by E E Everly
“There’s plenty of work, when I’m not shirking my duty and stalking you.”
I blush. “Maybe you shouldn’t, then.”
Killian attempts to brush my cheek with his fingers, but neither one of us can feel anything. “Silly Sasha. How can I possibly give you up?”
My fingers move through his. I wish I could hold them to my face. “When my time is up on this plane, we will be together, I promise.”
My bedroom door cracks open. Killian and I stare with wide eyes at the half-asleep man who enters. Thandoran can’t see us as astral projections as he stumbles in with a pillow and blanket in his arms.
“What’s he doing?” Annoyance fills Killian’s voice.
I shrug. Thandoran drops his pillow onto the floor at the foot of my bed, flops down on it, and pulls the blanket over his head. I straighten as I consider the oddity of this. He’s not sleep walking.
Oh. I smack my forehead, but my palm passes right through me. “The wards. This is his second time sleeping in the flat. The first night did not go well. Natalia attacked him. He must feel unsafe.”
“Hmm.” Killian glares at Thandoran.
“Relax.”
“Just do me a favor. Don’t let your guard down, Sasha.”
“I’ve got this,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
“Time for me to leave. I love you.”
“Ditto.”
Killian blinks out of sight at the same time I’m sucked into my body. I bolt upright in bed, with a gasp. Thandoran mumbles in his sleep and rolls over, but he doesn’t acknowledge my awakening.
Great. I have a sleepover buddy.
EIGHTEEN
Thandoran and I sleep late. It’s well past ten o’clock when I roll out of bed. I eat and get ready for the day, all while Thandoran is dead to the world.
His firestorm must have taken a lot out of him, because there’s no way I’d be able to sleep on the floor for that long.
I tiptoe into my room, which is super dark with the blackout curtains, the only light coming in through the doorway from the hall window. I have my mind set for a mischievous prank, so I crouch and crawl over Thandoran’s sleeping body, being careful not to wake him. He breathes softly. His chest rises and falls, at perfect ease in his slumber. I hover inches above him as I lean forward and put my lips right near his ear.
“Thandoran,” I whisper as seductively as possible.
His mouth twitches.
I channel ghostly seductive. “Thaaan-dor-an.”
His eyes open wide, and he shoves me off so hard I fly across the room and crash into my dresser. He bolts to his feet and looms over me, with flames burning in his palms and his chest heaving, ready for a fight.
I rub the back of my head as I stare at him. His eyes are orange. “So your reflexes work.” I groan.
Thandoran’s seething, his nostrils flaring. As he raises his arms, the flames in his palms grow brighter. That’s when I get the sense that he’s not entirely aware.
“Thandoran. It’s Sasha.”
The flames pulsate with his breath. The fire in his eyes flickers. Why didn’t he have this reaction when Natalia attacked him that first night?
“Thandoran.” I push to my feet and creep toward him. I put my hand up. He’s frozen, and his eyes are fixed on my face. “That was a joke. I didn’t mean to startle you like that.” Okay, I did, but I didn’t expect this reaction. I reach for his hand. When he doesn’t move, I slip my hand along his wrist, carefully avoiding his flames.
The contact works.
Thandoran blinks and looks to where I touch him. His eyes widen as they move to his flames. Then he squeezes his palms shut, and the flames go out.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Thandoran does not share the same sentiment. He inhales sharply through his nose and yanks his wrist from me. With one menacing glare, he storms out of my bedroom.
I’m right on his heels. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.” I didn’t think that he’d assume I was a vampire attacking him.
Thandoran already has a whole mandarin shoved into his mouth. He leans against the counter, bracing himself with both hands as he somehow crushes the entire fruit between his molars. His mouth is so full he cannot speak, for which I’m grateful, because I’m about to get an earful.
He swallows and shoves another fruit between his teeth without speaking. I step back to give him space. His bliss-out does not come.
He’s on his third mandarin and still hasn’t moved. Hasn’t looked at me, hasn’t dared soften either. The muscles in his neck are bulging.
I want my ambrosia, something to ease my guilt, but there’s no way I’m sliding past him to open the freezer.
Finally he swallows the third mandarin and slams his palm onto the counter. “I could have killed you. Do you not even realize that?”
“I very much realize that now.”
“I understand that you don’t like me much, and that I’m a burden to you, but you don’t have to act like a spoiled princess all the time.”
“I’m not spoiled,” I say.
“You are. You don’t think of anyone other than yourself.”
What, are you my freaking mother? Who does he think he is to speak to me this way? “If you don’t like who I am, then you’re free to leave. No one’s forcing you to stay.”
Thandoran pries the pantry open and pulls out a box of Circle Oats. He shoves a handful into his mouth. He’s rage eating. I see it in his face, which is bright red. At least if he’s eating, he’s not yelling.
He pulls open the fridge when he’s done shoveling cereal and guzzles from my milk jug. I glare but don’t say a word. He crushes the empty milk jug against the counter.
No milk for me this morning, I see.
“We should get a few things straight,” he says. His eyes are sharp. His hair is on end. His T-shirt skims his chest, and somehow, all of it makes him look quite sexy, especially with his current temperament.
