Page 32 of House of Crimson Kisses
I leave the Chief and head inside, dragging Amelia back towards the food table.
“Hey,” Amelia says.
“Hey yourself,” I say.
“Can I have a word?” she asks.
I glare at her. “Well, you just interrupted another conversation I am now not having, so, yeah, you have my attention. What’s up?”
I glance at the balcony and then the stage. It doesn’t look like they’re about to start yet. I pluck a chicken leg off the food table and gnaw on it. Predictably, it doesn’t hit the right spot. I find Octavia as I leave the room, and she narrows her eyes at me like she can tell there’s an issue. I’m not sure if I love the bond for this connection or hate that I can’t keep anything to myself.
“What’s up?” I say to Amelia as I take another bite of chicken.
She looks down, her feet all shifty. “I, umm… I want you to know that I don’t blame you.”
“Blame me? For what?” I say, chowing down and tearing more chunks of chicken off the leg bone.
Her neck contorts. It’s like she wants to say something and can’t.
“You alright?”
“Fucksake. Yes. Look. I wanted to tell you that I don’t blame you for Mum and Dad leaving us. Okay? You were late the night she died, and I know you’ve worried over the years that if you’d got there sooner, you could have stopped it. But you couldn’t, okay?”
My chest tightens, and my eyes sting. This isn’t the time to discuss this. I try to find words, but my throat is thick with memories. How does she know this? We’ve never really spoken about that night. Not like this. I was young, but old enough to be an excuse for Mother to leave work. I was meant to get her from the club she was working at because she’d donated too many times already that week. The worst bit is, I don’t even remember why I was late now. And that, more than anything, haunts me. It’s my fault she died, I know that, and so does Amelia.
I frown at her. “Really odd time to bring this up,” I say, finally finding words.
She flaps her hands at me. “Yeah, well. It’s been on my mind since the ni?—”
Her voice cuts off and her eyes nearly pop out of her head.
“You are being very weird tonight. Is everything okay?”
Her cheeks turn red, and I’m not sure if she’s livid or embarrassed or what.
Someone calls the room to attention.
“We need to go in,” I say and rub her arm before depositing the now clean chicken bone in a bin and heading into the ballroom. I edge around the outside of the room to where the buffet is and take more chicken and potatoes. Then I take a seat on one of the rounded ballroom tables. They’re as grand as the rest of the room, with flowers bending and bleeding like the chandeliers. Servers place wine on the table. It’s a deep red and looks far too close to the colour of blood for my liking. Next, they wheel in barrels and caskets of blood. From what I can see, a variety of blood types all flavoured with different emotions—jealousy, fear, joy—are deposited on the table.
I inhale the chicken and potatoes, but when I’m done, I am struck with that increasingly familiar sensation: physically full, yet hungry. It’s like the addiction has shifted. It used to be more of a craving. Like when you’ve had a delicious Sunday roast but you’re still craving sugar at the end. Except it wasn’t sugar I was craving. Now it’s more like I’m ravenous, starved even.
Octavia comes and sits beside me now I’m finished eating.
“You okay?” she says.
It’s childish, but I bite at her. “Oh, you care now, do you?”
“Is this how it’s going to be?” She sighs.
“Until you give me my memories back, yes.”
She shakes her head at me. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Don’t patronise me. I want what’s already mine.”
The ballroom fills fast. Hunters grab plates of food, and vampires tend to the metal casks and barrels of blood. One vampire turns on the faucet and fills their goblet. Beneath the barrel of that cask in particular is a low fire, more embers than anything, but it keeps the cask and the blood inside at body temperature, I suspect.
Octavia draws her own goblet to her mouth, and I twitch.
