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“I’d like to know what it was that spurred you to conspire against me.”
He says this like he’s asking me what the weather’s like today. No emotion, no anger – just bland nothing.
“It wasn’t like that. You weren’t the target in it. You were just, I don’t know…inevitably involved.”
“Inevitably involved,” he repeats my own words back at me. “That’s a nice way of putting it. So go ahead, tell me how I became involved so inevitably.”
I breathe out anxiously, wondering if he genuinely wants to know or if he’s using this as some kind of strange trap. Maybe he’s just bored with the driving. After a few moments of considering, I decide to tell him. It’ll drown out the unbearable silence, if nothing else.
“I’d been living in Manchester city for two years. Well, hiding would probably be a better way of describing it. I feared that because the secret of my blood had been revealed to Antonia and her followers that she’d be searching high and low for me. And if not her, then others who her followers might have told about me. I had no clue that they’d all be dead soon after I left because of the war. So I hid. I lived a miserable little life with no friends, spending all of my time either studying or working.
“Then one night Finn showed up at the small art gallery where I had a job. I nearly died of shock when I saw him, thinking he was there to kill me. Only he wasn’t. He wanted to make a deal with me. He said Pamphrock would pay me if I came home and assisted them in finding where Whitfield had been keeping his daughter. I was suspicious that it might be a trap, but Finn convinced me his intentions weren’t to harm me.
“In the end I agreed to go back, but it was more out of loneliness than wanting the money. I just wanted to see my dad and my friends again. I hadn’t seen you in two whole years and the time that I had spent with you was so short, barely a couple of weeks. In reality I didn’t know you at all, so I had no loyalty to you, not really. And I thought that if you were involved in Rebecca’s kidnapping then you deserved to be deceived.”
“Well, that’s truly heart-warming,” says Ethan with bite.
“God, can’t you ever see that you’re not the centre of everything? You were a fucking after-thought in the whole situation.” He was way more than an after-thought, but no way am I telling him how anxious and excited I had been to see him again. I need him to understand that I was
focused on the saving Rebecca side of things, not on the betraying him side.
“Oh, even more heart-warming,” he snips. I take back what I said about vampires being oblivious to sarcasm, because Ethan’s giving me a good dose of it tonight.
“I never claimed to have a heart,” I say, trying to sound cold and aloof, but failing.
He glances at me sideways. “Oh, you have one. You’re just too young and foolish to know how to use it.”
“Look, can we change the subject please? I’m sick of going over this. And actually, I don’t get why you’re still holding a grudge against me when you’ve welcomed Delilah back into your confidence with open arms. She left you to come and join the slayers. I sat and watched as she pledged her allegiance to Pamphrock, in the back of a DOH van no less.”
“Delilah recognised that she was in danger with Whitfield rising to power, given his distaste for dhamphirs. I had been too preoccupied to notice her distress, so I can understand why she acted as she did. That is why I have forgiven her. You, on the other hand, were not in a life or death situation. You decided to betray me all of your own accord. Nobody was holding a gun to your head. You fucked me in my bedroom, a place you knew I had never allowed another female to enter. All the while you were living under the roof of a slayer, plotting against me. Those are the actions of a whore only out for what she can gain.”
I flinch at the venom in his crude words, tears threatening to spill from my eyes. But I steel myself and suck them back. “I can see that you’re never going to understand my side. All I can say is that you’re wrong, Ethan. So very fucking wrong,” I whisper, my voice quivering with unshed tears.
He doesn’t say another word and I spend the remainder of the journey trying to compose my hurt feelings. We park the car when we reach the airport and get out, silently making our way to the arrivals gate. Oh God, how I hate him right now. How dare he call me a whore? Call what we did in his bed just fucking? Is that what it was? The memory of it feels like a dream now. It’s fading and fading, almost like it never happened. A night of bliss that might as well have been a dream, because it sure as hell won’t be happening again. In this moment I feel like I can never let him take back the words he just said to me.
The arrivals gate is bursting with people, all running around, busy as can be. There’s something about airports that I find soothing. I know that most people think they’re stressful, but I like their liminality. The sense of standing on a threshold that could lead anywhere in the world. It’s a pity I’m not going somewhere right now.
Ethan’s touch at the small of my back brings me out of my thoughts. I step away from his hand and glance up at him.
“What is it?” I ask coldly.
“I have spotted your professor, but do not approach him just yet. I sense something in him. He’s not entirely human.”
Ethan closes the distance between us again and leads me over to a quiet corner where we can observe Edwards. I scan the crowd until I finally spot him. I wonder how Ethan managed to recognise him. Perhaps it’s because he’s the only other non-human in the place.
He’s standing on the other side of the wide hall, looking around at the people who pass him by, a brown leather suitcase at his side. He looks exactly the same as he did in the picture I saw of him, but now I can see that he’s only about five feet tall, if not less. People tower over him.
“Get your hand off me,” I bite out when I notice how Ethan is holding onto my arm. He’s not touching me in an affectionate way or anything like that. He’s holding me in place like you would an animal to keep them from wandering off.
Ethan releases his grip, his gaze on me hard.
“If he’s not completely human, then what is he? He just looks like a normal little old man,” I say.
“I can smell demon blood in him.”
“So there are demons as well now? Isn’t that fabulous.”
“There is everything,” says Ethan in a faraway voice, his eyes trained on Edwards in concentration. “One of his parents was of demonic origins, that would be my guess.”
