Infamous: (A Bad Boy Romantic Suspense) (29 page)

“If you need anything of me, just ask.” Solosha started to float towards the door.

“Well, I did want to know…that…spidery thing from the other night. Do you know who or what it was? Can it get in here?” I asked.

“It cannot. And it is very afraid of my kind. As it should be. We cannot be harmed by them,” she said.

“But do you know who it was?” I asked again. I was tired of everyone holding back information from me. At least Tina had been willing to just tell me whatever she knew about what was going on.

“No, though Robert and I suspect one of the houses is currently trying to grab for more power. They used to be mighty but have fallen into decay of late. This is the sort of creature they used to employ regularly,” she said.

“And they’re interested in me. Great. Just terrific. Super. So glad,” I said. She wafted over and a long hand came out from the folds, the skin a beautiful iridescent blue-gray with tapered fingers. She touched my face gently.

“Do not fear, Emma. I will protect you. And Robert will protect you. None shall pass these doors we do not know. It is my vow.”

“Er, thank you. I appreciate it.” She nodded, then moved to the still-open window. She turned back to me one last time.

“Your air is sweet,” she said. And then was gone. I wasn’t really sure what that meant but decided to take it as a compliment.

I also wondered how old something that was basically made of wind was. Was something like that even technically born? I thought about warm breezes off the ocean or the cold of the wind in winter. Were there sylphs in all of those? What else was in the elements of the earth?

Of course, the big question: did I want to know more than I already did? There wasn’t any going back, but that didn’t mean I needed to be aware of all of it. Or was that cowardly? Should I want to know it all? Was it wrong to want a little mystery about the world, still?

The thing about finding out that there are vampires is that it changes everything. And then you find out there are more things and it changes everything again. Myth is real, monsters are real. So my life up until that point started to feel pretty freakin’ unreal.

I started to feel a bit of panic again, rising in my chest. I wanted to be all cool and collected, and everyone certainly seemed to think I was handling it all “well.” But when I was alone, like now, the terror would creep in. The fear that my life would be a lot shorter than I had always hoped (maybe even assumed) it would be. That what was left of it might be filled with horrors.

And then there was this: it was possible I could become a vampire. The council had mentioned it. Did I want that? Was the idea of forever actually more terrifying than that life was finite? What did you do with all that time? How did you give it meaning? Did it have any unless it was something that could end?

I didn’t really want to be having this kind of existential crisis right now. It felt like the food and wine I’d eaten at dinner was threatening to come back up, and I took deep, calming breaths. My heart was racing. The idea that I was being potentially hunted began to overwhelm me, like I was drowning. It was my first panic attack and it wasn’t conveniently timed.

I opened the window, thinking I needed more air. It was cool and smelled vaguely like roses. I sucked it in in big gulps. The stone of the sill was cool and I pressed my cheek against it. Part of me wanted to twist up some sheets and, like a clichéd movie, climb down and run away. But I wouldn’t get far, I knew that. Not with all these creatures great and small looking for me. It was a suffocating feeling, having nowhere to go.

I suppose some people would think having two strong and handsome vampires to look after me was lucky. Or sexy. And some of it was, like the actual sex. But it was also confining. Like being a prisoner who, while cared for, was nevertheless stuck. A house this big was certainly a lot of prison to wander around in, but I still couldn’t leave. I couldn’t be truly on my own. I couldn’t decide I wanted to go back home, or to Paris. And there wasn’t anything sexy about feeling trapped.

Over and over, my mind kept going back to that fight in the alley. I could have left Tasha—but no, I really couldn’t. And it had set this series of events in motion where I was now some kind of wanted entity. It didn’t make me feel special, it made me feel vulnerable. Like some beacon in a wasteland, the center of a nexus I wanted no part of.

Then again, that seemed to be the way of things. You were thrust into situations you didn’t ask for and dealt with them as best you could. I’d been really lucky in life, I realized. No major tragedies. No serious hardships. I’d never had to really question my place in the world even if I’d felt a bit adrift in it. But now the world was not the world I knew and I was at a complete loss for how I should work within it. I could be a wandering college graduate figuring her shit out in the world of human beings. In the world of vampires, changelings, sylphs, I was the odd one out. The weird human, the food.

I paced my room, rubbing my arms. And I wished for my mother, again. She always knew what to say and, maybe more importantly, what not to say. And she also always knew what to bake to make everything feel better even if it wasn’t really. At that moment I really wanted the simple comfort of her apple pie.

No one bothered me that night or tried to spend time with me. I was lonely but glad. I wasn’t in the mood for either Robert or Dimitri, or even distracting sex. As much as I was enjoying that part of the situation, it wasn’t fixing anything. And, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to complicate things.

I’d always thought of myself as a one-man kind of woman. Never dated more than one person at a time, no one-night stands, no relationships shorter than a year. True, I hadn’t any many relationships, period. But casual sex and love triangles had not previously been in my wheelhouse. Meanwhile, it seemed like this was par for the course with vampires. Which made sense; they probably had firsthand knowledge of how love that seemed like it would stay true “forever” was only possible when forever wasn’t. People didn’t have to think about that.

How many women had Dimitri and Robert been with over the years? How many had they loved and lost? Even if it was one woman a year, that would be hundreds. At the very least Dimitri had clearly slept with hundreds of women. It didn’t bother me, exactly, but it did make me feel like a notch rather a distinct person. Did I want to be someone special to them? I wasn’t sure. I was important for now, but that wouldn’t last, I was sure. And they both liked me enough to sleep with me, but that wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of much besides a very specific kind of desirability. And I wasn’t stupid enough to think that alone was the same thing as being appreciated or cared for on a deeper level.

