Fire engines rolled off the production line in paler shades than my cheeks just then. I searched out Linus to commiserate with him, but he wasn’t blushing. He sank on the short bench opposite me, his knees an inch from brushing mine, and he locked stares with the bigger predator in the van in obvious challenge.
“I’m her donor,” he acknowledged, his chest puffing out an infinitesimal amount. “It goes without saying that no one outside our circle can know this. Share with the pack. Make them aware it’s a dietary requirement for her in case…” he made a point not to look at me, “…I’m ever indisposed.”
Tightness spread throughout my gut. “As in you have to go to Atlanta on business?”
He was on loan, only here for as long as he required to train me up for the Grande Dame’s use.
“That’s one possibility,” he allowed. “We have to make arrangements.”
Feeding arrangements. I swallowed when I found myself staring at the column of his throat.
Hood decided the road in front of him was five times more interesting than the conversation behind him and pulled into traffic.
“Six months,” I blurted. “We’ll try weening me off then, so I don’t turn connoisseur on you.”
“All right.” The set of his mouth tightened. “We can do that. I would recommend we start cutting my blood with other donors after that point.” He strapped in with more force than necessary. “You could be fully transitioned within a year.”
“Call me crazy, but you don’t sound relieved.” I gestured toward myself. “I’m a parasite, Linus.”
“You’ll be free of me in twelve months,” he repeated. “Will that suffice?”
“You wounded his ego,” Hood informed me. “Necromancers are only as good as their blood. He’s willing to provide, but you’re turning down his offer. You’re telling him he’s not good enough for you.”
“That’s enough,” Linus said coldly. “Grier can make her own decisions.”
“Lethe reacted the same way,” he confided to him. “She was a huntress, and when I brought her a deer carcass as a courting gift, she squatted over its head and urinated on its face.” He shook his head. “She ruined all that good meat to make the point she didn’t need me to provide for her.” He sighed. “The things I admired most about her—her strength, her ferocity, her independence—I insulted with a single thoughtless act.”
“I do need him, though.” I twisted my hands on my lap. “I can’t figure this out alone, and I can’t stomach anyone else’s blood. I’m not pushing him away.” Hurt throbbed in my next words as I turned them on Linus. “You’re the one with a life outside Savannah. You have a home, a career, friends. You’re going to leave, but I never will. I have Woolly.” And now I had Oscar. “I have to stay. That means learning to be self-sufficient. You can’t drive down from Atlanta every morning to blend me a protein shake.”
“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for,” Linus told me. “You’ll be fine without me.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from disagreeing with him. Independence was the goal. I couldn’t let him become a crutch. Those got kicked out from under you sooner or later. I had to be able to stand on my own. That was the point of the self-defense classes and the reason for my dedication to the education he was providing. I wanted to be able to function within the Society, yes, but I wanted to live my own life more.
“We’re here,” Hood announced. “I’ll park then walk the block while you do your thing.”
“A cemetery?” I scooted to the edge of my seat. “What are we doing here?”
“Knollwood Cemetery.” Linus opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Reaching back for my hand, he guided me out into the pleasant night. “We’re collecting grave dirt.”
The van pulled away, leaving us alone in the dark with a single streetlamp to light our way.
“I haven’t been here in ages,” I admitted. “Maud hated cemeteries.”
Linus knew all this as well as I did, but it still felt good talking with someone who had loved her.
“Five hundred years is a long time to live.” He unhooked the simple wooden gate and let me enter ahead of him. “We have no concept of how it will feel to find ourselves counting our final moments in what feels like a timeless existence to us now. I suspect, as we age, we’ll find ourselves less inclined to visit reminders of our mortality either.”
“Graves reminded her that no amount of money could save you in the end,” I mused. “The one thing she hated more than a problem magic couldn’t solve was one money couldn’t fix.”
We shared a laugh, and I almost felt her standing there, between us.
The sensation intensified until I tipped back my head and spotted Cletus hovering above us. From this angle, he resembled Spanish moss dripping from the old oaks as they forked their limbs protectively over the dead.
“Hey, Cletus.”
