Page 73 of The Royal Street Witch
She pulls her bottom lip in her mouth as her eyes narrow. “It’s that vampire, isn’t it?”
I feel my mouth widening from disbelief that she’s nailed it so perfectly, and I don’t want to lie anymore but don’t want to implicate her. “You would never let a vampire grab you like he did that night after my show. It’s been picking at me ever since, and I was so drunk…”
I walk to her, getting close enough to smell her Victoria’s Secret perfume, wanting to pull her hands in mine. “I have wanted to tell you everything, believe me, I have. But I can’t. Not right now. Don’t make me.”
“That sounds a lot like trouble to me,” she says, lips quivering, eyes searching my face.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Don’t say love,” she huffs, and her eyebrows furrow as she takes a step back. At first, it feels as if she’s repulsed, but then suddenly, as if terrified I might vanish before her eyes, she pulls me into her arms. “I won’t ask. Just promise me. Promise that if shit gets bad, real bad, you’ll come get me?”
“I promise.” A whisper on her shoulder, her arms around me, her chin against my cheek and I squeeze her harder than she’s squeezing me. “Thank you, Chantal. Thank you.”
“This is fucked up,” she admits. “Not knowing what’s going on in your life. That you’re keeping secrets. It hurts,” she sighs and releases me. “Jade will find out—”
“No, she won’t,” I say, and she silences, suspicious.
Tears well in my eyes and with one blink, race down my cheeks. Because we are both trapped, her with so many questions and me with so many confessions.
“Please believe that I haven’t told you for your own safety, and not because I didn’t want to share it all with you. It’s been killing me.”
“Jesus Christ,” she whispers, acceptance in her voice. “Be careful.”
“I’m the most careful,” I say before I can think, and then I meet her eyes. “I guess I used to be. I have to go.”
In silence, we walk out together, hand in hand, until our fingers part and she turns, walking in the opposite direction.
Bastian isn’t in his room, and he isn’t answering my calls. I free Mercury in the bedroom and set off searching for him, my heart strumming from what just happened with Chantal and worrying if Cassius and Bastian left.
No one is in the kitchen, nor the dining room, but the den doors are closed and I press my ear to one, where music plays softly.
Sliding my fingers along the door, my heart beats in my ear drum.
The first thing I see is a woman’s face, wrapped in ecstasy, assaulting my eyes—her arm draped over her head as she lies on the couch, her legs spread wide. And there he is, attached to the inside of her thigh, consuming her blood and he’s ravenous. His hand is sprawled, his fingers stroking her other thigh, a thigh that’s not mine.
ICE FREEZES IN MY VEINSat the intimacy, of my love between the legs of a beautiful woman, of her fingers wrapped in his hair, his head moving so gently, pulling the blood from her leg into his lips and I’m going to be sick, absolutely sick from the betrayal I feel.
Her eyes are pressed closed, lost in the pleasure of it all, a pleasure I can never feel, and when I want to just fall to my knees, I see Cassius. On the adjacent couch, blood dripping from his chin, a young man draped along his lap. A sadistic grin pulls on his face and impulsively, my fingers claw, my power wrapping around his neck from across the room and I squeeze.
The grip around his neck causes shock to cross his face and then I let go, because I can’t actually suffocate him to death, but I can shake him up, I can remind him whom he’s fucking with. He brought her here, he did this on purpose.
Like a cougar he bolts up, the boy plopping to the ground as he charges me, but I step back, slamming the door closed before he can reach me.
It will only buy a few seconds. He could kill me for what I just did, but I just stand back, collecting as much power between my fingers as I possibly can to shoot his ass across the fucking street if I have to.
The door flies open and he slams it shut behind him and my hand rises, full of so much electricity, it’s crackling between my fingers.
“Stay the fuck back,” I warn, chest heaving, fingers outstretched in front of me.
He halts, wiping the blood from his face and taking slow steps in my direction. I keep the electricity in my fingers, but he swiftly drops to the floor and my feet lift from the ground—that motherfucker swept my legs right out from under me, and I’m on my back faster than I can blink. Cassius speed crawls on top of me, the wind pushed out of my lungs, and pins my hands over my head. Vampires are fast, and it’s on me that I got sloppy.
“Use your powers on me one more time and I will slit your throat.”
In the human world, those kinds of words can be seen as violent or threatening, but I’m unshaken by them, just pissed. I try bucking my hips to throw him off me, but he’s got a thousand pounds of strength in his thin body.
“You fucking piece of shit. You knew what you were doing.” My mind pours heat into his hands, but unlike the time I did it to Bastian, Cassius keeps a firm hold.
“So this is how you deal with conflict. Use your power. Threaten, kick people around.” He nods to the crackle in my palms, the volts of power. “Put that away.”
