Page 78 of The Witch They Crave

I stop with one hand on the cold newel post. The voice. I've stopped flinching at it. That should probably worry me more than it does.

Go back to bed, it says. Not a command. Almost fond. Walking this house at night doesn't end anywhere good.

"And what would you know about it," I breathe, to an empty stairwell, to myself, to whatever this is.

It doesn't answer. It never answers the ones that would give it away. But it stays, close and quiet, the way a hand stays on your back in a dark room—and I notice, distantly, that it's the only thing in this house whose attention doesn't make my skin crawl.

So not alone… just bored. And curious.

Leopold's been different since the night I opened that door for him. Colder. He watches me over the rim of a cup that isn't coffee, the way you watch a tool you loaned out and got back with a crack in the handle—deciding whether you can still trust it with the job.

Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe I’m paranoid that Leopold heard everything that happened between me and Aamon after my nightmare. Does he know? Does he care? It's been a week and a half and he still hasn't said a word about it. And Leopold not saying a thing is worse than Leopold saying it.

I’m almost waiting for him to leave me another cream cardstock note that I’ve been a bad captive and my food privileges have been revoked.

But all this wondering is making me crazy–so I've stopped sleeping and started walking. Learning the house that's learning me.

I pass one of the night staff on the back stair—a young woman with a tray, who lowers her eyes and stands aside. Her sleeve slips as she does it, and there on the inside of her wrist: two small healed punctures, silvered at the edges. I've trained myself not to look at them. The whole house is staffed with them. Quiet, well-kept, marked, if you catch the light right.

I file her with the others and keep moving.

Then I hear something strange.

A room ahead, a door open a hand's width, gold light spilling across the floor. Not a cry. Not quite. Something lower, with too many emotions in it, and my body knows what I’m about to see because my brain can catch up.

I should turn around. Every instinct in my body is screaming to go the other direction.

I peek through the gap and into the room instead.

Leopold is sitting in a chair by the fire. There's a woman draped across his lap—boneless, head tipped back against his shoulder, throat open to the room. A human woman I’ve never seen before. A stranger, brought in from somewhere, for this. Leopold's mouth is at her neck, his eyes closed, one pale hand spread flat against her sternum like he's holding something he doesn't want to spill.

I've tried to picture this. Since the restaurant, since the glass of dark liquid he drank like wine, I've tried to imagine what Leopold looks like when he feeds. I got it wrong every time.

I pictured a predator.

This is a communion.

His fingers move against her sternum, almost a caress. And she makes the sound again.

And I can't tell…

That's the horror of it, frozen in this cold hall with my hand over my mouth. I can’t tell if the sound is agony or ecstasy. Her face is slack, eyes half-lidded and wet, mouth open. She could be dying or she could be coming apart with pleasure and it’s—I understand it with a slow cold drop—both. Leopold has made it both. Braided them together so tight that even the woman wearing that face couldn't tell you which one she's drowning in.

Is this… is this what Shandy has been doing? Is this why she got involved in the first place?

Leopold's eyes open.

He doesn't startle. Doesn't stop. He was never surprised—I understand that a beat too late—because he knew I was here before I did. He lifts his gaze across the room and finds me in the gap of the door, and there's no shame in it, no being caught. Just a slow, knowing heat, like I've arrived exactly on schedule.

I suck in a sharp breath and then cover my mouth to muffle the sound.

Then he puts on a show.

He knows what this looks like. He knows what he looks like—the firelight, the tenderness, the woman coming apart in his lap—and he tips his head to drag his mouth slow along the line of her throat, watching me the entire time. His hand slides up from her sternum and closes over her breast, unhurried, deliberate, and she arches into it with a sound that isn't pain at all.

He never once looks away from me.

And something low in me pulls tight.