Page 22 of The Royal Street Witch
“We’ll see together, through your eyes as though I’m in your body and you can live a moment over again.” I can hardly believe the words coming out of my lips. This would get me punished by Aunt Violetta, and maybe that’s why it’s easy for me to break the rules. She only cares when rules are broken. Fuck that. I’m going to show him a little magic, what I’m capable of.
“Yes, please. Let’s do it,” he says with the excitement of a child, and my heart feels like it’s beating inside my ear.
I take the deepest of breaths, centering myself. “I’m going to need to touch your face and you’ll need to keep your hands off me. I’m serious. Do not touch me.” I peer up through my lashes, discomfort swarming between us. I’ve already danced with him, cut his hair, and now touching his face feels even more intimate.
“That’s fine. I don’t bite…when I’ve had dinner.” A grin sits on his lips, and my unamused expression forces him to be serious because it’s like a bad vampire dad joke. My hand rises, hesitates, and pulls back, then rises again until my fingers slide up his cool cheekbone. Drawing my fingers to his hairline, I press the palm of my hand to his cheek. It’s strange but familiar at the same time. As much as I can protest, I’ve come to know Bastian—fuck, I’ve come to like him. But that doesn’t mean I can go soft.
“Seriously, I will fuck you up,” I warn, barely finishing the sentence because he laughs, my hand still against his cheek.
“I have no doubt that you would. I’ll be good. Don’t worry.”
I give a steely smile along with more instructions. “Close your eyes, and don’t open them until I tell you to. Understand?”
He nods, before slowly closing his eyes, and it’s not lost on me that he doesn’t give any demands. I could stake his heart if I wanted to, I could cast a spell that could turn him into a mosquito I could squash. But for some godforsaken reason, he trusts me and I’m not sure if I should commend or reprimand him for it. The alcohol must have something to do with this blind trust we have in each other at this moment. I take it for what it is and press harder into his smooth cheek.
“Now think back, to a place in time that you want to revisit. Some place that evokes good memories, someplace you could visit over and over again. A moment you could re-live forever.” His jaw tightens beneath my pinky and he breathes a sweet tequila-filled breath out.
“Okay,” he whispers so softly I could mistake it for the wind.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath as the incantation leaves my lips. “Retrosum. Retrosum. Retrosum.”
And…
It’s loud, the sound of machinery almost like a bicycle chain amplified. I’m seeing through Bastian’s eyes, but it’s not the hands I’ve grown to know. These are the small hands of a boy, clutching a metal bar in front of him as the car—no, roller coaster car—that he sits in inches up a steep incline. It’s bright, so bright with a blue ocean to the right of us and a parking lot and mountains to the left. We reach the top of a white roller coaster and then dive down, down, deeper as fellow riders scream. His eyes go to the ocean and the sandy beach, and next to him, a boy not much taller, but visibly older, with the same green eyes and wide smile. He screams as the roller coaster takes another dip and then another. Wind rips through his hair, and I feel it, I feel Bastian’s little heart beating, his mouth open wide from pure exhilaration. The scent of waffle cones and salt fill the air, while their contagious giggles bounce off the tracks. And the sun, it’s so warm and…different than the New Orleans sun. The air isn’t as thick, it’s almost—
I’m in the air, ripped from Bastian’s memory, flying until my back slams into the brick floor of my courtyard and air sucks in my lungs. Pain burns across my back while my head snaps up to meet bared fangs and blood-soaked eyes.
I am an idiot.
SCARLET TEARS OF BLOOD ANDagony streak down Bastian’s cheeks, pouring from his eyes. He’s seething over me with fangs that would love to plunge into my neck only inches away, so I take no chances.
“Ignite,” I whisper, pushing my sprawled hand toward him. A wave of electricity forms at my fingertips, and in a second, sends Bastian through the air until he’s plastered against my ivy laced brick wall as if he were light as a bubble, not a man of almost two hundred pounds.
He’s not here with me, not entirely. He’s still in the memory that I drew him to, his eyes searching with a pained expression on his face. I hold him steadily against the wall, his arms pinned to his side, and say in a low, strained voice, “I told you not to touch me.”
After what feels like minutes of heavy breathing, he looks at me. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally able to focus on the here and now. “I’m so sorry. I…did I hurt you?”
“No.” The pulsating pain in my shoulder blades makes me a liar.
“I…it happened so fast. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
I never felt his hands on me, just a force that shoved me to the ground, the unhuman speed that only vampires possess knocking me on my ass. It doesn’t matter how it happened. I let my guard down and I could have died. What the fuck was I thinking? To prove something to a vampire that’s shown a little interest in me. That’s not who I am. I harden my hand that’s holding Bastian against the wall, and he winces.
Blood tears still spill down his face—he’s still visibly shaken by the scene on the roller coaster. “I didn’t expect it…to feel so real.” He clenches his eyes closed, and I almost feel sorry for him.
“Where was that?” I ask, and his eyes spring open, his beautiful face so blood soaked, I shiver. I’ve never witnessed a vampire cry before. It’s fascinating.
“An amusement park on the beach.” Voice cracking, chin dripping with blood. “California,” he whispers.
“And the boy?”
“The boy?”
“Who was the boy next to you?”
“Jesus, let me down so I can wipe my face.” But he can’t command me. He’s broken my trust.
“Who was it?” I demand, wondering if I really have the right to, but something is telling me to get these answers, that there’s a purpose to this. A pain sparks in my hand, a warning that I’ll need to put him down soon. I can’t hold him for much longer.
