12
To be fair, it all started off fantastic. We didn't have to wait. The bouncer took one look at us, walking up in all of our glory, and decided that we were cool enough to go in. I didn't even have to pay cover. It was a first for me.
The club was nicer than I expected, three stories tall with a dance floor taking up the entire bottom half. The second floor was a bar with drinks and the third was VIP, with its own private dance space. I don't know how we got there, but we ended up in the VIP lounge with drinks pressed into our hands. No one even ID'ed us, which I thought was pretty lax on the club’s part.
“I'm gonna go dance,” Connie said before she had even taken a sip of her drink.
“I'll go with you.” Jenny jumped up.
“And I will not allow two lovely mademoiselles to go down there without an escort.” Alan bowed gracefully and took them each by the hand. I watched the trio laugh and descend down the stairs that we had just come up to join the throng of the crowd below. It was only nine o'clock, so the throng was pretty small for the moment, but even so, the three of them made a splash. People, myself included, watched as they moved onto the dance floor and continued to watch when they started to dance. They were good.
“Do you dance?” Dmitri leaned over and asked me. The music was loud enough that I had to lean close to hear him. I didn't have supernatural ears.
I shook my head. “Not unless I've just beaten a boss level.”
He smiled. I'd been teaching him the joy of video games. He wasn't too bad. He still preferred books, and I couldn't blame him for that.
“Will you dance with me?”
He sounded so unsure of himself when he asked. His big warm eyes were focused on some invisible piece of lint on his slacks.
“Maybe after a drink or two.”
Admittedly, none of the drinks I was drinking had any liquid confidence in them, but I kinda wanted to wait until the dance floor had a few more people. This way, if I made a complete fool of myself, it would be masked by the slew of other people being foolish.
I sat back, and he put his arm around my shoulders. He was muscular enough that it was a little uncomfortable, but I didn't want to make him feel bad for having an excellent body, so I stayed there.
“How did the lesson go?” he asked.
I frowned. “The same as usual. Everyone but me was awesome.”
“You worry too much,” Wei cut in. I hadn't actually expected him to speak. I assumed that he'd just stand there, looking like a body guard. He'd taken off the jacket. It should have made him look less intimidating. It didn't. His long, loose hair was a curtain around his face. “You think too much about how good others are. You seem to believe if you are not perfect in the beginning, you should move on. Some things take time.”
I blinked. It was pretty much a speech as far as Wei was concerned. He'd talked to me more since we had started our lessons in Tai Chi, but not a whole lot more. Usually just instructions on how to move my feet and what I ought to be visualizing.
Dmitri sighed. “He is right.” I could tell he didn't like saying it.
“Oh...good,” I said, feeling a little bit pissed off. I hadn't come out tonight to be told about my numerous flaws. I'd come out to relax and have fun and look cute doing it. So far, I had succeeded in the last, and nothing else. I sighed and moved away from Dmitri, no longer wanting to lounge against him.
He looked hurt. I hated that I had made him feel that way, but my feelings mattered, too. “Here's a rule for tonight,” I snapped, feeling a little grumpy, “Tonight, we aren't going to talk about my weaknesses, the prophecy, babies, or how I'm doing in magic. I'd prefer if we didn't talk about me at all.”
Wei raised his brow at me. “If that's your wish.”
I knew when he said it that he meant it. Wei didn't say anything unless he meant it. The fact that he didn't argue, make any demands, or try to reason with my request meant a lot to me right then. I realized that I could always count on Wei, and that made me love him just a little bit.
Shit.
“Why?” Dmitri wanted to know. He was looking a little peeved. Great. Wei got it. He didn't need to understand why. He just needed to know what I needed and that was that. Could Dmitri just let it go? Nope. He had to know why I wanted something, and then he'd pick it apart. I could already feel it happening.
“Because I just want to relax,” I explained. “My whole life this past...jeez, has it already been five weeks?...my whole life recently has consisted of being bad at magic and being bad at dating without a whole lot in between.”
“Your work in Tai Chi has been commendable.”
I blinked in surprise. “Thank you.”
Wei bowed. Dmitri glowered. He'd been glowering a lot lately. I was quickly getting fed up with it.
