Page 66 of The Witch They Crave

"I'm not baiting. I'm asking. There's a difference, though I get why you'd—"

His hand is around my throat before I finish the sentence.

Not crushing. Not cutting off air. Just there, all at once, his long fingers spanning the side of my neck and his thumb under my jaw, tipping my face up toward his as he draws me across the seat and close.

His pulse-warm grip, my pulse slamming against it—and down the bond, sudden and vicious, a spike of cold rage that isn't mine, that whites out for half a second and then chokes off, like a door slammed on it from the other side. Kage. He felt that. He felt me afraid. And then nothing, the wire gone slack and silent, and I don't know if he cut it off or something cut it off for him.

"Let me be clear," Leopold says, and his voice is soft, almost gentle, which is worse than a shout. "You will do what I ask of you. Every time I ask it. You'll open the doors and you won't ask what's behind them, and you'll keep doing it until I grow tired of giving the orders—" his thumb moves once against my jaw, almost tender "—or until there's nothing left of that lovely magic to spend. Whichever comes first. I'm patient. I can wait for either."

I make myself hold his stare. "You're an asshole," I breathe.

Something flickers at the corner of his mouth. Not the public smile. The private one.

"Sweetheart," he murmurs, "you have no idea."

He lets go.

I fall back against my seat and my hand flies to my throat, to the warmth his fingers left, the ghost of his grip printed into my skin. He faces front like nothing happened, fangs gone, hands folded, the picture of a young aristocrat being driven home from dinner.

The barrier flares blue across the windshield as we cross back onto campus. Devenir's ward. Tonight I could almost weep at the sight of it. The car slows. The mansion rises white and lit ahead of us and rolls to a stop at the foot of the steps.

I open my mouth. One more thing—I don't even know what, only that I need the last word, need to prove some small piece of me is still my own—

His door opens and he's gone. Just gone, between one blink and the next, no sound, no motion, only the cold air rushing in where he was.

Stupid vamp speed.

I sit alone in the dark of the car, my hand at my throat, wracking my brain to figure out what could be so important to someone like Leopold.

Something worth all this…

But deep down, I have a feeling I’ll be finding out very soon.

Chapter 16

I'm dreaming, and I know I'm dreaming, and I can't wake up.

There's a door in front of me. Dark wood. Brass handle worn bright at the grip. A number screwed into it at eye level, and I don't want to read it but I read it anyway.

Seven. One. Four.

I know that door. The hotel. My family…I've spent twelve years not thinking about that door.

A hand closes over the handle. Not mine—my mother's. Her thin gold wedding band. The freckle below her ring finger knuckle. The hand that braided my hair and put me to bed every night, and it's turning the handle, and I try to say don't but nothing comes out. In the dream I'm thirteen. In the dream I've already learned my magic is the most dangerous thing in any room.

Open it, someone says behind me.

Not my mother. A man. Smooth, patient, close to my ear, and the wrongness of it is that I almost know the voice—almost, the way you almost catch a word in another room.

Open it, Calypso. You know how.

"I don't want to."

You never want to. And you always do.

The handle turns. The door swings in.

It isn't the hotel room on the other side. It's the cottage—warm, gold-lit, full of people. And I know them. Nellie's on the couch with her legs tucked under her. Kage is leaning in the kitchen with that scarred smirk. Aamon's near the window, hands in his pockets, watching me the way he does. Everyone I have. Everyone I can't afford to lose. All of them in one room, turning to look at me as the door opens, all of them starting to smile.