Page 74 of Love Lives
I wokeup the next morning with a pounding headache and a vampire glued to my side. "Aldrich," I muttered, because he had his arm slung around me so tightly that I couldn't get out of bed. He didn't budge. I poked his side. "Earth to vampire."
He cracked an eye open at me. "What?"
"Time to get up." I needed to see what everyone else was up to, what our plans were going to be... I needed to talk to Puck about the stone Aldrich had stolen from Vlad.
All things that I had happily ignored in exchange for a night of sex with a vampire.
Not something I was even a little bit proud of.
Aldrich moved only slowly, stretching as he removed his limbs from my body. "How did you sleep?" he asked, but there was something in his voice that let me know this wasn't an ordinary question. Not small-talk.
I had no idea what he was getting at, though. "Not too well," I said, opting for the truth. "I got a headache."
"Yeah?" Aldrich's voice lacked all sympathy, as if I'd somehow brought this on myself.
I'd never known him to be this grumpy in the morning. Maybe he hadn't slept well either. Or maybe he had a headache too? I glanced at the window, then back at the vampire. “Is the light bothering you?” The curtains were drawn, but they weren’t black-out curtains.
“It’s fine,” Aldrich claimed, though he looked a little paler than usual.
We didn't have blood in this house, did we? Something else I needed to go downstairs to check. I rolled out of bed and grabbed the clothes Aldrich had helped me take off the night before. And what a night that had been…
So much for my plan to stay away from the vampire.
Before I could berate myself any further, though, Aldrich spoke. "Who's Cyril?"
"Cyril?" I dropped the pants I’d been holding. "Why are you asking that?"
"'Cause you were moaning his name in your sleep."
Well… shit. I didn't remember that particular dream, but it was certainly possible... "He's... this vampire who..."
"A vampire?" In spite of his usual devil may care attitude, Aldrich did not look amused at all. Was that... jealousy?
"A very good-looking vampire," I said before I could stop myself, because damn it, I wanted to see how my Velcro vampire would react.
Aldrich's eyes narrowed. "What's he look like? Whatever he looks like, you know I can look better."
I snorted. "Black hair, white streak... no, wait, don't," I tried to stop Aldrich, but he was already changing his appearance. The form he chose looked nothing like Cyril. His hair was too long and too straight. His face was all wrong too. Too aristocratic looking. "Please just change back. I'm sorry."
Aldrich shot me an unimpressed look and kept his form. "I'll change back when I feel like it."
"Fine, be that way." I shook my head at him. "Cyril was Atlus's partner. You know, the witch whose spirit we tried to summon during the séance? I think some of his memories kind of got stuck in my brain during that process."
That seemed to do the trick; Aldrich changed back. He didn't dropallhis illusions, though. He simply went back to his preferred style, red hair and all. "You got some witch's sex memories stuck in your head?"
"It's not just sex." I pinched the bridge of my nose in exasperation, though how I'd ever expected Aldrich to focus on somethingotherthan that, I didn't know. "It's all sorts of things. They come to me in dreams."
Aldrich studied me silently for a moment. "Do you think the witch's magic rubbed off on you too?"
"What do you mean?" I'd always had magic, even though Aldrich didn't know that.
"You kinda went ballistic yesterday," Aldrich explained. "Before you blacked out. Looked like you were about to have a super-hero transformation or something when you cast that spell. It was something else. Seriously."
"It was one of Atlus's spells," I explained, trying to think back to the day before. I hardly remembered blacking out, or casting my magic. It was as if something had just... taken over me, in that moment. A chill went down my spine and I pushed the thought aside.
"Vlad recognized it," Aldrich said.
"Yeah?" I pulled my shirt over my head and stepped into my pants.