The wraith twitched his fingers in what might have passed for an attempt at waving.
“We’re going to have to talk about him.” Linus eyed his wraith with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “This level of awareness isn’t natural. We’re taught that wraiths are unthinking, unfeeling entities, but he’s too familiar with you for me to believe that’s the case any longer. You’ve altered him.”
“For the good.” I watched the wraith retreat into the shadows. “He was creepy. Now he’s friendly.”
“Toward you,” Linus emphasized. “Heightened awareness means he will start making his own decisions about others, how he behaves toward them, what actions he deems is a threat to us, and that means he’s an increased risk in public. We can’t guess how he’ll react in dangerous situations, and that makes him rogue.”
“The Society puts down rogues.” The reality of what I had done, however accidental, sank in and left me dragging my feet. “What can be done about a wraith once it’s bonded?” A worse thought occurred to me. “What will happen to you?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I can’t recall a case where a wraith was unbonded.”
“Please tell me it’s not because the wraith became a moot point after the necromancer involved died.”
His eyes crinkled with amusement. “I believe I can control Cletus, with your help.”
“You’re not comforting me here.” I gripped his forearm. “What will happen to you if he’s put down?”
“Bonding with a wraith is a life sentence. They’re bound to their master until death. Practitioners have been executed for misusing their wraith or wraiths, but this is a first.”
“I doubt that.” I reflected on all I had learned about my condition so far. “The Great Library was probably chockful of incidents like this one.”
“That resource is gone. We’ll have to start our own.” He cast his gaze around the gloomy acreage. “One perk of the modern era is I can keep notes in my grimoire as well as in a cloud to access from my computer or phone. Any research we collate on your condition will be preserved for future generations. Maud’s notes will prove invaluable once we locate them.”
And there it was. The first subtle hint he still wanted access to the basement since moving in with me.
I had hoped it would take him longer to circle back around to the topic, but I wasn’t all that surprised.
What he lacked in caloric intake, he made up for in the sheer bulk of knowledge he consumed.
“We need eight ounces of old grave dirt and eight ounces of fresh.” He plowed ahead, on to a new topic. I could have hugged him for letting me off the hook before I got the chance to writhe. “I brought plastic baggies and bone scoops for each. Do you have a preference?”
“I’ll take the old dirt.” I accepted the sandwich bag he passed me as well as the whittled scoop made from a human femur. “I like reading the inscriptions on the headstones.”
“Cletus.” He waited on the wraith to appear. “Stay with Grier.”
The wraith billowed acknowledgment and drifted toward me.
“A funeral was performed earlier today.” He readied his own supplies. “It shouldn’t take me long to collect a sample.”
“Be careful.” His preventive-measures chat with Hood rang in my ears. “Call if you need help.”
Warmth filled his eyes, a startling counterpoint to the chill of his skin. “I will.”
Embarrassment flooded me once he turned his back. Linus could protect himself, on all fronts. Worrying about him was silly. Except…I could still picture him limp in the front passenger seat of the van we borrowed from Mary Alice after he got cut with a poisoned blade. Proof none of us were as invulnerable as we imagined ourselves to be.
“Thank you,” he tossed over his shoulder, as if the waves of mortification crashing against him demanded comment. “For caring.”
“No problem.” I hesitated when a glint in the bushes forming a neglected hedge around the oldest graves caught my eye. I watched as a pattern emerged and suppressed a growl of frustration. “First one done buys the other dinner.”
“Deal.”
The illuminated message repeated, broadcast in bright spurts. I considered ignoring it. I considered pointing it out to Linus. I considered pivoting on my heel and running the whole way home. Instead I did the worst possible thing. I walked toward it, moth to a battery-operated flame, like an idiot.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.” Boaz clicked off his flashlight then sheathed it in a loop on his utility belt. “I’m glad you did.”
Moonlight warmed his milk-chocolate irises. Lighter bands, liked swirled caramel, brightened them even further. White scars stood in stark contrast against his tanned skin, almost as pale as his platinum-blond hair. Whiskers covered his square jaw, and his features came across harsh without his trademark charm softening them.