Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
He shrugs with his hands. Like it can’t be helped.
But I am stuck on those names. “Jane and Susan.” I smile. Because even though I can’t see their faces, I know that very soon I will.
Paul must read my mind or something, because he says, “What about Syrsee?”
“What?”
“She’s nice, right?”
I shrug. “Yeah. She is.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t fuck with her.”
“How have you not figured this out yet? She’s the Black witch, Ryet. It’s Syrsee.”
“What?” Now I’m just annoyed. “Why do you always have to take it one step too far?”
He bellows out a laugh. Then his face goes serious. “Syrsee is the Black witch. I am in the cottage with her right this moment. You are passed out sick. Do you recall getting sick?”
I huff out a breath. “Yeah.”
“You drank her last night.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “How do you know that?”
He just shakes his head at me. “Ya know, perhaps you’re telling the truth. Maybe you are preoccupied with that family of yours. It would explain your cluelessness.”
“I took a few sips from her lip, that’s it.”
“That’s the only reason you’re still with me, Ryet. You took a few sips. But you need more. Much, much more.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not going to kill her to save myself from the eternal damnation I have certainly earned.”
“She won’t die. In fact, she’s going to enjoy it. Maybe even more than you do.”
I sit down on the bed. Paul immediately gets up and sits down next to me. His arm snakes its way around my shoulders and he pushes on my head until my cheek is resting on his collarbone. “We’re going to get through this.”
I want to fight him, but he smells good.
“I need you to wake up and drink her. Do you hear me, Ryet?”
“I don’t want to.”
“You will. Trust me.”
“Give me their faces.”
He wilts again. Not like he’s tired, but like he’s disappointed. “I will. But I can’t do that until you drink her. If I give you those memories, the curse changes. And you will die before I can stop it. Go back. Wake up. Drink her until you are so full, you could not take another drop. And then we’ll talk about Jane. I really can give you a final—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Well, you get the idea. But first”—he pushes me off him and stands up—“you drink her.”
“Are you still there? In the room with her?”
“Only in spirit. There are unexpected forces working against me. I’m not sure who they are, or what they are planning, but I cannot be there in person. If I could, you know I would, right?”
When I look up at him, he’s got a weird look on his face. Like he’s… afraid of something. Like he’s afraid I don’t believe him.
“Do you love me?”
He nods without hesitation.
“Why?”
“You’re so—”
“Don’t, Paul. Don’t say ‘beautiful.’ You call them all beautiful. It doesn’t mean anything.”
He hesitates and I feel like time stands still.
Who am I to this demon?
Why is he so infatuated with me?
I treat him like shit. I dismiss him. I ignore him. I insult him. I hate him. “What did I ever do to earn this love?”
“You exist.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - SYRSEE
Vampire and food.
“Don’t bother running.”
Running? I’m still catching up to what’s actually happening. I’m barely comprehending what I’m seeing, so running… that feels like an action one takes when their brain is actually working.
“Sit down, Syrsee.” The vampire nods his head to the chair near the window.
But I don’t sit down. I force myself to take it all in. Ryet, sick in bed, his face pressed up against the bare hip of the vampire, his body sweaty and flushed, naked under the sheet that only barely covers him. He’s breathing hard and trembling, the whole of him shivering like he’s been out in the wind and the cold for months.
The vampire is naked too and he’s absently playing with a stray lock of Ryet’s dark hair as his ice-blue eyes take me in, then narrow as he barks my name. “Syrsee.” The word is sharp and commanding.
I just stare at Ryet. But I notice that there is a lavender haze around the edges of this room, which means the vampire isn’t really here. I’m in his dreamwalk—or maybe he’s in mine.
“He’s dying. I told you that.”
Finally, I let out a breath and look at the vampire. “You can’t hurt me and neither can he.”
“Dear girl.” He smiles at me, making his ice-blue eyes light up. “Why in the world would I ever want to hurt you?”
“That’s a joke, right? You want to drink me. You want to feed on me. You want to imprison me, and use me, and then, decades from now, I will die just like my grandma. Old, and crazy, and used up.”
“Used up? She was barely used at all. And she might’ve been old, but she was not crazy and she was not stupid. She certainly got the best of me. So if I were you, I’d aspire to be that woman.”