by Zoe Ashwood
Levi
Nora winks out of existence in front of my eyes.
One moment, she stands there, her face wild with terror—terror that I caused with my fucking idiocy—and the next, she’s gone, disappearing behind some sort of illusion spell I didn’t even know she’d mastered.
“Nora!” I call, turning this way and that, but it’s like she’s vanished into thin air.
Not even the sound of her footsteps gives her away, and I run down the alley, feeling the air in front of me like a fool, hoping to bump into her by accident.
I wonder if she’s already run off or if she’s watching me stumble around, laughing inside her invisible bubble.
No, she wouldn’t laugh. Despite everything I learned about this Raphaël guy and the curse she put on him, she didn’t do any of that with malice. She just couldn’t stand my confession, so she chose to take herself out of the equation.
Fuck.
Hands on my hips, I stand in the middle of a Parisian street, trying to decide where to look for her first. Because I have to fix this, make her understand that I don’t expect anything from her. Did I hope she’d throw herself at me? Yeah. But now that I’ve dumped all that shit on her, my mind is crystal clear again. Whatever evil spirit had possessed me is gone.
Unfortunately, I have enough self-awareness to name that spirit. It’s jealousy. Pure and simple. Seeing Nora’s stricken face when she saw the vampire after two whole years was…eye-opening. It was a ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ moment, and I chose to speak.
I came on too strong and freaked her out completely. I should have just told her I wanted something simple—like a casual, non-exclusive friends-with-benefits experience.
I scrub my face with my palm, groaning. A passing mother in a hijab sends me a startled look and drags her young girls to the other side of the street.
Great. Now I’m scaring innocent women and children.
Retreating back down that side alley, I pull out my phone and try Nora’s number. The call goes straight to voicemail. She’s turned her phone off—or maybe blocked my number. It doesn’t matter: the result is the same. I wish now that I’d put a tracking spell on her, but I’ve never been as good at casting spells as undoing them. What has always made me Nora’s perfect counterpoint is now a massive liability. If nothing else, I should have asked her to put a tracking app on her phone. It’s stupid that we can’t even find each other. Dangerous.
My first impulse is to return to our shoebox of an apartment. But that’s the one place I’m sure she won’t return to.
Of course, this confession of mine only scratched the surface of all the shit I’m keeping from her. Luckily, I haven’t completely lost my mind, and I didn’t blurt out the thing that’s kept me away from my parents’ house for months now. If I’d told her about that, she wouldn’t have turned herself invisible. No, she’d probably hex me with something nasty and turn me invisible so nobody would ever find my decaying body.
With no better ideas than searching for her on foot, I retrace our steps from earlier in the day. I wander around the cobblestone streets, hoping she dropped her invisibility spell. When I pass the New Age bookstore we saw earlier, I buy a handful of taper candles—just in case. Maybe she’ll be less pissed at me if I come bearing gifts.
Without a clear idea of where to go, I stop at the gallery again to check whether Nora had gone to see her ex without me. The thought sends another spike of jealousy through me, but when I arrive at the right street, a man exits the gallery. It’s him, the vampire, heading in the opposite direction from me, his steps fast but confident. At the first non-pedestrian street corner, a cab waits for him, and before I can do anything, Raphaël Aubert jumps in and disappears in the late afternoon traffic.
Now our only lead has gone gods only know where, and without Nora, I can’t follow him.
At least she wasn’t with him.
Finally, I grit my teeth and head toward our apartment. Even if she decides to split away from me, she’ll have to come by eventually to grab her things. I hope. She might decide that meeting me is a greater evil than losing her traveling clothes and crystals.
It takes me two tries to find the right little alley—they all look the same to me. I climb the four flights of stairs and pull out my key to the apartment. Right as I fit it in the lock, something crashes, and a muffled voice cries, “Ow!”
“Nora?” I nearly fall through the door in my hurry to get to her. “What happened?”
