Velvet

by Temple West

  Adrian’s eyes bloomed light in the darkness. “Hey,” he said, cupping his hand to my cheek. I looked at him, and his eyes pulsed, swirling. Tears leaked down my cheeks as he did his vampire thing, and suddenly, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Cold, still, and shaking, but no longer afraid.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, searching my eyes. His were still silver, but they were motionless.

  “Tired,” I said, taking stock. “But fine.”

  We were whispering pretty quietly, but I thought I heard a creak from somewhere in the house. Adrian instantly tensed, turning to listen. We stayed frozen like that for a few moments, before he relaxed.

  “House settling,” he concluded. His hearing was better than mine by a ridiculous margin, so I trusted his conclusion.

  “What did we do differently?” I asked. “Why didn’t it work?”

  Adrian opened his mouth, then closed it. “I don’t know. Unless—” He paused, thinking. “The nightmares started right after you went to the mall, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And that man—did he touch you?”

  I nodded again. “Briefly, just my wrist.”

  “When you were at my house sleeping, after the nightmare, I was next to you. Maybe to interrupt the connection, which was established by physical touch, that’s exactly what’s required to block it.”

  I stared at him. “What does that mean?”

  He shifted slightly on the bed. “I mean I think I can’t just be sitting on the floor.” He looked down, and though it was too dark to see if he was blushing or not, his voice definitely made it sound like he was. “I think I have to be touching you to make this work.”

  I laughed, suddenly. “I’m really glad Mariana or Dominic or Julian didn’t volunteer for this.”

  He smiled, but I could tell he was embarrassed. “I guess I could just hold your hand?”

  I yawned mid-scoff. “You need to sleep, too. I’m not going to make you kneel by my bed all night holding my hand.” I looked at him and pushed back my covers. “Just get in already.”

  My bed was a twin, barely long enough to fit Adrian. It wasn’t even pushed against a wall, so there was a good chance that one of us was going to fall out. He crawled in beside me and sat. Side by side, we both hung out over the edge slightly.

  “You have the tiniest bed I have ever seen,” Adrian said after we’d both sat there for a minute trying to figure out what to do next.

  “Yeah. Came with the room.”

  Still mostly blind in the dark, I poked his knee, then felt along his calf, trying to figure out what he was wearing, since I couldn’t see him. I patted his six-pack, too.

  “Sweatpants and a T-shirt. You came well prepared.”

  “Figured I might as well be comfortable.”

  “Well, get ready for some ultimate snuggling. You’re gonna be the little spoon.”

  “I am not going to be the little spoon.”

  I stared somewhere in the vicinity of his face sternly. “My bed, my spoon rules.”

  He sighed, which I interpreted as a sigh of resignation, and I pushed him down—which I was only able to do because he let me—and snuggled up behind him. I could feel him pull the blankets over both of us, tucking it in around my shoulders, before settling onto his side. Mostly because there was so little room—but also because I wanted to—I pressed my forehead into the middle of his back and closed my eyes. And then I realized something.

  “Wait, do you think there has to be actual skin-on-skin contact?”

  After a moment he replied, “That would actually make sense.”

  I nodded, and slid my arm over his waist, heart racing mutinously. I knew he could feel it, because my chest was pressed to his spine. After a moment, though, he put his arm over mine, moving my hand until it lay flat against his heart. He covered it with his own, and we lay like that for a long moment, our breathing too loud for the deep silence of the house.

  “Caitlin,” he murmured. “If you tell anyone I was the little spoon, there will be consequences.”

  I laughed into his shirt. “Admit it—you like being the little spoon. I’m a fantastic big spoon.”

  He just snorted and threaded his fingers through mine. Finally, I gave him a little squeeze, burrowed closer into the space between his shoulder blade and the pillow, and fell fast asleep.

