“You couldn’t have stopped me from feeling this way.”
She was right. He couldn’t even stop himself from burying his cock deeper or bringing their lovemaking to a riveting climax.
They came at the same time, at the same soul-stirring moment. He collapsed on top of her, body to body, heart to heart, and suddenly he knew that he loved her, too. But he didn’t say it. He forced it back, swallowing his revelation with the reality of what would never be.
They took a limo to the magic shop, but it wasn’t a rented vehicle. Anthony had created it, with a driver who was going to disappear, along with the car itself.
The final magic, Tessa thought. The final moment.
Once they arrived, they sat silently in the backseat. She clutched the pendant and gazed at him.
“This is goodbye,” she said.
He nodded and leaned forward to kiss her. Tears banked her eyes. How was she going to survive, never seeing him again, yet knowing that he was out there, granting wishes for other people?
“Embrace the world, Tessa,” he said, as if he’d just read her mind. “Become part of it.”
Rather than lie, she said, “I can’t.”
“Try. For me, okay?”
“I can’t,” she said again. As soon as the scars on her face returned, she would be the same damaged girl, only now she had scars on her heart, too.
She glanced over at The Chakra Circle, where her wish had begun. A “Welcome” sign shone brightly in the window. “Darrin is expecting me. I better go.” Dragging it out would make it more painful. Besides, she was afraid to take chances with the timeline. The wish needed to end before she went back to being a frog, before Anthony saw the real her.
“I better go, too.” He looked at her necklace. “Back to the jeweled cross that contains me.”
He kissed her one last time, and poof! He went into mist mode and entered the pendant. She stroked the ruby, and knowing that he was inside it, she burst into tears.
She got out of the limo, and the chauffer drove away, with her bags on the side of the road. Then the car faded, like a retreating mirage, as if it had never really been there at all.
Tessa cried harder.
Finally, she dried her tears and entered the magic shop, with her luggage in tow. Darrin greeted her at the door. They went into the backroom, and she removed the necklace. Darrin put the pendant in a velvet box and closed the lid, closing Anthony out of her life for good.
Instantly, Tessa returned to her ugly self. Darrin called a taxi for her, and she went home and shut the front door, locking it with a tight snap and another flood of tears.
Hiding from the world once again.
Darrin opened the box and summoned Anthony. Dutiful, Anthony left the pendant and appeared. He stood in the backroom, with his arms crossed and his heart heavy. He missed Tessa already.
“How did it go?” Darrin asked. “Did Tessa enjoy her wish? She was terribly sad when she went home. I was hoping that you were going to teach her to see herself in a new way.”
“I tried, but...” He struggled to explain. “It isn’t just the ending of her wish that’s making her sad. It’s me and our relationship.” He relayed the details to Darrin.
The older man gaped at him. “You had an affair with her, and she fell in love with you? How could you let something like that happen?”
“I wasn’t intending for it to go that far. I never imagined that love would be involved.”
“Do you feel the same way about her?”
“Yes.” He spoke the words out loud. “I’m in love with her.”
“Oh, Anthony. This is a mess.”
“I know. But there isn’t anything that can be done about it. A mortal and a gen-vamp can’t make a life together. She would never be comfortable around me, anyway, not looking the way she does. She doesn’t even know that I saw her true appearance. I lied to her and said that I didn’t.”
Darrin blew out a sigh. “You should have been honest with her.”
“I didn’t think she could handle the truth.” He’d done what he’d thought was right at the time. But in retrospect, he’d handled it badly.
“She was supposed to learn to enjoy life, to accept her scars as badges of honor instead of remaining ashamed of them.”
“I’m sorry I screwed up.” Anthony had wanted Tessa’s wish to make a difference. But it hadn’t. Other than the memory of what they’d shared, she probably felt as if she had nothing. He felt as if he had nothing, too. “May I go back to the pendant now?”
“Go ahead.” The older man softened his tone, then said, “I can see that you’re hurting, too.”
Anxious to morph into mist, he tried to reenter the ruby, but he couldn’t. What the hell? “Something is blocking me.”
Darrin squinted at him. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t get back in.” In fact, he felt odd. Weak. As if his legs were going to buckle beneath him. And his stomach, of all things, was growling. He ambled over to a chair and sat down. “I’m hungry.”
“You need to feed? Now?”
“Yes, but I don’t want blood.” That sounded sickening. It even produced a gag-reflex in the back of his throat. “I’m hungry for food. Like the ham and eggs I cooked for Tessa this morning.”
“Seriously?” Darrin came over, bending down to give him a close-up look. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Darrin kept staring at him. “Do you think you’re becoming mortal?”
