Page 16 of Will It Hurt?

I wiggled out of my sodden jeans and cuddled into the comfort of her throw. It smelled like Maia—the oil she used for her hair and the minty scent of her homemade bodywash.

“I saw a woman,” she said almost hesitantly. “Earlier.”

I didn’t meet her gaze.

“What woman?”

“When you spilled, your mind guard slipped for a brief second, and I saw a woman. A redhead. Blue coat.”

“Annabel.” I picked at a fray in the throw. “She’s the one I…”

“Neutralized?”

I was beginning to resent the word .

There was nothing neutral about what I did. My ancestors had once used silver daggers to get the deed done, and I was grateful that we had evolved to finer technology.

The idea of having to look into someone’s pain-filled eyes as I slit their throat or plunged a blade into their heart was more than I could stomach.

Sometimes I believed their pain was never exorcized. Instead, it looked for its next victim and slammed right into me.

Perhaps I harbored the pain of everyone I’d neutralized. It seemed fitting that I’d be burdened with it. After all, I’d taken their infinite lives with no more than a word and a spray of silver vapor.

“You were attracted to her,” Maia said, reading my silence incorrectly.

“Only in passing. And that wasn’t the issue.”

“I don’t know, Aisla. Having to kill someone I’m attracted to would put me in a shitty mood.”

“She was attract- tive. I wasn’t attract- ted. ”

Maia’s bleached brows rose. “So, what’s the problem?”

“This didn’t feel routine,” I said, glancing at my fingers and grimacing at the numerous red marks where I’d nibbled on hangnails. “Usually, I’m in and out quickly because I know this is what they want. I’m sure of it.”

“But you weren’t sure this time?”

“She did want to end her existence,” I said aloud, wondering if that was true.

“She signed the waiver sent by the High Coven. I saw it on your desk.”

So… what’s the problem? I felt Maia’s question envelope me, squeezing me tight.

“Maybe I’m just tired. I’m overthinking it. ”

“Aye,” she said, draining her mug. “Get the paperwork sent off and then rest. No back talk.”

Sometimes, I wondered if Maia knew she was younger than me. She often had the bossy aura of an older sister and the chatter of a wise old aunt.

After giving me a no-nonsense look, she slipped off the sofa and padded back to her workstation. A little label printer whirred in the background as she got back to her potions.

Unlike me, Maia’s role wasn’t ‘customer facing’. But it was just as important to keep the coven running smoothly.

Her mother—now part of the High Coven’s council—was lauded as a master potioneer, and Maia had trained under Elder Mariana ever since she could safely fit into her goggles.

Being one of two potioneers left in the UK meant that she was constantly inundated with orders from our coven sisters down south and around the continent.

Maia didn’t mind it—she was more than happy with her desk job. She’d often said she would’ve left the coven if she’d been given my duties.

I didn’t blame her.

As I watched her work, I felt my eyelids slide closed, lulled by the heat of the hearth and the rhythmic tapping of the pestle and mortar.

Just five minutes, I told myself as I pulled the throw tighter over my body.

When I awakened, the sun was rising outside .

Chapter Three

Jinn

I was rudely awakened from a lackluster slumber by a loud thought—not mine, never mine. My assistant, Nathaniel, hovered just outside the door to my bedroom, tapping his foot nervously against the hardwood floor.

I’d warned him many times not to sully my existence with his anxiety, but dhampirs always assumed they had more control over their thoughts and actions than they actually did.

A smattering of irritation slithered through my veins, awakening the shadows that had lain dormant as I rested. They detached from my skin, rising and stretching lazily as they sought the source of the exasperating noise.

Easy, I soothed, trying to allay their bloodthirsty nature.

They twisted in the confines of the silk-lined coffin like little toddlers waiting to throw a tantrum.

But as I reached for the latch on the underside of the lid, they settled disagreeably, melding into my skin.

Once, long ago, I used to feel the pinch and stretch as they leeched my borrowed lifeblood to take shape, but now…

Pain and I had parted ways a long time ago.

As the lid of the coffin rose with a smooth upward glide, grey-blue light flooded my safe space, forcing my teeth into a tight grind.

Dusk had clearly not fallen. Why was I being disturbed?

Bloody Nathaniel. I should’ve known better than to give a dhampir a chance .

