by Zoe Ashwood
She lifts one shoulder in a dainty shrug. “I guess it’s because vampires don’t look different? I never would have figured it out if I hadn’t seen him feed.”
I grip her hand tighter. “Tell me that’s not who we’re going to find in Paris.”
Nora grimaces. “Well… I don’t want to lie to you.”
“Nora!” I gape at her, horrified. “A vampire? Really? How is that our plan to win this race? He could literally eat us.”
Witches created vampires thousands of years ago in an unwise attempt at immortality. Individuals who chose to turn managed to stay alive indefinitely, if you could call it that, but they lost their magic—and their humanity—in the process. Then, in the sixteenth century, covens all across the globe agreed that given the Inquisition and the witch trials endangering the lives of so many witches, they couldn’t have vampires adding to the mix with their peculiar dietary needs.
So they went on a rampage and killed them all, exterminating nests with centuries-old individuals. It’s a dark chapter in magical history, but when we learned about it as kids, our teachers always told us it had been a necessary step. The knowledge of how to create vampires had been lost—or locked away so thoroughly, no one has access to it anymore.
Yet here was Nora, telling me her ex-boyfriend is a vampire.
Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any weirder.
“Okay,” I say. “Explain to me how this is a good idea. And how you managed to get away from him once he realized you knew what he was.”
Because that’s the issue, right? If the vampire knew Nora had seen him, why would he let her live?
She cracks her knuckles. “Well, I cursed him.”
A startled laugh escapes my lips. “Of course you did.”
She offers me a quick smile, but it disappears just as fast. “I ran away from him as fast as I could, and he didn’t follow at first. But he found me at my old apartment.”
“How?” I lean forward, gaze fixed on her.
Nora flushes crimson, splotches of color appearing in her otherwise pale face. “He, um, spent some nights there.”
“Oh.” I sit back, dropping her hand in the process. “Oh, wow.”
She thunks her head on the table, her long hair obscuring her face. “Kill me now.”
So many questions pop up in my head, most of them inappropriate. For example, what was the sex like? Do vampires even get a hard-on? But I don’t voice any of them, firstly because I hate the thought of Nora having sex with some ancient creature, and secondly because I’m not about to shame her for any of it.
“Hey.” I poke her shoulder gently. “It doesn’t matter now. Just explain to me how you’re still alive. And why we need his help.”
Nora blows out a long breath. “He tried to glamor me into forgetting, I think. He did this weird thing with his eyes and told me I hadn’t seen anything abnormal. Then I smacked him in the face, and he realized his powers weren’t working on me.”
My eyebrows go up at this. “Because you’re a witch?”
She shrugs. “Or because I was wearing a protective charm, as usual? I have no idea. But he wasn’t happy about that. He told me…” Her words falter, and she swallows.
My heart thumps a painful beat, but I wait silently for the rest of her confession.
“He told me he loved me,” she whispers finally. “And that I couldn’t tell anyone about him.”
“Damn. Does he know you’re a witch?” I ask, my mind reeling over the fact that an immortal being had fallen in love with my best friend.
“I don’t know. He might have figured it out. Anyway, I left my apartment that night—I didn’t want to be there in case he returned. But I didn’t want to go home either.” She looks up, her eyes pleading, and her lower lip trembles. “My mom was sick, and I didn’t want to lead him there. Lili and Elliot were barely out of high school, and Dad had so much work to do, taking care of Mom and the shop all by himself.”
For a moment, I don’t understand what she’s saying. Then it clicks into place.
“Ah. So you came to me instead. In case he did follow you.”
A crushing weight lands on my chest as all our interactions are cast in a new light. A rosy lens that had colored the past two years lifts, and I’m left with the stark fact that she considered me less important than her family.
It’s a nasty thought to pop up in my head. Maybe she’d just been searching for protection. Had she considered me her safe haven, or was I expendable?
Nora takes my hand, and I’m too numb to shake off her grip.
