Of course. I’m happy to watch her for as long as you need. We can get a cab to you in the morning. Please stay safe. (Your hands are too dextrous for the world to lose access to them.)
He followed the line with a gif of someone inappropriately wiggling their fingers, and Mercer had to set the phone down entirely and close his eyes to keep everything inside him in check. With the world blocked out, though, confined to the cooling summer night air and the sweat on his brow and the thought of Rahil beneath his touch, he didn’t want to open them again.
19
RAHIL
Caring for a preteen in a dilapidated house with no power, little food, and few useful sleeping areas was actually far less daunting than Rahil would have imagined. Lydia was worryingly fascinated by the idea of candles—apparently Mercer wasn’t a fan of letting anything flammable in the house—and pumped to sleep on what she called the “modern coffin” of old mattresses. She even accepted potato chips for breakfast like it was a perfectly normal choice instead of the only thing they happened to have in the cupboard just then.
Mercer texted a few times throughout the night, with short, punctuation-free messages that simply confirmed he was alive and asked for status updates. By mid-morning, he still hadn’t responded to Rahil’s request to come by, nor answered any of Rahil’s calls. He’d had a long night, Rahil told himself. He was probablyfinallyasleep.
Rahil had no reason to interrupt that. He was simply feeling anxious and hungry because he hadn’t made time for a blood meal in a few days, and Mercer’s promise to think on his request ran through Rahil’s mind. He’d certainly just make things worse if he showed up now—get tangled in the shed trap, like he had the last time he’d invaded Mercer’s property in an attempt to check on him.
But this time, they had two projects to finish. And Rahil had Mercer’s daughter. Hunger or not, perhaps therewasgood reason to go…
As he threw on his coat, hood up and collar flipped to his cheekbones, he scowled at Lydia parentally, being sure to show his fangs. “If you leave this house for any reason that isn’t an immediate threat to your life, not only will I never turn you, but I’ll tell every single vampire in the entire city that you’re off-limits for life.”
Lydia didn’t even look up from her phone. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll stay put.”
“Me too!” Avery shouted from behind her. That they were already planning to be home for the next few hours and were willing to watch over the house and Lydia in it was a genuine miracle.
“And if you see anything suspicious—”
“Call you,” both of them responded.
“Good. And don’t blow anything up.”
“No promises!” Avery called after him.
He caught Lydia flashing him a sloppy finger as he stepped into the sun.
The sprint through the neighborhood barely registered to him, each lunge just a mechanism moving him closer to Mercer. By the time he reached the Bloncourts’ lot, the slight shaking in his bones only spurred him to step more lively. He vaulted up to the shed window—closed and locked now—to peek in. Some things had been moved since he’d left the afternoon before, but his heart sank as he found no sign of Mercer himself.
It was eerie not to hear Kat’s curious baying as he approached the back of the house. That door was locked, as was the front, the building dark and uncomfortably quiet. Rahil began to truly shake then, the beginnings of an ache settling into his muscles. He kept calling Mercer’s number, pacing around the shaded side of the house and trying to peer into the windows.
Through a slit in the dark curtains, a distant screen lit up.
Mercer’s phone.
It was on the ground, face up. Discarded. When Rahil squinted, he swore he could make out the silhouette of dangling fingers above it.
His heart rammed into high gear. He scrambled at the hinges of the window, pushing with all his vampiric strength. The metal locks popped. The glass slid effortlessly to the side as the screen caved under Rahil’s weight. He tumbled into the room, a pinwheel of limbs and adrenaline.
A massive shape lunged at him from the bed to his right, both hands outstretched. Rahil should have been able to dodge—his instincts were fast enough, surely—but another instinct caught him a moment too soon, his body recognizing what his brain could not. Fingers wrapped around his throat and the fabric of his shirt, closing down, warm and rough and—
Mercer froze. His hands loosened, and his eyes widened.
Rahil didn’t move either. He could feel the pressure of Merc’s fingers, so firm and yet gentle, and he could not have forced himself to pull away, not in a million years, not even if it meant trading his life for just one more second with all of Mercer’s attention on him like this. One of Merc’s thumbs shifted, gliding, slowly.
“Fuck,” he whispered. Then he retreated.
Like he hadn’t practically burst Rahil’s heart open and caressed it, he slumped back onto the bed and curled into a fetal position, one arm dangling over the side of the mattress and the other tucked around his head.
“Lydia?” he asked. His voice sounded strained; not just tired, but tight and gruff. Was thatpain?
“She’s fine. At home, with a friend,” Rahil said quickly, following it up with the more important question, “Are you?” As he spoke, he could feel his own fingers absently tracing the places Mercer had touched. Here, in his bedroom, his smell was intoxicating.
Mercer breathed out. He closed his eyes, wrapping his arm tighter around his head. “Normal.”
