Page 56 of Blood Lovers

“Are you jealous?”

“I don’t have feelings, Ryet. I have needs.”

“Right. So… I’m gonna wake up now. Nice chat.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which was?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Thanks.”

“I only ask because I gave you a lot of blood in Miami.”

“Nope. I’m good.” But I don’t remember it that way. Sips. That’s what he gave me. He’s always denied me full drinks.

“But I need to give you more. Very soon.”

“What? Why? I just fed. And it was two months early.”

“There’s something wrong with you, Ryet. Can’t you feel it?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’re a piece of work, you know that? You know what’s wrong with me, Paul? You. And the fact that you turned me into your bitch.” I pause and bare my teeth at him and then growl out my words. “If you want something from me, show up in person. Stay out of my fucking dreams.”

Not how I usually end things between us, but who cares. It works.

Because the next thing I know, my little winter dream forest is empty.

And finally, I find a little peace in sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - SYRSEE

They didn’t even let me read the books.

I’m starting to get sick of the dreamwalks.

Ten years, nothing. Last four weeks, I can’t get a moment’s peace.

It means something. Like the numbers ‘11:11.’ There was a time, years ago, when Zusi and I were teenagers, when these numbers seemed to be everywhere.

“It’s a sign,” Zusi told me at the time. Because the urban lore around eleven-eleven was something Guild kids just knew about.

They are most often seen on the clock or some kind of timestamp and they mean that you have a new beginning coming.

It was true, too. There was a new beginning coming. I graduated from the Guild school and was sent to a public college to study library science.

But so did Zusi. Not public college, of course. She went to some Guild place. Wherever Guardians go to learn to… guard. So I kinda just forgot about the numbers.

But college was a new beginning. It was the first time I’d ever been on my own. First time since I was seven that I wasn’t surrounded by Guardians. I learned things there I didn’t really need to know, and dated men, and had friends who were neither witches nor Guardians. I went to parties, and rushed a sorority—though I didn’t get in—and took tests like my life depended on the scores I got.

I loved college. I didn’t have a care in the world, either. No worries about hunters, or vampires, or witches muddying up my head at all hours of the day and night because I was under the protection of Grandma.

It’s possible that I took that for granted.

And now I am on the run from a hunter and it’s not just a possibility that I took my grandma for granted, it’s a fact.

But the reason all this stuff is presently on my mind is because my current dreamwalk has brought me to the Guild library. The haze is purple. So past, or future, or some other reality. That’s the only thing I know for sure.