“Do you want to go buy shit off of Instagram ads now? I do that when I’m drunk sometimes.”
“No,” he laughs. “I want to have sex with you again.”
“Already?”
“I’m a vampire. I really can fuck you all night.” He flips me over, pinning my body between his and the mattress. “You are beautiful.” His lips meet mine. “We should go on vacation.”
“We should. Like a cruise!”
“If that’s what you want.”
“You’d hate it, wouldn’t you?” I run my hands up and down his back. “It’s all sunny and oceany.”
“I like the ocean. And the sun. Too bad it’ll burn me.”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “Too bad.”
“You name the place and we’ll go. You know I’ll do anything for you, Callie.” His words slur a little and it’s fucking adorable.
“Kristy was talking about Disney World earlier and I want to go back. Tabatha used to take me and Evander when we were kids. We loved it. It’s magical without real magic.”
Lucas lets out a snort of laughter. “Then we’ll go.” He rests his head against mine and closes his eyes. His phone rings, echoing up the stairs.
“It’s Eliza,” he sighs. She has her own ringtone and he knows it’s her calling. “She’s so needy sometimes.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “She just loves you.”
“Obviously.”
I playfully smack him. “She worries.”
“Too much.”
“Go answer! She’s finally starting to like me and when you ignore her for me, she gets jealous.”
Lucas grumbles but gets up, zooming out of the room and then back into bed with me. I snuggle up next to him, not realizing he’s FaceTiming Eliza.
“Nice tits,” she answers.
“I know, right?” Lucas laughs and spins around, grabbing my boobs.
“Stop!” I protest, laughing and reaching for the covers. Lucas tickles me and I squeal as I push him away.
“What the fuck is going on?” Eliza’s voice crackles through the phone. “I’m going to hang up.”
“But you called,” Lucas lets me go and plops down on his back, holding the phone up so Eliza can see his face.
“Um, no. You called me.”
“Only because you called first,” Lucas counters and gets distracted with my boobs again.
“Lucas, stop!” I laugh.
“I don’t want to.” He drops the phone and snakes his arms around me. Eliza’s voice is muffled, but I hear her saying she’s going to hang up. I reach around Lucas for the phone.
“What’s up?” I ask, trying to hold the phone up but end up smashing it against Lucas’s back. He turns back around and takes the phone from me.
“Because she’s nosey,” he answers. “She’s always been nosey. Nosey little vampire.”
“Are you drunk?” Eliza’s blue eyes widen.
“Maybe.”
Eliza lets out an annoyed sigh. “I’m glad you’re not dead, Callie. Have fun with him. He’s obnoxious when he’s had alcoholic blood. Be glad it’ll wear off fast.” She ends the call.
“She’s right.” Lucas drops the phone onto the mattress and spoons his body around mine.
“That you’re obnoxious?”
“No,” he laughs. “That it wears off fast. Why, you think I’m obnoxious?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” I twist around in his embrace and kiss him. “I’m tired.”
“You’ve had a long day. Let’s both get some sleep.”
I sit up just enough to glare at the window. Bright sunlight is shining through and birds are happily chirping. I hold out my hand and telekinetically close the blinds.
“Thanks,” Lucas mumbles, still half asleep. “I prefer the dark.”
“Me too when I’m hungover.” I flop down and let my eyes fall shut. I drank a lot and then Lucas drank from me. I feel like shit right now and want to go back to sleep. But I’m so thirsty and I have to pee.
Dammit.
Mentally groaning, I stagger out of bed and into the bathroom. I gulp down water right from the faucet and use the toilet. Then I drag my butt back into bed and snuggle up with Lucas. He’s dead asleep, skin cold, and perfectly still. I’m hot and have a stomachache. Curling up against his cool body feels good. Binx is sleeping on my pillow and Freya and Pandora are sleeping on piles of laundry on the floor, looking so much like normal cats it’s almost funny.
