Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (12 page)

I felt a pang of guilt, tinged with the slightest hint of panic.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Again, Geoff. I pushed my hair out of my face. I’d made promises to him, promises that I’d meant. Promises that I still meant? I didn’t know. I couldn’t think.

“Well, I’m going to hit the Mall in Columbia tomorrow,” Lisette said. “Why don’t you and Geoff come along?”

I snorted and swept my hair out of my face. “Because Geoff really wants to go clothes shopping with you.”

“He’ll come to hang out with you, Cora,” Lisette said patiently.

“He hasn’t called me over break,” I said evasively.

“Have you called him?”

“No,” I admitted. “We’ve messaged on Facebook. I told him the therapy’s working.”

Lisette huffed into the phone. “He’s giving you space. Come on, Cora. Before you get in too deep with this Dorian Thorne, you should give Geoff a real try. You actually really know Geoff, and he’s a nice guy.”

Too deep. Was that before or after Dorian sank his teeth into my throat? Before or after he took what passed for my innocence again and again? I thought of this morning. And again.

“Sure thing,” I said aloud.

“Meet you at three? By Marble Slab?”

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there.”

“Oops. Gotta go,” she said. “Mireille wants me to see some new awful viral video.”

“Okay,” I said. Mireille was Lisette’s sister, a freshman in accounting. “See you.”

“Bye. Make sure to get our bathroom really clean. I want to see it spotless when I come back.”

“Uh-huh.” I smiled despite myself. “Nothing keeping you from driving over here and helping out.”

“Oh, look, I think I’m having car trouble.” She laughed.

“Riiight. Bye,” I said.

“Bye.”

I hung up and sagged onto the couch. Geoff. I had pretty much made him a promise at the end of the last semester—a promise that I wasn’t sure I could keep anymore.

I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. And that thought scared me.

As I grabbed some lunch, I realized that the interior of the fridge hadn’t been cleaned out. Finally, something to do.

I thought about the problem with Geoff as I scrubbed it, or tried to think about him, anyway, because every time I had his face fixed in my mind’s eye, it would blur and Dorian’s would replace it—his warm hand on mine replaced by Dorian’s cooler, more stirring touch, his mouth with Dorian’s kiss. And I thought I could bear that, but far worse was the catalog of Dorian’s expressions in my mind’s eye, his amusement, his ineffable sadness, and the rare, brief moments of tenderness, as if he were remembering how to feel...

I decided to wash my bedding, and I pulled everything off and shoved it into the washing machine, leaving the door to the laundry closet open so that I could perch on the counter and watch the blankets go round.

My acceptance packet from the University of Chicago sat next to me. I couldn’t bear to go through it. Not with the knowledge that I was hardly more likely to attend it now than when I was dying.

I remembered something Dorian had said to me the night before, something about how I’d made those dreams my reason to live. I wouldn’t have ever put it that way. I would have just called those things my life, my future. But he was right. They were an idea of a future, not a future itself. And I’d battled my way through classes, though the awful alemtuzumab injections, through everything by repeating to myself the list of all the things I wanted my life to be, all the things that would prove to Gramma that I was happy, successful—that she’d done a good job.

Now that future was more than a dream. It was an actual acceptance letter that I could hold in my hand. Something I’d earned, I’d won myself. Why, then, did Chicago suddenly seem less brilliant next to the image of Dorian’s white house?

By the time the sheets and blankets were dry and back on my bed, it was dusk. I flipped on the lights and paced the apartment, hunting vainly for some other spot that Dorian’s staff had missed in their cleaning.

Finally, I pulled up Hulu on my laptop and watched the Christmas specials I’d missed as I cleaned out my binders and backpack, making a stack of the books I planned to sell back the next day. I took a shower and curled up in bed with a hot chocolate and my laptop.

And I thought about him. Dorian. Constantly. Obsessively.

Eating lunch, I had thought of him. Folding laundry, my mind was full of him. Throwing out last semester’s notes, I couldn’t get him out of my head.

