Page 76 of The Royal Street Witch
“Since I’ve been a vampire I’ve only been addicted to one thing. You. Could the potion have gotten out of control? Absolutely. But that was nothing like how I craved alcohol, couldn’t live a day without it. I’m sorry I was ashamed of my weakness and I lied. Back then I never thought I would be given the chance to love you like how I love you now.”
And suddenly, it doesn’t matter anymore. Who made him, his drinking, when he was human, and why should it? It has nothing to do with us, with our relationship. It’s a lie I can live with, and I can’t live without him.
I open my legs and glide onto his lap, legs wrapping around his waist. I kiss his shoulder, colder from the water chilling his skin.
“You’re healing, I can see it,” I whisper, laying my head on his chest as he inhales the scent of my hair.
“Better days are ahead, my love. I can feel it.”
I’M SITTING ON THE PORCH, sipping my tea while staring at a text from my mother, stuck in a repetitive cycle of typing a response, then deleting it, then typing another response.
Bastian gets stronger every time he feeds, and I know that I have to go home soon, I have to go back to my life. To my cousin, my shop, my duties.
I look to my phone again, tired of the lies, tired of dodging her and her questions. But I’m tired of being abandoned by her, tired of her only caring about me having a fucking baby.
How are you able to keep the shop closed for so long? It doesn’t add up, Aster.
I blow out my cheeks, letting the tea warm my throat, my stomach. I’m running my fingers over my face, attempting to project a calm over myself, but she’s not the only person that can feel something is wrong. Change is coming and it’s either for the better or for the worse, and I can’t decipher which one.
Cassius’s classical music echoes down the entryway to my ears as car lights illuminate the street, the car slowing to pull into the driveway. I rise, a current burning through me, and run in the house to find Cassius.
“Take me,” I whisper, and I’m guided to his bedroom, the door open, him standing in front of the full-length mirror. As he’s pulling on his coat for an evening out, our eyes meet in the reflection.
“Someone’s here,” I say, and he spins, passing me by, his face stoic and determined.
“Tell Bastian to come out, and you and that cat wait in his bathroom.”
But that’s as far as we get once we reach the entryway. Because Nicola and Franklin Maltese are standing there, Nicola’s face twisted with a kind of fear I’ve only seen on mothers.
“No!” she shrieks when she sees me, and Franklin sneers with what looks like a twisted disgust, and I collect all the power in my fingers that I can muster.
Bastian appears, shirtless, and thank God his color is back, his body hard and muscled again, the weak and hollowness gone.
“This isn’t true, tell me! What they are saying?” Nicola screams at the three of us, and I can feel Cassius’s anger, I could reach out and touch it.
“Fucking Curtis,” he whispers, and Franklin saunters toward us while Bastian steps backwards, guarding me.
“I didn’t believe him at first, no, sure didn’t. When he reached out and said something was going on right under my nose in New Orleans. I couldn’t believe a family of this caliber would go behind my back like this.”
And this is it. What I’ve been fearing since the moment I agreed to work with Bastian. It’s happening and I may die and it all hits me at once. I will fight for my life and I will fight for Bastian’s. I step out from behind him and let the power grow in my palms, the sensation from energy filling all the way to my elbows.
“You’re a fucking traitor, Bastian Delacroix, and now your whole goddamn family will pay for it,” Franklin spits, and I wonder how much he knows. If this is Curtis’s doing, he must not know about the potion.
Franklin’s eyes skirt to me, my body filling with a power I’m worried about deploying.
“What are you gonna do, baby girl? Here I thought your mama was all the trouble; seems the apple don’t fall far from the tree.”
“What are we being accused of?” I ask.
His guttural laugh forces his head back. “Yeah, you witches always need to know the charges before the hanging. Fucking witches is against our laws, fucking vampires is against yours. You’re going to lose it all. Your grandma would shed a tear.”
“You don’t know shit about my grandmother,” I yell, inching forward, my fingers cackling.Please let him only think it’s fucking. Not love, not illegal potions.
“I’ve had a witch on standby for years in Shreveport, and she will be our supplier from here on. The agreement has been broken. You are fired.”
And a panic consumes me, my life’s work being ripped from me, and I’ve wanted it gone, but then I don’t at the same time. I look at Bastian who’s breathing heavily, shaking his head, worried about me.
“Don’t do that,” he says, outstretching his hand toward Franklin. “We can work something out.”
