by Zoe Ashwood
When I open my eyes, I find Raphaël looking at me with a thoughtful expression. “They wouldn’t thank you for that, you know? They want nothing to do with magic.”
I tuck my tingling palms into my pockets, guilt flushing through me. “Yeah, I guessed as much. But we’ve pulled them into this business, so I can’t leave them without protection. They won’t notice it’s there.”
If something happened to them because of us, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.
We follow the flow of foot traffic out into the open street again. Levi buys a pita bread stuffed with kofta meatballs from a stall and takes a big bite.
“So what did you do to help out the Mansours?” he asks Raphaël.
Raphaël studies him for a moment as though deciding on the best reply. Finally, he blows out a breath. “Gamal did business with a witch, not knowing who he was dealing with. When he was supposed to be paid, the witch put a curse on Aya, who was four years old at the time, and told Gamal to forfeit the payment or lose his daughter. It was the kind of sum that would have bankrupted him.”
Levi pauses mid-chew. “The witch attacked a kid?” he mumbles.
Raphaël nods gravely. “Aya nearly died. I don’t know what the curse did, exactly, but she’d started losing weight and she couldn’t keep her food down. I heard about it when I came to town. So I tracked down the witch and killed him.”
He keeps his gaze on the merchant turning meatballs over the grill, not looking over to us as though he’s afraid of our judgment. Glancing over at Levi, I can tell instantly that his fury is directed at the long-gone witch, not Raphaël.
I take a step closer to Raphaël and touch his arm. “Good,” I say simply. “Anyone who hurts children is a monster.”
He faces me, his hazel eyes wide. I just smile, taking his warm hand, then loop my other arm through Levi’s.
“Now come,” I say, “you must show us where to get the best baklava. I’m dying for something sweet.”
Fifteen
Raphaël
I want another chance with Nora before I ask her for that spell she promised me.
It’s a persistent, seductive thought that rolls through my mind as we meander through the souk. Nora gets her baklava, as well as a beautiful headscarf. I buy her a wide-brimmed straw hat to protect her fair skin from the harsh sun.
Despite everything that happened between us, I want to try again to show her what I still feel about her. She’s had two years to get over whatever she felt for me, but her spell threw me right back to where I was, falling fast for a woman I shouldn’t even think about. Nora had been a forbidden choice even when I thought she was human, but she’s a witch. I should stay far away from her.
“We should return to the hotel,” she’s saying, “and prepare for some basic spells we might need tomorrow.”
Levi slings his arm around her shoulders. “Not a bad idea.”
I envy their casual touches, their easy familiarity. I don’t think they’ve been a couple long, but they’re comfortable around each other in the way that only old friends are. Levi hasn’t done anything to make me dislike him, but I want to rip his arm off every time he touches Nora nonetheless.
“But I don’t think I’ll be able to do a full circle,” she continues. “Not without ruining the carpet in the hotel room.”
“Might be worth it,” Levi counters. “What Aya said seriously freaked me out. Gods only know what evil those nasty ancient witches cooked up.”
They both turn to me.
“Any ideas?” Nora asks. “Did you ever come across any Egyptian witches, besides that asshole you…” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Killed.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have told them about that, but it’s best they know what they’re dealing with. Their civilized idea of witchcraft might not apply here. The Old World is much harsher and more cut-throat than anything they’re used to. And I don’t want Nora to romanticize what I am.
A killer. A murderer. A monster.
Which is why I agreed to accompany them. Her spell will put an end to that, once and for all.
“I don’t know anything about magic,” I reply anyway. “I wasn’t turned by a witch.”
Nora sidles closer. “Then how?”
Her big brown eyes light with curiosity, and she studies my face as though searching for something out of the ordinary. She won’t find it. Until the bloodlust takes hold of me, I look very much human. I can’t blush, but my skin is just dark enough that I’m not deathly pale like some white-skinned vampires.
“I was bitten by a lover.”
I don’t know what it is about Nora—and Levi, too—but I’ve shared more about myself in the last twenty-four hours than I had in decades before that. Maybe it’s because I feel like I owe Nora the truth after the awful way our relationship ended. She confessed her actions to me, so maybe it’s my turn now.
“When?” Levi asked.
I smirk. “What do you think?”
He studies me with a frank, assessing gaze. His eyes are a startling shade of green, and I can see why Nora is affected by him. He’s handsome like few mortals are, and something stirs inside me at his attention.
Hmm. Given enough time and a flicker of interest from him, this could be a lot of fun indeed. Something inside me relaxes at the thought, and I grin at them both.
“I’d say you’re about thirty, I can’t say how long ago you were turned,” Levi says.
Nora bounces on the tips of her toes. “Ooh, were you alive to see the pyramids built?”
I laugh. “No! How ancient do you think I am?”
She grins in return, radiant with curiosity. “I don’t know! This is fun. Don’t tell us.”
We amble back in the direction of our hotel at an easy pace, and they keep guessing, throwing out significant historical events and narrowing down their guesses. It seems crazy, almost blasphemous, to talk about this out in the open when I’ve spent the last two centuries hiding my nature so completely. But their interest is infectious, and I find myself remembering all the momentous things I’ve witnessed in this time.