It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t healthy. And I couldn’t help it. Knowing that I would see him on Wednesday made me feel far better than it should. If I could just accept this bond—whatever it was—I felt certain that my spinning mind would have some relief, and I could wait until New Year’s Eve with some degree of calm. Fighting his claim on me only seemed to make it worse.

But as much as I wanted him, and as much as I missed him, it wasn’t enough to get in trade for all of me. Whatever promises he made to not deliberately reshape my mind, I knew he would if it was important enough, and I had a bone-deep conviction that his influence would change me unconsciously no matter what.

It was, as he said, what he was. And what I had become.

But I had my own life. I had my own will, my own direction, my own plans and friends. And I wasn’t willing to give them up without a fight.

***

I
woke up early Monday morning to emptiness. An empty apartment, an empty building, an empty campus, an empty life.

I ate breakfast haunted by Dorian’s presence. A memory of his voice, his touch, his expression would come over me, and I would freeze in its intensity and the sharp loss of it when it was gone.

I threaded the blood-drop pendant onto one of my own necklaces and put it on. It was a stupid gesture, since I couldn’t accept the bond that it represented. But I felt slightly better with it against my skin.

Shaking myself out of my strange fugue, I checked my test results online for my newest lymphocyte count. Fifteen thousand. Still higher than normal, but less than a fifteenth of what it had been at my last test.

I stared the number, stark black on white. It took the last, lingering shadows of doubt away. I truly had been healed.

By him.

Well, then. I guess I really do have to get ready for my last semester of classes.

I washed my bowl, shoved my textbooks in my backpack, and headed to the university bookstore. After dropping my old books off at the sale desk, I headed to the textbooks section, my schedule in my hand.

Using my phone, I crosschecked the store’s prices online. It dragged out the entire process into an hour-long ordeal, but it was worth it for the savings. But the total was still too high because I didn’t have money for any of it.

I should get another job. I wasn’t sick anymore, and the real world came with real costs—ones I couldn’t pay right now. I’d had a healthy bank balance after my summer internship, giving me the confidence to agree to move out of the dorms and into the campus apartment with Lisette, Christina, and Chelsea. But I’d counted on being able to keep my work-study gig and the front-desk job with a local moving truck rental franchise.

Neither of those had panned out. Just one week into the semester, I’d been so tired I’d had to give up the rental company job, and a month later, I couldn’t keep up the work-study. Rent, food, car insurance, and my cell phone bill had destroyed my summer savings, and I had fifteen hundred dollars of unpaid out-of-pocket health expenses.

I was trying very hard not to raid the very small balance left in my Gramma’s bank account. Until her house sold, I needed to pay utilities and taxes on it. But unless I got a job—and fast—I didn’t see how else I’d get through the next semester.

Dorian will give you all the money you need,
a small voice whispered.

I didn’t listen to it.

I finished my online purchases, wincing at the balance. I took the two books I was buying in the store and headed to the checkout. Those would almost be covered by the credit I got from selling my old books back, at least. I’d also have to go to the print shop for the professor-produced materials for art history. On credit, but I’d deal with that later.

I took my receipt and shoved the new books into my backpack, pulling up the hood of my jacket to shade my face. As I lowered my sunglasses and stepped out of the bookstore, a voice called my name.

“Ciao, Cora!”

I turned around to see a familiar face behind a broad pair of Louis Vuitton sunglasses.

“Cosimo?” I asked incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

“S
pying.” Cosimo dropped his voice conspiratorially. “I heard that Dorian’s new consort was an actual honest-to-goodness college student, and I had to see for myself. I heard he even lets you live in the dorms. For most consorts, school would be traded in for a Maserati and diamond studs in three days flat.”

I had met him when he’d grabbed my arm as I was trying to run from the ballroom during the introduction. Why was he hunting me down here, on campus?

“Maybe I’m different.” I narrowed my eyes at him behind my concealing shades. How fast could Dorian get here if I called?

As if he could read my mind, Cosimo said, “Don’t worry,
cara
. There’s no reason to be afraid.” He waggled his fingers in a dismissive motion. “We’ll have you back safe and sound in no time.”

