Chapter 15: Predicaments

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  Two days before my grandmother welcomed death’s embrace at long last, after months of illness, she told me a story.

  I was eleven the early spring morning she summoned me to her makeshift bedchamber in the smaller pantry in The Rabbit and the Rooster - a temporary solution that, although untraditional, allowed her to be within voice’s reach from the rest of the family throughout the day as well as the heat of the grand furn in the kitchen. I sat on the edge of her cot and held her bony hand when she spun for me the tale of Annabelle. Her final tale.

  The poor orphan girl, Annabelle, had hardly a full set of garments on her body or enough to eat for the day, when she stumbled upon an old crone in the woods calling for help. Annabelle set aside her own misfortune and helped the old crone, who was both too blind and too weak to find her way home.

  The old crone’s hut was ramshackle with holes in the roof and a furn that wouldn’t keep fire for long, and before Annabelle could leave, the crone would ask of her another favor, then another. Annabelle, warm of heart, split the old crone’s firewood, fetched her water, and cooked her supper - and when the old crone could find no more tasks for the girl, Annabelle found work of her own, for there was much more work to be done.

  A day turned into a week, and a week into a month. Annabelle worked hard and asked for nothing in return; she ate the scraps of her own labor and slept in the chicken coop. Even after she one day found piles and piles of bones buried in the garden and discovered that the old crone was in truth a child-eating witch, she stayed and worked from morn to eve - and the witch was content with her for now. Only when Annabelle’s labor was finished would the witch kill and eat her, like she had done the others before her.

  One day, when the witch had grown too hungry for human flesh but also too fond of Annabelle, she went out to ensnare another poor child to eat instead. When she returned with a young boy, Annabelle offered to take care of the boy and cook him up for her. The witch, delighted by her dutiful apprentice, handed her the boy and went for an afternoon nap, and Annabelle hid the boy away in the chicken coop and took a chicken to the chopping block in his stead. She then cooked a wonderful meal with rosemary and deadly nightshade from the witch’s garden, and the witch, hungry and greedy as she was, ate all of it. Weakened by the rosemary, the witch fell ill and died from the deadly nightshade before the night was through.

  Annabelle and the boy made the witch’s hut, now repaired by Annabelle’s own hand, their new home, and they took in any poor and unfortunate soul who wandered too far into the woods.

  The tale of the brave, cunning, and patient Annabelle lingers in my mind when I, by sunrise the next day, knock on the library door. Seth calls for me to enter, and I steel my nerves as I once more enter the innermost chamber of the vampire’s lair.

  “Good morning, Kia,” Seth greets me, his dark eyes fixed on the page of his journal that he’s currently scribbling in. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Well enough,” I say and stop next to the desk. The notebook thuds softly when I drop it on the surface - not an aggressive move, but just loud enough to catch his attention. The feathered quill ceases its dance across the paper, and Seth looks first at my notebook and then me.

  “Please take this before I change my mind,” I say.

  For the fraction of a second, his attention glides to the entrance behind me. “Would you be so kind as to lock the door?”

  Only when the lock has clicked in affirmation does he put the quill to rest in the inkwell and unwrap the book. He plucks the vial from the hidden compartment and turns it between his fingers, inspecting the unusual amount of blood with the deadly calm befitting of a predator. “This is far more than we agreed upon,” is all he says.

  “I am well aware.”

  Placing the vial on the desk with surprising tenderness, Seth closes both the notebook and his own journal and stands up to face me properly. “I told you not to take pity on me,” he says, jawline tight. He is an entire head taller than me, I realize as we stand face to face like this - and slightly more broad-shouldered than I once noted him to be.

  A part of me wants to deny his accusation, but I’m not even sure what, exactly, brought me to double the dose last night. It just felt right at the time. “Thank you for the book,” I say instead. “Though I cannot read the title.”

  “Am I to believe this is some manner of paying me back for your present?”

  When he puts it like that, I feel like a fool. I shrug, averting my gaze to find purchase somewhere on the bookshelves behind him. “I suppose it is.”

