Page 17 of The Second Sight (Wanderlust Emporium Presents, Season One)

Chapter

Thirteen

SEVEN

Mesmerized, I traced the path of water droplets sliding down the curve of her spine.

Kasi’s skin glistened, warm brown against the white towel she clutched loosely at her chest. Last night had changed everything between us.

What began as a threat to my kind in a darkened alley had transformed into something new, something unexpected.

This was something that made my centuries dead heart stir with an emotion I hadn’t allowed myself to feel since my Basirah.

I hadn’t planned to take her to bed, or to taste her lips instead of her blood, but now that I had, I couldn’t imagine letting her go back to her ordinary human life. Not when she carried such extraordinary fae blood in her veins.

Her innocence should have repelled me. In four centuries of existence, I’d never been anyone’s first. It was too dangerous.

There was too much potential for regret if I hurt a human virgin.

Yet watching her now with her eyes meeting mine in the mirror with a mixture of shyness and newfound confidence, I felt something dangerously close to love.

“Come home with me,” I said, wrapping a towel around my waist. The words emerged before I’d fully formed the thought. “Not just for a few hours. For the entire day. I want to show you my world.”

She turned, droplets cascading from her damp hair down her chest. “Your home?”

“Yes. Where I live.” I confirmed. “Where I lay my coffin.” I joked, stepping closer to her. “Crackstone Manor.”

“You sleep in a coffin?”

“No, I was joking. I sleep in a bed. My house contains answers to questions you haven’t even thought to ask yet. I have ancient texts about vampires and about the Fae. Perhaps even clues about who your mother is.”

Her eyes widened slightly at the mention of Theia. I’d known it would be her desire to understand her mother’s origins. I wanted to give her the answers she craved, and I also wanted to selfishly lure her back to my place.

“I should call my dad,” she said, but her tone suggested she’d already made her decision. “Let him know I won’t be home today.”

“A text message will suffice,” I suggested, reaching out to tuck a wet strand of hair behind her ear. The casual intimacy of the gesture was a sign that this was destined. “We can leave as soon as we’re dressed.”

Twenty minutes later, we walked down her quiet suburban street side by side.

Kasi wore a simple sundress and sandals, her still-damp hair pulled back in a loose bun.

She’d applied minimal makeup, just enough to hide the evidence of our sleepless night.

She looked young, innocent, human except for the subtle glow in her eyes that marked her fae heritage.

My Porsche waited where I’d left it, half a block away, gleaming obsidian in the morning sunlight.

“This is your car?” Kasi asked as I led her to the passenger side.

“For nearly fifty years,” I replied as I opened her door. The leather seats greeted us with the rich scent of well-maintained luxury. “One of the advantages of immortality was time to acquire beautiful things.” And she was my new beautiful thing.

As I slid behind the wheel, her phone vibrated in her purse, once, twice, three times in rapid succession. She glanced at it, then deliberately returned it to her handbag without answering. The subtle tightening of her shoulders told me who it was.

“Your father,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“He’ll leave a voicemail,” she said, looking out the window.

“You should answer.” I kept my voice gentle but firm. “Parents worry. Even when their children are adults.”

Her eyes snapped to mine, surprise evident in her expression. Perhaps she’d expected me to encourage her to ignore her only family. That had never been my intention. I’d lost my own family centuries ago, violently, and painfully. I wouldn’t be the cause of such loss for her, not even indirectly.

Reluctantly, she retrieved the phone as it began vibrating for a fourth time. “Hi, Dad,” she answered, her voice carefully casual.

Even without putting it on speakerphone, I could hear both sides of the conversation perfectly. Vampire hearing had its advantages.

“Kasi, where are you?” Her father’s voice was tight with controlled panic. “I just saw you on the Ring camera walking down the street with some White man. Is everything okay? Who is he? Did he come from your apartment?”

“Daddy, I’m fine,” she said, shooting me an embarrassed glance. “He’s a friend.”

“A friend? Since when do you have friends, that I’ve never met? And he looks much older than you. Is this someone from college?”