My fingers instinctively crept to my chest, tracing the outline where my heart used to beat. It was a peculiar habit I’d developed over the course of a few days, ever since Belle left.

We’d hardly spent a day apart since I’d turned her. I relished the years of feeling her every emotion and hearing her every thought. With the distance between us, this new silence was… Unsettling.

I missed the faint lub-dub of her still beating heart, and the way her lips moved when she read. We’d spent decades together with me guiding her gently into vampyrehood in a way no one had bothered to show me.

But she’d said she needed some time to herself—that she’d be home in a few days.

I had to respect that, even though in my unbeating heart, I knew other creators would do what they pleased with the children they turned. They’d command and coerce and compel.

But Belle and I were different.

“What is it, Nathaniel?” I called out, pushing strands of clinging hair out of my face. The ventilation system in the coffin wasn’t the best, but after a century and a half of forcing myself to get used to its narrow confines, I didn’t relish the idea of a brand new one.

Anyone who’d spent a night in a new coffin would know that it isn’t pleasant—between the swallow-you-whole softness of the satin lining and the lemon-burst smell of the wood polish, the experience was a sensorial nightmare.

But after endless years spent in this particular silken cocoon, I had grown somewhat attached to its shortcomings. I wondered what that said about my personality.

My assistant entered the room in a flurry, his fingers clasped over a laptop like a schoolgirl running around campus with a handful of books. Warm with sweat, his fingers left marks on the dark grey metal .

“What’s the matter?” I asked when he hovered at the foot of my coffin with a bead of sweat trembling on his brow. The rigid inflexion in my voice made his heartbeat double.

“I, um, you asked me to, um—”

I should have picked a better assistant than this bumbling fool. When was the last time he got through a sentence without stuttering? Certainly never in front of me. He’d been in my employ for a little over a year, and each day with him was only a practice in tedium.

The only thing that prevented me from cutting him loose was the knowledge that he would probably be ripped apart by another employer who couldn’t stand his weaseliness.

See? Despite what everyone believed, I did know what kindness was.

I stepped out of the coffin and said as calmly as I could: “Out with it, Nat.”

My silk pajamas settled into a black cloud on the floor.

I was undeniably a creature of comfort—it was hard not to be when I’d had little to call my own before I was turned.

I’d recently learned from Nat that calling someone a sick Victorian child had become a much-used insult among chronically online humans, but as someone who had actually lived that life, I wouldn’t wish the suffering and disease upon anyone.

As I walked across the room in search of my ironed ensemble, I felt Nathaniel shift slightly. Without turning to face him, I knew he had angled himself away quickly, too skittish to look at me when I didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.

That was the problem with fledglings—they still retained too much of their human sensibilities.

Nat, for example, had been turned accidentally-on-purpose five years ago by an old lover who thought consent was a mere suggestion.

No attention had been paid to logic and reason when deciding if Nat would make a good vampyre.

My assistant, stupid as he was, had fought the change, leaving him in an eternal in-between state.

Not human, not vamp—just a walking pity party.

As I dressed, I picked at his mind, burrowing through the familiar pathways with ease. Nat had a simple mind with no locked rooms and no pitfalls. Instead, he spoke his thoughts more often than not.

The ability to read minds was different from compelling someone—a distinction that most got wrong. Compulsion was a skill that every vamp was born with, but mind reading was a muscle we needed time and effort to build.

Some vampyres could do one or the other, but only older creatures could ever master both. It took skill and finesse to raid someone’s mind without them noticing, and the same technique could be applied to compelling someone to do or feel certain things when they didn’t want to.

I thought about it from the perspective of art. If two people were handed the same set of colors, they wouldn’t create the same painting. One might draw a simple stick figure but the other could rival Degas.

Some vamps, like me, put in the time and effort to make mind reading a pleasant experience, while others didn’t care about the mess they made of their canvas.

I’d heard stories, now and again, of my counterparts tearing through minds with a mental cleaver and leaving their victims emaciated like a limp noodle.

I couldn’t say that the idea hadn’t crossed my mind ever so often—especially when Nat hummed and hawed like he had a mouthful of treacle. But I couldn’t imagine being responsible for the aftermath. I didn’t like the idea of a half-conscious dhampir on my handwoven Kurdish carpet .