“Levi, I wasn’t thinking straight,” she whispers, her voice urgent and low. “You were the only witch I knew who wouldn’t straight-up try to kill Raphaël, and I needed time to prepare the spell I was going to use.”
Facing away from her, I laugh, and it comes out as a harsh bark. “What gave you the impression that I wouldn’t have tried to kill him?”
“You’re different,” she insists. “You don’t judge people by what they are. You made friends with me when we were little, even though your dad never liked it.”
I snap my gaze back to her face. “You knew?”
She squeezes my fingers tighter. “Of course I knew. We were never good enough, and if Mom hadn’t been so powerful, we wouldn’t have been accepted in the coven at all.”
I want to deny it. I want to defend my father and say he’s not that big of a jerk, but he is, so I clamp my lips together and don’t respond. That little Nora Moss became my friend was a constant source of contention between Dad and me, and he’d never been happier than when she picked a different college to attend, so we didn’t meet as often.
It’s safe to say Dad and I haven’t been on best terms since she became my roommate and colleague.
“What does that have to do with your vampire?” I ask finally.
“He’s not mine,” she answers, then flushes as though it was a knee-jerk reaction.
I lift one eyebrow in question, and she sighs.
“Fine. My vampire showed up at your apartment while you were out for a run. But I was ready by then. I’d set up about a hundred protection spells on your place, and when he stepped through the door, I caught him in a magical circle.”
The amount of magic that must have taken is staggering. To catch a vampire in the past, whole covens had gone on a hunt in case the immortal creatures overpowered one or more of the witches. Nora had put together a defense all on her own while she was distraught.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demand. “I would have helped you.”
“And put you in even more danger?” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t your problem, and I’d already realized that I shouldn’t have led him to you.”
“Nora…”
Her grip on my hand grows almost painful, and I realize it’s taking all of her will to get the story out.
“I cursed him,” she continues, her voice raw. “I cursed him so he forgot about me. I couldn’t take away his emotions, but I locked away all the memories about us, about the time we spent together. Then I put a repelling spell on him so we wouldn’t even be able to meet by accident. Every time he gets within thirty feet of me, something prompts him to turn the other way. I tried to think of another spell that wasn’t so horrible, but that was the only one that would keep him from ever coming back.”
By the time she finishes her story, her face is scrunched up tight. She presses a hand over her mouth and looks up, blinking fast. Still, her eyes well with tears.
What Nora had done… Even though I don’t want to imagine that other man as a being with feelings, I can’t help but sympathize. The curse she’d put on him was cruel. Effective but terrible. The vampire would have been left with all the emotions that their break-up must have sparked, yet he wouldn’t have known what had caused them.
I don’t know what Nora sees in my face, but her expression crumples, and she bursts into tears, silent, racking sobs that shake her shoulders and leave her pale face splotchy with col
or.
Ah, fuck.
I scoot my chair closer to hers and put an arm around her. “Hey now. Don’t cry.”
With a hiccupping sob, she buries her face in my shirt and clings on. Her tears shouldn’t be shocking, but they are. Nora’s not a crier. Not once during those first weeks at my apartment did she break down and cry, even though I’d suspected she’d gone through a difficult situation of some sort. And at her mother’s funeral, I remember her standing solemn and silent in the graveyard, dressed all in black, but she hadn’t shed a single tear.
That she’s sobbing now breaks my heart.
“You really loved him, didn’t you?” I murmur, leaning my cheek on the top of her head.
Nora freezes in my arms, then sniffles and pulls away. She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of my jacket and uses the napkin from beneath her teacup to blow her nose.
“Yeah,” she says simply, not looking at me. “I thought he might be the one. But I never got to find out.”
The words punch a hole through my chest, and I unconsciously lift my hand to rub my sternum. Over the past two years, Nora and I have become…friends, yes, but something more than that. I’ve never had someone so close to me, and the mere thought of losing that connection is too much to bear.
