Page 15 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

That’s right, Julian had come along at Quinton’s behest, so he could put his weird miracle juju cream on my face. The poor guy.

I climbed down out of the Rover without responding to either of them. What could I say that hadn’t already been said? This was the Quinton Show and we were only here to play the role he’d assigned to us. It was utter bullshit, of course. But what could you do?

Binx was in a carrier in the backseat behind the driver’s seat and I opened the back door to get his carrier out.

I had nothing else to bring inside with me. All the clothing that had been in the dresser at the Alexander house I had left behind there. I guess it wouldn’t be too bad having clothes there. I wouldn’t have to worry about packing a bag in the highly unlikely event I ever wanted to stay over there again. Then again, the chances of me ever wearing anything other than those pajamas was highly unlikely.

I looked down at the white tank top and soft yellow thin pajama pants I wore and once again found myself feeling grateful to whomever had picked them out. Without them I would be wearing dirty clothes because no way in hell was I ever wearing the rest of those ill-fitting, ugly things.

I paused at the edge of the stone pathway that lead up to the house. I stared at the black door and my vision was suddenly filled with images of Dash crumbling to the ground with his red stained hands pressed into his middle.

I felt faint.

There had been so much blood. And now it had all been washed away. Like it had never happened.

Heat hit the small of my back as a palm brushed against me. The heat was a welcomed distraction. I used to find the heat they gave off disturbing and once it had overwhelmed me to the point where I had actually fainted because of it. Somewhere along the way I had come to crave it and didn’t realize how much I missed it until one of them touched me after I’d gone a while without it.

When Quinton touched me now, the heat was down to a mild hum, not at the surface but in the background. Always present but no longer overwhelming. It was comforting to me, like coming home.

This was not Quinton touching me now.

It had been a good long while since Tyson had touched me, or at least it felt like it had been a really long time. In actuality it had been about a week. But I knew his touch when I felt it, even if it had been a while.

“Are you alright?” Tyson asked me in a low, concerned voice.

I had to clear my throat twice before I could answer him. “Yeah,” I choked out. “It’s just that I can see it happening in my head. You know, with Dash. But to look at it now, you can’t even tell anything bad happened here. I don’t know, I guess I feel like it should have left some sort of mark behind, you know? Like it did on me, like it did on Dash. Instead, the stones are no longer red, everything’s been washed away as if it never happened in the first place. I think that’s my problem. Everything here looks so normal, so calm. How can it look like this when I feel the exact opposite on the inside? I’m not normal and calm. I don’t even know what I am but it’s certainly not those two things. I’m just…”

I trailed off, not knowing how to put my feelings into words. I sounded like a hot mess. What would he think of me? That I was insane? Some days I felt insane. It probably showed.

“Things are going to calm down, girl. You’ll see. And when they do, we will find you a new normal. It won’t be filled with blood, or tears, or death, or disaster, or anything that makes you feel how you’re feeling right now and probably have been feeling for the past several months. We’re going to get to a place where there’s no chaos outside of Uncle Quint being crazy, the twins fighting with each other, Julian being spiteful and doing fucked up things to people, Dash hiding from the world and being weird and hermit like. We won’t even get started with Damien’s vanity and all the trouble that can get him into, not to mention his raw arrogance. Or, my anger issues and my, for lack of better words, temper tantrums. Before you know it, that’s going to be your normal and after a while you won’t think any of it is crazy in the slightest. But all of this chaos and blood and devastation, your mom dying, Marcus leaving, this shit with the football player? It’s all going to blow over, I promise you. And then maybe we can go out on a date like the normal people we will never be. Would you like that, Ariel? Would you go on a date with me?”

My mind blanked. A date? With Tyson? How could I even think about dating when we were just talking about blood being washed off of the pathway? And he wanted to go out on a date. Good grief.

“Um, Tyson,” I mumbled. “I don’t think I’m at a place where I should be going out on dates. Maybe like six months from now we can come back and have this discussion again.”

Or never. That sounded like a decent option to me at the moment. Dating sounded complicated. I didn’t need any more complications in my life at the moment.

“You do know,” Julian drawled as he walked past us, “if she goes out on a date with you then the rest of us are all going to ask her out on dates as well. Nobody has said anything about the kissing that you and Quint have been doing, but if you start taking her out on top of that… people are going to start getting jealous, and feelings are going to get hurt.”

My face heated in embarrassment. Did they all know about who I had been kissing? I hoped they all hadn’t sat down with each other and talked about me kissing some of them. We had more important things to deal with.

Julian inserted a key into the lock on the front door and turned it, unlocking the door. Why did he have a key to Dash’s house? And did the rest of them have keys? I felt it was important to know these things seeing as I lived here now.

“Can we forget about dates and kissing, please?” I grumbled. “I have to get my cat inside, he’s tired of being in this stupid box and wants out. And, can you blame him? He’s been displaced and uprooted from his home when he probably would have preferred to stay home by himself in the first place. Someone should have been easily able to come here and refresh his food and water every day. It’s not like the rest of you had anything pressing going on. You all were just moping around Quinton’s house.”

“It’s my house, too.” Tyson said.

“Did you just call Binx your cat?” Julian grinned at me, clearly amused by my having claimed Dash’s cat as my own. “Does Dash know about this?”

I shrugged. Binx didn’t seem to mind and that was all that mattered to me at the moment. They could judge me all they wanted.

I eyeballed Julian as I walked up the pathway and asked, “Do you have any pets, Julian?”

Tyson chuckled as Julian pushed the door open.

“No,” Julian grunted. “I can get some though, if you’d like me to.”

“What’ll it be, girl?” Tyson teased. “You want a dog? Maybe one of those little suckers you can fit in your purse and carry everywhere with you?”

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