Time After Time (Cora's Bond) (7 page)

“I called a series of councils, both closed, strictly among the Adelphoi, and open, allowing others to make their cases,” Dorian said, as if I had casually asked how his day had gone. “Together, we had to assign official responsibility to the Kyrioi and decide on what actions were permissible to take in response to this insult to our faction. We established
jus ad bellum,
and we are now taking further steps as a consequence of that resolution.”

I shook my head in frustration even though I knew he couldn’t see me. He had to know that none of that made any sense at all to me. That could only mean that he was hiding things from me by making them difficult to understand to keep from breaking his promise that he’d never lie to me.

“Is that why I’ve been so upset for no reason since yesterday evening?” I demanded. “Because I don’t think it’s coming from me. No, scratch that. I know it’s not coming from me. It’s you. Something’s up with you, and it’s big and it’s bad, and you’re not telling me, dammit!”

“I’m very sorry that this has affected you, Cora,” he said coolly. “I would do anything to spare you the least mental disturbance, if I could.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. If he’d been in front of me right then, it would have been very hard not to punch him. But he wasn’t. I was on campus, and he was...wherever he was. And in such terrible danger that I could taste it.

“Take me home,” I said abruptly.

“What?” he asked, a note of surprise jolting through his stonily neutral tone of voice.

“You heard me. Take me home. I want to be where you are.”

“No, Cora.” The iciness of his words froze my heart over the phone. “You must stay there. I’ll see you on Friday, as we’ve already arranged. Not a moment before.”

“You can’t do this, Dorian,” I said. “Whatever it is that you’re doing, you have to stop!”

“We have no laws, but we have customs, and they are the only thing that prevents the old times, the bad times, from returning,” he said flatly.

Just then, class ended, and students began to pour out of the rooms on either side of the hall, their joking and chatting creating such a din that I had to strain to hear him.

“I know that these proceedings will be difficult for you, but it will all be over soon, one way or another,” he continued. “And then we can attend Hattie and Jean’s funeral in peace and continue to strengthen our side against the enemy.”

I started to protest. “But—”

“No ‘buts,’ Cora,” he said. “I will send for you on Friday. And I will see you. I promise. Whatever it takes.”

He was gone.

Looking pale herself, Clarissa escorted me back to my dorm, and with a quick, meaningless quip, she left me there alone with the shifter guard outside my door.

I paced the empty apartment until I thought I’d wear a track in the carpet. As the time edged closer to six o’clock, I forced myself to slow down long enough to start dinner. I ripped open the frozen bag of a skillet dinner and poured it into a frying pan. And just as I heard Lisette’s key in the door, I doubled over and fled to my bathroom, where I vomited my guts into the toilet.

The pain was a hammer on my body, beating out my brain, flowing down my throat and into my belly, where it sent everything else rocketing up again, over and over again. Never had I felt anything like this before, not even when I’d suffered the conversion that had rewritten every cell in my body. Never could I have imagined that someone could bear this and survive.

“Cora?” Lisette said from the doorway. “Cora, what’s wrong? Can I do anything for you? Get you anything? Call for help?”

I shook my head before another spasm took me, and I leaned over the toilet, not caring that I was clutching its rim in both hands, not caring about anything except the pain that wracked my body—and Dorian.

Dorian, Dorian, Dorian.
Something terrible had happened, something unspeakable, and I was helpless in the mere backwash of his pain.

How much more must he be in?

I tried to fumble for my phone, but another wave of nausea struck, and then I was beyond all thought or reason for a very long time. My existence was pared down to nothing but my agony and the spasms that seized me, shot through with terror whenever there was enough of my mind left over to feel anything but pain.

During a brief respite, I came to myself long enough to register the cold rim of a glass being pressed against my lips, water sloshing into my mouth. I swallowed reflexively and then groaned, and my eyes focused on Lisette’s worried face.

