I forced myself to smile and allowed her to take me farther into the crowd, trying my best to enjoy all the effort they put in for me even though in the back of my mind, I was counting down until sunset so I could run into a vampire’s arms and forget about all of them.
When all you see is yourself, Druella, how can you expect us to give you knowledge that affects a whole coven? Old man Easton’s words from earlier came to the forefront of my mind again. Maybe he wasn’t wrong at all. Maybe I really was a horrible person, a brat who took advantage of everything and everyone.
So many people cared about me and loved me, and I acted like I loved them, too, but was it love if I could betray them the moment the sun went down?
I didn’t want to think about it, so I just drank, really wishing I’d taken Adelaide’s advice and gotten something stronger.
* * *
“Are you magic drunk or simply drunk?” Theseus asked me when I arrived at his front door, soaking wet from the storm brawling down around us and the lake. I’d sort of created the storm to end my party when everyone would still not leave after the sun had gone down. I tried to leave over and over again, but they kept roping me back in. Finally, when I saw how late it was getting, I just let my temper get the best of me—a tad.
“Neither. Just wet and cold,” I whispered. Water dripped from my curls as I dropped my bag and walked directly to his chest, wrapping my arms around him.
“Hugging me will make you colder.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do,” he said, lifting me, and at the speed of light, he brought me into the cabin and sat me down right beside the fire. Before I’d opened my mouth, he’d removed most of my clothes and wrapped a blanket around my body. He was gone, then back in a flash with a towel that he tied around my hair.
“You’re making me dizzy.”
“Then close your eyes and bear with me. I do not want you to get sick,” he ordered, carefully adjusting the towel on my head. “I will go get you some tea and soup—”
“Theseus.” I held on to his arm. “I am a witch. I rarely get sick.”
“You are a very peculiar witch, so I would not put it past you.”
“Hey!”
He kissed my forehead. “I shall be back quickly.”
“Fine,” I said, letting go of him, and he was gone.
I heard the clamoring of pots, but I didn’t look because he really was moving so fast that it gave me a headache. Instead, I snuggled closer to the fire, holding the blanket around me tightly as I glanced around to see if my laptop bag was nearby. Spotting it by the door, I waved my finger and sent it flying over to me. Everyone was so used to seeing me carrying it for work that they didn’t even notice it. I’d been using it to bring more and more things here. Though who would have suspected I could fit so much into a fifteen-inch bag.
“What shall you pull from your Mary Poppins bag today?” Theseus mused as he sat back in front of me with a tray of hot tomato soup, hot chocolate, and fresh bread.
I looked over and grinned. “It still amazes me how well you prepare food for someone who hasn’t eaten anything in over a thousand years.”
“I never guarantee taste. The rest is simply following directions,” he replied, looking over everything as if to check he hadn’t messed up anything.
I smiled. “You are really sweet.”
His gaze shifted to me, and then he chuckled but didn’t say anything.
“What? Why are you laughing?” I asked. “You don’t want to be called sweet?”
“It is not that.” He lifted a piece of bread to examine it. “Of late, I could not help but think how…how mortal this all is—dinner with actual bread before me, a warm house, and a woman across from me, smiling and calling me sweet. You truly make me feel as if I were mortal as well.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Neither. It simply is,” he replied, but I wasn’t sure I understood.
“Now, I don’t know if I should give you my gift or not.”
He raised his eyebrow. “A gift for me? Should you not be the one asking me for yours?”
“I had a feeling you’d get me something. But I always feel like you are giving me something and taking care of me somehow, so I wanted to get you something, too,” I said as I reached inside my bag, suddenly nervous. “Don’t laugh at me.”