Page 112 of The Witch They Fear

Margo, from the armchair: "Hmm."

Nellie's eyes are on me, and her face is no longer teasing. "Okay. Now Kage."

I blow out a long breath, my cheeks blowing wide. Now this one’s a toughie.

He killed somebody for me, I think, and don't say.

"He's an asshole," I say. "He's actively, intentionally an asshole. He calls me Hex, and I swear he pushes me on purpose. He says things to get a rise out of me, he purposefully avoids eye contact like just looking at me will turn him to stone. He's the most aggravating man I've ever spent time with. And I can’t get him out of my system. There’s some kind of pull there, and I—I think about him constantly. I’m trying very hard to convince myself it's the blood, because the alternative is—"

"The what?" Margo's voice. Sharper than I've heard her use yet.

I look at her. Her glasses are off her forehead and back on her nose. Her hands are no longer folded in her lap. She is, in fact, sitting forward.

The entire room is dead silent. I swear the music scratched to a halt.

"The—the blood." I look at Nellie. Nellie's mouth is open. "I—he gave me his blood once. Healed me with it. After—after the… whatever. I drank it. And I think it created some kind of pull.” I move my hands back and forth, miming the way my magic curls and years for him when he’s around. “An attraction or—I don't know what to call it. I can feel where he is in a room."

The silence is so loud I check Nellie's face. Then my stomach drops.

"Calypso Dellaby," she says.

"What?"

"You drank a vampire's blood."

"I—yes?"

"You drank it."

"Yes, Nellie, that word only has one meaning."

She exaggerates a nod, her eyes about popping out of her head. "And you mentioned it like it was a footnote, Cal. You buried I drank a vampire's blood in the middle of a sentence about your love life."

Tess: "You totally buried it."

Shandy, from the rug, mildly: "She did bury it."

“So?” I murmur, fear starting to trickle in and heat up the back of my neck.

"It's—" Margo is choosing her words carefully. The healing-track, professional voice is on. "Cal. Blood-sharing isn't a small thing. It's intimate. There's a reason most witches won't even talk about it in mixed company. You take a vampire's blood into your body and you’re not the same kind of separate from him after. He can feel you. He knows where you are. He knows when you're scared. He has a piece of your interior in his interior, and you have a piece of his, and that doesn't go away just because the wound closed. Some witches consider it more intimate than sex. A lot of older covens consider it the next thing to marriage." She pauses. "The fact that he gave it to you without explaining any of that to you is—" she stops. "It's a violation, Cal. He should have at minimum told you what it would do."

"Oh. I mean—I knew. I guess I kind of knew it was a thing. I knew it created a pull. I just—I don't actually know what the rules of it are, I don't know what it does in the long run, I—"

"Wait how long ago did you drink," Shandy asks, from the rug. Calmly.

"…like twelve days."

"Twelve days?" Margo's voice spikes.

"That's actually good news," Shandy says, still mild. "Cal. A single drink fades. Two weeks, three at the outside. He'll feel you for a little while longer, you'll feel pulled toward him for a little while longer too, and then it'll dilute out of your system on its own. The body handles it. The only way it deepens is if you keep drinking from him."

"…oh."

"What makes a bond stick is repetition. Blood over and over again, on a regular schedule. That's when a healer can't undo it. Witch-vampire couples who want a mate bond drink from each other deliberately, sometimes daily, for months. That's how the permanent version gets made. One drink in a one-time situation is like a bruise. A bad one, but a bruise."

"So the twelve days—"

"You're already most of the way through the worst of it." Shandy tips her head. "If you haven't drunk from him since."