Was that possible? Confused, Anthony ran his tongue across his teeth. “I still have fangs.”
“But you don’t want to use them.”
He touched a hand to his wrist. “I don’t have a pulse. How can I be mortal without a pulse?”
“You might get one. It might be in the works.”
Anthony checked his forehead. His skin felt warm. Gen-vamps were supposed to be cool to the touch. He tried not to panic, but his heart was flopping like a net-trapped fish. “Maybe I’m sick.”
“Gen-vamps don’t get sick.”
“Maybe they do if they fall in love.”
Darrin stepped back. “I don’t know about that. But we’re going to have to contact Mathieu and see what he says.”
“I need some food first. I feel like I going to pass out if I don’t get something in me. Like maybe my blood sugar is low.”
“Your blood sugar? Lordy.” The shopkeeper reached into a desk drawer and produced a candy bar.
Anthony tore into the wrapper, and after devouring the chocolate and peanut butter nougat, he felt immediately better. But not gen-vamp better.
Mortal-man better.
Preparing for his fate, whatever it might be, he stood up, eager to talk to Mathieu and find out what the hell was going on.
Chapter Ten
Tessa tried to concentrate on her work, but all she could think about was missing Anthony. Two days had passed since they’d said goodbye. Forty-eight hours, and already her loneliness had reached a ridiculously painful level.
Every glance in the mirror was devastating, too.
Her doorbell rang, and she stiffened in her chair. She wasn’t expecting supplies. She frowned at the door. Was it a landscaper leaving a business card? Or someone eager to discuss his or her religion?
Whoever it was, they buzzed again. Persistent. Pesky. Tessa ignored the summons.
A few more tries, and the intruder gave up. Thank goodness. A moment later, Tessa’s cell phone ringtone chimed.
Good grief. She left her chair and checked the screen, but the caller was unknown. She went ahead and answered anyway, using a hands-free device. The phone wasn’t nearly as invasive as the door. Besides, it could be work related, maybe a potential client.
“Tessa?” the caller said. A man’s achingly familiar voice.
“Anthony?” Was he out and about, granting a wish? It seemed too soon for that. “What are you doing? Where are you?”
“Outside your door.”
“That was you?”
Her heart skidded to a near-stop. “I can’t see you now.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
“Because you don’t want me to see your scars. Tessa, I’ve seen them. I’ve known all along what you look like.”
Before her legs turned to jelly, she pitched onto the sofa. “You saw me from the pendant when I was at the magic shop?”
“Yes, and while we were at the hotel. I was able to bring your scars back any time I wanted to see them. On the night of the play, I made love with you while I was viewing your true appearance.”
A wave of dizziness came over. She went into the bathroom and dampened a cloth, holding it against her skin. “How could you do that to me?”
“Because I wanted to be with the real you. I love you, Tessa. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“That’s crazy talk. You’re a hybrid, and I’m human.” An ugly, ugly human, she thought, taking a disturbing glance in the bathroom mirror.
“I’m mortal now. It started happening soon after I got back to the magic shop.” He explained how he’d become hungry for food and was locked out of his pendant. “Darrin and I contacted Mathieu to discuss it with him. Mathieu didn’t understand it, either. But today he discovered that it was the effect of a spell that was placed on the pendant long before he’d added it to his collection. Apparently a romantic little fairy had sprinkled the cross with fey dust so that if a gen-vamp was ever captured inside it, he or she would be released by true love.”
True love. She clutched her middle. “How can you love me knowing how I look?”
“I think your scars are beautiful, Tessa. They make you unique. Darrin calls them your badges of honor, and I agree.”
She refused to accept it. “People would look upon us with disdain. They’d wonder how a handsome man like you could be with someone like me.”
He argued his point. “I’m connected to more than your flesh. I’m attached to your soul, too. I feel a bond with you that I’ve never felt with anyone, and I don’t care what other people think.” He paused. “Don’t you want to be with me? Don’t you want us to be together?”
God, yes. But not like this. “You liked being a gen-vamp. You were happy the way you were.”
“And I’ll be happy being mortal, as long as I’m with you. I’ll be able to provide for us, Tessa. Darrin gave me the pendant, and I’m going to sell it. The ruby is worth millions.”
Was he trying to bribe her to be his mate? “Money isn’t the issue.”
“No, but it’s important for me to know that I can take care of my wife.”
His wife? “I can’t marry you, Anthony.” She would feel inadequate next to him. The ugly duckling who wasn’t destined to be a swan. “I love you, desperately, but I don’t have the confidence to open the door and talk to you face to face, let alone marry you.”
“Damn it, Tessa. Don’t ruin our chance at happiness.”
