It was a rough night. I’d thought a hot bath might help to relax me, but the water felt like toxic sludge lapping against my sensitive skin. It was all in my head, but that knowledge didn’t remove the vileness within me. Dark light always pressed upon my own, leaving me with an irrational fear that it might never leave, like a dirty fingerprint left behind.
After throwing on a T-shirt, I pulled a blanket over me and curled up in the fetal position. There were moments I drifted off and saw those Vampires chasing after me. Only, in the dream, they gained on us and the rock didn’t explode. My blood-curdling screams reverberated off the tunnel walls as my limbs were torn from my body.
“Raven… Raven, wake up.”
The voice echoed in my head, and my eyes snapped open. It sounded like Christian, but when I turned over, no one was there. Shadows moved about the dark room, and my eyes closed again.
The cycle repeated for hours until I drew the covers over my head and shut out the world.
“Raven, wake up.”
Someone pulled the cover away from my eyes, and I squinted at the bright window.
“It’s late afternoon.” Christian set a silver thermos next to the bed and took a seat in my chair. “Thought you could use the caffeine.”
I propped the pillow behind me and scooted up, my head pounding. After blowing the steam from the opening on the lip, I sipped the aromatic coffee. “It’s good.”
“No cream. No sugar. Maybe a drop of blood.”
“You’re not funny. Is the baby gone?”
“Aye. Regulators came by this morning and spoke with Viktor before collecting the evidence. They had no interest in questioning the rest of us.”
“The baby being the evidence.” I gazed up at the window and yawned. “What time is it?”
Christian turned around and looked at my desk. After shoving a few things around, he gave me a peculiar look. “Wait a minute. Why the feck am I looking for a clock? You’re half Mage. What happened to your internal clock?”
“I hit the snooze button. It’s just that I have to wait until my father gets home from work before we go. I also want to give him time to eat his dinner, because he hates being interrupted when he’s eating.”
“And my job is to sit around while you have a talk-show moment, and then I scrub his memories? Sounds like a fruitless task.”
“You owe me a favor. And I’ll buy you a box of gum on the way home. How’s that sound?”
He crossed his legs. “Grand. And do you plan on telling him the whole story? The whole of the whole? Fangs, magical light, your history as a serial killer…”
“I don’t know. I’m just going to wing it and see what happens.”
He chuckled. “This might be interesting after all.”
My hands were steady, so that was a good sign that Cristo’s light was finally draining. Caffeine made me feel normal again, but I still had no appetite.
The susurration of snowflakes blowing against the window drew my attention away. “How bad is the weather?”
“It’s a mess out there. I asked Wyatt to check the forecast on his computer, but I don’t need a fancy computer to tell me the weather. The snow will stop by nightfall.”
I combed my fingers through my rumpled hair and took a last sip of the coffee before setting it on the nightstand. “Do I look okay?”
He stared at me unblinking. “You’ll not be winning any beauty competitions this evening.”
“I just meant do I have dark circles or look… not human?”
“Run a comb through your hair and put on that blood-red lipstick if you like. That might help with your corpse-like appearance.”
“Maybe I should paint my nails. The black polish is chipping.”
“I can promise you that the last thing your da is going to be shocked by when he sees his dead daughter standing in his doorway is the state of your cuticles.”
“Do you think Viktor will ask where we’re going?”
