Dead If I Do (10 page)

I let out a moan. The sheets twisted in my fingers. Sebastian kissed my breasts, licking at the oil. I forgot about everything except his tongue and hands.

Frantically, I grasped for the drawstrings of his pajama bottoms. He was ready, and so was I. He glided into me easily. Even after all the times we’ve found ourselves in this position, I reveled in how perfectly we fit together. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him closer, deeper. We moved together, faster and faster, until we came together in a rush. Sweaty and satisfied, I kissed Sebastian on the mouth. “I can’t wait to be married to you.”

He smiled, and I noticed his fangs.

“Oh,” I said. “We forgot to . . .”

“It’s okay,” he said.

I touched his cheek, and he leaned into my hand. “No,” I said. “I want to.”

Leaning back on the bed, I offered my throat. The sweat on my body began to dry, and the room felt chilly. I shivered from cold and anticipation.

Sebastian laughed low. “You’re cold,” he said, pulling the comforter up over me. “And, uh, if I bit your neck, I’d probably kill you.”

I blushed all the way to my ears. It’s not that I was paying that much attention when Sebastian bit me during sex; my mind was usually on other things. “I knew that,” I said, with a little shrug.

He smiled and ran a finger along my shoulder. Leaning in, he nipped my exposed flesh. Then, moving downward an inch, he took another light bite. Despite everything we’d just finished, I felt my body responding instantly. “I thought I’d just go on a little exploratory mission,” he said.

“Uh, um, yeah,” I said as encouragingly as I could. “Nice. Yes.”

Sebastian slowly pulled the comforter down, as he moved on to my stomach. I twitched and moaned with every nibble. It didn’t take long before I started begging Sebastian to bite and bite hard.

When he finally sank his teeth into a tender spot on my inner thigh, I came again.

I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. My hand groped the bedside tabletop, trying to find the receiver. I mumbled a

“Hello,” while squinting at the numbers on the alarm clock. I was disappointed to discover it wasn ’t nearly as early as it felt. Someone was talking, so I had to say, “What?”

It was the bakery. Their cake maker quit. No one else at the store had training. They were very sorry. I could try the other place across town.

“But,” I said, “you’re the only place in town that does organic, vegan, locally produced . . . ” Words failed me. I couldn’t believe this was happening again.

They were sorry; a lot of people were inconvenienced.

I thanked them for letting me know. With trembling fingers, I returned the receiver to its cradle. “Well, that sucks,” I said to Sebastian’s sleeping form. “Now we have no cake to go with the polka band and the pink taffeta.”

He murmured in his sleep. I gave him a kiss on the head, but it didn’t rouse him. I considered poking him until he got up, but he looked so peaceful lying there, and besides, I had other things to do, not the least of which was go to work. Getting up made the springs creak, and Sebastian grunted an “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whispered. Grabbing some clothes, I headed off to the bathroom to dress and get ready.

In the kitchen, Mátyás nursed a cup of coffee and
stared, bleary-eyed, at the
New York Times’
front page. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair hung over his eyes. The way he continued to focus on the paper, I thought for a second something spectacular must have happened overnight. But a peep over his shoulder on the way to the coffeemaker revealed nothing more than the typical unrest in the Middle East.

“You look rougher than usual,” I said, reaching for my favorite mug. It was hand thrown and had a nearly rude depiction of a peach on it. That’s not what I liked about it, though. I appreciated its size. The cup was fat and deep. I could put almost two regular cups inside. “Didn’t sleep well?”

“You two could learn to be quieter.”

I blushed but tried to hide it behind my cup. I leaned against the counter near the sink. Once I thought I could look him steadily in the eye, I said, “You could move out.”

He snorted. I waited for some kind of retort, but instead he flipped to the next page. Barney twined her girth around my leg. A plaintive meow reminded me that she had not yet been served her breakfast. I shook some kibbles into her bowl and refreshed her water. As I was setting the bowl down, I saw it. On the Welcome Kitty mat lay the dead and decapitated form of a brown mouse. “Oh gross,” I moaned in disgust.

Barney chirped and purred happily as she munched her food.

