he hears a small crack, and he quickly sits the jar down on the table before he smashes it to bits.

She looks back at him with a humorless smile. “It was incredibly naive of me.”

“Doesn’t matter. You didn’t deserve that.”

“How do you know?” She flicks her hair over her shoulder and twists further, so her shoulders are facing him. “I could be an awful person.”

He laughs; he can’t help it. The claim is so absurd.

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