Page 4 of Thief of Night
She’d tried hard to pretend to be someone normal, someone nice, for Vince. She’d hidden her worst self from him, and it had worked. Mostly. But there was no hiding anything from Red.
Charlie shouldered off her coat gingerly, then bent forward, resting her forehead on the steering wheel along with her hands. Her muscles, sore from bashing herself against a brick wall, were already locking up.
Red’s fingers were gentle as he pushed up her shirt. “There’s a big wound,” he said, hands warm on her skin. “You probably need stitches.”
There was no way she was going to a hospital and answering questions about a large human bite. “No stitches.” She’d stop at a drugstore on theway home to get antibiotic ointment and Steri-Strips or something instead. It would be fine. “I guess this is as good a time as any for you to—you know.”
“Drink your blood?” came his voice, soft and deep. She was glad her back was to him, so she didn’t have to see his face while they discussed this. “I can wait.”
The procedure of feeding hadn’t been so weird when it had been her own shadow, though it had still been odd. She had felt a little like she was nursing a baby and a little like a witch cradling her satanic familiar to some magical third nipple.
With Red, it was more like letting a tiger lick a paper cut and hoping it didn’t grow to like the taste.
But she knew that feeding a shadow was important for their connection. It wasn’t just blood. It was a stronger binding, a tighter tether. And the more closely they were bound, ironically, the longer his leash.
“Just do it,” she said, turning in the seat, voice brittle. “Unless you’re too full.”
He gave her an unreadable look.
Then she felt his tongue tracing the edge of the cut along her back. It hurt—just a little—and made the hair stand up all along her arms. A crackle of desire hit her like a static charge.
The press of his mouth came next and all her senses spiraled around that point of contact. The world narrowed to his lips on her skin and a tongue that felt like steam. She shuddered and gritted her teeth against the sensation.
She was light-headed by the time he pulled back. Closing her eyes for a long time, she tried to get her thoughts to settle. Before, she’d hoped he would distract her from the pain, but now she found herself concentrating on the pounding in her head to keep from feeling an ache between her thighs.
Car. Drive. Pharmacy. Home.
Fuck.
“If you’re done…” Charlie said, clearing her throat. She was shivering and hoped it was from the cold.
“I can only take what you allow,” Red reminded her, voice turning stiff.
He hated being bound to her. He might hate her, full stop. He didn’t remember agreeing to work for the Cabals. He had no reason to believe that she’d only bound herself to him to keep him out of worse trouble. All he remembered was Salt and Remy and blood, then nothing.
To him, Charlie Hall was just a stranger to whom he was tethered. A stranger with the power to make him do unspeakable things. Of course he resented her. She just wasn’t sure what to do about it.
Charlie turned the key, letting the van purr to life. Vince’s van, the one filled with spray bottles and plastic bags for his under-the-table job cleaning up crime scenes. She remembered him pressing her against the driver’s side door, his hands under her skirt, her nose against the hollow of his throat.
Charlie tried to concentrate on anything else as she drove to the nearest Walgreens. Inside, she ignored the alarmed look she got from the floppy-haired teenage boy manning the front register and started filling a basket with medical tape, gauze, antiseptic wipes, peroxide, superglue, and black licorice Twizzlers.
Christmas was only a few weeks away so the shelves were crammed with small tinsel trees, stuffed toy reindeer, and gift boxes of hot sauce, peppermint bubble bath, and cheap perfume, all making a play for last-minute, desperate shoppers. A shelf of televisions reported in chorus on the “Hatfield Cult Massacre” that had dominated the news in the last twenty-four hours. Charlie didn’t like hearing about it. Her mother had gotten married to her second husband at that same church where the bodies were found. Charlie and her sister had stood by a pew in their fancy dresses, wilting bouquets of Queen Anne’s lace in their sweaty hands. Even though none of them had gone down to the basement, where the murders actually happened, it still felt too close. The grisly reportage in the background made the weird, gnomish outdoor Santas even creepier as Charlie made her way through the aisles. The elves on shelves leered. A snowman with a glowing body blocked her way.
Charlie wasn’t ready for another holiday. Thanksgiving had been bad enough. Her mother, of course, had asked about Vince and about—well, everything in the papers. Remy. Salt.
“If he was so rich, you should have charged him rent,” her stepdad, Bob, said over their Stop & Shop turkey dinner—reheated in the oven of her mother’s long-stay hotel room.
Charlie had taken a big gulp of not-so-bad boxed wine to buy herself time. She didn’t want to talk about Vince, not when Red was a shadow at her feet, listening to everything she said.
“Wedid,” Posey said, interceding, for which Charlie was grateful.
“Well, you should have charged him more.” Bob winked at Charlie. He was being nice and she knew it. They were all being nice, even with their questions. Dancing around what they really wanted to ask.
“And he’s spending the holiday with his family?” Her mother poured Korbel champagne into glasses for the four of them. Mom might believe in astrology and mediums, but she didn’t even consider the idea Vince would give up having Thanksgiving at a table set with real crystal, where they would beeating a dinner prepared by a chef off plates rimmed in real gold. No one would love Charlie enough to choose her over that.
Rich boys, they were different. Her family all knew that, even Bob. You might spend time with one, but you better get what you could when you could, because everything they promised you would evaporate like morning mist once you started to bore them.
Red wasn’t really one of those rich boys. But he wasn’t exactly not one either.
