Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(71)

Darnell and Matt shared a quick smile. “You’re in, man,” Darnell said, holding up a fist for Matt to bump while the other guys laughed and made catcall noises.

Will watched them with an intense look, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed together in a thin line. I couldn’t read his expression.

“Oh, also?” I said, this time looking right at Darnell. “You need to stop with the back-and-forth stuff. It’s not cool. Either you want to be with Niamh, or you don’t, but don’t pretend you’re just coming over to the table because you had a question about homework.”

Darnell opened his mouth but didn’t manage to spit anything out. Will used his hand like a megaphone around his mouth. “Called out.”

As for me, I was impressed with myself. When did I get so brave?

I guessed the last couple of weeks had changed me. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so terrifying to look stupid in front of a group of guys who, for the most part, didn’t mean much to me. Other than Will, anyway, and I knew he wouldn’t judge me for it. There were worse things that could happen than being a little embarrassed.

And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved.





21


“You leave in an hour,” I said.

Will, who had his head resting against my bare chest, tilted his head up to look at me. “Hmm.”

“One hour, Will.”

He made a face and traced a finger along my stomach. Our skin was dry now. If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t have been able to tell we’d been in the lake thirty minutes earlier.

“Willyou walk me back to mine?” he asked.

“You want me to sneak out of my own house at four in the morning, walk you around the other end of the lake, then sneak back into my house?”

“… Yes?”

“Of course I will. Don’t know why you felt you had to ask.”

It took us longer than it probably should’ve to get dressed— mostly because Will kept rudely interrupting the process to kiss my legs, and stomach, and arms one last time before I covered them back up—but eventually we managed to get ourselves looking kind of presentable. We slipped outside fairly easily, thanks to my silent front door, and then started walking. My legs felt like they belonged to a turtle. Everything weighed so much more than it should’ve.

It had gone too fast. All of this had gone too fast.

“Do you have to go?” I asked.

“Do you?” he shot back.

“Please visit.”

He grabbed onto my wrist and stopped me from going any farther. “Seriously, we need to make a promise now, okay? One of us will make sure we visit the other as soon as we can.”

“Okay.”

“We can’t just say it, though, we have to do it. I don’t want this to be over. Maybe it doesn’t have to be, right?”

I shrugged. I just didn’t know the answer to that.

“We need to stay in touch. We need to keep talking, and we’ll figure something out. Maybe I can get down there for spring break or something. Or maybe you’ll come back to visit your aunt, and we can organize to meet up somewhere.”

I had a horrible feeling I was about to cry. All I could do was give a short nod.

Will cupped my face with one of his hands and stared at me with serious brown eyes. “Please don’t lose contact, okay? I need to see you again.”



“Did you know your heartbeat changes rhythm when you listen to faster or slower music?” Will asked.

“Nope. That’s pretty cool, though.”

“Yeah. And the cornea is the only body part that doesn’t get oxygen from blood. It just sucks it in, right from the air.”

He was sitting crossed-legged on a spare chair in the music room, flicking through the biology textbook he balanced in his lap. That day, his excuse to hang with me in the music room was an upcoming test. I’d thought the book was a prop, but, to my surprise, he actually sat down and started reading it when I picked up my bass. I wasn’t sure if it was because he really wanted to ace the test, or if he just found it really boring to listen to the same bass line repeated over and over again. I wouldn’t blame him if it was the latter, but then I had to wonder—why did he always come to visit me here at lunch when I spent three-quarters of it ignoring him to practice music?

“And blood flows through your veins so fast, it only takes twenty seconds for a blood cell to do a whole lap,” he went on. “That’s funny. I always pictured blood as cruising along at, like, a walking pace.”

“It spurts out pretty fast if you cut yourself badly,” I said.

“Yeah, but not, like, a-hundred-miles-an-hour fast,” he said. “Think about how small a blood cell is compared to your whole body. And it only takes twenty seconds. That would be like us doing ten laps of a football field in twenty seconds.”

“I guess. But it’s all relative, right?”

He blinked into the distance. “I don’t even know anymore. My brain hurts.”

I riffled through the folder of sheet music I’d been compiling for Absolution’s upcoming gig and selected a song I wasn’t having much trouble with, but that was a little more impressive sounding than the last couple I’d practiced. So maybe I wanted to show off a little with Will in the room. Was that such a crime? It had to be a misdemeanor at most. “So, are you actually studying?” I asked.