When we were alone, I allowed myself to nestle into Eli’s arms. It was the sort of thing that I ought to avoid, a vulnerability that I seemed only able to share with him. Sometimes, I felt like it was what I needed most in the world, though, a safe place to rest. I was stitched and had consumed two bottles of liquor. I wasn’t feeling my best, but I was coherent again.
Eli held me so that my cheek was on his chest, and he stroked my hair. It was soothing to be held, to be safe, and to feel cherished.
“Dating you is more stressful than I expected,” Eli murmured.
I looked up at him. “This is me. What I do. Who I am.”
He sighed. “Geneviève, I know these things, but I had hoped that dating during your seasonal lull would include more romance and fewer stitches. Is it so much to ask for some time where we can dance and avoid bleeding?”
A flash of guilt rolled over me. “I wore a pretty dress for you. Seductive, and wore gifts you bought to show my regard.” I turned my head and kissed his chest. “We danced.”
Eli looked at me so intently that I squirmed in embarrassment. “You read about fae customs. You wore my gifts because you researched my people.”
“There are a lot of rules. I got one right, but I get a lot wrong.”
“You researched,” he repeated in a voice filled with wonder.
“Fine. Maybe I read everything I could find on fae rules over the last few years,” I hedged. “I felt like I offended you often, and I just . . . you matter to me, Eli.”
He held me in silence for several moments. “Enough to take no more jobs for the next three weeks?”
I thought about it. In terms of the things he asked of me over the last year, it was perhaps the easiest request so far. I nodded. “You have my word: no more jobs between Yule and Twelfth Night. We’ll call it a witch bargain.”
He chuckled. “Terms for this ‘Witch Bargain’?”
“No talk of weddings.”
“Done.”
“Nothing that happens as a result of festivities is precedent-setting,” I tried to sound calm, but Eli’s slow smile said that he knew exactly what I was saying. Festivities often involved desserts, some of which left me as drunk as a human with a fifth of whisky.
“Of course, my crème brûlée.” His voice sent welcome shivers over me. “I cannot change the law of intercourse for my people, but . . . I can touch you as often as you allow.”
If I wasn’t fighting to keep my eyes open, I’d be ready for that. The combination of blood loss and daylight wasn’t doing great things for me. I was drifting in and out of sleep until evening came. Eli was asleep finally, so when I woke, I started to slip out of bed.
Eli, half-asleep, caught my hand. “If you need space, stay here in the guest room. I’ll go to my room.”
I paused. “I’m feeling better now. I could go h—”
“I want you here, Geneviève.” Eli met my gaze. “Will you stay with me?”
The way he said it didn’t feel like he meant just for the night, but that was all I could offer in the moment. No sharing a lover’s bed. No letting them stay in mine. It was frightening to stay, but I trusted Eli with my life regularly. Surely, I could trust him with my heart for a few weeks, too.
I crawled closer to him and nestled against his side.
“So, dating you involves sleep-overs?” I asked, voice as light as I could manage.
“I’d like it to,” Eli said. “I know it’s not your preference, but let me have today.”
“And tomorrow?” I asked.
Eli knew me well, which he proved by adding, “This is a guest bed, Geneviève. It’s not my bed. You are simply staying in my guest room. Say the word, and I’ll go to my bed. Alone.”
Maybe that wasn’t romantic for most people, but it made me want to swoon. Instead I kissed him. “I’ll stay.”
“I’ll get you breakfast,” he said.
Within moments, Eli held out a steaming coffee cup of vodka with a dash of grenadine and a couple cherries. Liquor was magical with my biology. Bring on the booze. It was a key part of what kept my biologically-irrational body running.
“You’re smarter than anyone that attractive ought to be,” I grumbled as I reached for the mug.
Eli laughed and helped me sit up. “A little fruit for the pain?”
“Yes.” I reached out further, but we could both see my arm shake. Fruit, unlike liquor, made me tipsy, but after my failed experiment, I could stand a little tipsy in my—. . . I glanced at the wall clock.
He steadied the cup as I wrapped my hands around it and drank.
“Do you know how worried I was, Geneviève?” Eli asked, voice heavy. Worse yet, he was using my real name instead of whatever pastry or dessert he chose to use as a term of endearment.
I’d rather be called food stuffs than my name—especially when it sounded so ominous. “I suggested I go out without you, so—”
“Endangering yourself alone is no better.” Eli walked away. He sounded increasingly calm as he added, “Beatrice sent word while you were recovering. Harold has ceased.”
“Ceased?”
“Existing,” Eli clarified. “She also sent a suggestion.”
“A suggestion?”
“For an elixir that might aid your recovery,” he said evasively. “I procured the supplies.”
Then he left, and I was too damn weak to pursue him. Honestly, I hadn’t intended to let some dead guy practice his subpar threshing skills on me. I hadn’t meant to get injured, but was it so bad that I took advantage of my bad luck to see if my healing had changed since my semi-murder earlier that year?
