Home > How to Dance an Undead Waltz (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #4)(13)

How to Dance an Undead Waltz (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #4)(13)
Author: Hailey Edwards

Groaning at how deftly he had manipulated the offer, I slid out into the night. “You’re hopeless.”

“All work and no play making you dull is a human sentiment. We live for the hunt.” A growl edged his chuckle. “We also enjoy getting paid to follow our instincts.”

“Where are you parking this thing?” I stepped out and patted the panel. “The Bat Cave?”

Linus had to be stashing his toys somewhere his mother wouldn’t find them.

“Bruce Wayne.” Hood barked out a full-throated laugh. “I see the resemblance.”

Cheeks hotter than the sand on Tybee Island during Fourth of July weekend, I made my exit.

The walk of shame was short as Lethe rounded the corner and blasted him with a feral snarl.

Rubber burnt as he reversed down the driveway and skidded onto the main road to escape his mate.

Ah, sweet romance.

Though I had lingered to chat with Hood, I found Linus waiting for me on the porch, Cletus at his side.

Given I had been in his line of sight, and with Hood, he had given me all the privacy within his control.

I liked that. Almost as much as I liked the sight of him standing there, hands in his pockets, chatting with Woolly like her opinions mattered when so many treated her like a thing instead of as a person.

Kind of how a lot of people treated me these days.

Dangerous that like. I was in no shape to test the cracks in my heart to see if they might be widened to allow another person in. But, as he looked back at me, the lingering wound from the favor I asked of him in his eyes, I had to wonder if he hadn’t been seeping through those very fissures for a while now.

Six

The following night started in the usual fashion. Screams. Night sweats. Tears. But my recovery time was improving thanks to the mortification factor. Linus was staying in his old room, three doors down from mine, and I would have tossed and turned fretting over ruining his sleep if I used my bed for its intended purpose. Since I didn’t, I mostly wallowed in guilt after waking. Thankfully, he had learned his lesson about checking on me—or sending Cletus as his proxy—after I woke him with violent sobbing the first night he spent in the carriage house. Since then he let me suffer the daylight hours alone, just how I liked it.

I was off the hook for a shower since I’d had to wash off the grave dirt last night before climbing into my pajamas. All I had to do to be breakfast ready was dress in jeans and a tee and hit the stairs.

Linus had instituted an open-door policy at the carriage house, a welcome I hadn’t known I craved from another person, an invitation to share space and simply be. The rules had changed since he moved in, but the sensation remained when I spied him in the kitchen, and a tiny smile curled his lips.

“Your smoothie is on the counter.” He continued slicing up fruit. “Let me know what you think.”

Bracing myself for tweaks to yesterday’s successful formula, I palmed the frosty glass. A shiver I couldn’t blame on the smoothie coasted through my limbs as he watched me close my lips around the straw. I took a tiny sip, rolling the mixture around in my mouth, and tasted the difference. Tasted him.

The sensation of locking gazes with another person, of knowing how tart their blood stung on my tongue was...complicated. Anonymous donors had been gross but easier to palate since they weren’t staring at me while I savored them. But I couldn’t deny, even two days into his experiment, I noticed the gnawing in my gut that kept me shoveling in as much food as I could put my hands on was easing.

“You mixed an extra shot of Linus into my breakfast this morning.”

“We don’t know how much blood you require to function optimally.” He plated fruit salad and made a shooing gesture to get me to sit. “I’ll increase the dose until we see a visible positive or negative effect or until you determine a preference.”

“The clinical approach helps.” I settled in at my usual stool to polish off my first course. “It’s easier for me to wrap my head around this if I consider the need for blood as a nutritional deficiency.” I shot him an innocent look. “Maybe I’ll start calling it Vitamin L.”

Flames erupted in his cheeks, but he hid his pleasure even worse than his embarrassment. Thanks to my friendship with Boaz, I had plenty of occasion to study the smug male. Puffed chest. Toothy grin. Swagger for days. This specimen exhibited none of those tells.

Red cheeks. Downcast eyes. Hitched breath. Those were Linus’s symptoms. Yet I read the truth in them.

He enjoyed providing for me. He liked knowing his blood sustained me. He relished me savoring him.

And his simple pleasure in that shifted things in my chest into new configurations.

After clearing his throat, he asked, “Do you feel any different?”