“No, it wasn’t fun to visit Victorian England. They’d barely abolished slavery, and people like me were treated like dirt. I got out of there as soon as I could,” I tell Nora, who’s clearly read one too many romance novels.
“So we can say…” Levi squints at the sky. “You were born sometime between seventeen-eighty and eighteen-twenty, yeah? That makes you around two hundred years old.”
Nora stops in her tracks, staring at me. “Did we get it right?”
For once, I’m self-conscious about my age. These two are so damn young, and I have no idea what they’ll think of me if I tell them the truth. But they’ve nearly guessed it, so there’s no use in hiding it.
“I was born in Egypt in seventeen-ninety-nine during Napoleon’s campaign here,” I tell them. “My father was a Frenchman from Auvergne, and my mother was an Egyptian peasant.”
Nora’s eyes go wide, and I’m sure she’s imagining the pillage that often accompanied conquests of foreign territories.
I can’t help but smile as the memories I’ve long buried surface again. “I know what you’re thinking. But my parents fell in love. There were many who…” I shake my head, not wanting to go down that ugly path of history. “It wasn’t like that with them. He got sunstroke by standing guard in the sun all day, and she nursed him back to health in her parents’ little house. When Napoleon retreated, she went with him. She was already pregnant with my older brother, Mathis, at the time.”
Nora takes my hand, her soft fingers gripping mine. “You have a brother?”
“Had,” I correct her. “He died in the First World War.”
Levi opens his mouth as though to ask a question, then closes it again.
But I know what he wants to know. “I turned him after I was turned, with his permission, of course. He’d already fathered four children by that time. Then he was shot in the head fighting for France at the Battle of Verdun,
and they burned the bodies before he could heal.” I only knew about that because I was fighting in the same battle but arrived too late to save him. It’s not something I like to think about, especially as I won’t ever forget the scent of those burning bodies… I shake my head. “That’s all in the past.”
“How did it happen for you?” Nora blurts. Then she flushes and drops her gaze. “You know what,” she adds, “never mind. We’re prying.”
But I need them to know—so they’ll be fully aware of what they’re getting into.
“My lover turned me in eighteen twenty-eight, when I was twenty-nine years old,” I tell them.
Levi’s eyebrows climb up. “Did she tell you she was a vampire?”
“He did not. He left me for dead at an auberge in Paris, and I woke up buried six feet under the ground the next evening.” How that had happened, I have no idea. He must have fed me some of his blood in an attempt to revive me, then didn’t stick around to see what happened. “I had to claw my way out of the grave. Luckily for me, vampires don’t need to breathe.”
Aaannnd there we go. I wanted to shock Nora and Levi, and shock them I did. They stare at me in horror. Nora holds her hand to her throat as though imagining waking up in a dark, dank coffin.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
Levi swallows a bite of his kofta. “Yeah, man, that sounds awful.”
I shrug, willing to put it all behind me. “Eh, it’s not so bad. I got to live twice as long as any human, and I’m pretty much indestructible.”
“So…” Levi’s gaze turns calculating. “A shot to the head and burning the corpse will kill a vampire?”
Nora elbows him none too gently in the ribs. “Levi!”
“A shot to the head and burning the corpse will kill mostly anything,” I reply dryly, because really, what a stupid question to ask.
But Levi perks up. “Good to know.”
“Why? Are you planning on murdering me?” I inquire.
“Nah,” he drawls. “It’s just good information.”
Nora groans and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Levi.”
He gives her a wicked grin and shrugs, completely unrepentant. I have to respect him for that—I’m making mental notes on witches, too. Nora shakes her head. Levi catches her around the waist and pulls her to his side. The look they exchange turns heated, and suddenly I’m the odd man out again, a witness to their developing relationship.
“You two go on. I’ll meet you later,” I say, taking a step back from them.
Nora cocks her head to the side. “You’re not coming?”
I could tell her that I want to give them space to finish what they started last night—the walls in the hotel may be built of brick and stone, but my ears are much too sensitive to miss something happening in the room next to mine. But I don’t want to cause any more awkwardness between them, and besides, I’m on a roll with this truth telling.
“I need to feed.”
“Feed? Like—” Nora stops herself and swallows thickly. “Now?”
I give her a long, cool glare. “We won’t meet anyone for days where we’re going. So unless you’re volunteering…”
“N-no,” she stammers, “I mean, um…”
Levi’s scowl is a thing of beauty. “Are you going to murder someone right now?” he asks, his voice quiet but lethal. “Because I can’t let you do that.”
I wonder why he thinks he could stop me.
A part of me wants to say yes, just to see what he would do. But I’m tired, so godsdamned tired of those who see me as a monster.
“No, I’m not fucking killing anyone,” I retort with a weary sigh. “There’s a—a feeding den. A blood bank. I’m going to drink enough to last me a couple of days and maybe get another bag to take with us.”
