Page 36 of The Royal Street Witch
Working on Nicola’s latest order. I’m tired.
If I tell her I’m tired, maybe she will leave me alone. And I am tired, but it’s the orders I’m tired of. The demand for a potion that knocks out unknowing humans while blood gets sucked from them. It’s an old-fashioned way to live and vampires are just always so old-fashioned.
There are animals and blood banks, so there has to be another way around what I’m a part of. Is this my purpose? To bow to vampires? Take my rations and then birth a child to make a nonexistent coven in my life happy?
You know these are good deeds and what happened when we stopped. You are saving people. Don’t forget that.
It’s always her response, and I admit, it soothes me. Once, in 1925 after an altercation between my great-great grandmother and Franklin Maltese, Vampire King of New Orleans, the witches went on strike and stopped producing the creams and potions for the vampires, and the murder rate soared. People in New Orleans went missing, their dismembered bodies washing up along the Mississippi if they were lucky. Guilt-ridden from witnessing all the death, my great-great-grandmother ended the strike on the terms that we would deal with Nicola instead of Franklin, and we would continue the still unethical but less deadly practices and produce the creams again.
I know, Mother. I know.
And then she responds with questions about business, and I don’t want to answer those questions. How I’m going to explain the fact that I’ll no longer have a mortgage soon is really beyond me, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.
I don’t want to talk to her about business; I want to talk to her about what I’ve done—about how Bastian is so much more than I thought, about how besides having sex, we are friends. But I can’t say a word. One thread, one sliver of information and she would keep tugging and tugging until it all unraveled. I can’t tell her we are friends because she would ask why, and it all started with a potion that should never have been created. So instead of answering about business, I put my phone on do not disturb, slide in my Air Pods, and let Freddie Mercury serenade me.
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t waiting for Bastian to text me. In the last twenty-four hours, I have checked my phone more times than I would ever admit. And when the text finally came, I ignored it for three hours. And then when another one came, I ignored it for another two, and that’s when my phone rang.
“Come over,” was all he had to say, his voice playful yet thick in the way only Bastian can seem to pull off. Funny and sexy. Commanding yet respectful.
The St. Charles streetcar was surprisingly sparse, the breeze on a humid night welcome. New Orleans heat is nothing to joke around with and the only thing I don’t love about the city. I think about an amusement park on a California beach—what it must feel like. A place Bastian seems to long for.
Through the side gate
I look up from his text message and swallow, wondering what his plans are for tonight. Making my life even harder is definitely an option. I don’t ask him what for or why because I want to see him. I miss him. I miss him every second.
The side door is a gate, massive in black metal, a large knocker of a lion’s head with a ring in its mouth. Music trickles from the backyard, where this door opens to.
“Hello, darkness.” He smiles, looking down at me.
I let out a slow breath, taking him in, wishing I was one of the drops of water running down his bare chest. He tilts his head, inviting me through the door into a slice of paradise. A thick blanket of grass crunches under my feet next to a very modern rectangle pool, lit a deep violet. Multiple fire pits are peppered through the yard, their flames licking the magnolia scented air.
“Wow,” I say as I follow him to a stone bar that’s outfitted with a grill, refrigerator, sink, and lit candles scattered about. “How the other half lives, huh?”
He grabs a beer from the fridge, his black swim shorts clinging to his thighs, his ass, his…
“Did you miss me?” he asks, walking up to me and placing the beer in my hands.
“Nope,” I say quickly, looking up at his breathtaking face, his chin the closest thing to me, his scar glistening.
“Did you know that when you lie, one of your eyebrows rises, just a little?”
“Nope,” I lie again because I do know that, and he points to it.
“Did it again.” And he takes a swig of beer, contemplating. “You’re a heartbreaker, am I right? How many hearts have you broken?” he asks, eyes turning to suspicious slits.
“I’ve lost count,” I say, looking up through my lashes. And I’m not teasing, I’m being honest. I’m the product of a mother that has spent her entire life chasing a happily ever after fantasy, and I know better.
I take a sip of the beer, trying to make some space between us, but he steps even closer to me, hand sliding to my hips. I slip the beer on the bar, the bitterness unappetizing.
“Are you going to break mine?” He’s sincere and it hurts a little, so I respond delicately and slowly.
“Yours isn’t mine to break.”
He’s hovering over me, and sweat is beading on my forehead.
“Not yet,” he says and presses his lips to mine, kissing me slow and intentional. His fingers dig into my back and my hands find his wet hair, knuckles clenching around the thick waves.
When we need air, he whispers he missed me and I want to say it back, I do.