“Back from where?” I demanded as a low-slung car in a violent yellow rolled up to the curb.

Cosimo opened the rear passenger door. “If you don’t get in, you’ll never find out. Don’t worry. I’m not going to touch a hair on your pretty head. That’s very bad form, you know. We’re just going on a little field trip. Very educational. If you want to.”

“If?” I asked. I looked around. There were at least a dozen people within view on the sidewalk—all human. They couldn’t save me from Cosimo. The only thing screaming would do would be to put them in danger, too. If I had a choice, it was because Cosimo was giving it to me.

“Yes, if.” He gave me a dazzling smile. “I really mean it. You can stand right here, in your own little world, and never see anything that Dorian doesn’t want you to until it’s far too late for you to care. Or you can come with me, and I’ll show you a few things I’m certain he doesn’t want you to know about—and tell you some things that
you
will.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why would I want to know? It’s not like I can do anything about anything, one way or another.”

He smiled again, showing too many teeth. “What if I told you that you could?”

I caught my breath. Could he mean it?

“In, then,
bella,”
he said, waving. “This is your only chance. In thirty seconds I leave, with you or without you.”

I hesitated. Could I trust him? He wasn’t doing something nice because he was my friend, so that left only one other possibility. He planned to do something Dorian didn’t want in order to hurt him. Which meant that getting in would betray what Dorian and I shared.

Whatever it was.

“Twenty-five.”

Of course, the best way of hurting Dorian would be to take away his cognate. If Cosimo wanted to kill me, though, he wouldn’t bother to ask me to get in the car at all. It wasn’t like I had the strength to fight off an agnate, nor would anyone else come to help.

“Twenty.”

So that meant Cosimo wanted to convince me of something, not kill me outright. And it had to have something to do with the bond.

That thought sent a tremor of unease through me, and then a second spike of fear that I could feel anything but happiness at the thought of doing something to the bond that held me to Dorian.

“Fifteen.”

What did I owe Dorian, after all? Sure, he’d saved my life, but only because he wanted it for himself.

I’d never wanted this. I had to be free.

I took off my backpack and got in.

“Excellent!” Cosimo stood in the door and held out his hand. “Your phone,
cara
. Not that I don’t adore Dorian’s company. It’s just that he’s not going to be very happy with what I want to show you. If he’s tracking you and you come anywhere near where we’re going...well, that’s an establishment he’d do a great deal to keep you out of.”

Reluctantly, I handed him my phone, and he passed it to a woman who had been leaning against the bookstore’s brick wall. I’d hardly even noticed her before, but she must be one of Cosimo’s thralls. My lifeline to Dorian, my phone with the tracking software he had loaded on it, was now gone.

If I’d been terrified, then maybe Dorian could have sensed it and come to find me, one way or another. But I wasn’t. I knew Cosimo was up to no good, but I really did believe that he didn’t plan to hurt me, at least directly. If he wanted me dead, there was no reason that I wouldn’t be already.

“She’ll keep it safe until you come back,” Cosimo said, bending down to smile at me through the open door. “Cross my heart. Now, scoot.” He made a small waving motion with his hands.

I slid across the bench seat to the other side, and he got in to sit beside me. My skin prickled with uneasiness at his closeness. Just because I trusted him not to kill me didn’t mean that I liked him.

“Drive,” he said to the chauffeur, and the car began to move.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Just a little field trip to Baltimore,” he said, pulling his sunglasses off and folding them primly before sliding them into the pocket of his blazer.

Baltimore. Dorian had gone there when I’d been attacked to try to find out who was behind it because the city was a stronghold of the Kyrioi.

That didn’t bode well.

“Look, if anything happens to me, Dorian’s going to find out,” I said.

Cosimo smiled. “You’re welcome to tell him. But I don’t think you will.”

“Are you going to stop me, then?” I challenged as the car merged onto the Beltway.

“Not at all,” he said soothingly. “You’ll be free to tell him anything. I’m willing to gamble that you won’t want to, though. You’re a cognate who immediately leaves her agnate’s mansion for school and a dorm room.”