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Chapter Eighty

LUNA

Pushing my entire face into his cheek, I kiss him. He acts as if I didn’t almost lose him. God, give me the confidence of a weak, wrecked, formidable undead king.

He brings me into the bathroom. It’s jade green from the tiles to the toilet.

“Where do you think he took my mother?”

“Don’t worry. Viaro can find anyone.” He pulls off both my socks at the same time. He’s never looked so tired. The circles under his eyes are deep and dark. The spot on his neck, where Charles tried to bite him, is still red.

“Did your phone get wet?” I ask. “We should tell Serafina we’re okay.”

“It’s soaked.” He kisses my cheek with tired tenderness. “Does that break them?”

“Pretty much. You can dry it out in rice, then maybe, but it takes a minute.”

“The house has a phone.” He reaches for his pocket, but his shaking hand misses entirely. He’s a vampire. He doesn’t shiver when he’s wet in winter or get the chills from a fever. It’s that unexplained shaking again.

He finally gets into the pocket, but notices that I clocked his difficulty.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

I shouldn’t prod. I should respect his cues. But I was almost raped by mad vampire number one and my mother was taken away by mad vampire number two. My filters are shredded.

“Is it my blood wearing off?”

He caresses my cheek and looks into my eyes with an admiration that would melt the icecaps. “Partly.” He pulls me close. “It’s just the cost of loving a woman like you.”

“You mean loving someone stubborn and reckless?”

“I mean perfect. Powerful. Priceless.”

He believes it because I changed the shape of his heart. That has to be good enough for now. He loves me as much as he can. I’m too tired to call him a liar outright. Not about that.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.” I pull away to look in his eyes. “About the shaking.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’m supposed to say ‘it’s okay,’ and ‘when you’re ready to tell me, I’m here,’ but?—”

“But instead you’re going to say, ‘whatever you say, boss.’”

“No. I’m going to say, the more you avoid it, the more I worry.”

He peels off my damp clothes as if uncovering the most beautiful work of art, kissing every revelation, pushing down, unzipping, pulling away with intense appreciation of the body beneath. I sit on the edge of the tub while he runs his tongue around my breasts, my navel, the insides of my thighs.

“He touched you here.” He kisses the spot. “I am sorry. I’ll make him scream until you say you forgot.”

“You’re avoiding,” I whisper to him.

He stops, looks up at me, and says, “No. I’m distracting.”

“Why do your hands shake when my blood wears off?”

“No more questions until I finish. Lean back.”

My body obeys so he can kiss around the edges of my opening—sucking gently to coat me in venom. Every touch of his lips and swipe of his tongue should bring more pleasure, but it’s too much, too soon. I can’t clear my mind of Carmine under the water and my mother’s bloody eyes.

“I can’t.” I push away his head.

“I said hush.”

“You said no more questions. That’s not a question.”

“I’m almost done.”

“No, you’re not. I’m sorry.” I sit straight and he stands.

He’s not hurt. He’s confused.

“This isn’t what I need.” I slide back into the tub. Water and bubbles splash everywhere. “And this is nothing like liminal water.”

“That’s a bad thing or no?”

“It’s good. Fine. Great. A stupid observation no one needed to hear.”

“Should I leave?”

“No. Please no. Sit. I’m weird. Between that person putting his hands on me and seeing you like that. Then my mother. My fucking mother… I imagined doing worse to her, and that was bad. Really bad. Then stupid Laro. I’m upset.”

“I can help you.” He retrieves a fat, soft sponge from the cabinet and dunks it.

His arm tremors while it’s underwater. “I can’t help your mind.

There’s a barrier between the brain and the blood.

But if I tell your heart to stop hurting, it will.

If I tell your body to stop running your blood hot, it will. ”

Blood doesn’t run hot, and the heart doesn’t actually hurt, but it doesn’t matter. I know what he means, and I believe he can do what he promises.

“Is that what you did for all the Strega you had in thrall? Xanaxed them?”

He switches the sponge to the unshaky hand.

“Maybe.” He moves the sponge down my leg, and I realize he probably doesn’t know what Xanax is.

“It’s a medi?—”

“I am dying.” He bites his lips. “Not just from being mortal. That would be living the rest of a normal lifetime. I am dying of what would have killed me before I was sired. This…” He holds up his shaking hand. “It has a name. Letters. And a baseball player.”

“Lou Gehrig?”