It really wasn’t my worst idea the last year.
“Eli?” I started, but it wasn’t Eli in the doorway this time.
Alice Chaddock stood there. “Good morning, grumpy!”
“Alice, why are you h—”
“Oh you poor thing!” She leaned down to fluff my pillows, giving me an awkward up-close look at her cleavage. “You look even worse than normal.”
“Thanks.”
“I felt that you needed me,” she continued in her cheery breathy voice. “I’m sure of it.”
“Alice, you’re human.”
“We bonded, though. Witch thing.” She waved her hand around.
I didn’t think I could bond humans, but I’d accidentally bonded two draugr to me. Honestly, I really had no idea if bonding a regular human was possible, but on the off chance that Alice was my responsibility, I kept her around.
That, and the queen of the draugr was likely to kill her if I didn’t, and I’d feel guilty. I hate feeling guilty.
“Fine. You are the best servant ever.” I grinned up at Alice.
She rolled her eyes at the thought of being a servant. Alice could probably buy the whole block my building was on—and not dent her bank account too much.
“Now, go away,” I muttered.
Alice laughed. She was growing on me, although last week she’d tried to be helpful and used steel wool on one of my knives. I’d explained that I liked the guy who sold me my last sword more than her. I certainly liked my actual friends better, but Alice waved all of those facts away.
“I’m going to do your face.” She opened her bag, designer and expensive, and started pulling out her torture devices. “I was afraid you’d look terrible for the party.”
“The party was last night,” I admitted. Then I closed my eyes, pretended not to be able to think of all the ways my life could be better if I simply stabbed Alice. She took more energy than anyone had a right to do, but my choices were either kill her or keep an eye on her.
Only one of those was actually an option.
“I don’t understand what Eli sees in you,” Alice said, staring at me as if I had become a math problem she might could solve. “Let’s at least get some eyeliner and rouge—”
“Alice, I was injured. I lost a lot of blood and—”
“That’s why you look so pale!” She thrust her wrist between my lips, scraped the skin on my teeth. “Here. Top off.”
I shoved her away, hard enough that she stumbled, even as my teeth descended to bite. “Stop that. I don’t need the taste of your perfume in my mouth.”
My so-called best friend pouted. Perfectly outlined, perfectly painted, smudge free lips jutted out like a child denied a treat.
“I’d be sad if you died, you know?” Alice flopped onto the bed beside my feet. “Tres gets impatient with me. And Beatrice is scary. And”—she darted a guilty look toward the doorway—“I don’t think Eli even likes me.”
“You belonged to a hate group opposed to him,” I pointed out once my teeth retracted. “And you tried to kill me. He likes me.”
“I said I was sorry!” Alice sounded genuinely upset. “And no one told me SAFARI was a hate group.”
“It’s called the Society Against Fae and Reanimated Individuals. That wasn’t a clue?”
Alice patted my feet through the duvet. “I wasn’t enlightened then. I am now. . . but Eli is still so grumpy with me. I like you, now.”
“Alice, honey,” I said, keeping my voice very level. “You tried to kill me just a few months ago. To a faery, that was yesterday.”
She stared, blinked, and finally whispered, “He time travels?”
I opened my mouth, and then I closed it without saying a word. What was there to say? If she wasn’t really as gullible as she appeared, this was the longest con ever. Her stepson, Tres, swore she’d been exactly the same since they were in school together.
Yeah. She went to the same college with him and then married his dad. Of course, my own parents were a special sort of wrong, too. My deadbeat dad wasn’t even alive, much less anywhere within range of my mother’s age, when I was conceived.
Alice wandered away while I was thinking. Honestly, I wasn’t recovered enough to deal with her. I could hear her, presumably washing her wrist from the sounds of the bathroom sink.
“She’s willing to help you,” Eli said when he walked in. “I had her delivered here—”
“She’s not a take-out meal.”
He leaned in the doorway, giving me enough space that I figured I must be looking less like death. He was polite when I was healing, pushy when I was well or bleeding.
“Do we even know that blood would help?” I tried to stand, not quite pushing to my feet but sitting upright and swinging my feet to the floor. I was preparing.
Eli came to my side as I stood, not infantilizing me but near enough to catch me when I tumbled—which I would’ve if he wasn’t there. He’d swept me into his arms, cradling me for a moment. “You are the least obedient patient I’ve met, Geneviève.”
“I waited for you before trying to stand.” I rested my head on his shoulder.
He said nothing, and we stayed there listening to singing from elsewhere in the house. Eli and I exchanged a surprised look. It was the sort of voice that should be immortalized, twangy enough to burn up country music charts and soulful enough to make sinners repent.
“That’s Alice?”
“I had no idea.”
We stayed there, listening. Perhaps it sounded a little better because the acoustics were so phenomenal here, but either way, she could sing. I enjoyed it. Eli obviously did, too. He began to waltz, as if we were at a ball.
“Can we not experiment on you? And can we avoid death, excessive bleeding, or dismemberment until the new year?”