“Kind of late in the season for that,” Mátyás said, as I wrapped the carcass in huge wad of paper towels. I didn’t reply. I was too busy cursing my cat under my breath and stomping into the pair of boots I left by the back door. I had to take the mouse corpse out to the bins in the back. I didn’t want it stinking up the kitchen garbage. I didn’t bother with a coat. The shock of the cold nipped my nose. Where water had splashed my hair while I washed my face, ice crystals began to form. The sky had turned a dusty gray, anticipating the sunrise. The bare trees were stark silhouettes. Everything was shrouded in a predawn hush.

I hurried down the icy steps and across the yard to the barn. The big plastic bins were lined up against the far wall. My hands were freezing as I tossed the paper coffin into the first one. As I slipped and slid back toward the warmth of the house, movement caught my eye. A crack between the barn doors revealed the passing of a shadow. There was something—or someone—in the barn. Despite the acreage, Sebastian didn’t keep any animals. The barn was mostly filled with his classic cars and the rusty farm implements left behind by previous tenants.

I didn’t know why it never occurred to me before. The barn made a perfect hiding place for someone impervious to the weather but who needed protection from the sun. I paused with that thought. Was Teréza more of a vampire now that she was awake? Could this be why Mátyás was nervous about the idea of Sebastian finding his mother? Was she right under our noses this whole time?

Was Mátyás keeping his mother in the barn?

I thought I’d better take a closer look in the barn just to be certain, but then I saw the parted curtain in the kitchen. Mátyás was watching me. I waved, and the lace fell quickly back into place. He knew I knew. The aluminum door handle was frigid on my exposed skin, and the sudden warmth from the kitchen brought tears to my eyes. Mátyás stood by the stove with his arms crossed defensively in front of his chest. His set expression told me he was ready for my arguments.

Just then Sebastian came strolling into the kitchen with a cheery, “Morning all.”

He crossed right between us, making a beeline for the coffee. Mátyás and I stayed locked in a stare. After filling his cup, Sebastian turned to regard both of us. He gave me a quick smile and offered me my cup, which I ’d left on the counter. The porcelain seared my skin. “Business as usual, I see,” he said drily. “Although it seems early in the game to be at stony silence. Don’t we usually save that for Saturday afternoons?”

I felt like I should say something about Teréza. As I opened my mouth, Mátyás’s eyes betrayed a tiny hint of fear. I frowned. Didn’t he just tell me last night he wanted Sebastian to talk to her? What was with the look? Was he still afraid Sebastian would actually kill Teréza?

“Seriously, the fight can’t be that bad. I only took a fifteen-minute shower.”

I shrugged. “Can you give me a ride?”

Mátyás looked away, still clearly nervous. He opened the cupboard and rummaged through the cereal boxes. Sebastian frowned at him and then at me. “Yeah, okay.”

Sebastian started up the car. We sat for a moment as
our breaths fogged up the inside. “All right, what’s going on?” he asked, as he took the scraper out from under his seat.

After taking the other one from the glove box, I met him outside. He started removing the frost from his side of the windshield. I worked on mine. “I’m pretty sure Teréza is living in the barn,” I said in a hushed voice with a glance over my shoulder. I expected swearing, maybe some banging of fists on the hood of the car, or some other eruption of emotion. Instead, Sebastian just nodded. He continued sliding the scraper over the glass. Peels of frost curled up under the plastic blade. “Yeah, makes sense. I should have thought of that.”

“Are you okay with that? I mean what do you plan to do about it?”

“I’m not sure.” He chewed his lip. We’d worked our way around the car to the rear window. Sebastian ’s side was meticulously clean; mine had uneven stripes on the window.

Once the windows were clear, we got back in the car. The interior had warmed some. I shook off the cold with an exaggerated shiver and rubbed my gloved hands together, trying to warm up my fingertips, which had gotten chilled. The sunlight glared brilliantly, glinting off fields of ice.

“She tried to kill us both,” Sebastian said. “Do you really think talking will help?”

“Don’t you have to try? She’s his mom.” I buckled myself in as he pulled the car out of the driveway. He nodded. He sounded a little defeated as he said, “I know.”