“Nora…” I clench my fists under the table, forcing myself to keep calm. “Why do we need this guy? Wouldn’t it be better if we stayed away from him? If you don’t want to work with him, we’ll figure out something else.”
There must be some other way to beat those ancient Egyptian curses, even though I can’t see it at the moment. But we’re smart. We’ll work through it.
She hangs her head for a moment, then looks up with a new, determined light shining in her eyes. “He’s nothing to me now, so I won’t have any issue dealing with him. When we met, he was working on a thesis on Egyptian art at my college. He told me his mother was Egyptian and that he’d spent a lot of time there over the years.” She pauses, as though struck with a thought. “Now that I know what he is, I suspect it was decades, rather than years.”
Shit, she’s right. Only gods know how many centuries he’s been alive. Maybe he’s one of the original vampires from before the great purge. Or maybe some of these monsters escaped persecution and kept making new vampires in secret. A shiver rolls over my back at the thought.
“And you’re sure he didn’t lie?” I press. “Is there a chance he…glamored you somehow?”
Images flash in my mind of how miserable Nora had been when she’d come to live with me.
Her expression turns grim. “I’m not sure. But it’s the best lead I have. Do you have a better idea?”
At first, I take Nora’s words as a challenge, and my hackles rise, but then I realize she’s asking for real. She’s including me in the planning. I should have insisted on this earlier. Still, what’s done is done, and if we can get a reliable guide to help us in Egypt, it would be downright dumb to refuse.
“No,” I grumble.
“Then we’re doing this,” Nora decides. “If it turns out he lied, I’ll just hex him again.”
This doesn’t comfort me like it should. For all that Nora claims she’s over this guy, I know her too well to believe her right now. Again, I glance down at my branded palm and wonder whether we’ve bitten off more than we can chew.
“Okay,” I say finally. “So we have twenty-eight days to find all three locations. We collect tokens from wherever they’re hidden, at which point we’ll be in mortal danger from funky magic. And we have to complete the race before everyone else to win the prize. And from our list of locations, we’re going to Egypt first because it’s the most difficult and the most likely to kill us. Did I miss anything?”
“No, that’s pretty much it.” Nora downs the rest of her tea and grimaces. “Ugh, cold.”
Then she picks up her clutch, announces she’s going to the bathroom, and leaves me mulling over the revelations of the past thirty minutes.
I could leave. Right now, I could take my backpack and buy a ticket to Boston. Return home to lick my wounds and put my life back together without Nora in it. Because I have no doubt that she would continue on this crazy mission on her own, even if I wasn’t with her. Nobody would blame me for not wanting to plunge headfirst into danger of the kind we’ll encounter in Egypt. No sane person would willingly head there, and that’s not even counting the challenges we’ll face in Iceland and Greece.
But as seconds tick by, I remain in my uncomfortable chair. I’m an idiot, clearly. A sucker and a hopeless fool, because I’m going to stick with Nora even when our next task is reuniting her with her fucking vampire ex-boyfriend. I’m going to be right by her side and deliver her to the man she used to love, when all I want to do is…
What? Pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and carry her home so I can wrap her in cotton wool and keep her safe? She’d curse my sorry ass and never speak to me again if I even attempted that. And it seems like I’m desperate enough for her company that I’m willing to put up with this shit just to stay close to her.
If that’s not the definition of insanity, I don’t know what is.
When Nora returns from the bathroom, I’ve managed to fix a neutral expression on my face. She’s done better, though—in the space of those five minutes she has erased all traces of her earlier breakdown. What’s more, she put on a deep red lipstick, the same shade she wore earlier. To me, it had seemed seductive and mysterious. It reminds me of war paint now, and Nora looks like a fucking warrior queen.
It’s insanely hot.
I clamp down on that thought and push it out of my mind.
Even though she hasn’t ditched my tux jacket, she seems ready for battle, and I sit up straighter at the sight of her.
Then I notice what she’s carrying. She sits back at the table and places a tall orange box in front of me.