Nora is sitting on the floor, rubbing her shin, and a glass lies broken on the other side of the coffee table. The pungent smell rising from the spill is…familiar. Casting my gaze around, I note the bottle of Glenmorangie whisky on the kitchenette counter, its orange label with the red ribbon at the bottom very distinctive. I’m pretty sure it’s my bottle, and a good two fingers of whisky is missing from it, but I clamp my teeth together and remain silent.
“Fuck,” Nora whispers. “Um.”
She springs into action, scrambling forward and picking up the shattered glass with her bare hands.
“I’ll clean this up, don’t worry.” Her hair falls forward, obscuring her face.
“Nora…” I drop my keys to the coffee table and crouch in front of her. “Stop.”
She shakes her head vehemently and keeps collecting the shards. “I’m fine. I can do this.”
Then she hisses in pain and drops all the glass back to the parquet. “Ow!”
I take her hand to see a bead of red welling up on a cut on her middle finger. “You’ve cut yourself.”
Nora snatches her hand away from me, loses her balance, and topples back to land on her ass. The moment would be funny if she wasn’t so upset. She looks at me with wide brown eyes, then bursts into tears again.
Leaving the broken glass where it is, I drop next to her on the floor and put my arms around her. Nora buries her face in my t-shirt and sobs, shuddering. There’s nothing I can do but stroke her hair and murmur nonsense that it’ll all be okay—even though I’m not sure that’s true.
Eight
Nora
I shouldn’t have drunk Levi’s whisky.
I shouldn’t have drunk whisky at all, because the most I can handle is two glasses of wine, but the bottle promised that I’d feel better.
The bottle lied.
The liquor churns in my stomach as my tears keep flowing, and I hiccup, then wipe my nose on a piece of toilet paper that Levi has brought me from the bathroom. I must look like a mess, but he’s still sitting next to me, patient as a rock and just as silent.
I swallow another hiccup, debating if I should try making myself invisible again. Chances are, the spell would fail and I’d end up giving myself horns or something. There’s a reason witches don’t drink and do magic. It’s a Bad Idea.
Levi heaves a sigh, gets to his feet, and pours a glass of water at the kitchen sink. He brings it to me and sits on the couch. I guzzle the cool water, then grimace. Parisian tap water tastes funky. Or maybe that’s just the lingering taste of expensive Scotch in my mouth. I force myself to finish the glass, then scramble up to sit next to Levi.
“Show me your hand,” he says quietly.
Hesitantly, I hold it out, afraid of touching him. My nerves are so raw, I half jump out of my skin when his fingers graze mine. Levi gives me a questioning look, but I shake my hand and keep still as he inspects the cut on my middle finger.
“This will sting,” he informs me, then mutters a spell for healing scrapes and bruises, one he’s used on me before, when we’d crawled through the forest and got tangled in brambles.
The gash pulls closed, my skin and capillaries knitting together. It’s a miracle in and of itself that some witches can influence bodies and play gods, but the fact is that the healing takes just as much energy as it would if the wound was left to its own devices. If the injury was big enough, the sudden strain on the spell-caster’s magic would kill them while the patient would live. It’s a delicate balance to know one’s ow
n strength in these matters.
Or so I’ve been told. My magic is useless for healing. I can influence other people’s emotions and mental states, but the physical bodies are beyond my reach.
Levi’s father is a strong healer, and Levi inherited some of that ability from him. With a wound this small, he merely shivers, then swipes his thumb over my finger to remove the last drop of blood.
“There,” he says.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice shaky. “That was stupid of me. Both the drinking and the running. Now I’ve wasted a whole day.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Raphaël disappeared somewhere after we left. We’ll find him tomorrow morning. Do you need anything?”
I peer up at him. I don’t want to do this now, but we really, really need to talk. Maybe it’s the alcohol coursing through my bloodstream or maybe our relationship was always meant to implode since we were obviously both hiding things.