“A little. Maybe? I think so.” I massaged my stomach with the heel of my palm. “I’m not as hungry as I have been. For a long time, I thought the problem was I couldn’t afford food that didn’t come in boxes. I wasn’t eating meat, and I was limited to fruits and veggies from the greenhouse. But I didn’t slow down once you started cooking for me. I’m eating more now than I have in my life, and I still get snackish.”

“Interesting.” He reached for a notebook and scribbled a few lines. “Do you mind?”

“Knock yourself out.” This way we both got something from the deal. I sated an intellectual hunger for him while he quenched a physical need for me. “Just do me a favor and refer to me as Patient G when you publish your research on goddess-touched necromancers. It gives me plausible deniability.”

“I don’t plan on publishing anything about your condition.” He slashed his pen across the paper.

“I thought that was the whole point.” I propped my chin on my palm. “Why do this otherwise?”

“Your condition fascinates me.” He glanced up then, expression earnest. “I want to understand its origin. I’m curious how and why goddess-touched necromancers exist. Their evolutionary roots would go a long way toward explaining your abilities.”

What he said made sense. His field of study was necromantic evolution. His passion was understanding the past to predict the future.

“After doing all this work, you’re going to keep it to yourself?” I drummed my fingers on my bottom lip. “What if there are others like me? Not everyone has access to my resources.”

Talk about your understatements. Pair my last name with the plethora of zeroes in my bank account, and there were few things I wanted that I couldn’t have with a snap of my fingers. That said, my greatest resource remained the man beside me, which no amount of money could buy.

His eyebrows climbed. “Are you saying you want me to share this information?”

“Strip my name and any identifying details, and I wouldn’t mind if you bound a copy and passed it on to the Elite to add to their collection.”

“Rumor might expose you,” he warned, smoothing a hand over his notes. “We might be providing interested parties with an instruction manual on how to reverse engineer someone like you.”

“The Marchands would not appreciate the competition. They seem to have cornered the market, albeit a black market, if Heloise was on the level.” I toyed with my straw. “I’m halfway tempted to put my acting chops to the test and fake a tearful reunion to gain access to their inner sanctum.”

At this ball, assuming the Marchands accepted the invitation, I would meet people who could share fresh stories about Mom. I would be introduced to the foremost experts on my condition. The past at my fingertips, answers within my grasp, but the cost…

“The Marchands had a stake in their possession capable of nullifying your magic. What other artifacts might they possess?” Black tendrils bled across his irises. “They’ll know how to subdue you. They’ll know how to hurt you. And they’ve proven they have no qualms about doing either.”

The artifact remained locked in my desk drawer, not the most secure location for an object of power. I really ought to be smarter about hiding it in case they got it in their heads to come looking for it. While I doubted they could breach Woolly’s new and improved wards, I didn’t want to be proven wrong or caught unprepared. As it was, I wasn’t keen on the ancient ash stake being in the house period. But any weaponized relic in my keeping was one less weaponized relic in theirs.

“Go on.” I rolled my hand. “Get it out of your system.”

Turning his back on me, he lifted the fruit salad off the cutting board then reached into the fridge. “Chocolate or cream cheese?”

What kind of question was that? “Both?”

“I thought you might say that.” He lifted out two small bowls and set them on the plate before walking it over to me. He returned moments later with lemonade made fancy by the paper-thin fruit slices floating in the mixture. “Bon appétit.”

Making grabby hands, I accepted my meal. “That’s really all you’ve got to say?”

“I offered my opinion.” He sat beside me and poured us each a drink, not that he would touch his. The gesture was habit for him, meant to help him blend in. “What else is there to say?”

“Boaz would tie me to a chair in the kitchen or lock me in a bathroom.” The first bite of apple soured on my tongue, poisoned by the use of his name. “Forget I said that.”

“I will never lay hands on you.” Linus drew lines in the condensation on his glass. “There are times I want to shut you away, where it’s safe. There are times I want to bundle you up, insulate you from all the ugliness in our world. But there will never be a time when I hurt you to accomplish those goals.”

Unshed tears glistened in my eyes, and I blinked to keep them from falling. “You’re a good man, Linus Lawson.”

“No, I’m not.” His eyes, more blue than black, flicked up to mine. “But for you, I try.”

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree,” I said and popped a cantaloupe wedge in my mouth.

   
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