“Yes . . .?”
Eli smiled and added, “And what if we just put a little of Alice’s blood in a martini? Beatrice suggested that it might aid your health.”
I scowled at him. “Fine.”
“Alice?” Eli called. “Could you bring Ms. Crowe’s breakfast?”
A moment later, she came into the bedroom with a beautiful glass of pink vodka. There was a lemon twist and cherry. I guessed the cherry was to hide the real source of the pink. Alice was as clever as she was bouncy.
In a chipper tone, she announced, “I made it myself!”
I held out a hand. I knew that the pink tint to my martini was a result of additives she took from her vein.
Truth be told, I’d considered trying blood, but it felt wrong. I had moral qualms about drinking from anyone, and I was fairly sure I shouldn’t have to do so. I’d existed for most of my twenty-nine years with a mix of vodka, green smoothies, and assorted herbs. Never sick. Rarely tired. Since the venom injections, I was always tired, and no amount of liquor made me feel satisfied.
I took a tentative sip of my blood-tini. “This tastes different.”
Alice looked at Eli. “I made it just the way he said to.”
“Hmmm.” I drank half of it. “It’s good. Spicy, though.”
She folded her arms and looked at Eli before blurting, “That’s the blood. He made me. I wasn’t going to lie, but—”
“Okay.” I drank the rest.
Eli rolled his eyes at me, and Alice stared at me in surprise. It was sweet that her loyalty to me made her unable to lie.
Honestly, it didn’t have much taste. Vodka. Touch of spice. My blood martini was surprisingly unexciting, despite the anxiety that I’d felt even considering it. The reality was far less exciting than my fears, and I felt like my stress was washing away—or maybe that was my hunger fading.
I wanted to be normal, whatever that was. I wouldn’t ever be human, so my normal was a little different. I didn’t mind the witch part, mostly didn’t even mind necromancy. I minded my paternal DNA. A lot. I was terrified of being a draugr. I grew up as the equivalent of a rose garden to every bee in range—but instead of bees, I attracted the dead. They were drawn to me, and I responded as well as anyone would when dead things popped up everywhere.
I killed them.
What did it mean if I was like them? If my genetic soup was more dead than witch? Necromancy worked by pressing life into the dead, and apparently, it worked on draugr, too. I shoved life into them, and suddenly, they functioned as if they were a century old. Coherent. No longer slavering toddlers. What would happen if I was changing? Would I be unable to kill them? Would I be unable to heal? To summon the natural dead? Maybe it wasn’t that I wanted normal. Maybe I wanted to control who I was, what I was. Define myself.
“How do you feel?” Eli took the glass, unfolding my fingers from the stem, and I realized I’d licked up the last drops of my blood martini.
“Embarrassed.” I paused. “Better though. Energized.”
Alice tossed herself at me. “You do need me! I knew it. Like it’s our destiny!”
“I . . . umm . . .”
She straightened up. “It has to be fresh, but I’ll be right here whenever you need me.”
It had to be fresh? That was news, and not the good sort. Questions popped around like manic bunnies in my brain. How fresh? How often? How much? Was it all the same? Should we test the theory?
But Alice was already gone, and I doubted she had the answers I needed. I glanced at Eli.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, undoubtedly seeing my worries and questions. Obviously, the answers weren’t ones he knew or he’d tell me.
I swallowed my panic and nodded. One crisis at a time.
When Alice returned, she had a cocktail shaker in her hand. “I made more. Just in case.”
Eli held out my glass, and Alice filled it. “I’ll mix up another batch before I go.”
She gave me a little finger wave like she was in a parade, and then she was gone again.
“Hey, Alice?” I called after her. “I like your singing.”
Her squeal, presumably a happy noise, was all the answer I got. Okay, maybe she was growing on me. The whole attempted murder thing was still a factor, but she was so damnably cheerful that I couldn’t entirely resist.
“We’re friends, aren’t we? Alice and I are friends,” I whispered to Eli. “I . . . like Alice.”
“You were too hungry to think clearly,” he offered. “Like a duckling imprinting on a food provider . . .”
Alice’s voice rang out, louder this time, as she presumably was mixing up another batch of blood and vodka for me. She was singing an old blues song, again managing to make it sound like it ought to be on a stage.
“I’m doomed if she keeps feeding me and singing.”
Eli laughed. “Drink up, butter cream. You sound more like yourself already.”
I hated how right he was, but I felt alert. I felt focused. Alice had just rescued me.
Although Eli didn’t point out that I’d been off since my attempted-murder, we both knew it. And it wasn’t just the appearance of fangs now and then or the weird energy. My necromancy had been erratic before I was injected with draugr venom. Since then, it was all over. Some days, my blood was calm. Other days, I could feel it thrumming inside me like war drums. I could summon anything. I felt sure of it.
But energy required balance. Magic always had a cost. And I wasn’t sure what the fee was—or if I was ready to pay it.