I shut my eyes and bite my bottom lip. Killian was in my room a few hours ago. How can I look at Thandoran, in his stupid rage fit, and think he’s sexy? How can I betray my feelings for Killian?
He’s been dead for so long. I miss him. I long for him. I want his arms around me.
That’s not going to happen anytime soon.
But Thandoran… How can I think—?
“Sasha. I’m not here to play games.”
I startle and grab the back of the barstool. “What are you here for, then? I want the whole darn truth. Stop being cryptic and stop telling half-truths.” My knuckles turn white.
“All right, then, princess.” He cocks his head, as if considering something, but he doesn’t hold back. “I’m here for one reason only. To find my sister. Everything else is a means to an end.”
Ouch. A slap to the face. I don’t care. I always knew he wasn’t here for me. “How do I fit into all this?”
“You are the means to my end.”
“You’re using me.”
“In a nutshell,” he says.
“When were you last on Earth?” My eyes bore into his.
“Just over twenty years ago.”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. “That’s it? Don’t I deserve more of an explanation?”
“When your mother closed the portals twenty years ago, there was a mass exodus. She asked the fae to return to Belyven. She didn’t want us being massacred by the vampires.”
The fae’s short run on Earth was just that—a failed experiment that ended in too many lives killed. We tried to learn about the humans, to coexist with them. We craved the knowledge. Fae have a natural curiosity for other species, so when we discovered portals to Earth, fae flocked here in droves. Once vampires learned what a tasty elixir we were, it was open field day on us. Mother closed the portals to save us.
But now the seed demons knew where we were, and they could teleport to Belyven and kidnap us.
And trade us to the vamps.
The discovery of the portals,
as exciting as they were, led to massive deaths for our people.
“You and your sister were here?” I ask. “How old are you? You can’t be more than twenty-five. Were you a child when you were here?”
“I was eighteen. My sister was twenty.”
“You’re thirty-eight?” He’s way older than I realized. But why should I be surprised? Storm sprites live about a thousand years. Once we reach maturity, we stop aging, until we hit a certain limit in our magical vitality, and then we age almost overnight and finally die. I thought, given his behavior, that he was closer to twenty. Sometimes I thought he was seventeen.
“Keep up, princess. We aren’t talking about my age.”
“So what happened? How was your sister taken?”
“There was an ambush at the portal. Demons and vampires working together to kidnap storm sprites. We fought. A lot of us were killed once the first sprite was cut because a frenzy started. My sister forced me through the closing portal as she held them off with her storm.”
I closed my eyes as I pictured Thandoran after his sister shoved him through the portal and it closed. “And Mother wouldn’t reopen it.”
“Even though a dozen of us with loved ones on the other side begged her to. She flat out refused, telling us that they were most likely already dead. Which was probably true.”
“Then why do you think your sister’s still alive?”
“Because of this.” Thandoran pulls a compasslike instrument from his pocket and sets it on the counter. The top is clear glass, with a yellow crystal inside. One end of the crystal comes to a point, exactly like a compass needle. Thandoran flips the lid open. Inside, the base is hollow brass, with a lock of blonde hair in it. Thandoran points to the hair. “That’s Kaelea’s.” He snaps the compass closed and stares at it.
Nothing happens.
I lean over the gadget. “What’s it do?”
“It points direction to wherever she is.”
“But it’s not doing anything.”
“It did. On a whim, several years after she was taken, I put a strand of her hair into it, and it started spinning. The crystal didn’t stop until a few days ago.”
“Does that mean…” It could mean she’s dead, but I didn’t want to say that out loud.
“It means exactly what Ciprian says. She’s in a cell that nullifies magic. The compass somehow got a read on her and can’t anymore. Magic isn’t foolproof.”
“Unless Ciprian’s lying.”
Thandoran scowls. “He’s not.”
“You would take the word of a vampire?”
“That was my whole purpose in going there. To find out if she was still alive. I don’t think he’d lie. He has nothing to gain for it.”
“You needed me to get you to Earth,” I say, “because I’m the only one my mother’s willing to open a portal for.”
“I was waiting for you. Hanging around the city. Rumor was that you would bring your son, so I just had to bide my time. I even stole hair from a brush in your room so I’d know the precise moment you teleported onto the planet.”
“How?”
“The crystal spins wildly when you’re off planet,” he says, “but the moment you stepped onto Belyven, it pointed directly at you.”
“You just happened to be so close when I arrived?’
“That was happenstance. Fate was leading me that morning. After bringing you to your mother, I convinced her that she owed me, that since you had to return to Earth, I could come with you.”
“She let you?” I shook my head in disbelief. Mother never did anything out of the generosity of her heart.
“Your mother made me swear that if she opened the portal for me to come to Earth and find my sister that I would be your protector until you broke the curse and returned to Belyven.”
“Of course. Why does that sound so familiar?” My mother struck a similar bargain with Killian. She’d restore his sister’s vampire body to human if he swore to be my protector, and that didn’t go over well. She promised Killian something she couldn’t do. “Once again, you’re a poor schmuck doing my mother’s bidding.”
