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“You’re putting off the inevitable. You’re going to come out of whatever Myrddin did to you, and I’m going to be waiting for you. Save us all some time and take the sweet woman you used to be and pair it with your badass self, and we’ll have a lovely couple of hundred years together. Give or take.”
“And then I’ll die and you’ll find a new me.” It was how a relationship worked when one loved a vampire. He could focus all that affection on you, but you’re not immortal. Even if I took Casey’s blood every day, I would still die at some point and he would move on.
“No, baby. I won’t.” He sat up and the sheet dragged down, showing off lean hips and a distinct lack of undies. There was a look on his sleep-softened face that disturbed me. When he got this serious, it almost always was something that could wreck me. “Have you ever heard of sympathetic transference?”
Of course I had, and my heart clenched at the thought. But there was one problem. “Again, that is a companion issue. I’m a witch.”
“And again, I’m an academic.” His hand went to the center of his chest. “They took your soul from here. This is where I felt it. Like they’d taken a knife to me. It was seven years ago. That was when you became Profane. Why did he wait?”
The ceremony that had made me Profane had involved Myrddin taking a piece of my soul, and it had exited my body from exactly where Casey had touched on his own. From right above my heart. I’d lain on that altar, by choice this time, and prayed to whoever would listen that the piece Myrddin took would be the part of me that loved Casey.
Turned out all of me loved him.
“He didn’t require an unholy trinity for many years. Also, I had much to learn. In the beginning I spent time in the schools,” I explained, my mind racing.
“You mean the reeducation centers.” His eyes had flared like I’d dropped a clue right on his lap. “I was unaware you spent time there. I always thought you simply took your place at his side. He and Nimue were training you.”
“And then the world was chaotic, and he certainly didn’t have time to train a witch who’d lost her power.” I didn’t like to think about the training houses. They were meant to build the best of the best, and that meant they broke everyone else. I’d had to be strong to survive and take my place. Nimue came for me one day about two years in and declared I was properly educated in Myrddin’s ways. I had been relieved to go home again. “When I was ready, I came to the Coven House and took my place. It was decided that given my ties, I could potentially find a way to communicate with some of our enemies.”
“You mean lure us out and kill us.”
“I meant what I said.” But the logic wasn’t logicking. Why had I never thought of it? Why would Myrddin allow an academic in his Coven House when he’d been the one to put out the tale that Marcus Vorenus had killed the king? That the academics were behind everything. Why would he allow me to bring one into my home?
“I know you mean it and that’s the problem, but we’ll deal with that another day,” Casey promised. “None of this tells me how you can deny my claim. I knew where they took a piece of your soul, Olivia.”
“That proves nothing. You would have gotten word of the ceremony from your spies. I know you have many. That Russian is nothing if not an excellent spy master,” I returned. “And the fact that he took it from above my heart only makes sense. The heart is closely aligned with the soul.”
“How do I know it hurt?” He asked the question with a note of sympathy that had me clenching my fists. “How do I know it felt like burning at first? Like the heartburn you get when you give into the urge and eat something fried. But it built until it felt like he was going to break your chest bone, until you almost welcomed it happening because it would mean it was over.”
Goddess, he had sympathetic transference, and I wasn’t a companion.
Vampires don’t die naturally. You have to behead or stake or blow one of those suckers up. Getting them to ingest silver has been known to do the trick for some. But there is one way for a vampire to die a natural, almost human death, and that is when the vampire bonds so deeply with their companion their bodies work overdrive to keep them alive. Vampire blood alone can’t make a companion immortal. Nothing can. But love can allow a vampire to go with his mate when she dies.
What Casey was telling me was bullshit because there’s no record of some academic dying with his non-companion mate.
It was one more trick he was trying to pull on me. He had to be lying. He was testing my every defense.
It had to be because if he was right, then he loved me in a way I couldn’t comprehend, in a way I wasn’t sure I wanted.
No. I was absolutely certain I didn’t want it. I didn’t want his arms around me or to hear him playing that sad fucking guitar in the background while I lesson planned or read essays from the teenaged supernaturals I taught.
I wasn’t a teacher. I was Profane, and nothing could touch me.
The window. I focused on that. It was slightly open, and I knew I’d shut it the night before. Or whatever they called the sleep cycle here because the moon was high in the sky right now. “You got in through the window.”
His shoulders came down slightly as though he was disappointed I’d changed the subject, but he seemed to let it go. He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair. It was wavy right now, and I liked seeing it out of the queue he normally wore it in. “I climbed right up the trellis and had to avoid the plants that apparently like to roofie a dude. I actually punched one of the suckers.”
The idea of him getting a face full of plant GHB and falling to the ground below for a nap amused me. I would ask if we could get a few more of those out there. “I’ll remember to lock the window tonight.”
“And I’ll find another way in, wife. You will not be able to keep me out. I’ll find you and lay down and sleep beside you.” He stood, and I couldn’t help the gasp that came from my mouth.
He was completely naked. He’d slept beside me all night, and there had been nothing between us but my clothes. If he’d nuzzled me while I’d slept, I might have been able to trick myself into believing it was all a dream and I could have had him again.
What would Casey’s bite do to me now? During the brief time we’d been together that bite had been pure ecstasy.
“Put on some clothes.” I turned away, looking for his pants.
“I don’t see why I should,” Casey said with a deep chuckle, his hands in fists on his hips as though offering that gorgeous body up for my delectation. “Clothes have no place between a husband and a wife.”