“Here,” she mutters. “Glenmorangie, right?”
I accept the box, undo the flap, and take out a bottle of ten-year-old single malt whisky. Its amber color catches the light, and my mouth waters at the thought of how spicy and smoky it will taste.
“What’s this for?” I ask, putting the bottle back in its box. “We didn’t get thrown out, arrested, or killed.”
Nora lifts one shoulder. “Life’s too short to wait for the right moment.” Her words sound like a premonition, and she seems to realize it too, because she shakes off the gloom and offers me a small smile. “Besides, we might still get killed, so I thought it was better if you enjoyed your whisky before that happens.”
I snort, but a part of me is thrilled that she remembered. I’d joked earlier tonight when I told her she owed me a bottle, but she remembered. Nora is good at details.
Her brown eyes are so familiar, but I find something new to admire every day. The moment stretches like we’re balancing on the edge of some new chapter, but neither one wants to take the first step to plunge ahead.
Nora blinks, then suddenly shoves to her feet. I follow her example instinctively, then look down at her, lifting my eyebrows.
“Come on,” she says, motioning with her hand. “We need to make a plan.”
I grin, because I can’t help it. It’s good to see her back in her element. I pick up my backpack and follow, as always.
Five
Nora
Our Paris apartment is cramped and tiny, situated at the top of a narrow, rickety staircase in a building so old, it was probably around for the French Revolution, but the view is stunning. I gaze out toward the gleaming white dome of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, then focus on the bustle of the Montmartre street below us. It’s just after two, and the popular quartier is teeming with tourists and locals alike. The little shops and art galleries are open, their wares spilling out on the cobbled sidewalks, and there’s a fresh energy to the scene, lifting my spirits after the sleepless night spent in the Edinburgh airport.
The shower turns off in the bathroom, and a minute later, Levi emerges in a cloud of steam, wearing nothing
but his boxer briefs and a t-shirt. For a second, our gazes collide, and I’m caught again in that strange sensation where my world goes tilting sideways. This is a completely normal scene for us, because this apartment, though cramped, isn’t much different in configuration from Levi’s place in Boston. Two bedrooms, a living room with a kitchenette, and a single shared bathroom.
So it should come as no shock at all that Levi struts around without his jeans on. It’s my brain that’s going haywire after everything that happened. My confession has left me hollowed out…and lighter than I’ve felt for years. Finally telling Levi everything has been both terrible and cathartic. It took all of me to spill the secrets I’ve been keeping, but now, it’s like we’ve ascended to another plane in our relationship, with a deeper understanding of each other.
At least, he understands me better. I still have no idea what’s hiding behind that inscrutable expression of his.
I wrench my gaze away and pretend I’m busy making sure I have everything I need with me. Levi slips into his bedroom and reappears a minute later in a pair of well-worn slim jeans. Aviator sunglasses perch on his head, and his t-shirt hugs his muscular chest and biceps just right. He wouldn’t look out of place in some swanky aftershave commercial, and here I am, feeling rumpled and pale in my khaki linen pants and white cotton blouse.
If he notices any weirdness around me, he mercifully doesn’t comment on it.
“So, where are we headed?” he asks, pointing at the map of Paris we got at the Charles de Gaulle airport early this morning.
I flop down on the creaking sofa and study the labyrinth of city streets on the paper. “We should probably get a better map.” This one will do in a pinch, but it might take us some trial and error to locate Raphaël’s whereabouts. This morning, it got us to the right arrondissement, and that was enough. Now we need to pinpoint the exact street and building if we don’t want to spend the next week going door to door and asking uncomfortable questions in our stilted French.
Levi sits beside me, and his leg brushes mine. I stiffen, then pretend everything is fine by throwing myself into the spell. I slowly drip a small puddle of water on the paper. Closing my eyes, I take deep, cleansing breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and sink deep into the well of magic inside me. I let it flush over me, warm and shimmering, then take only a pinch for this enchantment.