Nora’s face changes color from white to pink within a second. “You’ll drink from a human? Like…like that other time?”
She’s thinking of the night she saw me for what I am. When I had my fangs stuck in the wrist of some anonymous woman who was going through her fourth climax of the evening courtesy of a vampire’s bite. Not just mine—I’d been her last client that evening. It was a business transaction. I got my blood, warm and fresh and without the added taste of the anti-coagulant that always ruins the bagged stuff. She got a wad of cash and a screaming orgasm on top of that.
It was just my luck that Nora followed me and entered the feeding den at that exact moment.
“I’ll drink from a human donor if one is available,” I tell her honestly, shrugging. “It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t mean anything. But it’s more likely I’ll get a blood pouch.”
“Oh.” She visibly pulls herself together, stilling her fidgeting hands by her sides. “I guess that’s… I mean, I’m sorry for asking.”
“Are you really?” I ask softly.
She gives me a confused frown, but now is not the time to discuss this further. Anything I say beyond this point will only cement her opinion of me as a demon who drinks the blood of innocents while ruining them. Levi likely thinks the same.
So I give her a nod and slip away into the crowd, losing myself among the people who used to be my countrymen. I’m no longer an Egyptian—I don’t exist in any register, and my property in Alexandria is listed under a different name. But the living, thrumming city center tells me something I felt the moment we touched down in Cairo: I’m home.
And it’s good to be back.
Sixteen
Nora
Levi and I walk hand in hand down toward our hotel. It’s just after noon, and sweat trickles down my back. My linen shirt sticks to my skin, and I’m grateful for the wide-brimmed hat Raphaël bought me.
We pass a street vendor selling freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, and I inhale the tangy scent of the fruit. Cairo is full of little surprises, a city of contrasts. But my thoughts are on Raphaël and his story—I’m seeing a completely different part of him now.
Levi squeezes my hand, prompting me to look up at him.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “You’ve been quiet ever since we left Raphaël.”
People walk past us in the street, so many strangers. I pitch my voice low. “Yeah. I’m just thinking about how I didn’t know him at all. I mean…” I motion with my hand, searching for the right words. “This huge part of him is completely new to me. He never felt safe enough to share it with me, right? So the man I knew isn’t this Raphaël at all.”
He ponders that for a moment. “Well, he could say the same about you. Witchcraft is a huge part of who you are.”
“Ouch.” I grimace and stare down at the pavement. “But yeah, I get that. It’s just… How could I think I loved him if all he gave me was a construct of himself?”
He blows out a long exhale. “We all show only parts of ourselves to others. No one really knows the entirety of us.” Then he gives me a wicked grin. “I like what you’ve shown me a lot, you know.”
He’s right, of course. I don’t want to think like that, though—when I figure out who my partner for life will be, I’ll show them everything. And after all the secrecy and hiding I went through with Raphaël, I don’t know if I’ll be able to accept anything less from that person in return.
But I can’t tell Levi that now. Not when he’s a serious contender for that position. I don’t want to freak him out.
We’re mere steps from our destination, and we hurry across the street, then enter the cool oasis that is the hotel lobby. The heavy doors shut behind us.
I push my heavy thoughts to the side, step closer to Levi, and murmur, “You didn’t get to show me the best parts of yourself last night.”
He stares down at me, his face half hidden in the shadow. “We can fix that right now,” he growls.
We rush upstairs so fast, I almost trip. The door to our room barely closes behind us, and Levi is on me, kissing me deeply, with a hunger I match without a thought. His backpack lands on the floor with a dull thud while I kick off my shoes, and Levi drags his
t-shirt over his head in one smooth move.
I stop and stare, bewitched by the sight of him. Oh, I’ve seen him shirtless many times, but I’ve never allowed myself to look. I knew he had an amazing body. I’d just always forced my gaze to sort of skip over him, as though I possessed a Levi-shaped blind spot.
Now I draw back from him and sit on the edge of the bed, transfixed.
How did I miss the fact that one of his nipples is pierced? Oh my fucking gods, he’s magnificent. His nose ring should have given me a clue that it might not be the only body alteration he’s had done, but he never wears shirts tight enough for me to notice…and besides, I always tried really, really hard to look anywhere else but at him.
Levi laughs at my slack-jawed expression. “I hope this is a good sort of dumbstruck?”
I shake myself out of my stupor. “Don’t let it go to your head.” Then, unable to stop myself, I reach out and run my fingertips over his pierced nipple. “When did you…?”
“A couple of months ago,” he answers, his voice lower than before.
“It’s so hot,” I murmur and flick the barbell lightly with my fingernail.
He hisses in a breath, then leans over and takes my mouth, slipping his tongue between my lips. I open up for him, turned on just from his kisses.
Levi lifts his head, his gaze assessing. Then he grabs my waist, picks me up, and tosses me higher on the bed.
With a squeak, I land in the soft pillows, but he’s already there, stalking me like a big, sleek cat. Then he’s right above me, kissing me until I melt beneath him. His fingers find the buttons of my blouse, making quick work of them, and he groans as he uncovers my plain white bra.
