Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

“So it’s because I’m young.”

“No,” he said. “It’s because you’re young and you refuse to acknowledge what you are. What it means. What it promises. You’re fighting your condition, and that makes it almost impossible for you to control yourself. You need to admit it to yourself, Michael. You’ll never be human again.”

Last thing I wanted to do, and he knew it. I stopped playing for a few seconds, then picked up the thread again. “Fuck off,” I said. “Feel free to take that personally.”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. I glanced up. He was still watching me.

“You’re still not yourself,” he eventually said. “And you’re speaking like your scruffy friend.”

He meant Shane. That made me laugh, but it sounded hollow, and a little bit desperate. “Well, Shane’s probably right most of the time. You are an ass.”

“And even if you think it, you rarely say it. Which rather proves my point.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you? Because you’ve not asked a thing about your girlfriend, whom you left on her own in the middle of a vampire district, at night.”

That sent an electric jolt of shame through me. I hadn’t even thought about it. I hadn’t spared a single thought for Eve all the time I’d been in here; I’d been too wrapped up in my own misery, my own shame. “Is she okay?” I asked. I felt sick, too sick to even try to keep on playing. The guitar felt heavy in my hands, and inert.

“She’s becoming annoying with her repeated demands to see you, but yes, otherwise, she’s as well as could be expected. I made sure she got home safely.” Oliver paused for a few seconds, then leaned forward with his elbows braced on his knees, pale hands dangling. “When I was . . . transformed, I thought in the beginning that I could stay with those mortals I loved. It isn’t smart. You should understand this by now. We stay apart for a reason.”

“You stay apart so you don’t feel guilty for doing what it is you do,” I shot back. “I’m not like you. I’ll never be like you. Best of all, I don’t have to be.”

His eyebrows rose, then settled back to a flat line. “Have it your way,” he said. “The canned blood had an effect on you, yes, but not as much as you might believe. That was mostly you, boy. And you need to find a way to control that, because one day, you may find yourself covered in blood that doesn’t come from a punctured can.”

The way he said it chilled me, because it wasn’t angry, it wasn’t contemptuous, it was . . . sad. And all too knowing.

I let it drop into the silence before I said, “Eve wants to see me.”

“Perpetually, apparently.”

“I think I’m ready.” Was I? I didn’t know, but I ached to see her, tell her how sorry I was.

Oliver shrugged. “It’s someone’s funeral, if not yours.” He moved fast, out the door before I could make any comeback, not that I could think of a good one anyway, and I clutched the guitar for comfort. My fingers went back to picking out melodies and harmonies, but I wasn’t thinking about it anymore, and it didn’t feel comforting.

I was afraid I wasn’t ready, and the fear was a steady, hot spike that made my throat dry and, horribly, made my fangs ache where they lay flat. I didn’t know if I was ready to see her. I didn’t know if Oliver would care to stop me, if I went off on her.

But when Eve stepped through the door, the fear slipped away, leaving relief in its wake. She was okay, and back to her fully Goth self, and what I felt wasn’t hunger, other than the hunger anybody felt in the presence of someone they loved.

The shine in her eyes and her brilliant smile were the only things that mattered.

I had just enough time to put the guitar aside and catch her as she rushed at me, and then she kissed me, sweet and hot, and I sank into that, and her, and the reminder that there was something else for me other than hunting and hunger and lonely, angry music in the night.

“Don’t you do that again,” she whispered, her black-painted lips close to my ear. “Please, don’t. You scared the hell out of all of us. I didn’t know what to do.”

I relaxed into her embrace, and breathed in the rich perfume of her hair, her skin, the subtle tingle of blood beneath. I didn’t like to think about that last part, but maybe Oliver was right. Maybe I needed to stop denying it, or I’d end up in an even worse place, in the end.

“I didn’t know what to do, either,” I whispered back. “I’m sorry. I could have—”

“Stop.” She pulled back, staring at me fiercely. “Just stop it. You could have hurt me, but you didn’t. You didn’t hurt anybody, except that stupid machine. So relax. That’s not you, Mike. That’s some B-m

ovie monster.”

But I was the B-movie monster too. That was what Oliver meant, in the end; I was exactly that, and I had to remember it. It was the only way any of this would work.

I forced a smile. “I thought you liked B-movie monsters,” I said. My girlfriend punched me in the arm.

“Like, not love,” she said. “You, I love.”