Page 20 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“We doing this, boss?” Robbie asked, his face close to Callum’s ear, and Callum startled, not realizing how deeply he’d fallen into his reverie until he was yanked from it.

“Aye,” he rasped, feeling a thickness in his throat.

Robbie leaned back, tipping his head against the upper cabinet and closing his eyes. He took a deep breath, and on the exhale, Callum let his fangs sink in carefully. Always in the exact same place. He’d looked at the beautiful flowers tattooed on Robbie’s throat and found dark space between the petals of two different blooms that had been filled in with black ink. His fangs fit perfectly into those black voids, and he was careful to hit the mark every time.

The blood slid across Callum’s tongue in a thick flow, viscous and slippery and rich. He held back a sigh as he felt his mind clear.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

Robbie’s heart beat steadily now, not like the racing rabbit it had been the first time he’d offered up his throat to Callum’s teeth. He gently kicked the rubber heel of his boot against the bottom cabinet like an idle child waiting. When he was sated, Callum drew back, dragging his tongue over Robbie’s throat, an enzyme in his saliva causing instant clotting and healing.

His saliva could heal two puncture marks almost instantly, sealing and sterilizing without a mark. But it was not powerful enough to clot a wound caused by a careless, ravaging animal bite. Grief boiled in his belly as he stepped away from Robbie. He handed him the half-full glass of hydration drink, and Robbie took it without comment.

Callum was happy to take care of him, in the same way he was happy to take care of Penny and all of his other dependents. His nightclubs existed to keep people safe, to provide a mutually sought-after, mutually pleasurable experience. He liked to take care of people. Heneededto take care of people. He always had.

Except for that night on the beach, when?—

“You okay, Callum?”

Callum.Robbie never called him that. He looked up and saw the empty glass sitting on the counter next to Robbie’s tattooed hand. His gaze traveled up a tattooed arm to a tattooed neck, perfectly healed and unscarred, to Robbie’s concerned face.

“Aye,” Callum croaked and stepped back.

“I know that this is… professional,” Robbie said hesitantly. “But I have four sisters and a mama who said that I was going to be a good listener if it was the last thing she did. So, if you ever want to talk about anything, I’m… I’m here.”

Callum remembered that awful Christmas movie with all the vignettes and couples, the one that started and ended at the airport arrivals. Love… something. He remembered a grizzled rock star Bill Nighy showing up at his manager’s house on Christmas Day and saying something like “It's a terrible, terrible mistake, but you turned out to be the fucking love of my life.”

Robbie wasn’t the love of his life. Robbie was his employee. Just like Penny was his employee. But as he looked at the sincere face staring back at him, as he remembered Penny’s sisterly teasing and enthusiasm for him leaving town, it occurred to him that they might be the closest things to friends he had on this earth. And wasn’t that fucking sad.

But it was beautiful too. That of all the people he’d employed over the centuries, of all the people he’d hired and fired and paid and promoted and mentored and made, that Penny and Robbie would find their ways onto his payroll and into his life in the same lifetime. That Robbie would have been the one to find Esther, that Robbie would have been in the room when Marjory had blown in and hurled Callum’s carefully understood, carefully blank world completely off its axis.

Callum’s eyes stung. He felt a tear leak out and glide down his cheek. Robbie reached out to swipe it with his thumb, and Callum saw a smear of ruby red blood on the pad of Robbie’s finger.

“Wow,” Robbie breathed, his mountain twang somehow even thicker in a whisper. “Did you know you cry blood?”

“Aye,” Callum said, his voice soft. “I dinnae drink water, so I cannae cry water.”

“Does it happen often?”

“Nay.”

“So why now?” Robbie asked, reaching for a paper towel off the roll that hung from the underside of the upper cabinet and wiping the blood on it, leaving a brilliant streak against the white weave.

“Because fate is vicious,” Callum whispered. “Robbie, I cannae—I cannae?—”

He hung his head, clenching his fists at his sides and staring at the knots in the pine floorboards.

Robbie hopped off the counter and stepped around him. Callum heard a rustling of clothing. And then the door was open.

“Come on,” Robbie said, and Callum looked up. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up over his head and a scuffed and worn bomber jacket over top.

“Where are we going?”

“Magda’s,” Robbie said matter-of-factly.

“Magda’s,” Callum repeated slowly.

“Yeah. She told me she’d cook me dinner tonight. She also told me to bring you.”