Page 45 of Mortal Shift
“Hardly. You’re speaking out loud.”
“Oh.” Well, that didn’t seem like something I should do, but then, itwasa nice ass. Thaden was a nice ass, too. I giggled to myself.
“Watch it, sweetness. Call me too many names and I’ll drop you on your endorphin drunk little head.”
I blinked again, flooded with sudden understanding of why the world had turned upside down and I was all but cheek to ass cheek with Thaden.
“Why’m I over your shoulder?”
“Just be grateful I’m not dragging you back to Cole by your hair.”
“Just put…me down.”
“You’re in no state to be outside alone. I’m not the only monster out here.”
“Hottest one, though. Why’d you—” I broke off, making an ‘o’ shape with my lips and them squashing them together. Lips were weird. Thaden was weird. “Why’d you care what happens to me?”
“Oh, you taste far too delicious to let you go to waste. Cole may have your body, but your blood belongs to me.”
Chapter Sixteen
It took a month for the whispers of the other students to stop following me along the hallways, and a little while after that for the stares to die down—in most cases, at least. And it couldn’t happen fast enough for me. I was so over being the shiny new thing in town. It was like they’d never seen a human before, which was total bs because I knew most of them had spent the better part of the last two decades around them. Still, after a couple of months, the novelty of a human at Darkveil was apparently wearing thin. At last. And not long after that, everyone had something else entirely on their mind. Christmas break was fast approaching, and the upcoming party was all anyone could talk about. Yay for small mercies, I suppose.
“Are you going to the party?” Ling asked one evening when we were sequestered in the library, where I’d taken to spending most of my time.
I snorted a laugh and looked up for the book I was flipping through. “Me? Why would I go?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, arching a brow. “A little thing called fun. Ever heard of it?”
I laughed again, this time as mirthless as the last. “Ling. What exactly about our time together has given you the impression that spending the night in a room full of jumped up jackasses who hate me is my idea of fun?”
“Cole will be there.” She shot me a sideways glance and I shook my head.
“All the more reason for me not be there. Besides, I've got enough to worry about, don’t you think? You know, what the whole trying to stay alive business.”
“Oh, I don’t know, you seem to have that pretty well down these days. It's been, what, a whole week since anyone tried to kill you?”
It was true. And even that hadn’t been an attempt to kill me so much as to make me look like a complete moron.Thoseattempts were still more prone to succeeding than I would have liked.
I hadn't seen Thessalia for a good couple of weeks, for which I was eternally grateful. She seemed to avoid me now, aside from the disgusted looks she sent my way each time we happened to cross paths. Her brother, on the other hand, was still taking advantage of every opportunity to make my life hell. I avoided him as best as I could, but somehow he still managed to seek me out at least once a week, and every time he drank his fill from me. Each time I fought, and each time I fought a little less. I mean, what was the point, after all? He was going to take what he was going to take, and there was not a damn thing I could do to stop him, short of a stake through the heart—although books I’d been studying reliably informed me that a human wasn’t strong enough to pull it off. So not even that. Yup, my life was just one big bundle of fun.
And what I definitely didn’t need was Ling’s well-meaning but clearly misguided attempts to persuade me to indulge in her idea of fun.
“Are you going?” I asked, in a desperate attempt to interrupt her telling me all the reasonsIshould go. Abruptly, the enthusiasm fell from her face, and she looked down at the book in front of her.
“I, uh, don’t know.”
“Ling?”
She drew in an unsteady breath. “I’m not sure I can go.”
“Why not? Did one of those assholes tell you that you couldn’t? Because I don’t care if they’re vampires or shifters or fairies, I will kick their asses for you, you know that, right?”
She gave me a watery smile and a laugh that seemed to catch at the back of her throat. “Cali, supernatural slayer?”
“You better believe it, sister.” I closed my book and shuffled my chair next to hers. “I mean it, Ling. None of them get to tell you what to do, I don’t care who they think they are.”
She said nothing, and an uneasy feeling crept through my gut.