  A light chuckle brushes against the stray hairs on my forehead. “Firstly, in the strange case that you should not be aware: A present, especially one without occasion, is usually given with the expectation of nothing in return. As such, this was not meant to be transactional in nature - although I accept your donation with great enthusiasm.”

  I roll my eyes. Smart-mouthed bastard.

  “Secondly,” he says and picks up the vial again, swirling its sanguine content a bit, “you would need to extract a substantial amount to ever pay off the book in question.”

  A shiver runs through me at the thought of slitting open my own veins and bleeding myself half dry as payment for something. A mere object. I swallow hard. “Is my blood worth so little?”

  “Not to me,” he says. “The book, however, is worth a small fortune.”

  I huff. “In my ears, that was as good as a ‘yes’.”

  Seth moves to lean back against the desk; a rare act of casualness from him. “On the subject of payment…” he says, leaving my comment unengaged - perhaps strategically. “Would you mind if I consumed this immediately?”

  The audacity of his request makes me meet his eyes with a frown. “With me in here?”

  “You are free to leave or turn away, of course, if the thought of being present makes you uncomfortable.” He runs his thumb over the cork stopper in evident impatience, and his immaculate focus buckles and shifts to the prize in his hand. “Your generosity challenges me. With this in here I will be unable to concentrate on our lesson.”

  I ought not to be disgusted, as I used to be by the mere thought of him, a human, ingesting something that was once part of me, of my body. But he is no human, and that very fact seems to shift something within me. To him, this is as natural as me eating the meat of an animal, and I would be a hypocrite to treat it as something deviant. The only difference is that, in this particular case, the prey is still very much alive, and sentient, and witnessing part of itself be consumed. And while that makes it undeniably odd and unseemly, watching him would be… harmless.

  In some dark corner of my mind, I find a scintilla of morbid curiosity.

  “Go ahead,” I say, perhaps a bit dismissively. “As long as you don’t transform, that is.”

  Within a heartbeat, Seth has the cork stopper out and in his palm. “Much obliged,” he says and flashes his teeth in a wide, almost triumphant grin. No fangs. “I promise not to frighten you this time, Kia. I predominantly transform at will, and I see no need for theatrics over a thimbleful of blood.”

  My mind latches onto the ‘predominantly’ that slips out of him, but I tuck the formulating question away for another time. I’m not sure I want the answer to it anyway. Not right now, at least.

  I nod my consent and watch in silence as Seth tips back his head, opens his mouth, and lets the blood - my blood - drip directly onto his tongue. As if mesmerized, I count the drops again, all fourteen of them. Only when the last one has left the vial does Seth swallow, his Adam’s apple twitching once, eyes closing for a moment. He then inhales slowly, his nostrils flaring.

  Finally, he straightens his back, and a smile pulls at the corner of his lips as he turns to me. “Much better.”

  If I kissed him now, would I taste myself on him? Sweet and metallic and strange, yet familiar on his tongue?

  The spontaneous notion, inappropriate and utterly unwanted, horrifies me far more than watching him consume blood ever could. Fighting the queasiness growing in my throat, I urge the foul, twisted thought back into whatever hiding place in my subconscious it emerged from.

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  Unable to face him properly, I clear my throat and find my seat. “If you are finished, then let us begin the lesson.”

  “I will be shortly,” he says and grabs the carafe of fresh water he always makes sure to bring to our meetings, mostly for my sake. With eerie precision, he pours some into the vial, which he then swirls and rinses out. He drinks that water, too, although I doubt he can taste anything in it, diluted as it is.

  Wiping the few remaining droplets off in his sleeve, he presses the cork stopper back in and returns the vial to my notebook, all clean and ready for the next instalment. Much to my surprise, he then continues on to the liquor shelf and pours himself half a glass of brandy, which he downs in one quick movement.

  It feels like a stab at my pride to be flushed away immediately like that, and I’m not sure why.

  “Is my blood truly that unpalatable?” I ask him, secretly digging my nails into my palms to redirect the sharpness before it enters my voice. The effect is questionable. “Or is my company starting to grate on you to the point where alcohol is needed to endure it?”

