Page 23 of You’re So Vein

I scream and leap forward, knocking Augustin against the door. Cool vampire skin presses against me, and his arms go around me because there is literally nowhere else in this poxy cupboard for them to go.

For a moment – just a moment – I’m able to suck in a breath.

“Ms Ahuja, this is highly unprofessional—” His voice has gone all low and strange. And his lips are too close to my ear. My animosity for him briefly overcomes the rising panic, giving me enough space to take another deep breath.

“There’s something furry in here with us,” I whimper.

“Don’t panic,” he murmurs into my hair. “You are safe.”

“It’s furry, and it moved.”

“Where?”

“On the shelf behind me. It’s gone now.”

Augustin presses his body against mine so he can reach the shelf. His breath huffs against my cheek as he runs his hands around the pens and staplers. “Ah,” he says. “I see the problem. It’s not alive. It’s my scarf.”

“A fuzzy scarf…”

“Yes.”

“Are you making a bold new fashion statement, Durant?”

“It was… a gift. From a friend.”

“I didn’t know you had friends.”

“Not many,” he says evasively. “Does knowing the identity of the fuzzy interloper help with your fear?”

“No.”

“I suspected as much. You’re trembling.”

I am trembling. Despite how surprisingly pleasant it is being pressed up against him, my body is seizing up. My heart is mid-audition as the drummer for a black metal band. The beat pulses behind my knees, in my fingertips, on my tongue. I’m no doctor, but I assume being able to taste my heartbeat is bad, right?

Augustin’s arms tighten around me.

“Ms Ahuja, I know it’s difficult, but you need to calm down.”

“Oh yes, that helps so much. Thank you for that wonderful advice. Just calm down. I’ll get right on that,” I gasp out. “I need to think about something else. Tell me a story.”

“A story? As in, a fairytale? I don’t know any.”

“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”

He sighs with exasperation. “Fine. The year was 1888. Jack the Ripper had been terrorising London’s East End—”

“N-n-not helping.”

“I apologise. I shouldn’t use a notorious serial killer as scene setting for my real story.”

“I h-h-hate you,” I mutter, because I need to say something to remind myself that cuddling with Augustin Durant is not normal. His cool hands moving circles over my back are absolutely not taming the drum solo thrumming through my body. The deep tone of his voice isn’t loosening the vice around my chest. His breath on my cheek shouldn’t send the spiders running.

How does he know exactly what to do?

“The year was 1888,” Augustin continues, as if he hadn’t heard me. His fingers draw slow circles over my spine. “Absolutely nothing untoward happened in Whitechapel that year. John and Dulcina Durant ran a luxurious occult society in Belgravia, London, and petitioned the Dusk Court for the right to sire a son. That permission was granted, so the Durants went immediately to a local orphanage to inquire about the children.

“The Durants always chose staff for their society from this particular orphanage – children who had no one, so they had no one to gossip with about the things they saw. It was the orphanage where I grew up.”