Exhaust-blackened crust covered the snow piles on either side of the highway. A murder of crows burst into noisy flight as we passed a raccoon carcass on the side of the road.

“I think you should wait,” I said. “Let me gather the coven first. We’ll do our spell of protection and make sure to include you.”

“Maybe you could ask the Goddess for some guidance,” he said. I thought he sounded tired.

“You could try praying.”

“I don’t believe in the Goddess,” he said.

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” I said.

He glanced at me briefly. “I haven’t prayed to . . . not since the excommunication.”

“I’ve been thinking. If the exorcism drove out Teréza’s illness—not her vampirism—well, what if . . . What if you could be a Catholic again?”

He shook his head. “I still am Catholic. I’m just excommunicated.”

“You
know
what I mean.”

Sebastian’s jaw twitched. He reached for the sunglasses he always kept in the cup holder, and his lips were tight. I’d been with Sebastian long enough to know what that meant: time to change the subject.

I shielded my eyes as we turned eastward, directly into the sun. I felt like I must look like Nosferatu in that old, black -andwhite movie. How ironic then that I sat next to a real vampire who looked relatively comfortable in the harsh light.

“You know what’s weird?” I said, grateful that we’d gotten into the city, and the buildings and tall trees now occasionally blocked out the glare. “It seemed to me that Teréza was slinking off to hide this morning. Given that she’s your progeny, shouldn’t she be able to daywalk?”

Sebastian’s frown deepened. “What are you suggesting?”

“Well, you always told me that the change didn’t work, and Mátyás is pretty desperate to have his mom back. Vampires have that mutant healing factor. Maybe he thought if someone else turned her, you know, more-or-less ‘all the way,’ she’d get better, you know, faster.”

“So you think the pope healed her illness, but some other vampire got her up and walking, as it were?” His knuckles flexed on the steering wheel.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Sebastian’s jaw clenched. Clearly, he didn’t like the idea. “I suppose it does.”

“I’m just saying it’s not unlike Mátyás to hedge his bets.”

“She responded to my spell well enough,” Sebastian muttered under his breath.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What difference does that make?”

“I was just thinking that if Teréza has another Blood Sire, then my power over her would be diluted. That would explain why she could try to kill me at all, I suppose.”

“I don’t know anything about this whole Blood Sire thing. Parrish would hardly talk about his.”

“Well, I don’t have one,” Sebastian reminded me. “I’m just making guesses.”

“But you knew a spell over her would work. How did you know?”

Sebastian gave me a sidelong glance through his sunglasses. “I’ve been around for a thousand years. You think I never met another vampire in all that time?”

“So you do know something,” I said. A stand of oak trees that had firmly held on to bronzed leaves blocked the sunlight momentarily.

“Not really. The vampire I met was very . . . cagey about her traditions. Plus it turns out vampires are very territorial. She saw me as a threat.”

“She?” I asked. I knew Parrish’s Sire was actually a lady, but I had no idea Sebastian had ever met one. I was feeling a little jealous.

Sebastian nodded; not picking up on the subtext, he stared at the road. “I learned, though, that one thing Hollywood got right was that a vampire increases in power the more progeny they have. It ’s because they have power over the other person—the power of life and death.”

“So, what are you saying? A Blood Sire can kill their progeny, what, with a stern glance?”

Sebastian laughed. “No, by breaking the bond with a spell.”

“Can you break with Teréza?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” he asked sharply. “If I did that, it’d kill her.”

“Oh.” And that would be bad because? “But there’s another vampire’s mark on her,” I pointed out. Sebastian glared at me. “It’s too risky.”

I nodded. I was right about Sebastian. He still cared enough about her not to want to hurt her. Perhaps I should try Mátyás’s tack. “Well, maybe if we can find this other Sire, we can enlist their help. Mátyás seems to think all she needs is some direction.”

“If that’s even the case.” Sebastian reminded me, as he adjusted his sunglasses. “No, Teréza’s problem is that she’s been buried too long.”

“Still, maybe this other Sire could, you know, take her under his wing.”