Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
On the bad days, I go through a whole systematic process of remembering her. Cleaning and spell work and baking her favorite cookies, cumulating in a tearful trip through the box of photos I keep tucked away in my closet. She’d whack me upside the back of my head if she saw me on those days, would remind me that the dead aren’t gone for good and there’s no point in wasting my living years mourning someone who’s stepped through a door to the next part of this grand journey we call existence.
On the good days, I believe her. On the bad days? Not so much. And the anniversary of her death is always a bad day.
“Evelyn.” Lizzie’s voice is cold, but that’s nothing new. She might be downright sizzling when we’re in bed, but she doesn’t fuck around with the warmer emotions outside of it.
I sigh and try to focus. Giving her any less than one hundred percent of my attention is dangerous, which is exactly why I shouldn’t have come out tonight. I look at the human woman again. She’s rubbing her straw against her bottom lip in a really enticing way as she watches us … watches Lizzie. “She’s pretty.”
“Do you have another choice?”
I glance half-heartedly around the room. Nearly everyone is watching Lizzie, though most of them aren’t doing it overtly. I can’t blame them. She’s a sight to behold, a lean white woman with a tight ponytail of dark hair and a penchant for athleisure. Her leggings and fitted long-sleeved shirt should make her look like a soccer mom who wandered into this dingy bar on accident.
Like prey.
Lizzie, being a bloodline vampire from the family that possesses the magic to control the blood in a person’s body, money beyond comprehension, and an orgasmic bite, has never been prey in her life.
The other predators in the room know it, too. I catch sight of a female werewolf hauling her partner out the front door, and there’s a demon with a wickedly skillful glamour in the corner who’s motioning for his tab.
Clearing the way for Lizzie to hunt.
Too bad I’m not in the mood tonight. I knock back my third—fourth? fifth?—tequila shot and set the glass on the bar, trying to ignore the stickiness of the counter. “Whatever you want. She’s fine.” Any other night, I’d be sidling up to the woman at the end of the bar and giving her my best charming smile as I buy her a drink and lead her back to Lizzie. Tonight, it feels like too much work.
“Getting jealous, Evelyn?”
Even if I was—and I’m not—I know better than to say as much. Lizzie might like fucking me, but I’m not foolish enough to think she’d ever let orgasms get in the way of murdering me if the mood strikes.
Really, Bunny was right. I’m a damned fool. It’s the only explanation for the way I jump into bed with Lizzie over and over again, part of me thrilled to be dancing right up to the edge of ruin.
It’s that desire that has me leaning into Lizzie. I can have fun tonight. I’ll make myself have fun tonight, even if it kills me. I don’t have a death wish, normally, but nothing’s normal on April twenty-third. Not anymore.
“Maybe I’ll take her home instead of roping her in for you.” I grin up at Lizzie. “Want to make it a wager?”
She studies me with her eerie dark eyes. “Are you drunk?”
“No. Probably not. Okay, maybe a little.” I’m just being sentimental and letting it get the best of me. Not that Lizzie would know that yesterday was my birthday or that today marks Bunny being gone seven years. That’s not the kind of relationship we have. What we have can’t even be called a relationship. It’s a … what do my mortal peers call it? A situationship.
“If you’re not drunk, then what’s wrong with you? You never act like this.”
If I were a different person, if we were different people, this would be the turning point for us. I would confess why I’m so down, and she’d do something to comfort me. That’s the stuff of romantic movies, though. Not real life. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Evelyn.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” I lift my hand to flag down the bartender for another shot, but Lizzie catches my wrist. “Don’t bother. We’re leaving.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not in the habit of repeating myself.” She drops a wad of money on the bar and drags me toward the door. She’s moving fast enough that I can barely keep my feet. I catch sight of the woman at the end of the bar and her disappointed look, and then we’re at the door. No one moves to help me, though I’m not exactly in danger.
At least, I don’t think I am?