Some Girls Bite (23 page)

Thinking of my own hasty exit from academia, I wondered aloud, “Where do they work? These philosophers, I mean.”

“They stay pretty cloistered. Some in academia, usually with enough tenure to get basement offices and night classes. You ever see those guys who hang out in coffeehouses—they’ve got their laptops and those little black notebooks? They’re always there at night, scribbling furiously?”

I grinned. “I used to be one of those guys. Well, girls, anyway.”

Morgan leaned forward conspiratorially and hooded his fingers into a claw, then pawed at the air. “You never know if they’re vamps on the prowl.”

“Good to know,” I offered with a chuckle. Morgan smiled back at me. It was a nice smile, but it broke when he pulled an empty hand from the plastic chip bag, apparently realizing we’d finished it off. I took it away, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash, a perfect arc on the shot.

“Nice,” he said. “And speaking of hoops, you have something planned?”

I didn’t know we’d been speaking of hoops, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. “What did you have in mind?”

He checked his watch. “It’s one fifteen.
SportsCenter
’s probably on.”

“It’s a date,” I said with a firm nod, and led him back into the living room.

He was right. It was on. Even as late as it was, I shouldn’t have doubted
SportsCenter
was rolling tape on ESPN. Was it ever
not
on in the wee hours of the morning? We settled back into the living room, watched forty-five minutes of sports-related sarcasm, and debated the this year’s potential NFL draft picks. When the show was over, Morgan pushed up from the couch.

“I should get going. Couple things I need to check into before dawn, and I should run by Red.”

I belatedly realized that it was Saturday night, surely a big night for the club, and that he’d opted to spend it here, eating sandwiches and watching ESPN. As he went for the door, stretching his arms above his head and revealing the curve of smooth skin at the small of his back, I found myself wishing that he wasn’t a vampire. We’d reached a kind of comfortable rapport, and a quiet night with ESPN and lumpy sandwiches was a nice change from political intrigue, death threats, and supernatural revelations.

“Thanks for coming by to apologize,” I said, rising to walk him to the door. “It would have been nicer if you hadn’t been a jackass in the first place, but a girl always appreciates a nice dose of remorse.”

Morgan laughed. “Does a girl?”

I smiled back and opened the door, and we stood next to it for a minute, watching each other. Then he leaned down, one hand at my hip, and pressed his lips to mine. Morgan kissed me in slow increments, meeting my lips, then pulling back and moving in again. It was teasing by kiss, and he was incredibly good at it. But I wasn’t eager to repeat the mistake of kissing a vampire, so I pushed him back with the flat of my palm.

“Morgan.”

He protested with a groan, then diverted his mouth to my neck, where he trailed a line of kisses from ear to collarbone. My eyes drifted shut, my body apparently as eager as his to push things forward.

“You’re a hot single vampire,” he breathily murmured. “I’m a hot single vampire. But for your unfathomable allegiance to the Bears, we should be together.”

I pushed him back again, and this time he stayed upright. “I’m not up for a boyfriend right now.”

Morgan’s face furrowed into an exquisite frown, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Do you and Ethan have a thing?”

“Ethan?
No,
” I replied, probably sounding a little more defensive than I should have. “God, no.”

Still frowning, he nodded. “Okay.”

“I don’t do fang.”

He pulled back, apparently shocked, and gazed at me. “You
are
fang.”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Friends, though?” I offered a conciliatory hand.

“For now.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed a hand against his chest again, pushing him over the threshold. “Good night, Morgan.”

He turned and walked down the steps. When he got to the sidewalk, he turned around and began strolling backward. “I’m going to worm my way into your life, Merit.”

I waggled my fingers at him. “Uh-huh. Let me know how that works out for you.”

“Hey, you’re missing out. I’ve got mad skills.”

I rolled my eyes dramatically. “I’m sure you do. Find a nice, sweet Navarre girl. You’re not ready for Cadogan.”

He faked pulling a knife from his heart, but then winked, and crossed the street to his car—a convertible roadster. The car beeped cheerily as he approached, and in seconds he was inside and zooming down the street.