  When I woke up, Adrian was gone—which was disorienting, even though I’d known he would have to leave before my aunt and uncle were up. When I went downstairs for breakfast, I was extra careful to check if Joe and Rachel had any inclination that someone had been in my room last night, but they appeared to be completely oblivious. Maybe Adrian and I could pull this off, after all.

  As restful as my night had been, I’d still gone through two nightmares before we’d figured out how to effectively block the dreams. Backlogged with sleep deprivation, it was only eight p.m. when I said good night to everyone and headed back up to my room. I fell asleep immediately—but everyone else stayed up much later than normal (since it was the holidays now), which meant Adrian was delayed in coming over, which meant I had another nightmare.

  When I woke up gasping, Adrian was sitting beside me, eyes already glowing.

  “Hey,” he murmured. “You all right?”

  I sat up, took in a long, shuddering breath, and leaned my forehead against his shoulder.

  “Every time,” I mumbled. “Every time, nothing I do can change what happens. I always lose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I rubbed my eyes into his collarbone, frustrated. “In the dreams. It doesn’t matter how much I fight or struggle or run or scream, something bad happens, and I can’t stop it. It’s pissing me off.”

  He wrapped his arms around me in a hug, and I let him. After a moment he pulled back, eyes flickering to silver. “You ready?”

  I looked at him—and then shook my head. “I know that helps. But it feels wrong. It feels like I’m cheating, somehow. Even though it sucks, I feel like I need to be able to feel.” I looked up at him, hoping I hadn’t hurt his feelings. He was frowning, but he didn’t seem angry.

  “I understand,” he said, after a long moment. “I actually do understand. No more Jedi mind stuff.”

  He smiled and I smiled, and it was awkward again. I patted the bed and he crawled in next to me, stretching his arm out underneath the pillow. I guess he was going to be the big spoon tonight. I didn’t argue, just fit myself along the contour of his body and pulled the blankets over us. He rested his arm on my waist, and in a mirror of the night before, I wound my fingers through his. His breath was soft and warm on my neck and I heard him murmur, “Good night, Caitlin.”

  I smiled, glad he couldn’t see me.

  “Good night, Adrian.”

  * * *

  Adrian came over every night, sometimes crawling in beside me while I was still asleep, so that the moment I woke up, he was there. I’d grab his hand and squeeze it for as long as it took for the dregs of the dream to slip away. Sometimes he got there early enough that I didn’t have a nightmare at all. Usually we didn’t say much. Most of the time I woke up in the morning and he was gone. Occasionally, though, we were so entangled that he had to physically move me to get out of bed. I’d murmur something incomprehensible, he’d laugh (very quietly), and bundle the blankets back around me so I didn’t get cold. And it really only took a few nights before it wasn’t awkward at all anymore. It felt sort of … right, actually, to be sleeping next to him. And for that to be all we were doing. It was peaceful.

  And before I knew it, it was Christmas Eve.

  The insistent buzz of my annoying comes-with-the-phone ringtone startled me awake. I groped for it blindly on my nightstand and brought it to my ear, answering with a grunt instead of actual words.

  “You’re always so eloquent in the morning.”

  “Nmphmm.”

  “When can you be ready by?” Adrian asked. It was funny talking to him on the phone knowing that he’d been lying next to me onl
y a few hours before.

  I searched my brain groggily. “A few years? I don’t know. For what?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve. We’re supposed to go to my place?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Thank goodness I’d already told Joe and Rachel a week ago. They’d had time to get used to the idea.

  “Julian’s been a pain in the ass lately. Do you mind if we go somewhere else?”

  To be honest, I didn’t really want to be around Adrian’s family, either. They were kind of party poopers. “Sure,” I yawned into the phone. “Where you wanna go?”

  “We own a cabin a ways up the mountain. I was thinking we could go there and just hang out?”

  “Sounds good,” I said sleepily. “Give me an hour to wake up and five minutes to get ready.”

  He laughed. “I’ll pick you up at eleven. And do you mind if I bring Lucian along? I want to get him out of the house, and he seems to like you.”