I swallow thickly. “Sorry for vanishing. You took me by surprise.”
Levi groans and buries his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry, too. I fucked up by dumping all that on you. I shouldn’t have said anything. So if we could just go back and forget that ever happened, it’ll be great. We’ll go on like before, as friends, and everything will work out just fine.”
I crack my knuckles, then tentatively touch his arm. He lifts his head, his eyes startlingly clear and familiar.
“Is that what you want?” I ask, not looking away from him. “To go back to being friends?”
“Nora…” He turns to face me more fully, and our knees touch.
I shake my head. “I get it. You’re my best friend. And it’s been great working with you, but if we have feelings that go beyond friendship, don’t you think that hiding all that will make it worse?”
I need him to repeat what he said earlier. Or rather—to say what he didn’t say. He only told me he was making his move and that I shouldn’t undo the spell I put on Raphaël. Levi never actually said that he wanted to…be with me. Or what his feelings were toward me. Was he jealous? Worried he’d missed his chance? In love with me?
And yeah, I’m a hypocrite. A massive liar. I’ve become so skilled at hiding my feelings from him, it’s second nature now. Most of all, I’m terrified. He might freak out because commitment isn’t something he does very well. I don’t want to become a one-night stand. Or a month-long affair.
I want… Fuck, I have no idea what I want. My mind is running a hundred miles an hour, buzzing with anxiety. This mess of feelings and secrets we’ve cooked up can’t go on forever.
Levi goes completely still at my question. He’s silent for so long, I’m afraid he won’t answer at all.
Finally, he says, “Are you sure?”
I throw my hands up. “Heck no! I don’t even know what you meant back there. You were the one uncomplicated thing in my life, and now I don’t know what to do!”
A corner of Levi’s mouth turns up, and I realize I’m yelling and waving my arms around. Okay, so I’m not completely sober just yet. I try to reach for my power to see if I can piece together a spell that would clear my brain a little, but my magic remains dormant and hazy, resistant to my attempts to use it.
I’m never drinking again.
Levi slowly reaches for my hands, and I force myself to stay still. His hands are warmer than mine, and he rubs his thumbs over my knuckles.
“Maybe I didn’t express myself well,” he says, his voice tense. “But I was suddenly left with the realization that you were about to meet your former lover again. A man you loved.”
He looks up, and I’m surprised at his stark expression. He’s laying himself bare. For me.
“So I knew it was now or never,” he concludes. “I had to tell you how I felt, or you’d go back to him.”
“Okay,” I say after a moment of silence. “So?”
He frowns. “So what?”
“What does this mean?” I bite the inside of my cheek, willing myself to be still and silent, to let him get it all out.
“I—” He swallows, then clears his throat. “I want to be with you.”
Ah. My head’s still fuzzy, but my heart knows it’s about to get broken, so I desperately try to hold it together.
“Would you ever have told me about this if it wasn’t for Raphaël?” I ask. “I mean… Why did you need the trigger?”
He drops my hands and leans against the couch, palming the back of his head. “Hell, I don’t know, Nora. I didn’t want to fuck up what we had.”
His confession is so close to everything I’ve ever wanted, I’m tempted to stamp down on my misgivings and just jump headfirst into this craziness. Kiss him, like I’ve imagined so many times, and find out if he tastes as good as he smells. And forget about the fact that he only told me what he wanted, not what he feels for me.
And maybe I owe him a confession of my own. A part of me knows that this is a whisky-fueled decision, but I’ve been hiding for so long. All the secrets, the little everyday lies, the sour smiles I plastered on my face when meeting his girlfriends so they wouldn’t feel threatened by his roommate situation.
“Levi,” I begin, “I have two things to tell you.”
His eyebrows go up, but he nods, urging me to go on.
“First of all, I’m not going to get back together with Raphaël.” I mean it. Being with him felt like straying too close to a fire: hot and pleasurable, but I think I always knew I might get burned. And I did. Leaving him was, at the time, the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I have no intention of going through it again.
