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I have no idea what I want. I feel drugged and stupid. Dammit, IlikeCallister, just like I believed I liked Evan once, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it. I know they aren’t the same, but even so…how can this be happening all over again?
“I don’t know what I want. Not right now, at least. I need some time to think. Please go.”
He stares at me for a moment, his expression inscrutable. But I’m too tired and dazed to try to figure him out or offer him comfort. Eventually, he disappears, leaving me alone and confused.
CALLISTER
I’m back on my throne, brooding. Various demons keep wandering through, trying to cheer me up or invite me into a particularly delicious nightmare, but for once I’m not interested.
I thought Libra and I were both getting something out of our relationship, such as it was, but if she is to be believed, I was selfish. Perhaps she is right. I am not used to considering the feelings of others, especially humans.
I didn’t really tell her what she was getting into, that her body would be left sleeping in her own realm for days on end, only waking when she absolutely had to eat or drink. That she was helping to sustain my court. I fed on the fear she helped create, but ultimately, the satisfaction she got out of it was empty.
Even the sex wasn’t real for her, not the way it was for me. It was all a hollow experience in her subconscious, something that left her feeling hurt and used. Something that made her correlate me with Evan Dempsey.
None of that is what I wanted for her, but I can see how it’s my fault. By not taking the time to ask her how she felt or tell her what was really happening, she thinks I used her, that I only wanted her for my own ends. Even when she woke up, I tried to bring her right back here.
From a human perspective, I behaved terribly. I see that now. Now that she has explained it.
“Sire?” someone says. “We must speak with you—”
“BEGONE!” I bellow, standing up from my throne and clearing the room with a single glare. I never yell at my demons, but at the moment, I need to think. And not about nightmares.
Was she right? Was I simply using her? I suppose it’s possible; despite my millennia haunting dreams, I don’t have a great understanding of humans., because I’ve never bothered to learn or care about them.
But I don’t think that’s all it was. I feel something for her that I’ve never felt before, for anyone or anything. Something that has nothing to do with how delicious her fear is.
When she compared me to Evan, said we were the same, something inside me hurt deeply. I think it may have been my heart. I saw many of the things he did to her, and they enraged me. To think that I harmed her in the same way…I must atone for this. Somehow. But she no longer wishes to see me, so what can I do? I can protect her from further nightmares, but I already intended to do that. Was already doing that.
I need to speak with her, find a way to apologize for what happened and learn exactly what went wrong. How to not do it again. But she said she doesn’t want to see me, and I have to respect that. No more selfishly taking what I want from her.
I owe her that much.
Seven
LIBRA
There’s another knock at the door, and I sigh, wondering what Haven forgot. I open it without thinking, expecting my friend to be standing there with some new plot to save me, or maybe a giant coffee. Gift giving is her love language. But it’s not a tall, beautiful, elfin woman at my door.
Instead, it’s Evan Dempsey in all his menacing glory.
He looks different now: older, harder. His hair is shorter, his jaw is sharper, and his biceps are bulging. He’s gone from a reedy man in his early twenties to a filled-out ex-con.
His flat green eyes remind me of a rattlesnake’s.
“Hey, Eliza,” he says in a low voice.
I swing the door shut, but he blocks it and forces his way in, sending me backpedaling into the cabin’s living room.
“How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t hard. You may have slipped out of your apartment, but you don’t have many friends. Once I realized you were gone, all I had to do was watch them until one of them led me to you. I knew you couldn’t have gotten far. Not timid, helpless Eliza.”
Fuck. Haven had no idea what was happening when she came here, no idea that she needed to be sure she wasn’t followed.
“What do you want?” I ask. Like I don’t already know.
He smiles a slow, evil smile that holds no humor. “I told you, time’s up. You took my life from me, Eliza. It’s time to repay the favor.”
