by Cate Corvin
And now I knew something about Aislin Liddell: very few mortals rode a Faerie horse without being spirited away. She had some measure of control over them… which meant she was much closer to Faerie herself than any pure-blood slayer had a right to be.
A muscle twitched in her jaw. “I wish she hadn’t died here, and I wish we had a body to bring home, but no, I don’t blame you. It was the Fae’s doing. You didn’t make her sit on the kelpie. Besides, I figured you two would… settle your differences sooner or later.”
The guilt was fading. Horribly enough, I found I wasn’t sorry at all. I was relieved, which was somehow even worse.
Aislin gazed at me and held out a hand. “Deal?”
I took it and we shook decisively. “Deal.”
“Nothing like mutually-assured destruction to form the basis of a lasting friendship.” Aislin jerked her head, and I followed her into the marsh, still pondering my total lack of remorse.
“Why were you riding the kelpie, anyways?”
“The mares told me what happened,” Aislin said shortly. “I needed to get there quicker, but I was too late, anyway.”
She’d sent the rest of Lux back to the car while Beatrice had been dying alone beneath the waves. None of Lux besides me had seen Aislin riding the kelpie stallion like a Faerie queen.
And I wouldn’t tell them.
We sat across from each other on the way back to Libra, and despite the somber atmosphere and silence in the wake of Beatrice’s death, inside me roared a scream of victory.
One down. Four to go.
The fallout of Beatrice Glover’s death was surprisingly quiet. Headmaster Burns shook his head as Aislin recounted the events of the night, carefully dancing her way around certain truths: yes, we’d been left alone, we were grown-ass women, almost full slayers; of course she expected us to put aside our differences and get along for one practical mission.
She didn’t mention that she’d ridden a kelpie stallion. I didn’t mention that I’d known the mare was stalking Beatrice.
Maybe it was because the last of my short-lived guilt had fled, but I had no problems looking my instructors in the eye. It was interesting how Professor Knightley looked everywhere but at Aislin, and that Ermengol didn’t seem surprised in the slightest that Beatrice had died.
“Fool girl was more concerned with playing her silly games than watching her back,” she said, but her gruff voice was a touch gentler than usual.
Aislin and I walked out the Headmaster’s office together, cloaking each other’s secrets.
“Where do you go at night, Tori?” she asked out of the blue.
Despite my misgivings, there were no rules against what I did. Besides, I was pretty sure Apolline practically lived in Bathory herself. “To Club Bathory. I have a friend there.” Better for her to believe I was visiting someone than getting fucked up on dust. It was technically true, anyways.
Aislin nodded sagely. I was relieved that she didn’t press for who that friend might be. “You know we have study groups every other night, right?”
I held back a snort. Of course. Lux had essentially made a basecamp out of the library. “Yeah. I’m more of the study-alone type, though.” And the rest of your team still doesn’t like me.
“The offer stands.” She shrugged, the gesture not as casual as she wanted it to look, and I realized she was actually nervous about extending the hand of friendship to me.
“Thanks,” I said, touched that she was going out of her way to offer me a place in their group, even though she knew I’d stood by while Beatrice rode to her death. “Maybe I’ll join sometime.”
She paused outside her bedroom door, and once again the quality of her sharp bone structure struck me. It was easy enough to brush off Aislin as just being exceptionally pretty… unless you’d seen her riding a Faerie horse by moonlight. That’s when it all became clear.
Someone in her ancestry had a taste for Fae dick. Bom-chicka-wah-wah.
“I’m sorry I was a bitch before, Holmwood. You’re all right in my book. Watch yourself in Bathory, though- I don’t want anyone on my team being responsible for trouble.”
“You’re okay yourself, Liddell.” There it was again, that obnoxious fuzzy glow in my chest. Hadn’t I learned my lesson about friendship in Libra already?
Back in my room, I stretched out across my bed, crossed my arms behind my head, and stared up at the ceiling.
James’s voice was clear in my mind. She got what she needed, Tori. She got what she deserved.
“She got eaten by a bunch of horses,” I muttered. “Pretty shitty way to go.”
