“Enjoy your party.” She was glad her voice came out as a flat monotone. Him hearing her cry would’ve been a fatal blow to what was left of her self-respect. “Goodbye, Felix.”
She wasn’t sure what he heard in her voice, but she supposed even lizards could pick up threats. Instead of hanging up right away, he paused.
In a more cautious voice, he said, “Dahlia, if you’re?—”
Hanging up on him wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it used to be. There was no joy in it. No thrill of knowing he’d come back,demanding her attention again. She’d come to enjoy the way he chased her.
Not anymore.
She’d always known that he was just like every other vampire who looked at her a little too long. They didn’t see her as a person. At best, they saw her as a buffet they could fuck. At worst, she was prey to be batted around until they got bored and killed her.
Dahlia refused to be either of those things to anyone, but most especially to Felix.
FOUR
She didn’t turnher phone back on for over a week.
At first it was because that was the only way to avoid facing what she knew she had to do, which was find a way to cut off Felix for good. She hadn’t been able to work out how to do it before, but she also hadn’t tried that hard. Now she had real incentive: heartbreak.
The only problem was that she didn’t have the energy to make good on any of her ideas. So she simply avoided it altogether. It wasn’t like she needed her phone, anyway. Work wasn’t happening, and she’d already decided that she had to quit.
Finding another job that would work with her school schedule would be a pain in her ass, but it was beyond time to get out of the vampire world. She should’ve done it when Felix started stalking her. She should’ve done it the first time she’d been asked to mop up blood.
She sure as shit would do it after being impaled.
Unfortunately, she barely had the energy to job hunt on her tablet. Dahlia chalked it up to the strain healing put on the body, as well as a mix of shock and the ridiculous heartbreak she didn’t want to acknowledge. She slept a lot and ate very little.
At first, she just lacked an appetite. That wasn’t unusual, given the stress of everything. Cecilia plied her with homemade pasta and cheese puffs and burritos from their favorite place, but none of it sounded good. All she could manage was white rice, cheese, and the protein shakes she stashed in the back of her tiny fridge for busy days.
Things devolved slowly.
Her minimal appetite devolved into outright disgust at the foods she normally loved. Even her lifeline of white rice and soy sauce betrayed her. She began throwing everything up almost as soon as it hit her stomach.
A dull but persistent headache dogged her. It got a lot worse whenever she dared turn the lights on too bright. It wasn’t so bad, since she was used to a more or less nocturnal lifestyle, but the pain seemed to increase every day.
Then shakes came. And the fever. And the full-body cramping.
“I can’t believe I caught the fucking flu on top of everything else,” she moaned to Cecilia after puking up the only thing she’d managed to eat that day.
Holding her hair back for her, Cecilia fretted, “I really think you should go back to the hospital. This isn’t normal. You’re barely keeping water down now.”
She’d shuddered at the idea. Not because she hated hospitals or anything, but because the idea of stepping outside her apartment was… uncomfortable.
It wasn’t just that she was absolutely certain Felix would have someone watching it, but an instinct that had grown louder and more vicious every day. She couldn’t stand the idea of beingexposed.All she wanted to do was cover all her windows and hide under her bed.
So she shook off her friend’s concern, praying that whatever bug she’d caught would pass.
But it didn’t. One week bled into two.
Cecilia told her that the bar was open again — sans rooftop lounge — and management had been asking if she was coming back. Devon had sent her a ridiculous bouquet, which sat rotting on her tiny kitchen counter. Whether he hoped to get her to return to work or it was just another ploy to get her to pay attention to him, she didn’t know or care. She hadn’t even bothered to read the card.
It didn’t matter. Work didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
She couldn’t think past the pain in her head and jaw. Food was a distant memory, mostly accompanied by the burn of stomach acid.
Sometimes she thought of Felix, whether he’d given up yet, but mostly she didn’t. She slept for a long time. Too long.
When she woke after a nearly eighteen hour stretch of black, dreamless sleep to find two of her teeth coming loose, panic finally set it.