“Hey, Cora?” she said softly. She moved my arm, and I realized that she was retrieving something from under it—a thermometer from my armpit. She frowned at it. “You don’t have a temperature. You couldn’t have eaten something bad, could you? You’ve had all the same things I had today.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I was leaning against the bathtub, the cold of it creeping into my bones, but I couldn’t make myself move. I felt another wave coming, far away for the moment but gathering to overwhelm me. “Dorian,” I managed.

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Lisette said. “I called, but I can’t get through to him. His secretary keeps picking up. Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

I shook my head again, unable to explain as the pain rushed closer. I wasn’t sick. I couldn’t become sick anymore, not in a way that a human could. Only injury could make me feel this kind of pain—injury to me or through my bond with Dorian.

And then the pain arrived, barreling through my head and down into my stomach, and I heaved over and over again, long past the point where there was nothing more to come up.

The next hours were a blur, but nothing was as bad as that first blast of pain. Finally, sheer exhaustion overtook me, and I slumped against the wall across from the toilet as my eyes slid shut helplessly against it.

When I opened my eyes again, daylight was creeping through the open doorway that led to the living area. I forced my body to straighten, and it did, stiffly, my cognatic healing sluggish and unresponsive.

I didn’t want to die. That was my first thought. And because I didn’t want to die, Dorian must still be alive.

I fumbled for my phone, which I’d dropped on the floor, and forced my clumsy fingers to text Dorian.
Where are you? What happened?

His reply was instant.
So glad to hear from you. Be well. I’ll see you tonight.

I stared at it in disbelief, unable to connect the hell I’d just gone through with those words. If what I’d suffered had been merely the echoes of what his experience, what had happened to him? Why hadn’t he warned me about it? And why wouldn’t he tell me now?

I called, but the phone rang over to his service again, and the light baritone that answered was adamant that Dorian couldn’t be disturbed—even for me.

“Is he all right, though?” I demanded. “Why won’t you let me talk to him?”

“Mr. Thorne has requested that he not be disturbed right now under any circumstances,” the man said impassively.

“But is he okay?”

“I’m afraid that he doesn’t keep his entire staff updated as to the state of his current constitution, but I have not heard anything that would lead me to believe that he is not fine, madam,” the man said.

I wanted to rant and rail and threaten to have his job if he didn’t connect me immediately, but I knew that all that was useless. So I just took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Well, leave him a message to call me as soon as he can. No, scratch that,” I corrected. “Tell him I want him to call me now, no matter what.”

“I shall pass on your message, madam,” the man said.

“Thank you,” I said instead of screaming with frustration, and I hung up and curled my legs up against my body, resting my forehead on my knees.

“You’re awake!” Lisette appeared in the doorway.

I unfolded, getting stiffly to my feet. “Yeah, sort of.”

She looked me up and down and said, “I’ll make you some oatmeal.”

“You, cooking breakfast twice in a month? Who are you, and what have you done with my roommate?” I joked weakly, hanging up the towel that someone—probably Lisette—had used to cover me as I slept.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said, busying herself in the kitchen. “I’ve never seen you like that. I swear, when you finally fell asleep, I was minutes from calling an ambulance. You didn’t look that miserable when you were dying of cancer.”

I collapsed into the cushions of the sofa, feeling like I was a thousand years old. “I didn’t feel that miserable when I was dying of cancer. But I don’t think it’s contagious, so don’t worry.”

“Contagious or not, you’re staying home today,” Lisette ordered. The microwave stopped with a beep, and she brought over the oatmeal just as Christina stumbled out of her room, yawning, and gave us both a wave.

“You look better,” she said.

“I feel better,” I replied, even though my mouth tasted of stale bile.

Christina nodded and disappeared into the bathroom she shared with Chelsea.

“Yeah, a whole two steps from death instead of just one,” Lisette said, sitting across from me.

The ache had faded from my bones before I even ate the first spoonful of oatmeal. I was surprised at how hungry I was—and thirsty. The thin oatmeal took care of both of those desires handily. Trust Lisette to know exactly what I needed.

I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, but I’m fine now.”

Lisette didn’t look convinced. “Well, finish that up, and then get back in bed, okay? You’ve got a lot on your plate, and you won’t be able to do any of it if you keep getting sick.”