“That one.” He runs the sponge over my torso and shoulders. “When I was a man, it would have been a few years. But I’m on borrowed time. So.” He shrugs casually. Dismissal. Minimization. He’s pantomiming “whatever” for my benefit.

“Carmine…”

“So…” His shrug lacks enthusiasm. He can’t sell it. “It’s progressing a little faster.”

“How long do we have?”

Another shrug. This one is a big Italian che sera, sera.

“You don’t know? Or you don’t want to tell me?”

“You’ll be out of thrall in a couple of months.”

No. Absolutely not.

My hands fly to my face. There’s too much light.

Too much exposure. But when I close my eyes, all I see is my mother with dark smudges where her eyes should be, blinded by a vampire’s knife.

Over and over. Kicking liminal water. Over and over.

Here’s a thing, eight weeks. Too abstract?

Here are socket eyes. Look at it. Look, look, look.

Pay attention. It happened too fast for her to scream.

Look, look at the blood. What did that feel like for her?

What would it feel like for you? Let’s put the horror and compassion together in an envelope and mail it everywhere, all at once, while it plays over and over on every screen.

I lost control of my heart and my body already.

Now my mind is sticking its finger in a light socket no matter how much I tell it to stop.

Not that I know where the sensible stop voice is coming from, because it’s not my brain, which has gone completely rogue.

So there’s some fourth thing that’s mostly me—that wants better.

It wants control, and balance, and peace, but it’s powerless over the other three.

He sits on the edge of the tub and puts his arm around me, kissing the top of my head.

“I shouldn’t have made you tell me.” My hands drop and slap against the water. “Today has been the absolute worst. Hated it.”

“Zero stars.” He offers a rating the way I’d say it, and damn, I’m going to miss him.

“One out of ten. Fuck! My brain is exploding.”

“I can help you.”

“No. This is backward. I should be comforting you.”

“ Assolutamente no .” He yanks a big bath towel from a shelf. “I don’t want comfort.”

“What do you want?” I stand in the tub as he snaps open the towel and holds it out from the corners.

“I want to fight.” The towel is warm and soft around my shoulders.

From behind, he wraps his arms around me and speaks softly into my ear.

“I am going to fight for more time with you. I’m going to fight every vampire king at once if I have to.

I am going to make sure you are safe from being touched ever again.

Then I am going to bring that knife home, and Ferrante’s going to get this thing out of my chest.”

“Carmine.” I turn to face him. Is this more bad news? Will this snowball into another ton of straw on this poor camel’s back? “He’s in stasis.”

“He’ll be up.” He turns me around and uses the corner of the towel to dry my face. “They don’t all last fifty years. But I need him. The knife is volatile. It heals what it wants.”

“Wait. You mean this could all be for nothing ?” My face crunches up and tears blur my vision. “It might heal a papercut and not?—”

“Shh.” He puts a finger to my lips. “Let me fix you.”

He wraps the towel under my arms and tucks in the corner.

“I was up for, like, twenty hours two days in a row, so I might start hallucinating.”

“You’ll be asleep soon. Anything else before I start?”

“Did you tell Viaro to look for my mother?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure about your diagnosis?” I touch his face, because he doesn’t seem real. His eyes aren’t multicolored, but a brown rich enough to fall into. His skin does not glow. It has a translucent sheen.

“Luna. Nothing outside of your immediate control will cause panic in your heart or body. You will not react to your memories as if they’re happening now. Your heart will stop hurting. You will stop producing fear in your veins until you have control over the thing that’s causing the worry.”

The effect is so immediate it takes my breath away. The pain in my chest is gone. The urgency of everything—every thought, moment, movement—has dissolved.

“What did you do?” I whisper because I’m scared the sound of my voice will shatter the peace.

“I gave your body a command.”

I close my eyes, just to feel this moment for as long as it lasts. Mom is there. Mom the life raft. The water kicker. The blinded.

“The pictures are still in my head.”

“I can’t do anything about that. But your body won’t beg for more pictures to sate an addiction. From now on, they are your choice.”

“You rewrote me better than I ever rewrote anyone,” I say.

“I have more practice.”

“How long will it last?”

“Depends.” He rocks his head back and forth as if calculating. “If you don’t resist too much, anywhere from two weeks to forever.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re the last thing about my life I still control.”

As if his arm wants to prove the point, it shakes from the shoulder. He closes his eyes, waiting out the tremor.