A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21)(33)

Ibrahim came to us and informed us that the second boundary had been erected. Then it was time to deal with the merfolk we had left guarded by the other vampires. I arrived on the stretch of beach to find that most of the creatures had come to by now. Some had been bound, an attempt by the vampires to keep them in check. The latter all looked relieved to see me as I approached.

“So?” Ashley, who’d remained as one of the guards, asked, hands on her hips. “What are we going to do with these creeps?”

I was tempted to instruct the witches to hover the merfolk over the hunters’ ships, still floating outside, and give them a nasty surprise. But of course, that was not the most tactful way of handling the situation.

In the end, I just had the witches transport them to the shore of a deserted island situated on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I was certain that now that they knew where The Shade was, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find their way back, especially if we had others still lurking within our boundaries who could call for them. But for now, this was the best we could do. In the meantime, we had to double down and try to figure out how to purge our water of any remaining merfolk. And until we did that, we were stuck with this hostile environment, feeling like prisoners on our own island.

Chapter 10: Rose

Caleb and I considered going to the meeting that my father had called in the Great Dome, but since they would only be discussing what we already knew, I didn’t see any real reason for us to be there. I was aching for my brother as it was, and hearing the whole story repeated all over again would only end up making me more depressed.

So I suggested to my husband that we skip the meeting. Since our honeymoon, we had moved into our own treehouse. It was near my parents’, and within the area of the Residences in general, but far enough away for us to feel like we were living alone.

I was still in the process of moving my stuff out of my old room in my parents’ penthouse. It was amazing how much I had accumulated over the years. I found objects under my bed that I’d forgotten I even possessed. The room was jammed with gifts from my eighteenth birthday combined with Caleb’s and my wedding. My bedroom was large, but we’d received so many generous gifts, they had barely fit in my room. We had moved much of that to our new place already, but there still remained at least two loads’ worth of stuff. I couldn’t wait to hang up the painting of The Shade’s Port that Anna and her family had created for me.

I could’ve asked one of the witches to help in moving the stuff, which would have been far quicker, but with everything that was going on in and around The Shade, I didn’t want to bother any of them with such a trivial matter.

Seeing that Caleb and I had some downtime now, Caleb came with me to help move the rest.

“Do you actually need all this?” Caleb asked, scrunching his nose as he eyed the remaining possessions I had, some packed up in bags, some still strewn around the room.

I threw him a grin. “Why do you ask? We’re not exactly lacking space in our new apartment. We’ve got to fill it up with something.”

“Uh, no,” he remarked. “There is a joy to space and simplicity. Not every room has to be cluttered like a trinket store.”

I couldn’t deny that I had already cluttered up our penthouse quite a lot, but I found it amusing that this was the first time Caleb was commenting on it.

He bent down and scooped up my hair straightener. He eyed it with a frown. “What’s this?”

I moved up to him, taking the straightener from his hands and snapping it shut. “Oops,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean for you to see this. It’s a kind of torture device wives keep for their husbands when they don’t behave themselves.”

He pulled me against him and pressed a kiss against the side of my neck. “You can torture me anytime,” he said, his voice turning husky.

“Stop distracting me,” I said, pushing him away even as I smiled from ear to ear. “I’ve been procrastinating on this job for weeks, I need to finally finish it off.”

He gave me the eye before turning and surveying the rest of the room. “Well, we’ve already transferred most of it. I figure, what… twenty more trips and we should be done?”

I rolled my eyes. “Leaving aside all the gifts, I haven’t got that much stuff, okay? At least not compared to other girls my age. You’d have a heart attack if you visited some of my girlfriends’ bedrooms. We should be able to manage the rest in only two trips.” I smirked as Caleb and I bent down to pick up armfuls of bags. “You know we sound like a legitimate married couple.”

He smiled. “Maybe that’s because we are one.”

Caleb was, of course, grossly exaggerating the number of things I had. I was right in my estimation that we could carry the rest of the stuff in two more loads. This was definitely one upside to being a vampire: my strength. I was able to carry an inhuman number of things. And of course, Caleb, being larger, could carry much more.

We picked up as many things as we could and brought them back to our penthouse. We dumped them in the entrance hall before returning to my parents’ apartment for the final load.

The final load.

Caleb began picking up bags and, strangely, I found myself stalling. Looking around my room, I realized that unless I went out of my way to come in here, this could easily be the last time that I set foot in this space.