“Right, okay.”

She frowned at me. “I mean it, Cora.”

And she did. As soon as I finished my oatmeal, I took a shower to get rid of the lingering smell of sickness and then let her bundle me into bed. I slept my first true sleep since Tuesday night then, though my dreams were haunted by nightmares.

When I finally woke up again, the clock on my phone told me that my class of the day had already begun. I groaned and rolled out of bed feeling like my brain had been turned inside out. I tapped through to the house app to send the chauffeur a message about picking me up in front of my apartment instead of at my class, and then I stumbled into the living area to find Clarissa lounging on my Gramma’s sofa—which Rojek had assured me would be taken away over the weekend—with her feet propped up on the coffee table.

I frowned at her, but of course she took no notice.

“About time you were up, sleepyhead,” she said.

“What are you doing here? And what happened to your hair?” I asked suspiciously.

Clarissa now sported a fashionably shaped bob instead of the nearly elbow-length waving layers that she had worn just the day before.

“I’m guarding you, of course. You didn’t go to class, and so I didn’t go to class. Like the hair?” She raised her hand to pat the auburn locks. “I’m afraid it might have been a mistake. I might be taken for someone’s mother.”

I looked at her perfect, unlined face. “You won’t ever be taken for a college student’s mother, no matter what you do to your hair. Why did you cut it?”

“Can’t a girl get bored?” Clarissa pouted.

“Yes, a girl can, and I know you do, too, but if you cut your hair every time you got bored, you’d be bald.” I sat on the chair across from her. “So gives? What’s happened that Dorian won’t tell me about? And how is he?”

She met my eyes and said with absolute sincerity that I didn’t believe for a moment, “Nothing’s up, and Dorian is as fine as I am.”

“Okay,” I said, trying again. “So what happened last night, then? Was he okay last night?”

“Of course he was,” Clarissa said in a way that didn’t convince me in the least. “If he’s okay now, he had to have been okay last night, too, didn’t he?”

I scowled. “You’re a terrible liar.”

She shrugged. “I don’t often have to try very hard on humans.”

“Well, I’m not human,” I snapped. I stood up and retrieved my coat from its hook beside the door, shoved it on, and slung my backpack over it.

Clarissa got up more slowly. “You don’t have to tell me that, kitten. If you want to know what’s been going on with Dorian, you’ll have to ask him yourself when you get to his house.”

“He’ll be there?” I asked as I paused at the door, voicing for the first time my fear that maybe he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.

“Of course,” she said, following me out of the dorm room. The shifter bodyguards fell in behind us—two this time instead of one. That change caught my attention enough to truly register their presence for the first time in weeks.

“Why isn’t anyone concerned about large men and women standing in the hallway next to my door all night?” I asked Clarissa. The other bodyguards were under general instructions to avoid looking like they were with me, and talking to me was at the top of their list of no-nos.

Clarissa laughed as if relieved at the change in subject. “Oh, I’ve taken care of everyone on this floor, for the time being. The effect wears off fast, but a simple aversion like that—‘pay no attention to the hulking dude in front of the door’—works for short bursts without requiring a full-fledged thrall. And if someone reports them to the apartment staff, well, I have the staff under
slightly
tighter control, shall we say.” Her eyes went half-lidded, and I wondered just how much she enjoyed the process of enthralling people.

Knowing Clarissa, probably a lot.

We took the elevator down, and by the time I reached the sidewalk, Dorian’s Bentley was waiting for me. I swung my backpack in and followed, nodding to Jenkins as he shut the door.

I tried not to scowl at Clarissa, still standing at the curb. Being angry at her was as pointless as being mad at the clouds when it rained. But I was glad when the car rolled away, taking me away from her—and toward Dorian.

R
ojek greeted me at the door, and I remembered my manners long enough to pause as the footmen took my jacket and backpack, thanking him for arranging for my grandmother’s things to be donated.

“Of course, madam,” he murmured, but his stoic face managed to radiate approval.