But I had to ask myself, again, did I want that? Did I want two vampires to be really and truly “into” me? Did I want the responsibility of being the center of a real love triangle? That didn’t seem like me. I didn’t feel like that kind of girl.

What kind of girl was I, though? College graduate, vaguely floating, unlucky traveler, headed toward…what, exactly? A career as…something? Going back to school once I figured out I wasn’t good at the real world? Marriage? Kids? Did I want any of those things?

Now that my life was in actual, literal jeopardy, everything I’d previously found important seemed trivial and pointless. All the worrying about grades or dating or whatever thing had seemed so important at the time now felt like a world away. I wished I’d done more things I wanted to instead of worrying about what-ifs. I could have traveled sooner. Dated more. Learned how to surf. Instead I had waited and worried and now I was stuck in a house in Venice because creatures wanted to eat me or use me.

Maybe I was being a little hard on myself. It’s not like you can prepare for what seems like not just the impossible, but the utterly fantastical. I couldn’t exactly live my life trying to avoid run-ins with vampires or anything else I wasn’t aware was real.

The view from my room that night was clear and long, with a nearly full moon bright above. It lit the grounds with a silvery brightness that seemed to almost glow. There were rolling grass hills past the hedges, which looked like strange, sinister shapes in the dark. During the day they looked like what they were, but everything at night seemed to harbor lurking secrets to me now. I expected to see leering faces or creeping figures any second.

I curled up in my enormous bed and pulled the covers around me. I wanted warmth and comfort but not company, which seemed contradictory. I burrowed down, imagining my bed back home. It was really too small and had floral sheets I had thought were childish the last time I visited. Now I thought they were charmingly simple and would have traded all the four-poster beds in the world for a good night’s sleep in that slightly creaky twin.

Sleep started to fall, and I drifted, with strange snuffling sounds echoing somewhere between dream and waking.

A long corridor, stone, opens. The sound of water, falling, echoing endlessly. A soft breeze on my face, the smell of clay, earthy and dusty and old. The corridor is long; I can’t see any end. There are doors, gray, closed. They march past, each one like the last, and I am walking through stones older than anything.

One door is red. I don’t want to open it but it feels like I must. I can see my hand moving towards it, pale, shaking. It’s like it’s hovering away from me, an alien thing that’s not attached. I struggle to pull it back but my will is not strong enough for whatever it is that is pulling me toward this door.

I’m afraid of what’s on the other side. Deeply afraid. My heart is pounding, I can hear it, pounding, rapid. I want to say something, to pull back, but I can’t. I’m moving too fast and too slow towards the door. Its gravity is pulling me in.

I open the door and it gapes out onto darkness. Then the darkness has eyes, pale green, with slits for pupils. They are serpentine and seem to be seeking something. Seeking me. I try to step back, away, but am stuck, rooted to where I stand.

Hands on my arm, pulling me in two directions. Each is strong, insistent. I am unsure of both, trying to pull in a direction of my own.

Falling. It should terrify me but it doesn’t. Falling means I am not trapped; falling means I am out and away. It means I am free. I haven’t felt free in what feels like ages. It’s like flying but better, somehow. I am getting away.

Running. Not as free as falling, but still away. Down stone, up stairs, over a field, through a rotting garden full of statues of the dead. A weeping woman in white. A winged man.

I run and run, legs pumping, breath hitching, getting tight in the chest. I keep going, looking for someone.

Faces, friends, family. Tasha looking concerned, my mom over the stove smiling, the council, Dimitri and Robert. Then teeth. Rows and rows of teeth. Never-ending teeth. Sharp, pointed, descending, opening, biting. They fly at me while I run, tearing skin, trying to get at me.

Then, breaking through into a field, flowers bobbing heads heavy with rain. I slow, limbs feeling sluggish. I touch the petals around me, soft and velvety. What they are I can’t tell, maybe roses, maybe something else. I can never see them clearly, only feel the petals and smell the musk.

The fields roll, never-ending, an ocean of flowers. Red, purple, red again, rippling and waving. It makes me forget who I am looking for. If I ever knew.

Bodies in motion, blending, writhing. Skin on skin. Sweet and slick, full and aching, shuddering over and over. Warm, hot, blazing. Passion unending.

I stumble out of the field into a white space, snowy, cold, bitter.

This dream was getting annoying. I struggled to get out of it. It was like coming out of deep water, pushing and pulling myself up through layers of metaphor and subconscious symbolism. I was sick of this place in my head. It seemed hell-bent on upsetting me and giving me nothing but painful and complicated emotions to sift through. My waking life was more than enough.

I surfaced, awake, glad to be out. I pushed away the covers and let my face cool in the air. I’d been under like three layers of blankets and felt almost feverishly hot. I looked out towards the window to see early light dawning. It was pale yellow and peach, softly spreading over the world.

I put on some clothes and went downstairs, waving at Tina, who was groggily hunched over some papers with a cup of what I assumed was very sugary coffee. I opened the front door and walked out, breathing deep. The air was a little cold that morning and it stung my lungs. I was grateful for that. A little hurt was just a reminder that I was alive.

I looked out over the grounds and knew that I had to make a decision, and soon. I couldn’t stay here, but I couldn’t go. Much as I appreciated what Robert and Dimitri were doing for me, it was unthinkable to me to have to spend any more time like some princess in a gilded cage. I would rather risk whatever horrors were out there waiting for me than spend any more of my life trapped in a bubble.

I had to start a plan. A workable one, a sensible one, not some mad dash in the middle of the night. What it would be I didn’t yet know.

And then that night an unexpected opportunity presented itself.

“So, what do you think? You can come into the city with me, still all safe and protected, I get a little company, and you get out of this stuffy old mansion,” Dimitri said over dinner, eyes sparkling. I had a feeling what he really wanted was time alone with me. Robert didn’t look thrilled.