 

I was asleep when they came back at five thirty a.m. They fought at first—Mallory screaming at Catcher, Catcher yelling back. The topic was magic and control and whether Mallory was mature enough for Catcher to leave her to her own devices. Mallory rued his arrogance, and Catcher rued her naïveté. The argument woke me, but it was the making up that kept me awake. They slammed into her bedroom, and that was when the grunting and moaning began. I loved Mallory, and I was beginning to appreciate Catcher’s sarcasm. But in no fathomable way was I interested in listening to the two of them engage in a rowdy bout of makeup sex. When she screamed out his name for the third time—Catcher was apparently a machine—I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and stumbled groggily through the still-dark house to the living room, where I swaddled myself and fell asleep again.

The second time I woke it was almost noon. The house was quiet and dappled in sunlight, and I was just dazed enough—just stupid enough—to attempt to stumble back to my bedroom. I resituated the blanket, only one forearm, a few toes, and my face visible above the quilting, and began the trek back upstairs. I made it through the living room unscathed, unaware of how lucky that made me. With only a few days of vampiredom under my belt, I’d yet to come into contact with that terrible little vulnerability known to all who’ve ever seen an episode of
Buffy
—the sunlight allergy. I was just conscious enough to tread carefully through the dining room, and it wasn’t until I’d made it halfway to the stairs that I felt the pinch and sudden burn. I’d walked directly across a shaft of sunlight, my uncovered forearm catching the full exposure. I gulped in air, the pain of it nearly bringing me down into the beam—it stung like a burn, but tipped to unfathomably painful levels. The heat was astounding—like punching my arm into an overheated oven—and the skin immediately began to redden and blister. I yanked it back and clutched at the blanket with my safe hand, searching frantically for some way back into the dark, realizing that I’d trapped myself in a tiny sliver of shadow. I felt behind me for the doorknob, and pulled open the door of the tiny hallway closet, careful not to push myself back into the sunlight. When I’d maneuvered it open, I stepped backward into cool darkness, hunkered down on the hardwood floor, tears streaming from my eyes from the needle-sharp pain in my arm, and fell asleep.

 

 

 

I
thought I was in a coffin. I thought I was the brunt of some horrible Navarre joke, or some horrible Cadogan hazing ritual, and I’d been stuffed into a pine box like the dead girl I’d once thought I was. Starting to hyperventilate, I clawed at the blankets around me, then pounded on the walls, screaming for someone to let me out.

I fell forward when Mallory pulled the door open, landing face-first in her poofy slippers. Face flush with embarrassment, I rose to my elbows, spitting out bits of pink polyester fuzz. So much for the hard-ass vamp.

Mallory’s voice was strangled, and I could tell she was working hard not to laugh. “What. The. Hell.”

“Bad night. Really bad night.” I sat down on the floor, tucking my legs beneath me, and checked the status of my arm. It was lobster red from fingers to elbow, but the blisters were gone. Supernatural healing was a handy trick for an absentminded vampire, although it would make my enemies harder to kill. Tit for tat, I guess.

Mallory crouched beside me. “Jesus, Mer. What happened to your arm?”

I sighed and spent a few seconds wallowing in self-pity. “Vampire. Sunlight. Poof.” I waved my arms in the shape of a mushroom cloud. “Third-degree burns.”

“Dare I ask why you were sleeping in the closet?”

I didn’t want to embarrass her with a replay of her late-night antics, so I shrugged off the question. “Fell asleep, got too close to the sun, hunkered down.”

“Come on,” she said, taking my free elbow and helping me to my feet. “Let’s at least put some aloe on your arm. Does it hurt a lot? Never mind. Don’t answer that. You’ve got a master’s degree in English and you’ve yet to string a subject and predicate together. I’ll draw my own conclusions.”

“Mallory!”
Catcher’s voice boomed down the stairs.

Mallory fixed her mouth into a tight line and walked me into the kitchen. “Ignore it,” she advised. “Much like the bubonic plague, it’ll go away if you give it enough time.”

“Mallory! You weren’t finished! Get back in here!”

I glanced up the stairway. “You didn’t leave him handcuffed to the bed or something, did you?”