  Lifting an eyebrow, the vampire puts the glass back on the shelf. “As tempted as I am to take the bait, I cannot bring myself to provoke you, Kia, not even as a jest,” he replies and moves to join me at the desk. “The drink serves a purpose other than inebriation; it masks the scent of your blood on my breath.”

  I blink. “Oh.”

  And here I was, thinking the worst about him. But of course he, as meticulous as he is, does it preemptively. After all, what good would my constant vigilance do if he were the one to accidentally disclose our arrangement to Chiselle simply by being near her sometime after feeding?

  Once seated, Seth slides a stack of paper sheets in front of me and adds casually: “To eliminate any uncertainties, I can inform you that you taste utterly delectable.”

  Instantly, my throat goes dry, my mind blank.

  “Now, proceeding with the lesson,” he says, dipping the quill. “Today, you will practice your handwriting.”

  ?? ? ?︵?? ? ??︵? ? ??

  The first day of November is brutal, I come to realize when the clock has struck three in the afternoon.

  A solid cover of lead-dark clouds stretches far above the land, and the thick moisture in the air, coating the overgrown field in mist this morning, has now brought rain so cold that a freezing pain pierces through my skin and into my skull, making me grind my teeth. It can’t be more than a week or two from now before we’ll get the first bout of overnight frost of the season.

  Chiselle and I are soaked to the bone even before we reach the first snare. With all the leaves now squelching under the soles of our waterlogged boots, there is nowhere to seek shelter, so we trudge through the forest in tense silence, eager to get the afternoon check-up over with.

  For the third day in a row, all of the traps and snares are empty, and Chiselle is quietly agonizing by the time we slip back inside the scullery, our hair drenched and rain dripping from the tips of our noses.

  Gesturing for me to stay in the scullery, she sheds her cloak and dress right beside me without hesitation and then continues on to the kitchen in nothing but her undergarments. Compliantly - and perhaps a bit stunned by her brazenness - I stay on the doormat and listen as she rummages through a cabinet. When she returns with a couple of blankets, she signs for me to undress as well.

  I swallow hard. Like hers, my undergarments are of thin, white cotton, and I expect them to be as clinging and see-through as hers, soaked as they are right now. While Chiselle demonstrates a total disregard for modesty, allowing me to glimpse things only a lover or a mother should, I have my reservations - primarily due to the fact that I have a series of stripes gracing the skin of my inner thighs. Forbidden scars. And I cannot let her see them.

  While I hardly know a thing about the world of immortal beings, least of all its laws, I doubt I would be spared punishment if they found me complicit in the act of feeding a convicted vampire through bloodletting. Not to mention how they - whoever ‘they’ are - would react to me knowing the precise location of a confirmed one.

  If they ever found out, that is.

  Perhaps this is why Seth insists on keeping Chiselle in the dark about our deal; because she is not a prison guard, as I initially believed her to be, but rather an informant. And she answers to another master.

  “I prefer to change without an audience, thank you,” I say. The redhead looks me over with those invading eyes, as if she’s trying to figure out if I am indeed hiding something, and I brace myself for another inspection. But then she snorts, drops one of the blankets by her feet, and walks away.

  Before she can change her mind, I snatch the blanket off the floor and pin it in front of my body using my chin, then undress quickly. As soon as I am stripped to my undergarments as well, I wrap the blanket around my chest and wear it like a sleeveless dress. I find a tub and collect our dripping clothes for drying by the fire. I certainly need warmth as well, but I want to dry myself off properly and change into a full set of dry clothes before joining Chiselle in front of the furn.

  Without a word, I pass the redhead and continue upstairs to my bedchamber. Even at this time of day, despite the partially open curtains, the room is dark from the complete lack of sunlight outside. I leave the door open to allow a bit of light in from the hallway while I ignite the lamp on my nightstand.

  The first thing I notice under the dancing flame is a new note, placed on the cover of my treasured novel. Picking it up, I find another short message, and I debate with myself if I should wait and read it when I’m not wet and shivering from the persistent cold. My curiosity gets the better of me, though.

  ‘T’ as in ‘tree’, ‘h’ as in ‘horse’...

  I mouth the letters and their sounds to myself, working my way through them one at a time, until I am confident.

  “‘The Maiden and the Sea’,” I read aloud. A title - the one I couldn’t decipher.

