I took the cup from him and stared down into it. The smell had my gag reflex working. “I … don’t have an appetite anymore,” I admitted.
I glanced up. Andre’s stoic fa?ade had slipped and I stared at raw agony—there was no other term for it. He placed a hand on the side of my neck and squeezed it lightly. “Please try,” he rasped.
My lips rolled inward and I nodded. “I think I need to be alone for a little bit.”
Judging from Andre’s expression, the idea of alone time seemed to disturb him greatly, like I might use it to juggle knives or scrawl poetry onto my arm with razors.
The servant shifted, reminding me that we had an audience. Before Andre could protest further, I left the room. He didn’t need me here while he had to make tough decisions concerning me and his coven.
His voice drifted back to me as he returned to business with his servant. “Get ahold of the Politia and tell them they have more important things to take care of at the moment, such as the two dozen full-bodied demons that have been set loose on the island.”
I caught a whiff of the blood I clutched to my chest. Despite being repulsed at the smell, my fangs descended. Idiot fangs.
I took a tentative sip, then made a face as the spicy liquid hit the back of my throat. I’d gone from being disgusted by blood to craving it back to being disgusted by it. But I’d completely lost my appetite for food, and I couldn’t live off of water, so I would choke this down.
The next swallow I took was larger, and I gagged a little at the taste.
Screw it. I plugged my nose and began gulping the blood down. At last I finished it all, swallowing thickly. The metallic taste lingered, so similar to the smell of Cecilia’s blood when …
I shut the thought down before it made me physically ill. But at the reminder of Cecilia, I headed for Andre’s room, where I’d unofficially taken up residence.
Once inside, I moved over to my pile of belongings. They were exactly where I’d dropped them when we first arrived.
I dug through my dirty, travel-worn clothes looking for the one memento I still had from the woman who’d saved me numerous times. The woman I’d indirectly killed, for sleeping with Andre no less.
My stomach churned, and I pushed down the nausea, but—
Nope, nope, nope. Not staying down.
I ran to the bathroom, barely making it before my stomach purged itself of the blood I’d so recently drunk. I flushed the toilet, and straightened, my legs shaky.
I went over to the sink and ran the water. Cupping my hands under the stream, I collected a small pool of it and used it to rinse out my mouth. I spit out the water when I tasted something putrid.
I drew my hands away from me. Black blood still covered them from where the demons bled on me.
Ew, ew, ew. Was that what I’d just tasted? Demon blood? Not chill.
I scrubbed my hands furiously, until they were raw. And then I glanced up.
Crimson blood covered an entire side of my face where I’d been scratched, mixing with the black blood splattered across my cheeks and over my nose. I sucked in a breath and touched the side of my face.
I ducked my head close to the sink and splashed water onto my face, scrubbing it all down. Everything felt dirty—my hands, my face, and all those places water couldn’t touch. Gripping the edge of the sink, I let the cool liquid drip down my cheeks.
I should take a shower.
No amount of stream and scrubbing, however, would change the fact that Cecilia died today—her body, at least.
I swiveled away from the counter, my attention returning to my belongings. I left the bathroom and resumed tearing through them. Right now, I didn’t need to feel clean; I just needed to feel close to the woman who’d given up her life for me.
“Where the hell did I put that thing?” It had switched pockets at some point, but I couldn’t remember when that was or what I’d been wearing.
For one horrible second I feared I’d lost it. Then I slipped a hand into one of my tattered pants pockets and my hand closed over the sheet of paper.
The birthday card Cecilia had given me.
I yanked it out. It was bent and smudged, but not lost. A drop of blood that had rolled down my cheek now dripped onto the note. Even after all this time I still had the enchanted card.
I ran my fingers over the soft linen finish, tracing her writing. It took me a second to realize the words were not the same ones I’d read with Andre shortly after we’d landed in Germany.
A new set of instructions was scrawled onto the cream-colored paper.
Jericho Aquinas
Find him.
He knows how to save you.
I choked back a sob at the words. She must’ve written it before I’d made a deal with the devil.
We fates are far-seeing, but we also dwell in human bodies with all of their limitations. We are subjective, and we make mistakes.
She’d made a mistake.
I fell back on my haunches and rubbed my eyes. Defeat had a bitter, metallic taste.
My connection with Andre thrummed, building on itself as I felt him move towards his room.
I hurriedly wiped my eyes and stashed away Cecilia’s note just as the door opened. Andre entered, closing the door behind him. “We have much to discuss, don’t we, soulmate?”
I swallowed from where I knelt on the floor.
Andre moved over to the bed and sat on the edge of it. “I’ve bought us some time with the Politia. They will not attack for a while longer.”
I nodded, knowing that wasn’t really what he wanted to talk about.
Andre leaned a forearm on his thighs and ran his other hand through his hair. When he looked up at me, resolve colored his face. “What deal did you make with the devil?”
I hadn’t thought about what to tell him. My mouth opened, ready to tell him the truth. I bit back my response before I voiced it. How would he react if I told him what I’d promised?
“A kiss,” I said in a rush.
I almost groaned as soon as the lie spilled out. A kiss? That was the best I could come up with?