She glared up at me. “I’ve never lost at Scrabble. I’m convinced you cheated.”
I shrugged. “Cheating is one answer. Another could be that the longer you live, the greater your vocabulary. We checked the dictionary. They were all there.”
She muttered under her breath about me—a habit that I found humorous—and went back to her papers and rapid tapping on the keyboard.
“I brought you something.” I held out the misty blue potion and set it down on her desk. “It should heal everything to about 80 percent. I didn’t want you to be so uncomfortable. I know it’s hard for you to sleep.” I put my hands in my pockets. “We’re lucky Rhys can make such powerfulhealing potions. They’re incredibly difficult.”
She pursed her lips and looked at the smokey, light-blue liquid. “Aiwin’s was clear. Since Rhys keyed this to my DNA, it shouldn’t, like, turn me blue like a Smurf, right?”
I laughed. “With any luck.”
She pondered the potion some more. “Although, if I do turn blue, I’d be dang cute as a Smurf.” So saying, she twisted the cap off, then tilted the bottle up at me in cheers before she upended it in her mouth and swallowed it down. She shivered after she’d swallowed the last of it, and her eyes flashed pale blue before they returned to her normal copper color—a sign that the potion was working.
She squirmed a bit in her chair, and I knew the sensation she fought. It felt like bugs skittering over your skin. A less than pleasant sensation. But it was part of the healing process from a potion.
She finally settled back and gave a huge sigh. “Much better,” she said. “It tasted like root beer.”
I palmed the empty bottle and tucked it into my coat pocket. “Rhys must be fond of you. I’ve had ones that tasted like toenail fungus.”
“Have you actuallyhadtoenail fungus to compare the two?” she asked me with a kick of sass.
I laughed. “No, Miss Sass. I haven’t. But I can imagine.”
Mia was peeling off bandages and examining the skin underneath. Nothing was the slightest bit open anymore. They were all shiny pink scabs. She went to scratch at one, and I held her hand.
“If you scratch them, they might scar. Now, let’s see if you can sleep.”
“But my ta-da-done pile!” she groaned.
I snickered at the title. “It will still be there after you get some sleep. Wheredid you come up with the name ta-da-done?”
She smiled. “Because if that pile is ever full, and my to-do pile empty, it will have to have been because of magic!”
I laughed and escorted her to her room despite her feeble protests and attempts to escape. Zian followed behind us lazily. It was difficult, even for a vampire, to turn my back to a predator like Zian, but over the last several weeks, I had come to understand something of his devotion to Mia. Those that Mia loved and cared about, Zian would never harm. But those that attacked Mia?
If Zian ever came across them, he would gut them.
And he wasn’t the only one.
This…person or organization was frustratingly difficult to track. I had a team of shifters and gargoyles on it, as well as a few vampire associates, and still nothing could be found.
Because of my most recent vision, I knew that, whoever they were, they were circling closer, like sharks to chum. And one of the most frustrating things was the fact that I couldn’t figure outwhysomeone was coming after us; especially after Mia, who was an innocent.
I had to figure out a way to stop them before they hurt her. Or before they breached my defenses and killed me, leaving her defenseless.
We reached her door, and she and Zian went in. Zian went to the small, kiddy pool that stored his drinking water and started lapping it up. I smiled a little at the ingenuity of that.
Mia sank onto her bed, but she still looked tense. I put my hand on her shoulder. “I can make you some tea or something,” I offered. In the short time that I’d known her, I’d noted that she loved both herbal peppermint tea, and deep-south sweet tea.
She shook her head and crawled up to her pillow, resting her head on the downy softness. “Would you…can you stay with me tonight? Every time I close my eyes, I see the glass explode. I feel the shards slam into me. I can’t sleep, and I just want to feel safe for a while.”
I hesitated. It was not a stretch to say that Mia was beautiful. She did not have the unearthly beauty of the fae or vampires, but she was beautiful nonetheless. And what was worse was my attraction to her. An attraction that grew day by day and was rooted in far more than just her beautiful figure and face.
I had been fighting it for weeks now, determined to keep her at arm’s length. After all, Mia was under my protection. As a being under my care, it was my duty to protect her with all the resources at my disposal. Even if protecting her included protection from myself.
As a vampire, I had a lengthy and bloody past. A past which included my vampire youth, which was filled with horrendous vampire wars where vampire fought against vampire for the right to survive. I did not want to tarnish her innocence with my stained hands, and shewasinnocent. Innocent in the ways of love and lust. And innocent in the ways of paranormals. She didn’t know what it was for a vampire to be vulnerable with someone, to sleep with someone near them. Most vampires, even married, slept alone.
But she looked up at me with such a disarming mix of hope and trust that I swallowed my protests, toed off my shoes, and untucked my shirt. I put the dagger and pistol that I carried on the bedside table nearest me and climbed into bed. Zian snuffled my side and hiss-chuffed, clearly put out with me because I’d taken his favorite spot.
