Page 46 of Mortdale

He stopped before slowly lowering me back to my feet; his arm still banded around my middle while his hand remained firmly planted on my lower back. “What else?”

You see, dear husband. I also am cursed. And by cosmic standards, I am already as good as dead. “I’ll make a list and mail it to you. Anything I need to know about you?” I lifted my fingers, counting. “Vampire. Drinks blood. Awful mood swings. Adorable little niece. A big stick up his ass?” I asked, hitting his chest with my closed fist.

His tongue briefly brushed the top of his lip as he studied me narrowly. “I see you've got everything down.”

“Alright, but what are we doing about that stick? Is there any hope at all? Or is it a terminal thing?”

He brought a cigarette to his lips and took off his jacket. “There she is,” he murmured to himself, throwing it around my shoulders and pinching my chin between his fingers. For long moments, his eyes paced between mine. “You’re Willow Duncan now, Duchess of Darkheim. You don’t have to make yourself look small when you’re not, squeeze so tightly into their moulds, breaking and cracking and sawing through everything in your body and mind to build yourself exactly how you think they can bear to see you. And you don’t have to endure shit anymore. You hear me?”

The air in my lungs trembled with each exhale. “I wanted them to like me. What is so bad about that?” I took a deep breath. And released it. “The harder I’ve cried, the harder they’ve laughed. So I eventually started laughing with them. Because all I’ve ever wanted was to belong somewhere. I’ve done worse things to fit in places.”

I could count each breath entering and leaving his chest from how hard his shoulders expanded as he inhaled. The shadow of the woodland had cut through half of his face, casting severe horror on his features, particularly his eyes that had become nothing but two dark sinkholes. “I don’t find it funny. I’m not laughing. What now?”

“I’m colossally ridiculous. What will they say about you?”

“What they’ll always say about me.”

“Which is?”

“Something I will probably not give a single shit about.”

His grandmother’s cane echoed down the parterre. “I am sorry to interrupt your lover’s quarrel, but Piper insists we all witness her play the song she’s composed. It’s apparently dedicated to you, Lady Duncan.”

I pointed in the direction of the dead vampire. “Wake him up. Please, I can’t do it. I can’t hear her hit another note on the piano.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Till death do us part, we will suffer together, wife.”

I gaped at him as he took my hand and started dragging me towards the mansion.

His grandmother guided us to the drawing room where a semicircle of chairs had formed around a grand piano.

Logan kneeled in front of his niece, saying something in her ear, which she seemed to be in agreement with because she nodded vehemently whilst giggling.

Instead of sitting beside me with his grandparents, he lifted his niece up on his lap and sat with her on the piano stool. He took her little hands and started slowly pressing her fingers on the keys. It was some sort of a dramatic rendition, all in the lower register because I could hear it fairly well.

My skin burned with each perfect note he hit, and shivers spread across my scalp as the melody reached crescendo. Comfort sat against my chest, heavy and unbearable. And so unfamiliar. I wasn’t sure how to chew on it, or if I should just let it choke me.

“Thank you,” I shakily murmured under my breath, but I knew he’d heard me.

Piper had fallen asleep in his arms as we stood side by side in the middle of the guest room, staring at the bed we were supposed to share in the old Galahad mansion.

He set Piper in the middle of the mattress, covering her and pressing a few kisses on her forehead.

“I'll go for a walk,” he said, putting his jacket on. “Lay down and get some sleep. It will be a long walk.”

“You don’t have to go. The witch can lay on the sofa,” I told him, awkwardly taking a few steps towards it.

“I need to find out where that infected vampire came from. And as far as I know, my witch won’t like that,” he said, grabbing another blanket and pillow from the adjoining closet room. Still looking at me, he crossed the room, knelt down before the bed, and laid the blanket on the floor under it.

His shoulder brushed mine as he went past. “Go to bed. Or under it. Whatever my witch does.”

Asshole.

I slid under the bed, my bones immediately relaxing against the hard wooden floor. At some point in the night, Piper found her way down there and tucked herself against my chest. And around dawn, I had a strange dream. A cold hand brushing softly against my brow, my eyes, nose and lips, silencing the raging, nightmarish monsters that had been following me in my sleep.

Chapter 9

Willow