“One time I accidentally stole a lipstick from Target. It got pushed to the back of my cart and I didn’t see it, but when I was unloading everything into my car, I saw it and just took it.”
“That’s it?” Lucas cocks an eyebrow.
“I live on the edge.” I shrug and look at my sister. “Sorry about the memory thing. It was kind of for your own safety. I’ll cast an extra protective spell around the house later, too.”
A few seconds of awkward silence tick by, and it’s only then I realize that Abby was watching TV when we came over. A commercial for toilet bowl cleaner sounds behind me.
“Will this new circle actually keep the in-laws away this time?” Phil asks, a smile slowly coming to his face.
“I can definitely make that happen.” I rub my temple, feeling a massive headache starting to form. “But really, we should go. I need to get back to Thorne Hill so I can work on breaking this curse. I’ll help you clean first.”
“Seriously, Cal, it’s fine,” Abby presses.
“It’s late.” I step out of the salt circle and grab the bloody blanket from the couch. Abby will be disappointed to know that the couch is pretty much clean and she can’t use it as an excuse to trash the thing.
I’m aware Phil is still standing there, rooted to the spot as he watches me move about the living room, gathering up the remaining bloody rags.
“You’re still bleeding,” Lucas tells me, wincing as he reaches into Abby’s first-aid kit for a bandage.
“I’ll heal. In due time.” I ball up the blanket. “I’ll toss this and will get you another.”
“Are you sure you’re both okay?” Phil asks again. “I mean…not to be insulting, but you both look terrible.”
“It’s nothing a shower, some wine, and like a gallon of Kristy’s healing balm won’t solve.”
“Uh, okay. If you say so.”
“Callie,” Abby says. “Can I talk to just you for a second?”
“Of course.”
I follow her into the kitchen, which would be enough distance for a normal human not to be able to hear us, but not a vampire. “Hang on,” I tell her and cast a silencing circle around us. “Okay, no one will be able to hear us now.”
“Wow, that’s…that’s handy.”
“Yeah.”
She wraps her arms around herself, trying to gather her composure. Then she takes the bandage from me and wraps it around my arm. “You said Lucas’s heart hasn’t beat in over a thousand years.”
“Right.”
“Your words made something occur to me.”
“That sounds urgent.”
“It is. Or at least I think so. Lucas is still a vampire, right?”
“Yes,” I say confidently. He still has his fangs, has his ability to move with super speed, has super hearing, and still drinks blood. Yet…yet his heart is very slowly beating.
“Why would they do that? Curse him with, um, humanity I guess you’d call it, right?”
“To kill him. He’s been alive for over sixteen hundred years. Murdering him isn’t easy. Cursing him is the only way to get to him without risking him ripping their throats out first.”
“But he has you, and don’t the other witches know you’re like a super-witch and going up against you would be a death sentence?”
“Thanks for thinking I’m awesome, but no, most of the witches in my coven don’t know about my new powers, and we’re trying to keep it that way. What occurred to you?”
“If Lucas hasn’t been a human for over a thousand years, then he’s susceptible to a ton of germs that weren’t around when he was alive.”
“What?”
“Think of it like this: you take someone from Rome in the 300s and bring them here, into the modern, dirty world. Their bodies won’t be equipped to fight off certain things. I’m no expert on this, but we’ve seen it in modern medicine before. Someone lives in complete isolation, and then when they come into contact with others, they get really sick from something that wouldn’t keep most from going into work.”
A chill goes through me. “So…what are you saying, Abby?”
“I’m saying if part of Lucas has become human, a common cold could kill him.”
Chapter 5
“Are you breathing?” I fidget in the driver’s seat of the McLaren, waiting for a car to pass so I can pull out of the parking spot. I threw away the bloody blanket and helped Abby sweep up the salt on the floor before we left.
“No,” Lucas says, looking me as if I just asked if the sky is purple.
“Are you sure? You said you still inhale and exhale as a habit.”
“Most vampires do, but it’s not functional breathing. Look.” He leans back in the seat and becomes perfectly still. I watch his bare chest not rise and fall for a good two minutes. “Not breathing.”
I nod and look back at the road. I didn’t tell Lucas that Abby heard a heartbeat. I wanted to, but I couldn’t get the words to come out. Not there, not with Phil watching.
Though part of me thinks Lucas already knows. That he can feel it and can hear the faint beating coming from deep inside his chest.
“Where are you going?” Lucas asks when I go down the block toward his house on North Orchard.
“To your—Eliza’s house.”
“I told you, I don’t want her to know.” He looks at me with annoyance on his handsome face. “Let’s go home.”
Lucas officially moved in with me after our wedding, and we’re crammed into my little farmhouse as the renovations are completed on the estate he bought me several months ago.
“My purse is in the house. With my phone.”
The annoyance on Lucas’s face grows.
“It’s not that I can’t be without it,” I go on before he can make a jab about me being addicted to my phone. “But Eliza will wonder why I left it, and you two had plans to hang out. She’ll know something is up.”
“I’ll call her and tell her I changed my mind.”
“Lucas,” I start and flick my eyes to him. “She’s going to find out. You can’t avoid her, especially after we just went two weeks without seeing her.”
Lucas looks straight ahead and just nods. Eliza is a grown-ass woman and, more importantly, a three-hundred-something-year-old vampire who was raised and trained by Lucas. She’s lethal.
Yet she’s the closest thing Lucas will ever have to a daughter of his own, and while Eliza can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, he does whatever he can to protect her.
“Fine,” he huffs and lets his eyes fall shut. He needs to sleep for a few hours before we make the drive back to Indiana. We have time before sunrise.
I reach over and put my hand on his thigh. My heart is still racing, as it has been since Lucas was slashed across the stomach. I know exhaustion is going to hit me hard as soon as we get into the house, but right now, I’m still all jittery.
Slowly, I park the McLaren in the garage and rush around to help Lucas out. He waves his hand at me and struggles to get up himself.