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CHAPTER FOUR
Theo knew he should be sad about Skeeter. And he was, sort of.
He’d be sadder, he told himself as they drove to the funeral home, after he finished reeling from Kade’s proposition.
“I can hear your wheels turning up there,” Kade said from the driver’s seat. “It’s not like you’re killing me for real .”
Theo took a deep, calming breath. Kade’s soft metallic scent filled him all the way down to his bones. He’d gotten so used to it in the past year. Sometimes he wore Kade’s shirts to work so he could breathe it in if his coworker asked when his mom was coming back or how he was doing after his dad passed. He’d duck his head into the neckline and inhale, sometimes for the first time all night. It usually set him at ease.
But not now. Not with Kade talking about his own death, tapping anxiously at the peeling steering wheel of Sundance’s secondhand car.
“Too wide,” Theo said automatically as they swung clumsily around a corner.
“I know,” Kade barked. He cleared his throat, thin fingers drumming up a storm. “I always thought I was doomed. Even before all this—it was like I knew. Like it had all happened before. It kind of had , with most of my family. Lead a piece of shit life. Die young. This doesn’t feel like that.”
A yellow glow from the streetlights drifted over his face. One good thing about being in the passenger seat: Theo could watch Kade all he wanted.
“If it works,” Kade continued. “If it stops the ritual…you could touch me.”
He swallowed. Theo watched his throat bob and thought about a phrase Kade had said about himself last year: shaky guy. Loud heart. Would he still shake after Theo turned him? It wasn’t just a fear response. He did it when he was happy, too. Once, he started shaking when Theo was holding him at night—carefully, wrapped in a blanket so they wouldn’t touch. Theo had asked what was wrong and Kade had shook his head, body wracked with trembling even as he grinned.
I just never thought I’d have this, he’d admitted.
Theo didn’t want to lose that. Didn’t want Kade to be still and cold in his arms. Then again—if it worked, then Theo could finally hold him properly. No blanket in between them for safety, no evaluating every movement in case their skin accidentally brushed. No gloves.
Theo tore his gaze away. “Can we do it as a last resort? Like, if it’s the day before the ritual and we still don’t have a plan.”
Kade drummed faster against the steering wheel. Theo expected him to bring up how they were running out of time, how the memories of those dead boys were more vivid than ever, how much he wanted to escape this sword of Damocles hanging over his head—a reference Theo only knew thanks to Kade’s rambles as they did English homework.
Kade sighed. “If it works, why wait?”
“If it doesn’t work,” Theo started.
Kade rolled his eyes. “Milly and I have been talking about this for months. It’s a classic loophole! Like in Macbeth when the prophecy says no one can kill Macbeth who was born from a woman, and the cesarean guy does it because he wasn’t technically born!”
“I always thought that was a cop-out. How did you almost fail English?”
“I have to die for the ritual to work. I have to burn to death. But if I’m already dead, the ritual is screwed. They can’t finish that final step. Right?”
“I don’t know!” Theo barked. He jolted as Kade took a speed bump too fast. “I don’t know how any of this works. I just don’t want to trap you with this.”
Kade gripped the steering wheel, still recovering from the speed bump. “That’s our whole schtick! We’re trapped together!”
“Not like this,” Theo argued. “This is permanent . You can’t take it back. Unless you kill me, which?—”
“Isn’t happening,” Kade finished. His jaw flexed, his eyes fixed distractedly on the road ahead.
Theo cursed himself silently. Of course Kade would take that the wrong way. He was always waiting for people to run out on him.
“Not that we aren’t permanent,” he tried. Then he said the next obvious thing. “Like, I’d marry you.”
Kade blinked. Blood rushed to his cheeks, delicious and distracting. His heart beat so fast Theo’s mouth watered.
“Um,” Kade said, strangled.
“Not now . When we’re, like…” Theo’s mind reeled, trying to think of a normal age to marry the love of your un-life. “…thirty. Oh hey, we’re here!”
Kade stopped the Lexus with a screech outside of Hersay’s funeral home. Theo got out and sped all the way across the road before he forced himself to acknowledge that Kade wasn’t following.
He turned back to the car. Kade was still in the driver’s seat, staring out at the road with dazed eyes.
“Kade,” Theo called. “You coming?”
Kade looked at him. Cheeks still flushed, heart still going a mile a minute. Making Theo ache in a hundred ways that had nothing to do with the blood running through his veins.
“Yep,” he squeaked, and stumbled out of the Lexus after him.
Hersay’s had installed a security camera at the back door.
“About time,” Kade said as they stood out of range, sounding almost normal after the fiasco in the car. “How many times have you been broken into, guys? Theo, are you going to fly up behind and smash it?”
He turned to Theo, who was crouching down to examine the flowerbed planted next to the parking lot.
“I thought you said their flowerbeds were boring and that you were going to seed bomb them,” Kade said. “Are you seed bombing now? Is this really the time?”
“They’re still boring,” Theo replied. He straightened, flipping a rock in his hand. “Stand back.”