“I have no problem with protecting you. I can track my sister at the same time, and when I’m done, we’ll teleport to Belyven.”
“And leave me, I see.”
“Your vampire bodyguards had you covered until I arrived,” he says. “You’ll do fine without me.”
“You’re right. I don’t need you, Thandoran.”
“And I don’t need you.”
“Then why are you sticking around?” I ask.
“Just because we don’t need each other doesn’t mean we can’t help each other.”
“I help you find Kaelea, and you help me track down my demon.”
“Exactly.” He stands upright, straight and confident. “When we’re done, we go our separate ways.”
“Fine. Done.” I punch him in the shoulder before squeezing past him to my freezer and to my mint chocolate chip frozen custard.
Thandoran leans back against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks so smug that for a moment I think I’ve made a deal with the devil.
He does have the aura, with his red hair and all.
NINETEEN
I hang up my phone and turn to Thandoran, who’s lounging across my couch. “Good news. Natalia says you only torched a hole in the ceiling above the hall. Since it’s a two-story room, with no floor above it, the rest of the mansion is fine. The fire trucks arrived in time. Except for the half a dozen vamps you burned to a crisp, the hive functions as normal.”
Thandoran sits up and looks over the back of the couch at me. I’m having a late late breakfast at the kitchen island now that Thandoran’s cooled off. “What’s the bad news?”
“You’re on their most wanted list, and it’s no capture alive order. It’s drink on sight.”
He reclines and gazes at the ceiling. “Good.”
“Good?” I drop my plate into the sink. I settled for a breakfast bar, without milk, since Thandoran drank it all.
“You heard me.”
“This means you won’t be able to go anywhere without risk of life.”
“Sasha, I don’t plan on dying anytime soon,” he says.
“Natalia also says she’ll keep her ears open for any word of Kaelea. The vampires moved her to an undisclosed location before she and Dumitru moved in. That is, moved in the first time. Kaelea hasn’t been in Deorc Mansion for a long time.” I frown. “Nat never once mentioned that the vampires had any captives. Not ever.”
“And I wonder where her loyalties lie.” Thandoran crosses his ankles and folds his arms under his head, as smug as can be.
“With me,” I snap.
Thandoran bolts upright. “Then explain how she knew nothing about prisoners.”
“Need to know basis. Not every vampire is privy to everything that goes on. A lot of them live normal lives and have jobs.”
“Night shifts, you mean, like your friend Jakob.”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s not their fault they’re cursed.”
“Is that how your boyfriend explained it?”
That he was a soul stuck in an undead body. Yes. When people die, their souls are supposed to go to heaven or hell, according to human lore, but when cursed to become a vampire, upon death, their souls stay in their bodies, and they crave blood to keep their corpses from decomposing. “He didn’t want to become a vampire.”
“Right.” Thandoran gets up and moves around the tiny room. It’s much too small for his pacing.
I huff. He’ll never believe that some vampires are good, or at least try to be good. They’re still dangerous, feral if provoked, as Killian always emphasized.
“So, from what I heard in your conversation,” he says, “it sounded as if Natalia needed a bargaining chip.”
“In order to stay with the coven, she has to be a double agent. Ciprian will tolerate her and Dumitru only if she gives them every detail of my life.”
“And you told her that was fine?”
“It makes no difference,” I say. “At least she was being upfront with me and telling me Ciprian’s demands. This way she can keep me informed with what he’s up to.”
“Don’t you think he’ll guess that she’s feeding you information as well? He knows Natalia follows you around like a dog waiting for a crumb. She’ll tell him everything, and he’ll be one step ahead of us. He’ll know when we get close to finding Kaelea and will move her.”
“Nat’s not a dog.”
“You say bark, and she’s sniffing your neck,” he says.
“How dare you?” I rise to my feet and square my shoulders. I may be small, but I’m powerful. If Thandoran thinks he can cut down my friends, he has another thing coming to him.
“Don’t get me started on Dumitru.” Thandoran stops and pulls the drapes open. “They’re always closed. How can you live like this?” They were open yesterday. Did he not notice?
I guess I became used to living in the dark. With vamps as friends, I don’t open my drapes often, but sprites are used to sun and space, so Thandoran must be suffocating.
“You don’t have to worry about Natalia,” I say. “I don’t check in with her often. She won’t have much to tell Ciprian.”
“You told her we’re going to demon central.”
This was the plan Thandoran and I worked out after we agreed to help each other. Go to demon central and see what the new head guy can tell me about the demon who cursed me. Korbinian, the old leader, wouldn’t tell me anything. Then he was killed after he swore he’d have the demon release me from my curse.
I didn’t see the harm in telling Natalia this.
“It’s fine,” I say. “The vampires don’t care one way or the other what I do with the demons. The vamps like that I’m taking the demons’ powers.”
“Everything’s all so cut and dry with you.”
I shrug. “I try not to make life difficult.”
“Whatever you say, princess.”
I smooth my hands together, rubbing off any remaining crumbs, and grab Thandoran’s hand. “Let’s do this. Time to put our hands into the fire.”