  That surprised me. “No, I don’t mind.”

  “All right, we’ll pick you up in an hour. Dress sort of warm; it’ll take a while to heat up the cabin.”

  “Okay,” I yawned again. “See you then.”

  I hung up and buried another yawn in my pillow, then forced myself to get up. At 10:48 I’d managed to shower, dress, and make myself breakfast. I was spitting a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink when I heard Norah yell her usual mantra up the stairs.

  “I’ll see you guys later,” I said as I headed toward the door.

  “Be careful,” Joe grunted in my direction.

  “Call us if you need anything,” Rachel offered.

  I waved and headed out the front door. Rachel and I still didn’t exactly chat, but we’d unofficially declared a cease-fire for the holidays. Maybe I was finally getting used to this place. The rage that had once been a natural part of my day had quieted, and sometimes I even felt downright happy.

  Through the window of the truck, I could see Lucian bouncing up and down excitedly. When he saw me, he climbed over Adrian and pressed his face and hands against the window. I smiled and waved at him; he grinned back, lips squished to the glass.

  “Hello, Lucian,” I said as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Hello,” he replied, squirming with excitement.

  As we pulled out of the driveway, Lucian leaned forward, cranked the volume on the stereo to an almost painful level, and sang.

  “Jesus is just all right … something! Jesus is just all right, oh yeah! Jesus is just something something! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!”

  I stared quizzically at Adrian. “You got him hooked on The Doobie Brothers?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Ever since he heard this song, he can’t stop singing it. I have no idea why.”

  We listened to Lucian’s broken, half-filled-in lyrics for the next four and a half minutes. I’d never seen him look so energetic. He bopped his head along to the fast-paced beat and sang boldly. I was actually a little impressed. When the song was finished, he leaned back against the seat with his usual blank expression and listened passively to the variety of songs that shuffled through. Two playlists later, we pulled up to a log cabin and the landscape looked vaguely familiar.

  “Remember when we went sledding?” Adrian asked as he parked the truck. “That was part of this property, about a half a mile northeast of here.”

  That would explain it, then. We climbed out and Adrian led the way to the cabin. A fire was roaring in the stone fireplace of the main room.

  “I came up here earlier to start warming it up,” Adrian admitted, looking shy.

  I smiled. Of course he had.

  He disappeared into a side room and came back without the small lunch cooler he’d brought with him.

  “Would you like a tour?” he asked.

  I shook my head at him, smiling. “There are three things in this world that require tours: museums, castles, and de la Mara private properties.”

  He rolled his eyes and took me by the arms. “Come on; it’s a short tour today due to grumpy tourists. This,” he said, turning me in a slow, 360-degree circle, “is the main room. Notice the shabby-chic sofas, the Stony Creek original area rugs, and the Fields dining set.”

  I stared at the dining room table and the six chairs that sat grouped around it. “Are those really Fields?” Trish had told me once that her grandfather had been a carpenter, and a ton of the furniture around the county had been handcrafted by him, once upon a time.

  “Yep. Mariana and Dominic thought it would be best to have something that represented the spirit of the town. They actually lived here for a while, while the house was being built.”

  “Doesn’t have enough marble to seem like their style.”

  “And you’ve managed to sum them up in one sentence. On with the tour.”

  He walked me straight forward toward two open doors. “In door number one, we have a bedroom! Door two is a bathroom. Over there is the kitchen. That’s it.”

  I was surprised. “Really?”

  “The cabin was already here when they moved in; otherwise it would have a six-car garage next to the well out back.”

  I suddenly realized Lucian was missing. “Where’s your brother?”

  Adrian sighed. “Frankie?”

  “Alejandro!” I heard a small voice call from the kitchen.

  “He’s recently discovered YouTube. Lady Gaga particularly fascinates him.”

  “Ah.” In a weird way, that made sense.