  “Impressive.”

  His voice comes from the doorway a few strides to my left, from the still gloomy bathing chamber.

  A choked yelp escapes me, and I take an instinctual step away from the source, accidentally treading on the hem of the blanket wrapped around me. The fabric bundles up underneath my sole, and I lose my footing in an instant. As I tumble backwards, the blanket is ripped off me, and I land back-first on my bed in all my thinly clad glory. Immediately, my hands surge forward to cover my most intimate areas.

  Seth steps out from the bathing chamber, his dark eyes gleaming, betraying all the emotions that his face is otherwise hiding: surprise and guilt and wicked amusement.

  “What in the Nine Hells are you doing here?” I hiss, my shock manifesting as sharp irritation while I lie exposed and vulnerable in front of him.

  “I was about to commend you for reading entirely without support from your alphabet, but I find that the moment has now passed,” he replies and moves to pick up my blanket. With his face lowered before me, he lets his gaze wander to a place it shouldn’t, and I witness the exact moment he notices the scars on my inner thighs - at least those accidentally peeking out from beneath my braies.

  His pupils widen significantly, and he stills, as if wholly entranced; as if his tightly gripped self-control is starting to slip and he’s battling himself - willpower against impulse - to retain it.

  Imaginary heat pools in my belly at his improper vicinity and sharpened, devouring focus. At the realization of how close he is to the part of me where no man has ever ventured before. At the thought of that tongue and those long, slender fingers, and what they might be able to perform with the alleged stamina and dexterity of a vampire.

  A shudder runs through me, and Seth blinks. Then, almost violently, he tears his attention from me, and I remember to inhale.

  Swallowing so hard his Adam’s apple bounces, he throws the blanket to me. “Please cover yourself.”

  “W-what are you doing in my room?” I force myself to ask once more, my cheeks burning as I sit up and wrap the barrier of damp fabric tightly around my body so that only my head is visible to him.

  “To deliver the note,” he says, running a hand through his silver tresses. The movement makes them shimmer like liquid starlight against the dancing flame. “You returned earlier than anticipated, however.”

  “Right,” I breathe.

  “Speaking of which…” In a moment of silence, he turns toward the open door to the hallway. “Considering the fact that I can neither detect blood nor hear Chiselle working downstairs, I expect your hunt turned out fruitless again today.”

  It is not even a question - it is a statement. He already knows. But how can he?

  Eager to shift the conversation away from me and my lack of clothing, I ask: “Are you telling me that you would be able to smell exsanguinating game in the scullery from all the way up here?”

  Seth offers me a mild smile - one meant to disarm. “I am, though only faintly.” When I quirk a brow at him, he elaborates: “Partly because I am searching for it intentionally, and partly due to the fact that I am regenerating, albeit slowly and steadily. For this you deserve all of the credit, Kia, in case you were not aware.”

  A lurch in my stomach. “I was not.”

  This information is not entirely inconsequential to me. He is regenerating because of the blood I am paying him. Growing stronger, his senses are heightening and his focus sharpening. When I first arrived here, all bruised and cut up, I managed to break into his library before he noticed my presence; now he can detect the smell of bleeding prey in the farthest corner of the mansion.

  Because of me, the predator is awakening from his slumber, and I cannot help but wonder how this affects his instincts and bloodlust - and, by extension, my safety.

  Folding his arms to rest against the small of his back, Seth moves to the window and looks at the absolute wetness that is outside. “Although I derive several delights from our arrangement, I cannot survive on seven drops of human blood alone. Degrading as it may be, I need animal blood.” He scans the scenery beneath him through the layer of rain droplets on the pane of glass. “Which unfortunately seems to be difficult to obtain for the time being.”

  “Chiselle is quite stressed about it too,” I say, “So much that she seems to have forgotten how much she currently hates me.”

  The man huffs softly. “Give it a few hours. I am certain she will remember before nightfall.”

  I stare at his back and casually crossed forearms. At his long fingers. I swallow. “And why is that?”

  “Tonight, Chiselle and I will discuss how to address my dwindling source of sustenance. I predict that she might not like my decision.”