Page 6 of The Shadow Bride

I ignore the hallucination, just like I ignore my churning stomach as deer blood enters my system. “I apologize,” I say again, calmer this time, lifting my chin and meeting each of my friends’ gazes. They smile tentatively back at me, and I’m already forgiven. Even Beau relaxes in his seat, and Odessa vanishes to her bedroomonce more. Mila lingers for just another second—her eyes a bit too understanding—before she follows.

The silence remains a touch tense, however. Lou still looks vaguely sick.

“Was that— Did my mother come to the door this morning?” I ask Reid after another moment.

“Yes.” He pushes his empty bowl away. “She came from the Tower. She’s been, ah—harassing the huntsmen about your whereabouts.”

“Harassing Jean Luc, you mean.”

He casts me a wary glance. “She said the time has come for desperate measures.”

“What did he tell her?”

“Nothing. He agreed not to disclose anything until you’re ready. For now, the kingdom assumes you’re still with Michal—though Jean hasn’t been particularly quiet on that front.” Reid hesitates. “He debriefed the Chasseurs on Les Éternels before we sailed to Requiem on All Hallows’ Eve, and they... well, they haven’t exactly been discreet since we returned. Rumors of vampires have swept the city—probably the entire kingdom by now.”

“The price of silver has soared,” Beau confirms. “I’m friendly with a local silversmith, and I think he’d like to marry you.”

I almost laugh at that. Almost. Instead I choke down another mouthful of blood. It tastes gamey and wrong, tainted, like rancid meat on a hot day. My stomach rolls. “I never expected Jean Luc to keep vampires’ existence a secret. Still, though, it’s very... kind of him to have kept mine.”

Reid gathers the empty bowls on the table to avoid looking at me. “I told you he doesn’t hate you, Célie.”

Another uncomfortable silence descends. His second lie.

Clutching my hands in my lap, I stare down at my knotted fingers—sleek and pale and elegant. Completely foreign. “Of course not.”

The first night I woke as a vampire, Jean Luc attended dinner. The first and only meal he took with me. When I walked into the kitchen, pale and strange, his eyes tightened. When I lifted the bowl of broth to my lips—broth, not blood, in a hopeless attempt to maintain normalcy—I spewed it violently across the table, my body unable to consume it. Lou and Reid produced a cup of blood without hesitation, but thelookon Jean Luc’s face...

Though I refused the blood—knocking it to the floor in a fit of panic—Jean Luc still left.

He left, and he hasn’t come back.

As if remembering that night, my abdomen contracts painfully, and I clamp my jaws together, determined to keep the blood down this time. “My mother won’t—” But my hand flies to my mouth, abrupt, as my body starts to heave involuntarily.No.Through sheer force of will, I swallow and lay down my spoon. I will not lose my stomach tonight. I willnot.

Beau pats a sympathetic hand against my back. “Your mother still thinks you’re gallivanting across the countryside with a handsome stranger. She cares very little about his vampirism, one way or the other. Truly, I think she’s angrier about your broken engagement than his taste for blood. You’re good and thoroughly ruined in the aristocracy now.”

With a violent shudder, I choke at his pronouncement, losing the battle before it even started. The hateful liquid burns all the way up until I expel it across the table in a desperate heave, justlike every other night this week. Just like my sister predicted.

A second of silence follows. Beau’s hand stills on my back. Then—before I can do anything more than cringe away, horrified—my friends move in practiced unison. Lou waves her arm, and the bloody sick on her peonies vanishes instantly. Reid gathers my bowl almost as quickly, marching it out the front door, while Beau pulls my hair aside and Coco hands me a cloth to wipe my face. “It’ll be all right, Célie,” she says earnestly. “We’ll figure this out.”

“This is nothing, really.” Though Lou smiles in reassurance, she looks even paler than before. And the peonies—they remain pink instead of white. I cannot focus on that, however, as another bout of sickness wracks my body, and Reid plunks a small wash pail in front of me.

It’s all so kind.

So humiliating.

“Perhaps, er—bear next time,” Beau says in a horribly light voice.

I nod without a word. Because this is my life now.

When my sister speaks again, I can almost feel her presence at my back, like she stands directly behind me. Like she has stood there all along. Her fingers seem to caress my hair, and for just an instant, Beau’s eyes flick to the strands, narrowing slightly as they rustle in the too-still air.You’re going to kill them, you know. You never really stood a chance.

And abruptly, it’s all too much—my sister’s voice, her touch, the overly sincere expressions of my dearest friends. “No.” I snarl the word, slamming my palms on the table and whirling to scream at my sister, to tell her I will not be killinganyone—

But she isn’t there. Of course she isn’t.No oneis there, and thetable cracks ominously beneath my hands as Beau lurches away with a startled cry, as Reid and Coco shoot to their feet in alarm. “Célie?” Lou rises slower than the others, frowning at the empty air behind my chair. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Beau shudders as he too inspects the space around me. “Is there another ghost here? That—that Mila woman?”

“Mila left with Odessa,” I say through my teeth.

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