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He’d said something—I needed to reply. My mind raced, desperate to remember some ancient Greek fun fact. Because that mouth was closing in.
“Yes,” I blurted, more loudly than I’d intended. “Archimedes. He said he could lift the earth. If he had a long enough pole. Or a lever, I mean. If he had a place to stand and a lever, he could move it. The earth. ”
Though Alcántara’s head was tilted down, I could read how my comment had pleased him, despite—or maybe because of—my nervous babbling. He chuckled, and I felt the puffs of breath on my skin. “So he did. ”
“But he was killed,” I said, dredging everything I could from memory. At the word killed, I gave an instinctive tug to my hand, but the vampire held on tight.
“So he was. ” Alcántara traced the lines on my hand, smearing faint trails of blood across my palm. He brightened, remembering the story. “They say Archimedes spoke his last words to an attacking Roman soldier. ‘Do not disturb my circles!’” He laughed, and gooseflesh crept along my arms. “Human creatures are so delightfully banal. ”
I tried to imagine what else he might’ve thought about us humans. Delightfully banal…but loads of fun to kill. Banal…but for the musky aftertaste. Because the other shoe was going to drop, and soon. This punishment was shaping up to be a doozy.
But still, the vampire didn’t release my hand. Instead, he swept his cool finger along my palm again, harder this time, splitting the cut back open until I flinched from the pain. He held his finger up to catch the firelight. His skin was stained a pale pink.
I watched, horrified, as he brought it to his lips. And then his eyes caught and held mine as he sucked his finger slowly into his mouth.
Crapcrapcrap. There was licking happening. He pulled his finger from his mouth with a dull suck.
What else would he want to taste? Frantic, I did a quick mental inventory of all my other bloody parts. It was not good. I needed something, anything, to talk about.
“And the book?” The words exploded from me, sounding high-strung even to my own ears.
Calm. I needed to calm the hell down. I didn’t want to rile him any more than he already was—I mean, did vampires get blinded by bloodlust? Who knew what happened once they got a taste of it. And I definitely wasn’t feeling equipped to find out.
Keep him chatting. I glanced back at the book. “I mean, what is it? You didn’t tell me. Which text is it? Is it original?” I tried to act avid and interested, but I was afraid I probably just sounded feverish.
“Ah, yes. My book. ” Momentarily diverted, he dropped my hand, and relief prickled through me, sending a rush of blood to my head. “It was a very exciting development in the world of mathematics. This particular text was discovered only decades ago. ” He smiled coyly. “It was later purchased at auction by an anonymous bidder. ”
“Which was you,” I said baldly. If I hadn’t been so panicked, maybe I’d have spoken with more deference, but I was too freaked to think straight, particularly since Alcántara’s disciplinary techniques appeared to involve finger sucking. It gave my words a thoughtlessly casual edge. “You guys seem to have a lot of money. I mean you’ve had years to save up, right?”
But he didn’t seem to mind my informali
ty—I guess licking on a girl really loosened a fellow up. He considered it for a moment, answering thoughtfully, “We have resources at our disposal, yes. ”
I stalled then. I had nothing to say to that. My childhood had been a series of apartments in central Florida—luxury was when we’d made the leap to a two-bedroom.
He tilted his head, seeing the truth of it. “Little Acari. I dare say resources isn’t part of your parlance, is it?”
Oh no. Getting personal again. “We didn’t have much, no,” I said tentatively.
“It is true, this axiom men have on the importance of living well. And yet the old adage isn’t completely correct. You see, it’s living forever that is the best revenge. ”
He smiled then, full-on, bearing two dagger-sharp teeth, which reminded me that, although he was undead, I could find myself very, very dead at the slightest provocation.
The image silenced me.
“But we were discussing my book. ” His tone was almost jovial, as if he hadn’t just bared a pair of freaking fangs. “I’ve not yet told you the best part. ” He picked up the tray and tipped it so the pages could catch the light. “Look at the writing. Can you guess what it is?”
Guess? I could barely read it. Archimedes had been an inventor—Alcántara was probably reading instructions on how to build an ancient Greek torture device. Position Acari’s thumbs between screws; tighten. “N-no. ”
“Do you know what a palimpsest is?”
Where the hell was this going? I gave the barest nod. “I…Yeah. …It’s when they scraped the writing off a manuscript so they could reuse the pages. They’d just write over the old stuff. ”
He gave me a courtly nod. “Clever girl. But of course you knew. ” He turned a few pages, and the smell of mildew gave my nose a twinge. “It was once a common practice, when materials like parchment or vellum were too valuable to be squandered. ”
I nodded, even though I was familiar with everything he was telling me. And what was with the minilecture, anyway? Because I knew he had a point—I saw it coming in the satisfied gleam in his eyes.
“Acari Drew, you are like that palimpsest. Scraped clean of who you were. Altered, yes?”
