Every bruise, scrape, and mark on Hannah’s body is because of me. She’s lied and stolen in the hours since we’ve met. I’m witnessing her corruption already—these small compromises, hour by hour, proving that the innocent woman from the beginning of the night will soon be gone, and it will be my fault.
But what am I meant to do? We’re stuck together. I cannot simply send her home.
And even if I wanted to…
Well, even knowing what I’m doing to her, I don’t wish to stop. I want to keep feeding on her, touching her, tasting her, ruining her.
And if I’m reading the way she looks at me correctly, she wants to be ruined.
13
Hannah
Igripthebusseatwith white knuckles as we wind through the dark roads toward Elizabeth’s house. It’s eleven and the moon is reaching its peak, which means our time is nearly half up. My palms are sweating from our escape, from almost getting blown to pieces by Maya, from the four-story drop that should have killed us both…and from Julia pressing against me on that balcony, her fingers in my hair and in my mouth.
When she tipped my head back, cold adrenaline flooded my veins, and yet my traitorous body leaned in. Even now, my skin dances everywhere she touched me, and I can’t tell if I’m trembling from fear or anticipation of where this might go if I let it.
She shifts beside me, and my breath hitches, like I’m expecting her to grab me again and wrap her hand around my throat.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asks, her voice low.
She must sense my tension. “Should I be?”
“That’s not an answer.”
I swallow hard. “I’ve just never met a sanguine witch. Or knew witches existed.”
In truth, I haven’t forgotten for a second that hundreds of people have died at her hand, and several more would have been killedtonight if I hadn’t stopped her. And now I’m alone with her on a very empty bus, heading deep into the darkness.
So yes, she scares me. But it’s a different kind of fear than I’ve ever felt. It’s not the fear that makes you run, but the kind that roots you in place and makes you wonder what it would feel like to let the danger consume you.
Besides, she’s gone out of her way to protect me more than once, and that contradiction makes everything all the more confusing.
“I think I’m more worried about whoever we’re about to meet,” I say. “I mean, if Maya was adescendantof your coven and nearly killed us… Should I be afraid?”
“My coven was full of powerful witches. Elizabeth wrote some of the darker spells in the grimoire in her younger days. But as long as we don’t anger them the way we angered Maya, we should be safe.”
This doesn’t bode well. But what choice do we have but to keep going? This is our only link to Rebecca.
At last, we step off the bus on a narrow road lined with ancient oaks, their branches forming a shadowy tunnel. The world is silent this far out of the city, only the churring insects and rustling leaves filling the air. We walk for ten minutes, our breaths misting and our feet crunching on the gravel shoulder, before we reach the iron gates guarding Elizabeth’s house—no, herestate. A Victorian mansion is set back among the trees, its Gothic windows glowing amber against the night sky. Dark shapes that must be gargoyles perch along the roofline. The whole place radiates old money and older magic.
“Welcoming,” I mutter, shivering in the cold.
Julia peers through the gate at the mansion. “Elizabeth always did enjoy her theatrics.”
I stare at the intercom, a black box jutting out of the ground on an elegant iron post. But I don’t push the button yet.
“Do you feel like you have enough power to handle them?” I ask, my stomach twisting.
Julia flexes her fingers, studying her hands. Magic flickers between her knuckles like lightning, but we both know it’s not enough. “More than before, I suppose.”
An idea takes form, tentative and tempting. If skin-to-skin contact gives Julia power…and if my breath gives her power…then what if…?
I recall the way her magic surged when she had her fingers in my mouth versus when she just grabbed my hands, and the way she seemed almost drunk on it when we were pressed together on Maya’s balcony. More contact, more intimacy, more power? If she can’t drain someone to death, does intimacy fill that gap?
My heart pounds harder in anticipation of what I want to say. What I want to do.
I study the sharp line of her jaw and high cheekbones in the moonlight. She’s beautiful and menacing and totally unreadable. For all I know, she’s planning how she’s going to dispose of me the second we break the binding spell.
