But I wasn’t worried for a moment.With each day I am learning how to barter with the horseman more and more.Kat would be safe after sundown.Crane would be too.The horseman knows how important they are to me.He knows they are off-limits.
I drop Kat off at her dorm room, and then I hurry over through the mist to Crane’s.At this point I don’t care if anyone finds it suspicious how I head into the faculty dorm every night, then again, I feel everything about the school is in a slow collapse.Perhaps we’re the least of its problems.
I get to his floor and Crane opens his door, stares at me in horror.“What happened?”
I frown and walk in his room.“Nothing.Sorry if I’m a few minutes late.”
“No,” he says, slamming the door shut and then grabbing me by the neck.“You have blood on your face.”His eyes drift down.“On your clothes too.What did you do?”he growls, squeezing my neck tighter.
I have to try and think.
Oh.
Then I grin at him.“Nothing for you to worry about, Crane.”
“Nothing for me to worry about?Whose blood is that?”
I’m smirking now.“Whose do you think?”
He narrows his eyes at me, and then it dawns on him.
“Fuck you,” he snarls, pushing me over.“Can’t keep your damn dick in your pants, can you?”
“You should talk.”
“You know how dangerous this is,” he snaps.
“This has nothing to do with some sacrifice or me knocking her up on behalf of a demon.You just don’t want me inside her when you’re not around.”
“And so what of it?”he asks, throwing his arms out.“I told you I’d remain jealous and possessive through it all.The fact that you got to fuck her, lick her bloody cunt when she’s ather most primal and powerful, yes, I’m damn jealous that it wasn’t me.”
I walk over to him and put my hands on his shoulders.“You want to kiss me now?You can probably still taste the blood.”
“Fuck off,” he sneers.But then that indignation in his eyes burns away to lust, just like I knew it would.
His eyes fall closed, and he leans in and captures my mouth in his, moaning slightly as his tongue licks the rim of my lips, slips past my tongue, and my toes are already bunching up in my boots.
Before we can get too carried away, he breaks the kiss and pulls back.
“I’m mad at you,” he scowls.
But I know he can never stay mad for long.
28
Crane
“One week until the full moon,” Kat says quietly as she places a stack of books on the desk that Brom and I have taken over in the library.
Brom grunts as his eyes flick over her, pausing at her chest and her lips.“Is this your way of saying you want to practice beforehand?”
I kick Brom under the desk, but he ignores it.
“Actually,” she says, sitting down across from us, “as much as I enjoyed what we, uh, did in the woods during the dark moon, I think I would rather save myself for the next ritual.There’s something about it, about the way the energy gathers, that I feel will be more powerful if we let it build up for a while.Like filling a reservoir.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I say, tapping my fingers on the desk.“We should save ourselves.”
Both she and Brom raise their brows and give me an incredulous look.“Youthink we should save ourselves?”Kat says.