  We walked into the kitchen and discovered that Lucian had taken a jar of green olives out of the fridge and was thirstily drinking the juice from it. I shuddered.

  “Why is he doing that?” I whispered as Lucian drained the jar and started popping olives onto his fingers.

  Adrian leaned in. “Salt content is comparable to blood. It’s one of the ways we’re trying to help him with withdrawals. He’s down to two blood bags a day.”

  I blinked. “Oh.”

  “You’re gonna get a stomachache, buddy,” Adrian warned. Lucian stared at his brother and slowly chewed an olive off his pinkie finger.

  Adrian shrugged. “All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  We walked out as Lucian contemplated the remaining olives.

  “Still think he’s cute?”

  I looked back at the door. “He’s adorable. Strange and slightly terrifying, but adorable.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks so.” Adrian sat down on the couch and stared blankly into the fire. For a moment, he kind of looked like Lucian.

  “What do you mean by that?” I sat next to him and drew my knees up to my chin to keep warm. Adrian grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and handed it to me.

  “I don’t know,” he said, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “He just has such a limited world. He’s not allowed to interact with anyone outside our family—besides you, of course, and I had to pull strings to even allow that—and no one in the family pays any attention to him. Which seems so stupid after we went to all the trouble of getting him back. Sometimes I feel like…”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch. “Sometimes I feel like the only reason he’s important to us is so we can say we won. Julian sure as hell doesn’t care about him, and Mariana and Dominic are so wrapped up in their own lives that they don’t even realize he’s there half the time. I try to help, but he needs more than me. He needs structure and discipline and love—he needs parents.” He smiled bitterly. “We all need parents.”

  I’d never heard Adrian say that much about his personal life the entire time we’d known each other.

  “What was your childhood like?” I asked, a bit abruptly, hoping to keep him talking.

  He blinked at me a few times and shrugged. “I was born in Greece, so I lived with a family there until I was eight. Then I was sent to live with Julian in France for four years. Since we were related and similar in age, they thought it was a good idea to pair us together.” />
  “Aren’t you guys, like, seventeen years apart? And who’s this ‘they’?”

  “The Council—they decide where we live until we come of age. And, yeah, we’re seventeen years apart, but that’s very unusual for siblings; most are centuries older than each other. A demon can only get back to earth in a physical body once every couple hundred years—it simply requires too much energy. My father got through a century and a half ago, created a body, and had Mariana. We destroyed his body and sent him back to hell, since he can’t really be killed.”

  “I still don’t understand that,” I said, leaning forward. “Everything can be killed.”

  “You can’t kill something that’s not real,” he explained, then shook his head, as if he knew that didn’t make sense. “I mean, they are real, but not like we think of things being real or imaginary. They’re ideas; individual units of energy that happen to have some sort of consciousness. It would be like trying to ‘kill’ light—you can cover a light source, stars can implode and go dark, but you can’t end the life of something that was never really alive to begin with. Honestly, we don’t understand what they are. That’s why we call them demons—they’re the stuff of nightmares.” A dark look passed over his face. “In your case, literally.”

  He leaned back against the sofa. “Anyway, he got through again thirty-six years ago and had Julian, which was honestly pushing how quickly we thought demons could regroup their power. Then, somehow, he broke through less than twenty years later and had me. Which should have been impossible.”

  Adrian’s eyes narrowed as he glared into the fire. “He’s smarter than the others, or stronger. More adaptive, somehow. Seven years go by and he gets Lucian’s mother pregnant and manages to steal him from right under our noses before we even realize what’s happened. It was an embarrassment. I remember listening to my Greek ‘parents’ talk about it at night when they thought I was asleep. I was only seven, but I knew it was important to get him back. It’s only recently become clear to me that it was to save face, not to save Lucian.”

  The firelight hit Adrian’s glowing eyes and turned the silver dark, almost black. He was angry; I didn’t need an internal emotion sensor to tell me that. Lucian seemed to be a very delicate subject for Adrian.