“Jesus, no.” I incrementally relaxed, until she continued. “My headboard’s a single piece of wood. There’s nothing to handcuff him to.”

I groaned and tried to wipe the image of a naked, bound Catcher writhing on the bed from my mind. Not that it was a bad image, but still . . .

Mallory kept us moving toward the kitchen. “He’s pissed because he doesn’t think I’m paying attention to his incessant goddamn lectures on magic.” Her voice went lower, and she mimicked, “Mallory Delancey Carmichael, you’re a fourth-class sorcerer with duties and obligations, blah blah blah. I think I understand now why the Order kicked him out; he was too bossy, even for them.”

We went into the kitchen, and I took a seat while Mallory pulled a tube from a drawer next to the sink. She slathered cream on my arm with careful attention, then recapped the tube and set it aside. “I wonder if you need blood today.”

I frowned, partly from the thought of drinking blood, partly from the realization that Mallory had become my predatory den mother. Since when had I become so needy? “I’m fine, I think.”

“It’s just that sometimes in the literature”—and by that she meant the occult fanzines that appeared in our mailbox with surprising frequency—“when vamps are injured, they need extra blood to supplement the healing process.” Her gaze flashed up. “You are healing, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “The blisters are gone.”

“Good.” She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bag, and my stomach began to grumble immediately.

“I need it,” I sheepishly admitted, a little ashamed that I still had so little knowledge about the workings of my post-change body. I rubbed at a crick in my neck, no doubt the result of my having slept hunkered in a ball on the closet floor. “The fact is, for all this talk about how strong I am, I’m really not very good at being a vampire.”

Mallory warmed the blood, poured it into a glass, and handed it to me. But she held up a hand before I could lift it to my mouth, went back to the refrigerator, and pulled out a celery stalk and bottle of Tabasco. She dotted some pepper sauce into the glass, then slipped in the celery. “Bloody Bloody Mary.”

I took a sip and nodded. “Not bad. It could use vodka and tomato juice, but not bad for all that.”

Mallory snickered, but her grin faded when Catcher stomped into the kitchen. In his hands was the thick leather-bound book I’d seen him looking through the night I’d visited my grandfather’s office. He was half naked, a pair of jeans that rode low on his sculpted hips the only visible bit of clothing. The man had a body to die for—all curves and angles and little delicious hollows of sculpted muscle and flesh.

While I took in the view, Mallory yelled, “Will you quit following me around? It’s not even your house!”

“Someone has to follow you around! You’re a danger to the goddamn city!”

A little thrilled that this piece of supernatural drama had nothing to do with me, I gave up the pretense of politely ignoring their fight, put down the glass, and gave them my full attention.

Catcher stalked through the kitchen, practically threw the book down on the kitchen counter, then pushed Mallory onto a stool. He pointed at the book.
“Read!”

Mallory popped up and stared at him for a long time, her mouth drawn into a tight line, her hands fisted so tightly together her knuckles were white. “Who the hell do you think you are that you can order me around?”

Tension and magic rose and spiraled around the room, tangible enough to raise the hair on my arms and neck. Eddies of it dipped and flowed, the ends of Mallory’s hair lifting around her face like she’d stepped into a strong breeze.

“Jesus,” I muttered, staring at the two of them.

Without warning, there was a crack of light. My glass, thankfully empty of blood, shattered on the counter.

“Mallory,” Catcher warned, a half growl.

“
No
, Catcher.”

The overhead light flickered as they stared at each other, a strobe lighting the battle of the wills.

Finally, Catcher sighed, power dissipating from the room with a tangible
whoosh
. Without words or hesitation, he grabbed her arms and pulled her against the line of his body. Then he lowered his head to hers, and kissed her. She squealed and twitched, but as his mouth worked at hers, she stilled. When, moments later, he pulled back, he looked at her expectantly.

For a heartbeat, then two, she just stared at him. “I told you we were done.”

“Sure you did.” He kissed the top of her forehead, turned her body, and pushed her shoulders so she dropped onto the stool. Then he raised her chin to meet his gaze. “I have to get to work. Read the Key.”