Theo slung the rock into the security camera, which went crashing to the ground in a shower of metal and plastic.
“ I would’ve flown up,” Kade muttered. “But I guess that’s cool too.”
Theo broke the door handle with one sharp tug. They’d installed a new lock. It looked fancy. Theo felt a little guilty about their previous two break-ins as he kicked the broken metal out of the way. He ushered Kade inside and closed the wrecked door behind them.
“Ah,” Kade said. “Memories. What do you think, will we be doing this again a year from now?”
“I hope not.”
Kade went over to one of the storage fridge doors and plucked the CRACK A COLD ONE magnet off.
“Souvenir,” he explained when Theo gave him an incredulous look. “In case it really is the last time.”
Theo was filled with a strange melancholy. Then he remembered he was standing in a funeral home scoping out the dead body of his classmate, and he sobered.
He followed his nose to the nearest body fridge. “Ready?”
Kade made a face and nodded.
Theo pulled out the tray.
Skeeter Bass’s eyes were closed. Her skin was pale above the white sheet and her lips were parted. She’d finally gotten her braces off. Theo hadn’t noticed until now.
Her neck had been torn apart. The scars she’d gotten last year were barely visible, the flesh open and bare. Pink tendons lay exposed and a hint of her jawbone showed through the skin. There was another deep, brutal puncture wound in her scarred shoulder. Animal attack, Felicity had told them drolly before they left.
Kade squirmed. “Man. Your dad’s messy. You’re always so neat.”
“Thanks,” Theo said quietly. He could feel Kade’s gaze on him, worried he’d said the wrong thing. They didn’t talk about Victor much. Even when they went to Milly’s to try and come up with a game plan, they referred to Victor as Him. When He comes back. When He tries something.
Kade frowned. “Hey. Did her neck just…move?”
“What?”
Kade pointed. “There. Her neck looks different. I thought I saw?—”
He broke off with a yelp as Skeeter’s neck shifted. The skin was pulling together, Theo realized with dull horror. Healing. The tendons knitted together, skin sealing over it with a sickly wet noise. Her scars melted like they’d never been there in the first place.
Theo stepped in front of Kade, mind whirring. He didn’t remember anything after he’d woken up dead. Didn’t remember walking away from Kade or going feral on a deer. When Skeeter woke up, would she be herself?
Skeeter’s eyes flashed open. They were liquid black.
“Oh shit,” Kade whispered.
Skeeter sat up with inhuman speed. Her head jerked toward Kade, black eyes locking on him with a hunger Theo knew intimately. Her mouth filled with fangs.
Kade gripped Theo’s sleeve, pulling desperately. “Oh shit !”
“Shit,” Theo agreed. He held up his hands placatingly. “Skeeter. Hi. We don’t know each other that well, but?—”
Skeeter yanked herself out of the body drawer and lunged at Kade.
“Nope,” Theo blurted. He blurred forward and caught her in midair. She hissed and bucked, swiping toward Kade. The sheet twisted around her in a demented toga, covering some but not all the important bits as she scrabbled.
Theo grunted, pinning her arms to her sides. “We can’t put her in the Lexus like this.”
“Got it,” Kade said. He rolled up his sleeve reluctantly, face creased as he crept up to her.
Theo yanked Skeeter away from him. “Whoa, hey! What are you doing?”
“Calming her down,” Kade said. “You have her, right? Chill out.”
“ You chill out,” Theo muttered. He watched anxiously as Kade came closer, his beautiful wrist held out toward Skeeter’s snarling fangs.
“Careful,” Theo warned.
“Yes, mum .” Kade lifted his hand closer to Skeeter and grimaced. “I don’t trust those teeth. Can you bite me? I’ll drip-feed her.”
Theo’s mouth watered. He motioned for Kade to come behind him, twisting his head so Skeeter couldn’t reach before he opened his jaw.
“Hole punch,” Kade muttered nonsensically. He pressed his hand against Theo’s teeth. Theo bit down, lips peeled back so he didn’t burn him.
“Ow,” Kade said. “Thanks.”
It was perfunctory, the most no-nonsense bite they’d ever shared. Theo licked his fangs as they went blunt, longing for Kade’s bare neck. He’d fed yesterday, but he was always hungry when it came to Kade.
Kade held his bleeding hand over Skeeter’s snarling mouth. For a moment she got even louder. Then she quietened, her struggle dying down as she tipped her head up to be fed. For a minute the only sound was the dull drip of Kade’s blood falling into her mouth.
Finally, Skeeter’s eyelids fluttered. She went limp in Theo’s arms. She strained to keep her mouth open, but eventually even that went slack as she passed out.
Kade cupped his injured hand. “No fun without the venom.”
Theo heaved Skeeter into a carry hold. Her mousy brown hair was wild with struggle, the sheet a bedraggled mess around her body. Blood smudged her chin and cheeks, even her nose from Kade’s drips going astray.
Theo wiped her face with the sheet and looked at Kade pointedly. “Still want to be a vampire?”
Kade rolled his eyes and held out his injured hand. “Are you going to heal me or not, blood boy?”