But you’re not sorry.
No. I wasn’t sorry, not in the slightest. The guilt was long gone, and every punch, kick, bruise, and cut Beatrice had laid into my flesh, every speck of James’s shredded photograph, the memory of snakes crawling over my skin, was now repaid in full.
The blackness washed over me, but now it felt less like a clinging, drowning ocean and more like a warm, comforting embrace.
When it came time to punish Will and Sura, though, I would be sure their downfall was because of me, and not a pretty little sea-pony.
9
Will
Not even a pixie shaking her ass next to my ear could pull me out of my gloom.
The little Faerie finally gave up with a minuscule harrumph and darted to Apolline’s drink. My ex-girlfriend held up her glass, already bleary-eyed with alcohol and dust, and the pixie wriggled over the drink, glaring at me the entire time.
There was no place I wanted to be less than this damn club, but I couldn’t let my team go out and act like fools without someone to keep their asses in line.
“Lay off the dust,” I grated out.
Apolline cast me a disdainful look.
“Being the prefect doesn’t make you my keeper, Will.” She took a long slurp of the glistening liquid. I wondered if her guts were gold-plated with pixie dust by now.
My own guts twisted at that word. Keeper. I’d snapped at Father that I wasn’t Tori’s keeper. She wasn’t my responsibility. Not my sister, not my problem.
I should’ve known that my irresponsible bullshit plan wasn’t enough to take her down. Wasn’t that why I’d grown to like her? Shit just bounced off Tori like she was made of rubber.
Now she strolled through Libra alongside Aislin Liddell, looking like they were growing closer by the day. I’d walked into the library the other day, and both girls had been in there, laughing uproariously over something. As soon as they saw me, they’d fallen eerily silent, the smiles sliding off their faces, both watching me with cold gazes.
At least she had one person she could trust. Aislin was good people. Unlike me.
I’d spent two weeks wracking my brains for a way to apologize to her and come up empty-handed. I couldn’t unrecord the video. I couldn’t unsend it. I couldn’t untip the vial.
I hated how much Sura blamed himself. It was all me. I’d asked for the saliva; I’d designed the ultimate hurt against her.
Now, she was in an even worse position and she didn’t even know it. It did hurt when she called my father Dad. It was a reminder of everything I’d lost, the stranger he’d become to me.
But I wasn’t wrong, and I knew it. He’d had designs on Tori since the first day he met her, and if she didn’t watch her shit, she’d end up surpassing him.
And that was the ultimate no-no.
My mother had been better than him and look what that had gotten her. Skinned on a fucking altar because ‘she should’ve been able to handle one demon’.
Unless Tori wanted to get caught up with his bullshit, she needed to watch her back. My impossible task was getting her to trust me enough to drive this point home.
I didn’t care if she hated me for the rest of her life, as long as she didn’t play right into Father’s hands in her pursuit of revenge.
“Earth to Will.” Apolline raised a sparkling hand, waving it in front of my face. “Hello? Anyone home?”
“My god, you’r
e annoying. What do you want?”
She slumped back in her seat, pouting. “You’ve been so cranky since you put the Brotherfucker in her place. Shouldn’t you be happy, asshole?”
No. Not one bit. It was more like the one bit of sunshine in my life had gone out and left me in the dark again, but I was the asshole who’d created the clouds.
“Why don’t you-” I bit back my words, swallowing the cruel things I wanted to say, such as fuck off to the goddamn pixies. I was responsible for two people’s shitty year so far: Selena’s death, and Tori’s humiliation. No matter how much Apolline pissed me off, adding a third was a terrible idea. “Put the dust down, Moreau. It’s going to make you sick if you keep drinking it like this.”
She raised her eyebrows, stirring her drink with a plastic stick. “That’s ass-backwards. It makes you better. It fixes-” She waved her plastic stick in the air- “Everything that’s wrong in this world.”
It was impossible to talk to her when she was like this. “Whatever. Piss glitter if you want.” She slouched sideways, her shirt pulling to the side, and the edge of a dark bruise on her shoulder caught my eye before she pulled the fabric back into place. “What’s that? Moreau, have you been bleeding for them?”
