At the jugular vein, blood ran down from two distinct puncture marks.
I looked between Michael and Monique. Monique shrugged; Michael grimaced. Drawn by the scent of blood, Rodney came out from the sitting room, then leaned on the doorframe, his arms folded. If it wasn’t him, then who?
“Ethan,” Karson roared. When he didn’t appear immediately, he roared again, “Ethan!”
“What?” Ethan appeared at the top of the stairs, wearing an open silk robe and boxer shorts, his hair bedraggled, his eyes glassy.
“Clean. Up. Your. Mess!”
One of the women missed a step and almost fell. She dropped her shoes and watched as they bounced down the stairs. She slapped a hand over her mouth and they both giggled. As if falling down twenty steps would be a hell of a time.
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Keep your shirt on, it’s not like you haven’t done the same.” He staggered down the stairs. How drunk was he?
One girl stumbled sideways as she collected her heels off the floor and almost fell over.
“Wait just a moment, ladies. It appears we haven’t quite finished.”
The girls gave him wonky smiles and stared at him with glazed eyes, just like the girls Rodney had brought to the dinner party.
He cradled one head with all the tenderness of a lover. Then he moved his lips to her neck and the sound of crunching a peach jolted my hearing. She tilted her head back and gasped. Then she closed her eyes in some kind of erotic delirium. His throat bobbled as he swallowed her blood, and then his tongue licked over the puncture marks and the blood on her neck. By the time he pulled his head back, the puncture marks were gone. I looked away as he did the same to the second woman.
He stepped back. “You can go now,” he said coldly, directing them with his palm toward the door. When neither girl moved, Ethan opened the door. “I haven’t got all day,” he drawled.
One walked out but the other hesitated. “Will you call me?” she whined.
“Bianca, sweetheart, by the time you get to the end of the driveway, you won’t even remember my name.” He used his hands to usher her out.
She turned back. “I’d really like to see you again?—”
“I’m sure you would.” He snapped the door shut in her face. Then he looked straight at me, bitterness and a challenge in his eyes. Daring me to say something.
My heart began to thud, my breathing increasing as the heat climbed. It was not the feeding that upset me. They had to feed to survive. I knew what he was trying to do. He was showing me what Karson did when I wasn’t here. He had made it clear many times that he didn’t want me to be with Karson, but drunk or not, this was just plain mean. I clenched my teeth.
The door opened moments later. Ethan snarled as he pivoted back. My heart stopped. The woman was about to see another, feral side of him.
Josh walked in and halted abruptly. “Um, nice to see you too, Ethan,” he said mildly. “I take it the two drugged-up girls staggering down the drive belong with you?”
“Joshua,” Ethan crooned. “You almost lost your head.”
Josh forced a smile as he scanned the room, his head tilting as he picked up on the tension you could cut with a blade.
Caron’s eyes flew to mine. “Don’t you see what they are, Amy. They’re evil. You don’t belong with them. You belong with me, with your coven. We can protect you.”
Karson bristled. I leaned against his arm subtly to keep him calm. “The witches threw me out as if I never mattered. Now I get to decide where I belong.”
Caron snorted. “The witches didn’t throw you anywhere.”
“Given being born a witch is genetic, I’d say at least one witch did,” Karson said.
My birth mother. His words slammed hard. I shouldn’t care—I didn’t know her or what her circumstances were—but it still hurt.
“We have no idea where you come from. But we do want you with us,” Caron appealed.
To use me, to send me to battle to probably die for a cause I knew nothing about until six months ago. Not that I could say anything about that with Josh and Rodney in the room. But I could ask the question that had plagued me.
“My adoptive parents, they knew what I was. Are they witches?”
“Your father is not, but your mother, she was what the world calls a medium. She was highly gifted in speaking to the dead, and she used her skills to solve crimes that otherwise would have been unsolvable.”