“Has dating me been bad?” he wanted to know.
I took a long drink from something that tasted like cherries and pineapple. It should have tasted amazing, considering those were two of my favorite flavors, but I could barely enjoy it. “No, dating you has not been bad. Dating you would be fantastic if you weren't so...difficult.”
I hated to say it, but it was true.
“How is it difficult?” he demanded.
I waved a hand between us. “This, this is how it is difficult. This, right here. Dude, listen, you are so cute, and so creative, and I love the way you read books, but the moment that something isn't exactly how you'd like it to be, you just get grumpy. You make it about how you are feeling right then and forget that other people are having feelings, too. You want me to dance with you. You want me to cuddle with you. I get it. But dammit...” I huffed as the rain of anger I'd been riding derailed and all of my words just sort of disappeared in a rush of frustration. “You can be so...difficult.”
“And you want easy,” he snapped.
Alan chose that exact moment to walk up the stairs. Great. If ever there was the definition of easy...there it was. Dmitri sneered at Alan. Alan raised one perfect brow.
“What did I do?” he wanted to know.
“You exist.”
Dmitri surged to his feet and stormed off. Alan watched him go. I sighed.
“Well, that...was unexpected,” Alan said. He picked up one of the myriad of drinks that still sat on the see-through table and took a long sip. “What's gotten under our prickly boy’s skin?”
“You,” Wei said without any anger. “He sees that Lorena is not falling in love with him, and he blames you.”
“You are breaking the rules,” I said.
He bowed his head. “True. My apologies.”
“Rules?” Alan asked, taking another sip of drink.
“Lorena does not wish to talk about the prophecy or her flaws tonight. I believe she just wants to have fun.”
“That's all girls really want,” I said, parodying the song. I don't think they got it. Woe is me to only be funny to the people who get mid-80's pop references.
Wei stood up. “I am going to find Dmitri and make sure that he does not reveal us to the humans.” And just like that, he was gone. He moved fast, faster than Dmitri or Alan. One moment, he could be there, the next he could be gone. I'd gotten used to vampire movement, the way they could just...swoosh...like super heroes. Wei was The Flash, the other two were Superman, and yeah...The Flash was faster.
“I hate to break the rules, but is it true?” Alan asked.
“Is what true?” I said, realizing that I wouldn't be able to get to have fun until we had a whole conversation about me and the prophecy.
“Do you not love Dmitri?”
I sighed and dragged a hand through my hair. “I should, right? He's cute, and he's strong, and he reads and write and paints. Have you seen his paintings? They are gorgeous. And he leaves me these little sketches and love notes and everything...”
“And yet...” Alan asked, prompting me to go on.
“And yet...I don't love him. I'm attracted to him. I think he'd look great naked, and I could listen to him read sonnets for the rest of my life but...every time I talk to him, I always have to be worried about what I might say. He can be so damn...moody.”
Alan laughed, but there was a sparkle in his eye. I finally said what I'd been waiting to say for like...a month.
“It would help if you weren't totally in love with him.”
The laugh cut off. He gave me a look. “I beg your pardon?”
I sighed, rubbing my fingers across my forehead. “I moved around a lot in high school. I've told you that before. While I hated all the moving, I got to learn a lot about people. How the people who are in Alaska are pretty much the same as the ones in Florida, despite the huge difference in cultures.”
“Both of those places are American.”
I shrugged. “That's true, but that doesn't make them the same. Anthropology was my major, so bear with me if I zone off and explain the cultural differences between places whose only common denominator is the language they speak and the government they pay taxes to.”
He smiled at me. “So, you think I am in love with Dmitri.”
“I know you are. I think you have been for a long time. You poke at him, you prod at him, and you do it so he will pay attention to you. I've watched you do it. When you think he is giving me just a little too much attention, you'll sneak some little offhand remark in there that you know is going to bug him.”
He swirled his drink in his cup. His face had taken on that neutral, but mildly amused, face that I knew meant he was hiding something. “I could be trying to get your attention.”
I nodded. “You could, but I know better. You aim the comments at him, knowing that he's going to flip out. You aren't trying to get my attention, you are trying to get his. You love him.”
