* * *
When I wake up, it’s not from the sounds of pounding on the door. Brice as a berserker is loud, and I’ve slept through all of it. It’s from his voice calling my name, asking me to let him out.
I open my eyes. It’s starting to get light outside. I stand up, unlocking the closet door. “Sorry,” I say as I open the door. “I fell asleep.”
Brice’s eyes widen when he sees me. He reaches out to touch my neck.
I look down. There’s blood everywhere. It’s soaked into my shirt. Most of it’s dry by now, but it looks horrible.
“Olivia—” Brice breaks off. His voice trembles.
I take a step away from him. “I’ll take you home.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll walk.” He starts away from me. He stops. Turns. “I’m sorry.”
“You have to be careful. You have to find a way to be locked up before midnight. If you’d been at that party...”
He nods. “I didn’t think about it.”
“Obviously not.”
“I’m sorry. I never want to hurt you.” His expression is so different from the one he wore when he was taken over by the change. It’s so hard to wrap my head around the fact that Brice’s body encompasses both of these entities—the maddened killer and the sweet guy.
“It wasn’t you,” I say. “Not really.”
His face twitches. “So then who was it?”
There’s nothing to say to that.
“What I said before in the car—”
“You were drunk. Don’t worry about it.”
He takes a deep breath. “Maybe it would be better if I stayed away from you.”
I’ve thought this before, but hearing it come out of his mouth almost stings me. I don’t react.
“I’ll still make you the charms. I like doing that. I never get to use magic otherwise. It’s fun. But...all things considered, maybe...”
I nod. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah.” He turns and walks away.
Chapter Nine
When I get home, Nonna is already awake. She takes one look at the bite on my neck and ushers me into the bathroom so that she can clean it and bandage it. While doing so, she keeps up a steady stream of chatter, explaining that she warned me about “that boy,” and that berserker bites often get infected because the human mouth is really dirty, and on and on.
I don’t interrupt her. I feel like I’ve learned my lesson. When she stops, all I say is, “If I hadn’t gone to get him, he would have hurt more people.”
She nods then, as if she accepts this. She finishes bandaging me quietly.
“It happened because the spell I was using on him wasn’t working,” I say. “Why would that happen?”
She furrows her brow. “That is strange, Olivia.” We leave the bathroom and start back for the living room. “I’ve heard from some of the benedette women I see in church that there’s been similar happening recently in the berserker wards. One man broke out of his restraints and attacked one of the benedette while she was right in the middle of a spell. It never used to happen before.”
“The berserkers are changing?”
She shrugs, picking up her knitting. “No one knows.”
“Could it be from the charms I gave you?” I ask. I haven’t mentioned it since I gave the charms to Nonna, and she hasn’t told me anything either.
She looks at me as she sits down. “I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”
Could Brice’s berserker virus be different than others? Could it have come from one of the Calabrese charms? I feel guilty, suddenly, in a way I never have before. If that’s true, then I am responsible for Brice’s monstrousness. I’m the reason he’s like this. In effect, I’ve almost bitten my own neck.
“Thanks Nonna,” I say.
I’m still tired, so I go back to sleep for a few more hours. As I lie in bed, I try not to think about the things Brice said to me before he changed. I try not to memorize the way his voice sounded when he said he loved me. I try not to make that moment a moment I can treasure and think of and return to over and over. Brice loves me.
When he’s not trying to bite my throat out, that is.
And maybe only when he’s drunk.
And besides, he said he would stay away from me. That’s the right thing to do. I know it. He knows it. And my throbbing neck knows it too.
The Toil and Trouble Trilogy, Book One Page 21