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my lips. If only he knew just how much older I was than his daughter. The protective father routine was endearing and entirely justified. Vampire men were predators, but human men were monsters. There wasn’t much of a difference.

“He’s not that much older.”

“I don’t like this, Kasi. After what happened with your mother, you know I worry about you. You should’ve introduced me to this man I ain’t never seen before.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Where are you going? When will you be back?”

His questions sobered my amusement. Mr. Bacchar feared abandonment just as much as Kasi. Theia’s disappearance had left scars on both of them, wounds that had never properly healed. No wonder her father was frantic at the sight of his daughter walking off his property with a stranger.

“I’ll be back later,” Kasi promised. “I’ll text you in an hour, okay? I promise everything is fine.”

“Is your location thingy still on?”

“Yeah, Daddy you know I never turn it off. You can literally see my location at all times.”

A groan came from her cell phone. “Well okay. You call me if you need me.”

“I always do. Love you, I’ll talk to you later.” Kasi, sweetly added.

“I love you too. Just, just call me back later.”

“I will, bye.”

Kasi ended the call, her shoulders sagging slightly with relief. “Sorry,” she murmured. “He’s been overprotective since my mother left.”

I started the car. “No need to apologize.”

She studied my face, her expression thoughtful. “Did you have a family? Before you were turned?”

“Yes,” I answered simply, pulling away from the curb. “I did. A very, very, long time ago.”

I didn’t elaborate, and thankfully, she didn’t press.

Some wounds, even after centuries, remained too raw.

Instead, she settled back into the leather seat, her face turning toward the window as Chicago’s morning streets rolled past us.

The city looked different through her eyes, I imagined.

She knew things now and with that came new possibilities, and new dangers.

I glanced at her profile, at the pulse beating steadily at her throat, at the slight furrow between her brows as she processed everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

She was standing at the threshold between two worlds.

There was the human existence she’d always known, and the supernatural reality she was just beginning to discover. I was the one leading her to the truth.

The responsibility of that role wasn’t lost on me.

Nor was the danger I was placing her in by bringing her deeper into my world.

I could’ve let her think she was human, but I was too selfish to let her go on with her life.

I wanted her for myself, not as a replacement but as something more.

Someone I could spoil, cherish, fuck, and love.

As I navigated through the city toward Crackstone Manor, I couldn’t bring myself to regret telling her the truth.

Not when she looked so much like my Basirah.

Not when her fae blood sang to me with each beat of her heart.

Not when, for the first time in more than a century, I felt something other than the emptiness of immortality.

At the stoplight on Michigan Avenue, I reached for my phone while Kasinda gazed out the passenger window. With practiced ease, I typed a quick message to my sister:

[Remove Basirah’s portrait from the entryway immediately.]

I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t need to. Lily had been with me long enough to understand the significance of Kasi’s resemblance to my long-dead wife.

The last thing I needed was for Kasi to walk into my home and see her own face staring back at her from a painting created over a century ago.

I pressed send just as the light turned green.

Then slid the phone back into my pocket.

“Is this your first time in this neighborhood?” I asked.

She nodded, still looking out the window as we glided past historic mansions and manicured parks. “I don’t come to this part of Chicago much. It’s beautiful, but—”

“But not where psychology students typically frequent,” I finished for her, amused by the economic and racial divide that still defined this city after all these decades. “You’ll find vampires tend to accumulate wealth over time.”

A small smile played at her lips. “Is that in the vampire handbook? Step one, become immortal. Step two, drink blood. Step three, invest wisely.”

Her humor surprised me. After everything she’d experienced in the past twenty-four hours. Her accidental discovery the supernatural world. She also learned of her own fae heritage. She’d also been intimate with a vampire and still maintained this spark of wit.

“Something like that,” I replied, turning onto a tree-lined private drive that stretched toward a property set back from the main road.

“Though most of my fortune came from more traditional means some wealth came from land acquisition, art collection, and occasionally backing the right side in various historical conflicts.”