‘How about you show me?’ I chuckled.
What about Violet? my voice said, but I ignored it as I so often did.
I pushed her back towards the bed and, in an awkward manoeuvre, she managed to pull off my shirt. Her hands traced my six-pack. I grabbed the material of her dress and attempted to discard it too, but she backed away.
‘Not until you tell me where you were.’
I covered the distance she had created, nibbling her ear and sighed in exasperated defeat. ‘I was with Violet.’ I moved down to her neck, ignoring the smell of her blood, acidic and foul – although that may have just been her attitude.
She backed off abruptly. ‘What? You were with that human piece of trash?’
I shrugged. ‘She isn’t human, she’s a dhampir.’ I pulled her back into me, but she resisted again.
‘Why the hell were you with her? How could you do that to me?’ she screeched, backing away with a murderous glare that told me I was in deep trouble.
‘She has just been attacked, Charity! What did you expect me to do? Tell her to sod off?’ I replied, confused at her reaction.
‘So you stayed with her, instead of being with me, your girlfriend?’
‘Girlfriend?’ I mouthed, taking a step back myself.
‘That is normally what you call the girl you are in a relationship with!’
‘Relationship?’ I breathed, looking around dazed, like the walls could make more sense of this than I could. ‘I don’t recall us being in a relationship.’
She shrieked in frustration, tearing at her hair extensions. ‘Kaspar, did you even bother to check Facebook? I applied to be in a relationship with you.’
‘You have Facebook?’
Her eyes bulged and became black and she looked like she might launch herself at me. Which would be amusing.
‘Yes, I’m one of your friends, which you would know if you ever bothered to check your profile! You’re just trying to deny the fact that you cheated on me with that lying human slut who was apparently attacked. Well, if that’s true, she deserved it. I hate you!’
I stood there for a full minute, feeling rather detached from my body. First, because we weren’t supposed to use social networking – too personal – and second, because I couldn’t take in what she had just said. But when I did, anger rose. ‘Take that back,’ I snarled, taking a step nearer to her.
‘Which bit? The “slut deserved it” bit, or the “I hate you” bit?’
‘The first bit. I couldn’t give a damn whether you hate me or not!’
She flipped her hair. ‘We are over, Kaspar. So over!’ She straightened her dress and stormed from the room.
‘We were never under!’ I yelled after her. She didn’t answer.
I couldn’t move, reeling in disbelief. I’ve just broken up with a girl who wasn’t even my girlfriend. There has to be an award for that.
I shook my head and grabbed my shirt off the floor. How inconvenient. I’ll have to find an alternative source of amusement.
I went back to Violet’s room, glad to see she had fallen asleep. I settled into the armchair beside her bed, frowning as I noticed the dampness of her clothes. I knew enough about humans from school to know she would get cold. I went to try to fold one of the sheets over her, but just then she winced in her sleep. I knew she was thinking of him.
Screw it: she can hate me for it later.
I crept into the bed with her, careful not to disturb her position. In an instant her face relaxed, and her feet entwined with me. Her breathing became more regular, and her expression more serene.
I reached over and kissed her on the back of her head. ‘Sweet dreams, Violet.’
TWENTY-NINE
Violet
‘You have three seconds to get your arm off me and move six feet away,’ I groaned, as the sun glared through the rather pathetic voiles.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ Kaspar chuckled, taking his sweet time to extract himself.
My body was stiff and, as Galen had rightly predicted, sore. I groaned again, as he rolled me onto my back.
‘Come on, you need to eat something. Doctor’s orders.’
‘I don’t want to eat.’ I rolled over, burying my face in the pillow. I never want to move from here, I thought.
‘You can’t not eat,’ he retorted, prodding my pillow.
‘Watch me. And since when did I let you sleep in my bed?’
This time he prodded me. ‘Not a morning person, are you? Well, if you want to be alone, fine, I’m heading to the kitchen because I desperately need a drink.’
‘I don’t want to eat,’ I repeated.
‘You already said that,’ I heard him call, before the door slammed. I intended to stay where I was, but every sigh of the wind outside sounded like breath on the window, and the emptiness of the room began to bear down on me. So I jumped up, darting to the wardrobe and to the basin. I washed my face and brushed my teeth before grabbing the mouthwash. I was just pouring a mouthful into the cap when it slipped from my fingers, tumbling to the carpeted floor. Seeing it almost in slow motion, I stooped down and caught it – the right way up, not even a single drop spilled. I raised an eyebrow. I certainly couldn’t do that before.
When I got downstairs, I found the entrance hall empty, both the doors thrown right back on their hinges. I paused, and then bolted across the marble expanse for the living room, like a child who runs up the stairs for fear of something running up behind them.
I found Kaspar had a drinking companion when I got to the kitchen: Fabian. They were in conversation when I entered, but stopped abruptly when they noticed me.
‘Morning,’ Fabian said. I didn’t answer, hovering instead around the counter and avoiding eye contact. An apple rolled my way and Kaspar poured water from the kettle into a mug, a cup of tea following the fruit. I gingerly sipped at the hot drink, hit by a sense of déjà vu and a return to the day of my first sample of Varnley’s fine breakfast cuisine. The uncomfortable thought was that now it was Kaspar who was looking after my human needs, whereas then I had desperately sought to avoid him. Now Fabian was the thorn in my side.
Fabian eyed me as I ate. I stared at the tiled floor. Kaspar raided the fridge, stuffing half a packet of ham into his mouth, washing it down with blood straight from the bottle.
‘You all right?’ Fabian asked. I nodded, lips tugged into a glum expression that said I wasn’t. ‘All right enough to talk?’
‘About what? There are a lot of things we could talk about. Cheese. Chalk. Chocolate. The fact I was attacked. The fact I’m a hostage. The fact this whole situation is totally shit. Take your pick,’ I replied, my voice surprisingly steely.