It was already ruined, burned by sixteen treacherous candles and fueled by a stupid hat. “We need to hang up now.”
“I’m not going to stop pursuing you. I’ll wait outside your door all night if I have to.”
“I’m sorry, Anthony, but I’m not coming out there.”
She ended the call and cried like a self-centered baby. She was giving up the most perfect man in the world.
Because she refused to accept herself.
Later that evening, Tessa peeked through the peephole of her front door and saw a shadow on her stoop.
It was Anthony. He’d kept his word. Apparently he was going to stay all night. She wanted to go to him, to sit beside him, to put her head on his shoulder. But she was afraid of the ramifications. Once she crossed the threshold, she would belong to Anthony. Going back to her lone existence would be impossible.
She paced her book-cluttered living room, then looked out the peephole again. It was a dark night, barely a moon in the sky.
Why couldn’t she have remained pretty? Why did it have to turn out this way?
Because life wasn’t a fairy tale, she told herself, even if genies, vampires, and spell-casting fairies existed.
Go, her heart said. Be with the man you love. Her soul was telling her the same thing. But her damaged face said otherwise.
Screw her stupid face. Fuck the fire. Tessa needed to live, to be whole again, and Anthony was offering to teach her.
A gen-vamp gone mortal.
She smiled. He’d become human for her. That was a wish neither of them had considered. But a fairy had considered it. Tessa thanked the anonymous little sprite.
She unlocked the door and opened it a smidge. The creaking sound caught Anthony’s attention. He stood up and turned in her direction. Her heart blasted her chest. She could barely see him, which meant he could only vaguely see her, too.
She opened the door all the way and stepped outside. He reached for her and took her in his arms. They kissed like long-lost lovers.
After an excruciating amount of time, she invited him inside. The lights in her living room were low, but not low enough. His appearance had become visible, a reminder that she could be seen, as well.
He looked the same. In a sense, she supposed that she did too, because he’d always been able to see her genuine appearance.
No magic. No pretend prettiness. No lies. What was between them now was reality. Still, she wanted to turn the disfigured side of her face away from him.
But she didn’t. This was her first step in embracing life. He kissed her again, and she led him to her bedroom, where a golden-hued nightlight shimmered.
They made love in sensual positions, caressing and kissing, putting their mouths on each other’s bodies. She could feel the changes in him, his warmer skin and the beat of his pulse. His fangs had disappeared, too, and his eyes would remain forever brown. He was, for all intents and purposes, a thirty-eight-year-old human male.
“I’m going to like being mortal,” he said.
“And someday I’m going to like being me,” she replied.
“Someday soon,” he assured her.
She hoped so.
“Are you going to marry me?”
“Absolutely.” She longed to be his bride. “But I need time to prepare, to center my emotions. I want to be strong at the ceremony, not hiding beneath a veil.”
“I’ll wait for as long you need me to.”
“How did I get so lucky to have a man like you?”
“I’m the lucky one.”
Once again, they kissed and caressed. She climaxed in bursts of erotic joy, her inner muscles clutching his cock. Her orgasm triggered his, and he came, too, bathing her with white-hot seed.
Breathing in unison, they fell back on the sheet-tousled bed, holding hands and keeping the connection.
After a bout of sweet silence, she asked, “Do Simone and Nicholas know that you’re mortal?”
“Yes, I was able to tell them. Darrin brought them out of their jewelry so we could talk. Nicholas is happy for me. Simone is, too, but mostly because I’m one less gen-vamp that Mathieu can use to fuel his kingdom.”
“Speaking of which, how is Mathieu taking this?”
“He’s outraged about the spell, but there isn’t anything he can do to reverse it. He’s especially pissed that the same spell was enacted on Nicholas’s and Simone’s jewelry.”
She couldn’t imagine Mathieu allowing Anthony’s brother, much less the beautiful and temperamental Simone, a chance to be free. “Is he going to relocate them into other jewelry?”
He can’t. Once gen-vamps are placed inside their crosses, they remain there for all eternity.”
“Unless they become mortal.”
“I think I’m the first one who’s ever become mortal.”
“I hope Nicholas and Simone find true love.”
“Nicholas is hopeful, but Simone isn’t. She doesn’t give a fig about love. But who knows if it will happen for either of them or how long it will take? It took me decades to find you.” He lifted
his hand to the scarred side of her face.
She winced and closed her eyes. Habit. A bad one. She opened her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You’re being brave. And you’re only going to get braver.”
“And live up to my badges of honor?”
He smiled. “Most definitely.”
They tumbled into each other’s arms again and relished the moment, steeped in the magic of love.
Sheri Whitefeather is an award-winning, national bestselling author. Visit her website at: http://www.sheriwhitefeather.com
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