Page 22

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MERCER

Rahil was just… gone.

Of course he was. What else had Mercer expected to happen, when he’d shied back from a simple term of endearment and then flaunted a photo of his dead wife a moment later? Though, flaunted was perhaps the wrong word. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done. All the emotions that came with the jumbled memory were shame and fear now, layered in the returning pain of his migraine and the added nausea of anxiety, but he didn’t think that was what he’d portrayed to Rahil at the time. Maybe he’d brushed Rahil off; maybe he’d yelled at him.

Mercer couldn’t tell what of his recollections of that moment had even been real, now that he was alone again, hours later, his ice pack back on and his stomach so twisted that he clung to the room’s tiny trash can in case anything spontaneously decided to come up. His migraine was mostly over at this point, so whatever nausea remained was emotional in nature, but that didn’t reassure him. At least he knew how to deal with his typical physical maladies. With this, he had no idea where to start.

Lydia had gotten back forty-five minutes ago, stepping out of a cab like she was the divine emperor of Earth. Then she’d tripped on the even ground twice before reaching the front door. Pulling her beanie over her eyes, she’d charged past Mercer with a sullen, “Hey Dad,” and gone straight to her room, shouting at him that she was “trying to nap, geez,” when he knocked.

Mercer endeavored to make peace with that. According to one of Rahil’s earlier texts, she’d taken her morning meds. If she was refusing to so much as talk to him about her problems, at least she was resting. He wanted to ask Rahil if he knew more, but instead he dragged his trash can to the hall, listening to the gentle echo of Lydia’s favorite sleep-song.

The loneliest whale, she’d called it.

“Like you.” She’d nudged him in the shoulder.

He’d been taken aback by that, making a noise of confusion before responding, “What do you mean? I have my Puck!”

She’d just grumbled some derogatory term and moved on. Mercer had thought her ridiculous. If he were truly lonely in the way she’d implied, then he’d know it. He’d have gotten on a dating app long ago—would have found someone to help him raise Lydia when she was still young enough that a new parent wouldn’t feel like an invasion into an already stable life. If Mercer was lonely, he wouldn’t have let Rahil run out the door.

He could still feel the ghost of the vampire’s touch, the pressure of his fangs, the softness of his voice. Just the thought of it bloomed something raw and covetous inside Mercer, like sand poured into a gap that had needed filling for years—draining back out just as quickly with Rahil now gone, and no certainty that he’d return in the way he had before, with flirtation and tender fingertips and—

Mercer was not lonely.

Rahil had simply done something to him; that was it. This new aching was Rahil’s fault, not his. Rahil with his silky hair and soft hands and his way of making Mercer feel like he could relax, even if it was just for that moment, just for one long, perfect breath. Rahil, who couldn’t see his own worth. Who’d convinced himself that he’d done nothing for the people he loved simply because their paths had strayed away from his own.

Mercer missed him.

He fucking missed Rahil, like a crack had been revealed in his chest, and only that soft touch could fill it again. And the more he sat with that knowledge, the less Mercer knew what to do with it.

Groaning, he pressed his head between his knees. Lydia’s music had ended, and when he leaned across the hall to crack open her door, he found her asleep on her floor, a pillow tucked beneath her chin. He closed it once more.

There was still work to do, regardless of his indecision and the cracks in his heart. Now that his head no longer pounded and any sign of a lit screen didn’t make him want to die, he had better check his emails. With another groan, Mercer dragged himself to his phone.

He continued to sit on the floor with his waste bin as he responded to a couple of new customer inquiries, then confirmed the pickup time for a pair of repeat clients who were coming to get a set of kinky jewelry after sunset the next day, and sorted through spam, ads, and a few artist newsletters. As he finished, a new email came in. Its subject line alone made him shake. He swore he hadn’t felt this bad when he’d sent the original message alerting Anthony to Lydia’s med situation, but sometimes the answer was worse than the question. Still, he had to open it.

