“What will you do with it?” she heard herself asking, as if his admission to her would change anything. She knew exactly what he did with his poison: drugged people, addicted them, and sold them.
He dropped the bone fragments into the grinder. The whirring noise seemed loud in the empty room. “How about I make you a deal…”
She felt like her skin was crawling with stinging things as she stepped toward him. She wanted to go to him, despite everything. “What are you offering?”
He was a bastard. He preyed on the innocent. He used earth and bone to enslave people, not as punishment, but randomly for avarice and malice.
He lifted the corner of his mouth is a sardonic half smile. “For starters, drop that piece in your hand. Then tell me what you want from me.”
She glanced at the.38; she hadn’t realized she had raised it. She lowered it with effort. Her arm hung at her side, but her finger still rested on the trigger. Did I take off the safety, too? She wasn’t sure, but she suspected she had. The habitual movement would’ve preceded raising her weapon.
“I want you to stop mixing that,” she told him.
The look he gave her was curious. “And if I don’t? Are you going to stop visiting me? Stop stealing my toys?”
She had an intense craving to show him exactly what would happen if he didn’t stop. Why this one was different she didn’t know, but in that instant she wanted to let her Other heritage reign. Sex and death. The room was already filled with death; her body was screaming for sex. If she had both on the same night, she’d become just like the rest of her family—like Nyx wanted, like her mother wanted. She’d have eternity. Steal the lives of mortals, enjoy those dual pleasures, and she’d be stronger, faster, live for centuries…
She swallowed against the dryness in her mouth and said, “Please?”
“Please what?” Daniel gave her that same tempting smile he’d offered in the clubs so often. “I don’t like them mindless, Eve. No medicine for you. Aren’t you tired of provoking me? It’s been fun to have someone try to thwart me. Ballsy. I like it. Let me give you what you want.”
Her hand tightened until the ridges on the grip pressed into her skin. Her tongue was slow in her mouth as she told him, “You can’t.”
“Are you sure?” Daniel stood there with a jar of blood in one hand and the stuff of death all around him. “You see what I am, but you’re not disgusted, are you? Come closer.”
And in that instant, she wanted to swallow his final breath more than anything she’d ever wanted. She reached out her other hand to touch him, but stopped short of actual contact. “You don’t want to give me what I want, Daniel. Trust me. Please. If you have anything good in you, change your path. Stop making these drugs. For everyone.”
And then she ran, away from temptation, away from the room of death and blood and bone. She was a mortal. She could walk away. She’d chosen humanity. She just needed to keep choosing it.
Eavan went to her car and began one of her tried and true reordering plans. Absently, she drove out to Chapel Hill. There was the first stop. Step one. Routine. It was a strange loop she’d adopted when she was a student—like walking her perimeters, demarcating territories. Like an animal.
No, she reminded herself, proving that I am not an animal.
It made her feel more focused.
I am not a monster.
At UNC, she measured her steps, pacing them out just so as she crossed campus to reach the courtyard outside Davis Library. That bricked vista felt reassuring—line after line of red bricks. There was order, structure. She clung briefly to that. Order. Follow the lines.
They’d just opened for the day.
How long was I driving?
She went inside and wandered through the wide open layout. People, regular mortals, were already going back and forth between shelves and tables. Some were curled into cocoons of their own projects—papers and books and furrowed brows. It was normalcy. It was her world—the one she chose.
The one I’m staying in.
She’d find another way to deal with Daniel—talk to Muriel or one of the lupine-clan or even Nyx if necessary. She had found a limitation she wasn’t going to test.
I can’t keep stalking him.
She crossed back over the campus, smiling at the green spaces. Even those were in order. The paths were angled. The layout was defined and orderly. Sure, there were people who weren’t walking down those paths, but they were following other guidelines. They wore their school colors or their Greek letters on their clothes. They defied grouping by assigning themselves another group. It gave form to the world. It was not-chaos.
She drove past Durham, not wanting to stop by Duke’s library when she was feeling so tentative. Step two. Choosing. The Perkins Library building was gorgeous, and the order she craved was more obvious inside, but walking through the stacks made her feel predatory. But I will not hunt. Good mortals, smart humans, didn’t stalk and attack. Knowing what she could be wasn’t always reason enough to resist. She wanted it to be, but it wasn’t.
For that, she needed her routines, her tried-and-true tactics. She hadn’t needed to work this hard in years. She left the library and drove to Raleigh.
NCSU was twisted among the city; the campus twisted between houses and restaurants and stores. University buildings nestled around tattoo parlors and coffee shops and convenience stores. Students and professors ate next to construction workers and strangers. Everyone is welcome here. Sure, there were those that wore letters and insignias, but those who didn’t could still blend. It was a feeling more than a quantifiable element, and the feeling was one that soothed her unease. Here, she could restructure herself. Here, she could create the order that kept her anchored to the world that she had chosen.
As she walked across the brickyard, she felt herself settling. Maybe it was the routine; maybe it was the familiarity. It didn’t matter, not really.
She went inside D. H. Hill Library and went up to the second floor. She walked through the east wing and then the west wing. She went to the study carrels. She stroked shelves and paused at water fountains. It was all about the anchors. It was all about order.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Cillian was behind her; her new temptation was right there in reach.
“Nothing.”
“Really? So why were you at Brennan’s warehouse the other morning? Why are you here tonight? Brennan’s a factor somewhere here, Eavan. I just don’t know how.”
Eavan bowed her head. If Cillian knew about Daniel, Nyx would know, too. Unless she already does. “How did you know where I went?”
“GPS.”
“Did you install it?” she asked, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“No,” Cillian admitted. “They were preinstalled.”
Eavan paused. “They?”
She’d really thought that the car was tracker-free. Her mechanic hadn’t removed anything the last time. He’d pronounced her car “clean.” He’d lied.
“Your car, phone, the red jacket…”
Eavan schooled her face as she turned and said, “Shh.”
“What are you doing?” Cillian repeated, softer this time in deference to their location.
For a heartbeat, she considered telling him, giving him the answers she’d never spoken to anyone. Instead, she said, “Walking.”
“Walking. Driving. Going in and out of libraries. Aimlessly pacing sidewalks…” He stepped closer, moving into her personal space as if such a thing was acceptable “At least you don’t have a pattern. I can’t imagine how your potential stalker could—”