I glared at her even as Apolline mutinously jutted out her chin. “What do you care, Will?” She was so high on dust she couldn’t even sit up straight. “It’s not your place to whine about what I do. You’re the one who screwed your own stepsister on video. What’s giving a little blood next to that?”
I grit my teeth together. “It matters because vampires have notions of ownership, you absolute moron. You shouldn’t get involved with that.”
“Pfft.” She blew her lips out. “And if you end up belonging to a king? Can’t rise much higher than that.”
Incredulity lanced through me, but whatever I was about to say to her got lost somewhere between my mouth and my brain.
The strobing crimson and violet lights reflected off dark hair, lighting up Tori’s delicate features as she stepped into the pixie club. My mouth went dry when she strode forward, revealing long legs under a very short emerald-green dress, the tip of a dagger gleaming on her thigh from its strap.
She didn’t even look at me, sweeping by without so much as a glance around the club, heading up to the next floor. I didn’t even realize I’d stood up until I bumped into the railing of the stairs.
Tori paused, most of her hidden in the darkness of the stairwell. I’d said her name. Everything seemed to be happening from far away, like I was the one who’d just downed an entire pixie’s worth of dust.
“Yes?” She looked down at me, her expression unreadable. All I knew was that it wasn’t clear hate for once. It wasn’t quite like basking in warm light, but it was better than the abyss of total despair.
My mouth was open, but nothing came out.
Tori rolled her eyes and turned, taking another step up.
“Wait. Tori, please. Stay here with me.” She was here for Càel. Without warning, jealousy spiked through me, washing out all my other emotions. I followed her up the stairs, out of the pulse of the pixie club’s music, stopping only when her muscles stiffened. “You don’t have to get involved with them. Just because he helped you doesn’t mean you need to indebt yourself to him.”
Her inscrutable honey eyes ran over me. In the darkness of the stairwell it was impossible to make out the finer aspects of her expression. “I’m not indebting myself to anyone, Godalming. I’m here because I like him, and I want to see him. It has fuck-all to do with you.”
Again, the envy left me almost breathless, and I didn’t even have a right to that envy. “He’s not what you think he is. No vampire is a Good Samaritan. He just wants what he can suck out of you.”
Her lips thinned. “Wow, when did you become the morality police? He hasn’t laid fangs on me once, Will. Not one single time. He’s a vampire, but he has more respect for me and my bodily autonomy than either of you did.”
“How many times can I apologize, Tori?” I grabbed her hands, breathless at the sensation of her nails digging into my fingers. “Do you want me to get down on my knees and do it? Want me to crawl for you in front of Libra? I’d do it. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to make you see how sorry I am for what I did, even if it’s unforgivable.”
Her head cocked to the side as she examined me. My heart was thumping unsteadily, the feeling of her hands in mine like finding a life preserver floating in a devouring sea of remorse.
This wasn’t Tori. This dark-hearted woman was nothing like the Tori I’d known and fucked over.
“Oh, Will.” Her fingers tightened, looping through mine, and I held back a sigh of relief. “How about you go jump off the roof? It’d be more entertaining than watching you crawl around on the floor.”
Tori pulled her hands out mine. My fingers felt icy cold after feeling the warmth of her skin again.
“There’s nothing you can do,” she said distantly, drawing away from me. “You said it yourself: unforgivable. All I want is the satisfaction of making you bleed.”
“I would do anything,” I snarled, my hands reaching for her shoulders, desperate to keep her from slipping away-
A breeze touched my cheek. A finger drove down into the soft, fleshy hollow just above my collarbone, and a thumb squeezed under it, pinching together. Every nerve in my body focused on that one spot, thrilling with pain.
Tori’s eyes were just as wide as mine. The woman next to me was a vampire, white fangs shining against red lips. “Are your hands on an unwilling woman?” Her voice was faintly accented, but colder than the polar sea.
I got the vague sense of strawberry blonde hair hanging in long waves, but turning my head became an impossibility as the vampire’s head tilted in towards my neck. She took a deep breath, holding it for a fraught second, and released it. The warmth of her breath on my vulnerable neck raised goosebumps on my skin.