Mercer Bloncourt,

This is certainly an undesirable situation. I will do what I can. If you can ration Lydia’s medications to every ten hours, her nerve dysfunction and pain might relapse, but based on our early attempts at dosage, her seizures should remain fairly suppressed. It might buy us a day or two.

In the meantime, continue to keep me updated, both on your unholy gold work and any further issues you face with William Douglas.

Very Respectfully,

Dr. Hilker

Mercer threw up. Only bile came out, and he felt no better for it.

Anthony would see about replacing Lydia’s stock of meds, but if he couldn’t…

Mercer had known that might be the result. Lydia’s medication required a specific and complex combination of ingredients and technology to produce, and Anthony’s backdoor—which Mercer was pretty sure was another word for illegal—methods of production meant he had access to them at such rare intervals that he created as much as he could when possible, usually stocking Lydia up for months at a time. The thought of his daughter undergoing all the pain and debilitation of life without meds because her only access to them was through a shady, experimental avenue made Mercer furious at everyone and no one, at William Douglas and society as a whole, and at himself most of all.

He knew how precious those pills were, and how big a threat William Douglas could pose. Mercer should have had the forethought to protect the most important things in their home and their life. Yet here he was, sitting on the floor, hoping and praying that someone else could fix his mistake in time.

Mercer’s stomach churned again. If he kept sitting there, kept thinking like this, he’d be sick in more ways than simply his stomach. And he had to be well enough to pick up Kat in two hours.

Scratch that, an hour and forty minutes.

Mercer forced himself up, pacing around the house a few times—checking windows and doors and then windows again—before finally trekking out to the shed, where he was immediately distracted by a news notification on his phone.

Wesley Smith-Garcia had lost his court case.

It felt like too bad a sign to fully internalize the horror of it in the moment—and too obvious, in hindsight, that of course this would be the outcome—and in shock, Mercer scrolled through the incoming articles of self-righteous applause and compassionate dismay. As he refreshed, a new press release appeared near the top of the feed. It had a statement from the young man’s lawyer about their resolution to appeal to the California Supreme Court. “In any other case,” she had allegedly said after the verdict was released, “if someone had risked their life to save a neighbor from a hideous death, they would have been lauded as a hero. It is a failure of our justice system that we condemn those heroics simply because the neighbor in question is a vampire.”

Mercer forced himself to close his phone and set it to the side before he could instinctually scroll down to the hateful comments he knew would be piling up below the post. He didn’t need to see those right now. For the moment, it had to be enough to know that there were people out there standing up for the vampires in their lives, even if the reason for that was the horde that stood against them—against those like Rahil. Against Rahil himself.

Mercer tried to focus on one project, then another, but his mind kept roaming back to the vampire he’d been spending so much time with. They’d worked together in this space so often over the last few weeks, that he swore he could smell Rahil here; sense a tingling of his presence. Or perhaps that was simply the memories that kept reemerging, bringing the feel of Rahil’s fingertips putting such tender pressure on Mercer’s head and the touch of his lips to the side of Mercer’s neck.

It did him no good to dwell, but he couldn’t help himself. He traced the edges of the unholy gold they’d been working on—nearly finished with—and imagined the way it had made Rahil’s skin shiver. The bliss of his bite. The softness of his skin.

Mercer curled his hand around the metal, his spark lighting through it at the memory. He sensed the collision of energy and atom as though feeling the seep of venom into his veins. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he needed to do for the final step in the unholy gold’s creation.

Between picking up Kat from the vet and checking on Lydia, Mercer’s work with the metal took the rest of the night. Each heating, pushing and overlaying of the unholy gold in the presence of his spark felt like an act of worship—not simply to the God he’d grown up with, questioned, and uncertainly returned to, but to something bigger still. To the lonely place inside his chest and the idea that it could be filled someday. To himself.

And, regardless of whatever became of their relationship, to the vampire who’d gotten him this far.