“Hey!” I stood up and grabbed my book from his sudden thieving paws, shoving his chest after.
He took a few steps back, kind of stumbling from the force, and jammed his hands in his pockets, laughing. “Don’t try to hide things from a guy two-times faster than you.”
“You had no right to do that.” I put the book back down on the table he’d stolen it from.
“Then don’t lie to me.” He stepped back into my circle of fury. “Why are you reading that? What happened here while I was gone?”
I pressed my hip distractedly. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” he said, suddenly beside me again, but this time lifting my top.
I yanked it back down. “Get off.”
“What happened to your skin?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing, Ara. Come on.” He held both hands out, palms raised. “Talk to me. You know I got your back, kiddo.”
My lip quivered for a second before I drew back the grief and replaced it with fighting strength. “It happened after the lighthouse.”
“The lighthouse?” He followed me to where I sat back on the sofa. “After you fell?”
I nodded. “But Petey says it’s a Mark of Betrayal.”
“Betrayal?” He almost slipped off the seat. “What the hell’d you do, girl?”
“I’m not sure. I . . . I don’t remember.”
“Cah!” He scoffed, flipping his hair back with one hand. “Convenient.”
“I really don’t, Eric. I’m not lying.”
His head turned very slowly until his foggy brown eyes met mine; he searched inside my soul for a moment then looked away. “Do you suspect foul play?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you told David you think it’s a Mark of . . . Betrayal?”
“He thinks it’s a rash. He hasn’t seen it since it went dark and took on the shape of letters.”
“So, you haven’t had sex with him?” he asked playfully.
I wasn’t sure if I should answer. “Last time we did, the rash wasn’t as bad but . . . after I woke up the next morning, it was searing hot and the symbols had taken on real shape.”
“So, what, making love to your husband makes the rash worse?” he suggested as well as asked. “Maybe you’re allergic to him.”
“Ha-ha.” I reached over and flicked his earlobe. “Funny.”
He sat back, exhaling rather loudly for the quiet space we were in, then lopped his arm over the back of the sofa and around my shoulders. “Forget reading for tonight. You can investigate memory loss and icky rashes all day tomorrow. But you’ve only got me for one night.”
“And what do you suggest we do?” I sat up and removed his arm from my body.
“Jog your memory.” His lips angled into that sharp grin I loved.
“How will we do that?”
“Go jump off a lighthouse.”
I held my awkward smile, not sure if he was kidding or not, shaping it into a frown when he stood up and offered me his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe if we sit up there and watch the sun rise for a bit, you might remember something.”
“Okay.” I took his hand and stood. “But Quaid’s coming with us.”
“Quaid?” He looked over his shoulder. “Why him?”
“He’s my night guard. I take him everywhere.”
Eric’s brows shot up to his hairline. “Wow. Things have changed around here.”
***
“I’ve missed this place,” Eric said, dangling his legs over the platform and into the abyss below.
I sat down beside him, hugging the railing with both my arm and my chin. “So, if you miss it so much, why not come back to us?”
“I can’t. I finally have a life, Ara.”
“You had a life here.”
“I had a job here, following you around and offering advice. No offence.” He bumped me with his elbow. “I got better things to do with my eternity.”
“Fair enough,” I said, casting my attention then on the yellow glow reaching out to sea from behind us, lighting up my hands and making eerie shadows of the rocks below each time it passed. The fierce wind roared up here, whipped past the metal railing, shaking everything that wasn’t made of iron, while the sea called beneath us—hundreds of meters down where it bashed the rocks in some angry attempt to prove greater might than the land. My hair moved around my face in a wild dance, strapping my eyes every few seconds, leaving them kind of teary with the sting.
“I love the way the ocean smells when it’s late at night,” Eric said.
“Mm.” I smiled, watching the dark sky with almost new eyes. “I think the glow of the stars gives it an almost richer, more dreamy flavour.”
“God, girl. Don’t go all poetic on me.” He reached into his pocket. “The king might have cause to worry ‘bout your intentions.”
“What, between you and I?” I scoffed. “In your dreams.”
He just smirked, looking out to sea again, tapping a small, silver case about the size of a card deck against his leg. “I sat in on a class today.”
“Class?”
“Yeah. Down at the barracks.” He flipped the case open and offered me the contents. I declined with a scrunched-up nose. “Mike’s got some pretty good stuff goin’ on down there.”
“I know. I came to sit in on the ‘How to Kill a Vampire Without Venom’ and ‘Putting a Vamp Down in Three-Seconds’ lectures last month.”
“Blade was giving that one today—to the newbs.” He lit a smoke, cupping his hand around it so the flame wouldn’t blow out in the wind, then shook the match and dropped it over the edge. “They’ve got this one move, where they jam a dagger into the back of the neck—” He used the two fingers holding the smoke to make a line over the top of his spine, “—slip it between the third and fourth vertebrae or something,” he said suggestively.
“Yeah, severs the spinal cord and sends them down fast. Takes at least a day to rejuvenate.”
“Unless you’re Lilithian.”
“In which case, you die.”
He drew on his cigarette, puffing the fumes out with “And the guns are new.”
I laughed, thinking about Mike’s face when he first opened the crates. “The bullets are spiked, you know? Some with Created and some with Pureblood venom.”