He sighed and set down his cup. “I assume this takes me out of the running.”
I looked at him. His long braid had swept over his shoulder, looking like a golden rope. I reached out and ran my fingers over it. It was as soft as it looked. “I don't know what it does. I can honestly say that I hate the idea that I know when you are kissing me, a part of you is thinking about him.”
“I like kissing you, Lorena.”
He didn't call me by my pet name, and it hurt just a little. “I know,” I said, “but you don't love me any more than I love you.”
He snorted, but he didn't disagree with me. “For a human, you are wise.”
“For a vampire, you’re just plain pretty.”
He laughed and opened his arms. I slid over to them, felt them wrap around me. He was hugging me goodbye, and we both knew it. He felt good, really good. He probably would have been a lot of fun to sleep with, but what was between us wasn't love, and it never would be. Too bad. I'd never gotten to see him naked.
He placed his crooked finger beneath my chin, and I lifted my head to gaze into those lovely eyes.
“When you finally do fall in love with Dmitri, treat him well, won’t you?”
The mask slipped away completely, and I could see the warm hope in his eyes. The silent begging that I wouldn't hurt the man that he loved. I nodded, swallowing the knot that had formed in my throat. He dipped his head and placed the chastest kiss on my lips that I had ever felt. It was a soft kiss, a thank you kiss, and it was just that moment that Dmitri decided to come back.
“So we cannot talk about romance, but he can kiss you?”
I jerked away suddenly. Alan didn't. It was that moment that I knew that Alan had heard Dmitri coming. He had used the situation to his advantage. I wanted to be mad at him. Okay, I was a little mad at him, but after seeing all that raw emotion in his eyes, I couldn't really hold it against him. He was in love, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Dmitri, wait.” I held up one hand. I opened my mouth to explain, but what was I supposed to say? That Alan had just admitted to me that he wasn't going to pursue me because he was too in love with Dmitri? Yeah, that didn't really feel like my secret to tell.
“Dmitri,” Alan stood up and bowed. “Lorena was just saying goodbye. She has...ended...my courting of her. You've won.”
I shot Alan a look. That wasn't fair. I hadn't decided on anything. Just because I wasn't going to be seeing Alan romantically anymore didn't mean I was going to jump into bed with Dmitri. I still didn't love him, and I didn't know if I ever would. I hated a guy I had to tiptoe around.
“Is this true?” Wei asked.
“Kinda,” I answered.
Dmitri's eyes lit up. He closed the space between us in a blur of speed that just barely stayed inside the realm of human ability, even though it still caused a few heads to turn. His big strong arms were around me. “Really?”
I put my hands on his biceps. They were firm and hard beneath my hands. I swallowed. “Don't get too excited. Just because I broke the romance off with him doesn't mean I'm ready to be the prophecy girl.”
The light in his eyes dimmed. I could see that he wanted to ask the why, the how, the what. He wanted to question my decision. But he swallowed it. “I'll wait as long as you need.”
No, he wouldn't. I knew that looking into his face, surrounded by all those curls. He'd wait a while, maybe even longer than I thought he would, but sooner or later he'd make demands. He'd question.
“Will you dance with me?” he asked softly.
I didn't really want to, but I couldn't bring myself to say no and kill what little hope he had. I nodded, and he took my hand in his and led me onto the dance floor.
The song wasn't quite slow, but it wasn't fast either. There was a techno beat to it, like the rhythm of the heart. His hands went to my hips, and I began to move.
I am not the world's best dancer. I move with more enthusiasm than skill, but I love the way dancing feels. I love the way my body finds a rhythm and moves with it. I like how professionals can make a song into a story, using their bodies to tell it. I wasn't one of those. My only dance classes had been six after-school classes at the Y. Even so, it was easy to move back and forth with Dmitri's hands on my hips.
He was smiling at me, grinning as if he had just won some great competition. Well, I thought to myself, he was pretty sure he had. He stepped forward and matched his movements to my own, his fingers possessive on my hips.
Had he won? I wondered. There wasn't anyone else to choose. Then again, I didn't really have to choose, did I? I could still go home or to whatever I called home. Sure, having my grandmother's house and all the money from her estate would be fantastic...but not ultimately necessary. I had half a college degree in a field that no one had heard of and many years in the wild world of fast food customer service. What did I have to worry about?