Levi opens his mouth to argue, but I hold up my hand.
“Please,” I say, “I need to get this out.”
He presses his lips together and motions with his hand.
I face the window because I can’t stand looking at him. All of a sudden, I feel like I’m about to be sick. But instead of chucking up the whisky I’d downed, a wave of words spills out of me.
“Did you know I had a huge crush on you when we were little?” I ask, then cringe at my words. But I started this, so I better finish it. “You built me that princess castle out of Lego bricks. You were the only kid who would play with me, and I loved you so much for that. Then we grew up. And I met Raphaël, who turned out to be a freaking vampire. When things exploded with him, I ran straight back to you. I followed you around like a lost puppy, trying to ignore how much it hurt when you dated other women. Then my mom died. And you were there for me. Every damn day.”
My voice breaks, and I swallow thickly. He’d been the one to bring me dumpling soup from the Chinese restaurant down the street, to coax me out of my room for a walk along the harbor after I’d been cooped up for days, unable to cope with my grief and guilt.
I drag in a shaking breath, still facing away from him, and add, “And the weirdest thing happened! We became friends. Turns out, I didn’t even know you before. And now that I do, it’s even harder.”
I clench my fists so hard, my fingernails press painfully into my palms. “So I can’t do this, Levi. You said you wanted to be with me—but why?”
At last, I force myself to look him in the eyes. Levi’s expression is stricken, his handsome face pale.
“Nora, I had no idea,” he rasps.
A laugh escapes me, a mere huff of air that turns into a sob halfway through. “How could you have? I didn’t want you to know. I thought that eventually, I’d fall in love with someone else, like I did with Raphaël, and you’d find a woman who captured your attention for long enough that you married her.”
He frowns, and I put my hand up. “I’m so sorry, that was terrible of me,” I say.
Levi stares at me with intensity he usually only reserves for breaking curses. He’d never once looked at another woman that way. My stupid, battered heart flips, and in the thick silence, my hands tremble in my lap. I wish Levi would just lean closer and kiss me already. I wish I could grab fistfuls of his t-shirt and haul him to me, feel
his strong body above mine as we tumbled onto the couch cushions.
But I’m still drunk. And this doesn’t sound like a decision I should make while intoxicated, not when it has the potential to change both our lives forever.
“We could…” he starts, then cuts himself off. His throat works as he swallows.
I wait. I put myself on the line—anything more I say now will make me sound desperate.
“We could still be friends,” he says finally, “but with…”
He makes an impatient gesture in the air, a twitch of his fingers.
My heart sinks. “With benefits?” I ask and surprise myself when my voice comes out calm and level.
He grimaces, then gives me a reluctant nod. “Yeah.”
Oh.
I expected too much. From his words earlier, I thought— No, he never said he wanted to start a real relationship with me. Just that I shouldn’t return to Raphaël and that he was ‘making his move.’ I’ve always known him. And he isn’t the guy who will fulfill all my romantic fantasies.
So I have the choice of living a half-life with Levi, always hiding the truth of how much I feel for him, or—
“No,” I say.
His eyebrows fly up. “No?”
I press my lips together to keep useless words from spilling out.
Levi stares at me a moment longer, then blows out a long breath and stands. “I’ll just…” He makes a vague motion with his hand, then disappears into his bedroom, returning seconds later with a broom and a dustpan. He makes quick work of the glass I broke, then stops on the other side of the coffee table.
I force myself to look up at him. “What happens now?” I ask, my voice weak.
His smile is fleeting and sad. “Now it’s my turn to get real familiar with this thing right here.” He grabs the whisky bottle and lifts it in a mock salute.
“Wait,” I say, wobbling to my feet. “Where are you going?”
He points his thumb toward the door. “Out. I won’t go far. Call me if you need me.”
With that, he leaves, and all that remains is the faint scent of the spilled liquor and a queasy sensation in my stomach.