I fall asleep, and when I wake up again three hours later, Lucas isn’t in bed with me anymore. The smell of coffee fills the air, and I push myself up, smiling. This time when I get up, I don’t feel quite as shitty, but I’m going to need to drink a gallon of water before I feel back to normal.
“Morning.”
“Good morning, my love.” Lucas takes a mug down from the cabinet. “You feeling all right?”
“Let me have some coffee first and then I’ll answer that.”
He laughs and pours me coffee. I take it to the island counter. “You don’t feel hungover, do you? I mean, you can’t.”
“Right. Even if I drank you dry, I’d heal before the alcohol affected me in that way.”
“Another perk to being immortal.”
“Or you could just not drink so much.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I bring my coffee to my lips.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says softly. “I won’t lie to you and tell you I know how or why, but I’ll find a way. You are mine, Callie. I won’t let anyone take you from me.”
“Do you think vampires and witches will ever get along?”
“Maybe,” he says after a moment of hesitation. “We share a common enemy.”
“Humans,” we say at the same time.
“Though most witches blend into the human world seamlessly. Even you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, even I do?”
Lucas makes a face. “You’re the least human human I’ve ever met.”
I sink my teeth into my lip and shake my head. “What if I’m not really human?”
“You’re at least partly human or else I wouldn’t be able to drink your blood.”
“Right. I suppose it doesn’t matter, right?”
“We both know it matters to you. I love you no matter what, but I can’t blame you for wanting to find out more.”
My fingers loop through the handle of the coffee cup. “I think Tabatha knows something and is keeping it from me.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Back when the demon attacked me in the spring…back when I was called a half-breed for the first time, I asked her and she couldn’t look at me when she answered. And it was more like this feeling.” I bring my hand to my chest. “Because deep down I know I’m not fully a witch. And you said it yourself: I don’t smell lik
e my family. Is it because they’re not really my family?”
“Wouldn’t it be a good thing if they weren’t?”
“Oh, I’d love to not be related to my asshole father, but Abby…”
“She’d still be your sister.”
“I should call her. Or at least text and say hi.” Right on cue, my phone rings. “If that’s Abby I’m adding premonition to my list of powers.”
It’s not Abby, but someone from work. I have a mild panic attack that I was supposed to go in and open today and Kristy forgot to tell me with everything else going on last night.
“Hey, Callie.” It’s Betty. “Sorry to bug you on vacation, but someone came in looking for you, and when I said you weren’t here, she asked for your number. I didn’t want to just give it out.”
“Thanks. Who is it?”
“She said her name was Melinda Richards. Do you know her?”
The fuck? Melinda is in Thorne Hill? At my store? I should have hung around at the hospital and relayed the message. I’m betting that fuck-off of a brother didn’t even tell her to stay away.
“Yeah, I do. Is she there? I’ll talk to her.”
Betty hands the phone over. “Hey, Callie. It’s Mel. I’m sorry to get ahold of you this way but I had no other way of finding you.”
“What’s going on?”
“Work has kept us really busy. Lots of late nights at the office,” she says, and I know what that’s code for.
“In Thorne Hill? This is my town and—”
“No, in Chicago, but we need help. The books, are um, more complicated that we thought.” She can’t go into more detail with Betty standing there. “We need help.”
“How bad is it?”
“Everyone who’s, um, read it has died. Died with excitement for the next one.”
“How many?”
“Ten in the last month. There’s probably more. You know I wouldn’t ask for help if it wasn’t necessary.”
“I do.” My mind whirls. Melinda wouldn’t ask for help unless she had no other option. I shouldn’t be talking with hunters, and she’s risking it all by asking me for help.
“Hey, your friend just walked away to help someone,” Melinda says, letting me know she can talk freely. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She’s talking fast, needing to get me all the details before Betty comes back over and hears. “This demon…we have no idea what it is. It’s been moving from one abandoned building to the next, and anytime someone gets near, they’ve been found dead by the next day. There have been ten deaths we’ve connected to this demon, but there could be as many as twenty-seven.”