And then there was the fact that I knew that if I didn't take part in this prophecy, if I didn't choose one of the Sons of Vlad and have a baby...I was dooming magic to die. Damn. I really did not want magic to die. I wanted...well, I wanted magic to thrive. I wanted to see mermaids taking selfies and dragons guarding banks and who knew what else.
And all I had to do was fall in love with Dmitri, right? Well, no. I didn't have to. I could just take him to bed. There were worse things in the world than enjoying the body of a super-hot paranormal dude, but the truth was, I wasn't sure I would enjoy it unless I really, really felt something for him...and I ought to enjoy it, right?
Right.
So, what was there left to do but fall in love with my moody vampire? I glanced past his shoulder and saw Wei.
He was sitting on a bar stool, watching with eyes as cool and calm as a cat's. His lips were set into that perfectly neutral line that he could conjure up. He caught me watching him, and he bowed his head ever so slightly so that his hair fell over his face. My heart did a little skip. What the hell was that about?
Oh no.
I blinked and turned my attention back to Dmitri who was still smiling at me like I was everything in the world. Oh no. He slid his arms even tighter around me and pulled me closer as the music took it down another notch. The lights were low and there were sparkles on the walls as twenty or so other couples stepped into the embrace of their partners’ arms.
“Are you alright?” Dmitri asked.
“Nervous,” I said. It was true. I was nervous. This felt heavy. I'd spent a lot of time with Dmitri and Alan before now, but tonight felt...different.
He lifted a hand to my cheek. “Don't be.”
He kissed me before I realized what he was going to do. I damn near froze. The kiss was good. My body tingled, hummed, to be so close to a cute guy, but even so, a single thought hit me.
“Where's Jenny?” I asked.
Dmitri jerked as if he'd been struck. He looked confused and a little hurt. I couldn't blame him. I'd just ruined our first kiss by wondering about my friend. But even so, my eyes darted around the dance floor. I couldn't see Jenny anywhere, but there was Connie with her head pressed to some uniformed college boy’s chest. Oh no.
Dmitri followed the line of my gaze. He frowned, but he didn't release me.
“She's around.”
I frowned at him. “Yeah, but I'm going to go find her.”
“Why?” he wanted to know.
That irked me. “Dude, if you don't understand why I'm going to go look for Jenny, then I can't help you.”
I turned and walked off the dance floor, leaving a confused and grumpy guy behind me. The first place I checked was the women's room. It's where I would go if the person I'd been crushing on was slow-dancing with someone else. There was no better place to cry. But the line was about a trillion girls long, and I didn't know if I could wait that long to find her.
“What is it?” Wei asked.
“I can't find Jenny.”
He raised his brow, but didn't question it. “What can I do?”
“I don't know enough about vampire abilities to answer that question. Can you like...feel her?”
He shook his head. He didn't make fun of me for asking. I liked that. “No, and there are too many people here to sense her heartbeat.”
I filed that bit of information away for later. “I don't know what to do.”
He looked at me, his eyes, like flecks of obsidian, were warm with some emotion I couldn't name. “You are a witch.”
“A terrible one.”
He grabbed my shoulders suddenly in his hands and made me look at him. “I do not want to hear those words again.”
“I...what?'
He didn't shake me like I expected him to. Instead, his fingers dug in just enough that I could feel the steady iron-like pressure of them. “You tell yourself that you are bad, and you leave yourself no room to improve. I have felt your talent. Stop it.”
He meant it. Wei never said anything that he didn't mean.
“What do you mean you felt it?”
“The day you broke the window.”
I thought back to it. I remembered all the lines, the grand inter-connectivity of the Weave. Could that help me now? “You felt that?”
He nodded. “Find her.”
“I need some place a little less...loud.”
He nodded and wrapped his arms around me. For the second time that night, my heart skipped a beat. What was wrong with me? I decided not to think about that, not right now. I felt a surge of motion, and the next thing I knew, we were in a basement. The boxes of liquor were enough to tell me we were still in the club, just kind of below it.
“What can I do?”
“Just...stay,” I answered.
