Page 39 of Chaos
“God, I’d hoped you’d come. Did you like the song?”
I nodded, equal parts breathless and speechless because there was so much to unpack from what his song revealed.
“Come with me.” He threaded our fingers and tugged me off stage, and as is common in dreams, before I could process what happened, the two of us were in his dressing room.
“I know we’re supposed to go out to dinner with the others, but if it’s okay with you, tonight I just want you all to myself.”
Since his request was made in between a series of drugging kisses, all I could do was let out a little hum of assent as I clung to him. I wanted him. Not only to feed from. I wanted Sin in the way I wanted Jimmy once upon a time. I wanted a future. I wanted to make plans and share the ups and downs that came with them. I wanted to be the girl in his song, not just the succubus he was protecting out of some weird sense of duty or obligation.
If you’d asked me even a week ago, I would have denied ever wanting to let myself get close to someone like this again, but Sin’s song had revealed some long-buried truth inside me. I never stopped wanting that life; I’d just stopped letting myself believe it was possible.
“Sin,” I whispered, looking into his eyes and finding nothing but hope there.
“Say you’re mine, Merri.”
“I—”
Before the words left my lips, I jolted awake to the shrill sound of my phone ringing in the pitch dark of my bedroom.
The disorientation was real. For several heartbeats, Sin’s dressing room was superimposed over my bedroom, and I had to actively blink it away.
I made to sit up, but the room swayed, and I flopped back down on my pillow with a low moan. I’d say I felt drunk, but I hadn’t had a drop to drink. The sensation was similar, though.
The phone continued ringing until I finally picked it up and managed a hoarse, “Hello?”
Lilith’s voice was a blade of sultry steel. “What the devil have you been up to, pet?”
Irritation spiked through me at the interruption. “Well, I was in the middle of dreamwalking, but you interrupted me before I could get to the good part.” And by good part, I meant the feeding.
Have you heard of being hangry? Try being horngry. Horny, angry, and hungry all at the same time. Do not recommend.
“Did you just... snap at me?” Lilith’s tone sent a ripple of ice down my spine. I needed to rein it in.
“Sorry, Auntie. You know how it is when you are denied a very yummy meal.”
“And who were we feeding from, my darling?”
I sighed and flopped back onto my pillow. “Sin. But sweet, sexy rock star Sin. With all the emotions and feelings. It was like a five-course Michelin star dinner just waiting for me to dive in.”
Instead of approval, like I’d been expecting, Lilith sighed and murmured, “Oh dear. It’s worse than I feared.”
That dulled all my lingering sparkle. “What do you mean? I found a way to feed without hurting anyone. How is this a bad thing?”
“Merri, darling, you’ve been playing around with things you don’t understand. Things best left in the past where they belong.”
“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that? It’s not like you ever told me this was a possibility.”
Lilith murmured something I couldn’t understand before the sound of a door closing filtered over the phone. “It has been forbidden for centuries. That’s why I never instructed you on the art of dreamwalking.”
“What do you mean, forbidden?” That made no sense. If we could feed without doing harm, why would it be forbidden?
“I mean exactly what I say. The High Council forbade dreamwalking in the 1400s.”
Something about the timeframe niggled at the back of my mind.
“It’s no coincidence that the date corresponds with the start of the witch trials.”
There it was. Give a woman a little bit of power or autonomy, and of course she must be a witch.
