RoseBlood(83)

Thorn paused, pulling his gloves into place and working out the wrinkles in the dark leather. “I let her feed off one of her companions.” Duel emotions wrestled within him each time he remembered watching Rune attack her friend so viciously: one part impressed, the other part sorrowful. “The blond boy. Just enough to taint her relationship with her friends. But I stopped her before she could kill him. She wouldn’t do us any good in prison.”

“Fair point.” Erik stood, hand still rested in his pocket, and dragged his feet over to the glass chamber. Ange fluttered down to stand beside him. He propped his slumped frame against the metal counter, raising one corner of the tarp so he could glimpse inside. “What upsets me is you took her before I could provide guidance and comfort. Before I could get inside her head so that on All Hallows’ Eve, she would beg to make the sacrifice. You’ve made ill-wrought choices over the past few weeks that are coming to light, and I am not pleased. However, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt one final time. You have served me well over the years. You’ve brought her this far when no one else could have.”

Thorn narrowed his eyes. There was a pointed, underlying message within the mock praise that he couldn’t quite grasp. But he didn’t dare push. With the mood Erik was in, he’d risk never getting out tonight.

“Go free your patients,” his father said. “You must be thrilled it’s the last time you’ll have to do it.”

Every muscle tense and alert, Thorn drew up his hood and retrieved the cages. He started toward the tunnel leading to the exit route.

“Thorn . . .”

He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around.

“Do you remember my reasoning?” Erik baited, his voice a lyrical, hypnotic menace. “When you were young and I insisted you never keep a beautiful, wild creature caged for your own purposes for too long?”

Thorn tipped his head, weary of the passive badgering. “You said the animal would either lose the ability to function in the world without their keeper, or would turn feral and attack the one who feeds and cares for them, and have to be put down.”

Erik’s ensuing pause felt interminable, his silence louder than the plasma’s crackle. “Yes, my lovely wild-boy,” he said at last. “In hindsight, I realize I’ve kept you caged in darkness for far too many years. Now we face the consequences, and I fear the fates that will befall us both.”

A surge of impending doom raised the hairs along Thorn’s arms. Squinting to suppress the burn behind his eyes, he ducked into the tunnel. He followed the phosphorescent guidelines painted along the walls. His footsteps didn’t slow until the buzzing and popping of that artificial heartbeat faded to the soles of his boots scraping across pebbles on the way to his freedom—however tenuous it was.





19



CLIMBING TO THE STARS


“A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.”

Edmond de Goncourt

The platform beneath me seems too small . . . too tight. I’m not one for a fear of heights, but having nowhere to turn other than the locked door in front of me and the steep, winding stairway behind, I’m less confident than usual.

Diable mewls at my feet—a grumpy, scolding sound.

“I’m trying.” My tote’s strap balances precariously on my shoulder as I juggle my phone so the flashlight app can spotlight the keyhole in the door. I work the key into place. The tote slides down, its weight dropping to my wrist and yanking the chain from my nervous fingers. The key clatters to the stone step beside my feline companion. He hisses in disgust.

“Yeah? Well at least I have opposable digits,” I grumble. “I’d like to see you unlock something.” His unimpressed green gaze blinks up at me, reflecting my phone light as I fumble for the necklace. “Oh, I forgot. You’re a ghost. You’ll just materialize on the other side, right?” I tease him with the dangling chain.

Diable bats at the key until it’s out of his reach. He then yawns, stretches, and saunters back down the long, dark stairway we wound through minutes earlier, his jingles slowly fading away.

“Typical tomcat,” I say as he turns a bend where my light can’t reach. “Happy to have a paw in the mess, but always turning tail when it’s time for cleanup.”

Talking aloud to myself is the only way to keep my nerves in check. I’ve had a miserable, albeit productive, day: Turned all my friends against me, made Kat drop out of the opera, and won the diva’s role in one fell swoop.

After the auditions, Sunny tried to talk to me once or twice, but I shut her down. I can’t tell anyone why I did it. If I admit the truth, Jax will forget that I’m a heartless opportunist and start questioning our kiss again. And Audrey will never go along with a setup; she won’t honor her understudy duties if she knows I plan to fake being too scared to perform on opening night. That role belonged to her from the very beginning; this was the only way to make sure she gets her shot.

Most of the day, I hid in my dorm, while the other students decorated the foyer, stairways, and the ballroom on the third floor for the Halloween masquerade tomorrow night. Laughter echoed outside my door along with the sound of my four friends horsing around. Hearing them, wanting to be with them, hurt more than I thought it would. I know they’re safer if I avoid them. But why did they have to be so great? And why did I let them into my heart?