I would have told Dmitri to back up, or Alan to be quiet. Wei, I knew, wouldn't do anything unless I asked it of him or unless I was in danger. Damn. I didn't want to like him. He was grumpy.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Through the concrete floor, I could hear the music still pounding away, the thump-thrum heartbeat of it. Rather than ignore it, I focused on it, waiting for my own heartbeat, which was a little unsteady, to match it. I slowed my breathing down.
The trick to meditation, I had learned, wasn't to try to clear my head. It was to let all the thoughts I had go without dwelling on them. Did I want to think about my unexpected feelings for Wei? Nope, absolutely not. Did I want to think about the way Dmitri looked at me? Negative. Hard pass. Or Alan, who was pretty much destined to be stuck in Dmitri's not-even-a-friend zone? Not even a little. All I wanted to do was focus on Jenny and find her.
My breathing slowed down to almost nothing, my chest barely rose and fell inside of my awesome little black dress. I was aware of the way my feet felt in my sandals, of the quiet ocean that was Wei on my left. Then, I felt the dance floor, the people and their hundreds of emotions flying through them. I felt the anxiety of servers, the lust and fever of horny college kids. The stress and the hope and the depression and the dreams and aspirations of all of them curled over one another in some grand miasma of humanity.
“I...I can't...it's too much.”
Cool fingers touched my chin, and my skin seemed to flare to life. When I opened my eyes, I could see Wei's face, rounded with his Asian features, and then I didn't see him. I saw the power of him. It was this well of energy that didn't really have a color. But I could have dipped my hands into it if I'd wanted to. I reached for it instead, brushing my fingers through it. Energy jumped into my grasp.
He made a sound, and it was not an unpleasant one. I wanted to hear it again. I stroked that source of power once more and Wei hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I....don't...know.”
It felt so good, that power source. It jumped to my fingers and swam against my skin. I opened my eyes, and I could see everyone in the club. I mean, I couldn't see their faces, but I felt their energy, their souls, their lives, whatever you wanted to call it. Everyone had this little ball of energy tucked inside of them. Some were brighter than others, some were even color-coded for my convenience.
A particularly angry guy was bright red, mixed with black, the dude to his left had a blue sphere of life, tinged with bile green. That didn't seem like a good pair. A moment later, they started to fight. A bouncer whose energy was a bright vibrant orange grabbed them both and tossed them out. I didn't know what it all meant, but I knew that this wasn't normal...that this was all me.
I didn't dwell on it. I didn't want to understand just yet. Instead, I searched through one aura after another until I found Jenny. She was outside, tucked between the club and the closed bookstore next door. She was holding herself, and her own ball of energy was so dark blue that it was almost black.
“I know where she is.”
I broke out of the meditation suddenly. I was surprised to find that my hand was on Wei's chest. His eyes were wide, his lips were parted, and he looked as if I had just sucked the life out of him.
“Wei? What's wrong?”
“Well,” Alan said, “you found your source.”
I jumped. I hadn't realized that he would be there. “My...source? What? I mean...I know what a source is but...”
Wei pulled back, but he was unsteady on his feet. “It would make sense.”
Alan nodded. “It would.”
“Enough with the vagueness,” I said, stepping away from both of them. “What happened?”
Wei shook his head. “Do not worry about it now. I saw what you saw. Go to Jenny. We will discuss it later.”
I frowned at him. I didn't want to discuss it later, but I knew that understanding what had just happened wasn't nearly as important as getting to Jenny. I looked at Alan.
“Go. I will see that he feeds.”
“Feeds?” I asked. Jeez, what the hell had I done?
“You took some of his magic and made it yours, Lorena. Go, I will tend to him.”
I took Alan at his word and headed upstairs, ignoring the looks from the kitchen staff as I did. I didn't hear them demand to know what I was doing. All I heard were Alan's words telling me that I had taken some of Wei's magic. How had I done that? I didn't think it was possible. No, I thought, I knew that it wasn't possible. One of my grandmother's books had made that really clear. The only thing that could steal power from another person were a few particular types of faeries and one very specific kind of vampire that, according to the boys, didn't exist anymore.
So what had I done...and why had it felt so good?