Page 46 of The Guardian's Curse

“No need. You thought you were protecting me from the hideous beast before you.” A hint of bitterness rang in his voice, making her unspeakably sad. At the same time, it annoyed her. He was acting like a moody teenager, and she was over it.

“If there’s no need for an apology, why have you hidden in your room for nearly a week?”

“Because I don’t want to see you and you can’t take a bloody hint,” he said.

She drew a deep breath. “Is that really it? Or is it that you don’t want me to see you? You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

He leaned in closer. She didn’t make a sound, for fear that it would be a whimper. “I have lived with this curse for nearly a century, you foolish creature. What qualifies you to diagnose me, little witch?”

“Because I know more about magic than you do,” she said. “And until this happened, I was enjoying spending time with you. And don’t call me little witch, you condescending jerk.”

His grip on her arm tightened, and she let out the tiniest whimper. “Tread carefully, Shoshanna.”

“Why? I’m not the one who’s pitching a fit because I got my feelings hurt,” she snapped, careful not to move. If she twitched wrong, her entire arm was taking a leave of absence from its socket. And she certainly couldn’t stand her ground with the angry vampire if she was crying for mercy. “I was only frightened because I hadn’t seen your real face yet. Because you and Paris lied to me. I thought something had come in to hurt us. I was scared for you, not of you. I yelled at you to get out. Didn’t you hear me?” He was silent for a long stretch, eerily quiet without the soft rhythm of breathing to betray his presence. “Would you please come and play the piano with me again? I miss playing with you.”

There was a long silence. The pressure on her shoulder finally eased, though he didn’t release her. His voice was quiet and deadly. “Now that you’ve aired your feelings, are you satisfied?”

“Are you going to speak to me now?”

“I am speaking to you. Listen closely, little witch.” His fingers tightened on her arm with those words, as sharp and pointed as his teeth. “Leave me alone.” There was the faintest prick of pain on the side of her throat. Sharp teeth grazed her skin, and icy air left a trail of goosebumps before he pulled away. “Do your job to the letter, or I’ll drain you dry and tell Paris to find a more competent replacement after he disposes of you.”

He released her and darted away. In an instant, he was gone, door slamming behind him.

She let out a shaky sigh.

Maybe it was for the best. Most of her shipments had arrived, and she’d begun the work on the primary sigil in the living room. It was fiddly, precise work, and the last thing she needed was a brooding vampire underfoot. Paris had delivered a crate of textbooks from her apartment, along with a pair of fuzzy cat slippers she was certain he’d grabbed only so he could make fun of her. She had her mind and her hands full with the task of untangling Lucia’s curse.

And yet, she kept finding herself at that damned door, like something was pulling her in. She needed things to be right. Idiotic meat machine that it was, her body was all aflutter with the memory of his teeth at her neck.

If anything, he’d proven she was right about vampires. He’d rebuffed her tentative kindness and punished her one attempt to be devious. So why couldn’t she just let the stupid vampire disappear into the shadows?

* * *

The following day, a delivery arrived with half a dozen dresses in red and black, all wrapped in garment bags. She was unsurprised to find that they were all her size. Pinned to the outside of one bag was a note from Safira that said Pick something pretty for the party. I like the red.

Ah, yes. Because vampires loved few things as much as their lavish parties. When Paris told her about the upcoming party at Infinity, she’d wanted to stay home. But except for her terrified flight, she hadn’t left the house in nearly two weeks. And getting out of the house, where it was eerily quiet and full of tension from the brooding vampire downstairs...well, it had rapidly gained some appeal.

That night, she didn’t bother to prepare Alistair’s meal. If he wanted to be an asshole, he could fix his own damn dinner. Instead, she ate a salad while she read through an old treatise on curses.

Real curses were the domain of Night Weavers, a highly specialized cabal of tisserande. They used the art of Weaving as Shoshanna did, but they wove fate itself, binding powerful forces that could change the course of a life for eternity. Curses wove into a person’s soul, until they were so tangled they could only be extricated by the one who placed it.

In a decade of training as a tisserand, one thing had been made abundantly clear to Shoshanna and her fellow trainees. They did not meddle in curses. They were not to manipulate fate, lest they bring ruin on themselves and all those around them.

But as she sat with Lucia hour after hour and stared at her with arcane sight until her head ached, she began to understand. The curse was complex, but not utterly incomprehensible. Furthermore, there was something unusual. Tangled there in the dark, bruised blue of the curse, there was a hint of pure, rose red. It pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat. She could barely glimpse it, and she didn’t dare try to touch it yet. But she’d never seen such a thing. Alistair and Paris bore a similar bruise-colored energy, but there was no hint of this vibrant red.

A distant creak broke through her concentration. From the alcove, she could just see the piano in its new position. Quiet as a mouse, a familiar figure drifted across the uneven floor. Then there was the soft scrape of the wooden lid and the creak of the piano bench.

The gentle waterfall of Debussy cascaded from his fingers. Her heart thumped as she listened to him play. It took all of her mental fortitude to stay put, not to come running at the first hint of compromise. She was strong, dammit.

As he continued playing, she stared closely at Lucia again, trying to catch a glimpse of the pattern. The red thread was tangled through the curse, but she wasn’t sure it was a part of it. Interesting.

Silence rang out. He cleared his throat, a quiet and rough sound. Then he began to play again, with an obvious gap where a partner would play. With centuries of practice and supernatural dexterity, he was easily capable of playing the missing part, but there was a ringing silence, an emptiness of an open chord and missing notes. Was it wishful thinking on her part, or was there an invitation in the emptiness?

He cleared his throat again, and switched to the bottom part, as they’d played the very first time. A smile crept over her lips, and she glanced up at Lucia. She could return.

Shoshanna set her notes aside and quietly walked into the living room, standing at the end of the piano to watch him play. He was dressed in dark clothes again, the shadowed hood pulled up over his face. This time, he did not wear the dark gloves. His bare fingers danced across the keys in a flurry of gray against white.

His head lifted and tilted ever so slightly. Without speaking, he slid to the left to make space. With a shaky breath, she sat down next to him and turned the page back to the beginning. He began to play again.

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