I could have broken frozen chunks of ice off Timothy’s words.
I ran my tongue along my teeth and shot an easy smile at Miranda. “I’ve gone through some changes since I’ve last seen you.”
“What, like puberty?” She guffawed at her own joke, before she stilled. Her gaze caught on my smile.
Specifically, my teeth. More particularly at my elongated vampire incisors.
The humor slid right out of her expression. Her face went taut, eyes widening as her breath caught. “Aaron, how...when?”
A hand clapped my shoulder. “Ah, I see you’ve met my main attraction.”
Seth’s cultured voice slithered into my ears and wrapped around my throat like an invisible hand. I tried to maintain a smile, but it faded despite my best efforts.
“Set,” Timothy said, using Seth’s ancient name even as his eyes fastened to Seth’s grip on my shoulder.
Miranda raised her blade, her posture stiffening, eyes narrowed.
It was only then that Timothy stepped forward. “What do you mean, this is your main attraction?”
“Well, you saw the show, didn’t you?” Seth asked. “Aaron is spectacular, and he’s drawing droves of people to my hotel. I’m making him into a star.” His hand moved from my shoulder to a possessive hold on the back of my neck.
I’d spent the last few months doing exactly what Seth wanted and hating him for how well he understood me. He dangled heights and speed as bait and I took it every time, running Sinopolis rooftops, dropping from ledges that would have shattered my human bones, landing clean and laughing before the rush even faded. The world was bigger, now that I was a vampire. Stronger legs. Faster reflexes. No fear of the fall. I chased the thrill willingly, then looked up to find the leash still wrapped around my throat, the contracts and terms andcameras waiting to claim the moment. The rush was mine. The show piece wasn’t. It made me feel...used.
There was no squelching the shame this time. I stared at Timothy, watching his reaction. Willing him to understand why I didn’t come find him after I’d been turned into a vampire.
His face went through a series of minute changes—first, a tightening around his eyes, then a barely perceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth, followed by a slight flaring of his nostrils. To anyone else, he might have appeared impassive, but I could read the devastation in those subtle shifts like a book written in a language only I understood.
“He’s yours.” Timothy’s words came out soft but flat, and my guts cliff dove right out of my stomach and smashed into the ground.
The disappointment, the pain that flashed over his features was what kept me away. Like the coward I was. Barely perceptible to anyone else, but I could read him. I always could.
It was gone in a moment, replaced with his placid face of business.
“Yes, my Sekhor, Aaron,” Seth said, grinning at me. “He and I are blood-bonded.”
Miranda’s eyes widened, sword dropping to her side as she clearly needed a minute, or twenty, to comprehend what Timothy had gleaned far quicker.
He was always too clever for his own good.
“He’s been most...useful,” Seth said, fingers massaging the back of my neck in encouragement. Then as if finally noting the tension, Seth stopped. “Though I get the sense you’ve all been acquainted before.”
He dropped his hand, waiting for any of us to answer. A long, loaded, three beats passed.
Danger crept up my spine with warning prickles at the idea of letting Seth know too much. The god was all flash and swaggeron the outside, but I knew he was always planning, leveraging, manipulating.
“Yes, he used to work for Grim at Sinopolis,” Timothy supplied, as official as ever. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. His business-like manner was so stiff, I wondered if he hadn’t turned into a robot version of himself in the last few minutes.
“Yeah,” I brushed my fingers through my hair. “I worked at Perkatory cafe for a couple years.”
And stayed far longer than I did anywhere else because of a certain dark-haired man who took his cappuccinos with extra foam.
“Is that so?” Seth said slowly.
He looked between us, as if trying to guess what wasn’t being said. A dark eagerness flickered in his eyes, and I shifted my weight, fighting the urge to bolt.
Then Seth laughed as if he’d heard some great joke. “Well, isn’t it a very, very small world?”
Timothy’s gaze burned into me until my heart fluttered and flipped like a snowboarder. “The smallest.”
