‘Sammy…” Ned starts to say and his hand reaches for mine, then his gaze flicks to the shadowy doorway. “Oh. Hi, Blue.”
I spin around just in time to see Blue striding into the kitchen, a frantic look in his beautiful eyes. The sight of him takes my breath away, but he ignores me and glares forcefully at Ned.
“Sammy, are you okay?” says Blue without even looking at me.
“I’m fine,” I reassure him.
Blue walks right up to Ned. “You were angry and then upset,” he says as he continues to talk to me while focusing on Ned.
Ned slowly gets to his feet. It’s a calm, steady movement, but there is predator marked in every line of his body, and a clear, ‘back off’. Blue bristles in retaliation.
“Ned was taking the piss out of my favorite football team!” I blurt.
Blue turns to look at me in surprise. Ned grabs his coffee cup and strides towards the door. “I’m not dealing with this,” he mutters.
And just like that, he is gone. Damn. Vampires can move fast when they want to.
Now I’m all alone with Blue. My throat tightens. He is not wet, which means he was in his bedroom, in the house. Not so far away from me, after all.
There is so much I could say to him. So much I could share. I could be brave and lay my heart on the table. But that has never done me any good before. Blue won’t laugh or mock me. He won’t pretend to feel the same so he can use me.
No, Blue would be devastatingly nice about it. Apologetic that he doesn’t feel the same way. Then he’d check up on me often and want to talk about it. And that all sounds like a fate worse than death.
Especially because once this is all over, I want us still to be friends. I want that more than anything. And opening my big mouth will just ruin that and make things awkward and awful. So no. I’m staying quiet.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you. I’m going back to bed now!” I say.
And then I turn and flee like the coward that I am.
Chapter twenty-one
Blue
The washing machine is humming and sloshing, so I guess it’s working. I think I remembered all the steps Red showed me back when we first moved in. Since I don’t wear clothes very often, I don’t have to do laundry all that much, so the process hasn’t really stuck in my mind.
I never had to wash clothes in the ocean. As for my brief stint as a rising popstar, I had people who took care of it for me. In the harem, we had those stupid clothes to wear and new sets just appeared in my closet every day.
So laundry is a bewildering mystery. An unexpected part of freedom. I think the simple domesticity of it could grow on me. It has a certain charm to it.
I don’t really need to be doing any laundry right now, but being in the house makes me feel closer to Sammy, and I’m willing to take any reason I can find.
The washing machine gurgles. I think that is a good sign. I can probably leave now, but then I wouldn’t have an excuse to be in the house, and the pool feels awfully empty without Sammy.
Suddenly, my senses alert me that someone is approaching the laundry room, and my heart quickens. But I quickly realize that it is Pink. He opens the door and I greet him with a smile.
“Hi Blue!” he says warmly.
He picks up an empty plastic basket and opens the door to the tumble dryer. I watch with interest as he starts picking items out ofthe machine, one-by-one and folding them neatly before placing them in his basket. I’ve always just thrown everything in once they were done and then tipped them into my hamper. I wonder if that’s why Pink’s clothes are never wrinkled and mine always are?
“We are getting close to sourcing some Solstice-harvested Black Mandrake,” Pink says.
His words hit me like a punch to the gut and knock all of the wind out of me. My vision fades.
I nod. “That’s great.”
“Then we will pretty much have everything we need to unbind you and Sammy.”
“Wonderful,” I smile, and my voice doesn’t even wobble.
