Page 19 of Cursebound

He is Tomasso’s lackey when he could have been his own man, and it breaks my heart. He’s a Maker, a genius—he’s made fortunes designing software. He could live anywhere, do anything. Instead, he chose this. To become Tomasso’s little errand boy.

“Cut it out, Rosa. We’re not kids anymore. There is only one side, and he’s always on ours. And I stay here with him because it’s my home—he’s my family. I was six when they died. Six! I barely remember them, and it’s not like you stepped in to fill the void. You shut yourself off, even when I came crying to you for comfort. The only person who was there for me was Tomasso, so maybe get off your fucking high horse and listen to him!”

My own temper flares—not least because he has struck a nerve. He’s right, and that hurts. I did let him down. But he doesn’t know all of it.

He doesn’t understand how it feels, carrying this guilt. Carrying the knowledge that if I didn’t swap places with my twin that night, she’d still be alive. He doesn’t understand how it feels to have seen her afterward, when I broke into the mortuary to say goodbye. When I saw her gorgeous hair burned away, leaving singed fuzz on her blistered red scalp. When I saw her face contorted in agony, her mouth frozen open in a silent scream.

Once that image was lodged in my mind—of my sweet, amazing twin sister desperately scratching at a locked door while flames engulfed her—something changed inside me. Something vital shut down for the sake of my sanity. I mourned them all, but when I lost Serena, I lost a part of myself.

So yes, I let him down. I let everyone down. Apparently that’s what I do.

“I’m not having a kid, Pietro—I mean it. The world doesn’t need another me.”

CHAPTER 9

ROSA

Ispend the rest of the day in a kind of limbo, lurching from thinking too much to not thinking at all as I sprint around Grant Park and lock myself in my gym to kick the shit out of inanimate objects. I speak briefly to Donatella and find out that there is no change in Paola’s condition.

I don’t mention the baby, and neither does she. I am tormented by the image of Paola, vulnerable and weak when she has always been so vital and strong. She would have been a great mother, and the world is a sadder place for the loss of her child, Seer blood or no.

Donna says the family is devastated, not thinking clearly, too bound up in their grief to answer questions. Nobody knows what she faced in Cairo or why it all went so wrong. Too much time has elapsed to have a hope in hell of tracking them, and Paola doesn’t look like she’s going to wake up and tell us the whole story anytime soon.

Apparently she’s hooked up to a million tubes, and a vent is doing her breathing for her. The Vecchissime’s best Healers have been sent to her, but there’s still no change.

For now though, if she’s aware of what’s going on, she’s in a world of hurt. I hope she doesn’t. I hope that for now, as she physically recovers, she is blissfully ignorant of what is happening to her. Of what happened to her precious baby.

I spend some time doing light research on the Coscas, surfing sites on the dark web and discovering that basically nobody knows much at all. They’re doing a bang-up job of keeping a low profile, and Luca da Firenze as an individual simply doesn’t exist. I expected nothing more, but I’m still disappointed.

I run myself a bubble bath and rest my weary body in the hot water, looking for respite. I would like to talk to him again. I have questions—like, a million of them—and nobody to ask. If I were more sociable, more open to the other families and to our culture, I’d have resources—wise friends I could call or elders to pump for information.

If I were more like Donatella and less like, well, me, then I wouldn’t be so alone in this.

I should have asked for his number, I think as I swirl the bubbles around with my toes. Followed him on Insta. The ridiculous concept of Luca having Instagram amuses me, and I take the opportunity to force my thoughts away from the multitude of stressors in my life. I’ve been around for long enough to know that no matter what’s going on in the world, the brain is like any other muscle—overusing it causes pain and injury.

What I could really do with is sex. Toe-curling, spine-tinglingly good sex. As I towel myself dry, I toy with the idea of scrolling through one of the hookup apps I subscribe to, but it won’t help. The only person my body seems to associate with sex right now is him. He is gone, but not forgotten. I still have faint bruises around my jaw from where he grabbed me, visible now that my makeup is cleaned off.

My hand goes to my face, touches the tender spots. How can I want to screw someone who did this to me? It goes against every instinct and principle I have, yet I can’t deny that it’s true. He marked not only my face, but my soul, and I don’t understand it.

I clamber into bed and flick on the TV to reruns ofTrue Blood. The irony is not lost on me. It’s an entertaining if misleading show. Few vampires are as hot as Eric and Bill. Although he blows them both out of the water.

Sometime later—I have no idea exactly when—I wake up. While I’m still asleep. Yeah, it’s complicated.

I can feel the sheets on my body and know that I physically remain cocooned in the safety of my own home. No light is filtering through the blinds, so it is still nighttime.

But my senses tell me that I am also somewhere else. Part of me is walking down a plushly carpeted hotel corridor. I get into an elevator and know which button to press.

The other me blinks and emerges from the elevator. Stands in front of a door, staring at the white wood, deciding whether to knock.

I am in both places at once, perfectly balanced between the two—it is like the visions I get when I’m being Called, but without the usual danger flare of heat from my amulet. Sleeping me reaches up to touch the gold heart-shaped charm. It is still there, and it is cool.

So, I process calmly, I am having a vision. A different kind of vision. I’m usually hitching a ride in the mind of a vamp, seeing what they see, using those visual prompts to find them, looking for road signs and landmarks. But this time, I seem to be hitching a ride in my own mind. It’s odd. I glance down from the white door, see the yoga pants and tank top I fell asleep in. Yep. I’m definitely having a vision of… me? What the fuck?

I breathe in, expecting nothing—my visions don’t expand beyond sight and sound.

This time, I scent everything: an empty wine bottle left outside one of the rooms, flowers in a vase at the end of the hallway, the leftover trace of perfume. And under all of that—underlying it all—is him. Old wood, dark spice, all male.

I look around, confused. Is this a good old-fashioned sex dream? If so, I am totally up for it. I’ve been like a bitch in heat since I met him, and maybe this is my mind’s way of letting me have my cake and fuck it. All of the fun without any of the danger or moral ambiguity? Yes, please.