“Rhianwen.” Tori’s voice was almost inaudible under the music, a whisper of sound. “He’s mine to hurt.”
What the fuck? Tori… and a Morrìgna?
Rhianwen squeezed a little harder, sending a lance of agony through my chest, and I exhaled my breath in a rush just so I wouldn’t betray myself with a sound of pain. The Morrígna looked at Tori, raising her eyebrows.
My stepsister nodded, her entire body just as tense as mine.
“A human as tall as Càel? Very, very interesting.” Another vampire, coming up the stairs, penning us in. I’d seen her name written on Knightley’s blackboard- Morgrainne Crowfoot. Thin ginger braids capped with gold ornaments hung to her waist, clinking when she moved.
She towered over Tori, but she was tall enough to be face to face with me. Face to scowling face. Her girlish freckles were painted over with swirls of blue woad.
I was very aware that death was standing on all sides, backing me against a wall.
Tori’s olive skin had gone pale, but she set her jaw. “Morgrainne Crowfoot, he’s mine. Both of you. I’ve got first claim to fuck him up.”
Neither vampiress acknowledged the slight quaver in her voice. Tori had about as much of an idea as I did about how this would turn out, but Morgrainne’s white teeth were showing in a smile.
Rhianwen raised a delicately arched eyebrow, and finally released me. Relief invaded the space that pain had numbed. Amazing how one tiny spot could be so damn debilitating.
“You don’t want us to skin him for you?” Morgrainne picked at her nails with a dagger, leaning against the wall alongside Tori. “I need a new winter cloak. A tan one.”
“Nobody wears cloaks anymore, Morgrainne,” Rhianwen murmured. “We have Neiman Marcus now.”
Three pairs of eyes looked at me, waiting for me to bolt.
Everything I’d wanted to say to Tori had fled my skull with the Morrígna’s appearance. She looked strangely natural between the two redheaded women, like they were meant to be a trio. Something whispered at me, a sense of foreboding I couldn’t place.
The fine hairs all over my body rose in goosebumps. It was probably just the extremely close and unwelcome proximity of two vamps.
“Do you have anything else to say to her?” Even as the shortest of the group, Rhianwen had the coldest presence. I could easily envision her painted in blood.
I also knew exactly what she was waiting for. “I apologize for laying hands on you, Tori.” My voice came out stiff, but Tori nodded, still looking totally freaked out by her new retinue.
Fuck. I couldn’t leave her to deal with the Morrígna alone. “I mean what I said. I’d do anything. I’m so fucking sorry for everything. Please just… just come with me and let me make it up to you.”
It took everything I had to hold back from reaching for her again, but Rhianwen hadn’t blinked once, or moved so much as a single muscle. It was uncanny as fuck.
“Please, Tori.” I knew she heard me, even with the words a whisper. “Please.”
“I read a new word in a magazine,” Morgrainne said. Unlike Rhianwen’s cultured accent, her voice was thick and raspy. “Testerical.”
Some of Tori’s paleness faded as the corners of her mouth twitched, and finally spread into a full-blown grin.
She and Morgrainne both burst into laughter, a snort slipping out of my stepsister.
Okay. Really fucking funny. I was willing to crawl on my knees for her and she was laughing at me with a vampire.
And yeah, I deserved it.
Even Rhianwen was unsuccessfully trying to hide a smirk. I just stopped myself from giving her a dirty look. Tori didn’t even notice when I walked away.
The pixie club burst into life around me as I descended, shame and rage heating me from the inside like a furnace. The truth of my situation was finally beginning to dawn on me, and I hated every facet of it.
There was nothing I could do. No crawling, no begging, no debasement, no pleading. Short of turning back the clock, nothing was going to earn Tori’s forgiveness.
I collapsed in a chair. Sura was up in Seventh Heaven, getting drunk off his ass, lost in his own regret. Apolline writhed on a vampire on the far side of the club. All I saw of him was dark hair as he nuzzled his way down her arm, her fingers woven through the black locks. A smear of blood was drying on her cheek.
