Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [81]
I called Kelley on the way to give her an update about McKetrick and reached the House a bit too close to dawn for comfort. I ran from my car into the House, only barely realizing in my sun-fed exhaustion that the protestors had quieted, no doubt thanks to the two dozen camouflaged members of the National Guard who stood at equal points around the fence.
I immediately headed upstairs to fall into bed, but stopped at the second floor landing, and cast a glance at the third floor above me. Before my better judgment kicked in, I was drowsily climbing the stairs to the third floor, then tiptoeing down the hallway to the wing that held the consort’s suite . . . and Ethan’s rooms.
I stood in front the double doors to his apartment for just a moment, before pressing my palm to the door and my forehead to the cool wood.
God, I missed him. Jonah’s kiss might have been glorious for that one moment of oblivion, but its wake was so much worse, miring me in thoughts of Ethan.
Without warning, the door slipped open.
I stood up again, heart pounding. I hadn’t been in his rooms since the night he’d been killed. Some of his personal effects had been boxed up, but the rooms had otherwise been closed off. Frank had chosen other quarters and Malik and his wife had remained in their own. I’d avoided Ethan’s apartment altogether, thinking it was better to go cold turkey than become a phantom, haunting his rooms to foster the memories.
But tonight, after lightning and fairy queens and kisses and guns, I needed a different kind of oblivion.
I pushed the door open farther, and walked inside.
For a moment, I just stood in the doorway, eyes closed, drinking in the familiar scent. His sharp, clean cologne was giving way to the scents of cleaning polish and dust, but it still lingered there, faint and fresh, like the whispers of a ghost.
I opened my eyes, closed the door behind me, and surveyed the room. It was nicely decorated, with expensive European furniture and furnishings, more like a boutique hotel than the rooms of a Master vampire.
I walked across the sitting room to the second set of double doors. These led into Ethan’s bedroom. The sun now above the horizon, I walked inside and caught the lingering scent of him again. Before I could think better of it, my shoes and jacket were on the floor and I was crawling into his bed, tears spilling from the familiar sensation of the linens and the scent of him that filled them.
I thought of the few times we’d made love, the tenuousness and joy of it, and the quirky, teasing smile he’d given me when he’d been pleased with something I’d done—or something he’d done to me. His eyes were so brilliantly green, his mouth perfection, his body as finely hewn as any marble statue.
Wrapped in the scent of him, I smiled and savored the memories. There, in his bed in his darkened rooms, I fell asleep.
We were in a casino, surrounded by a cacophony of electronic chirps and flashing lights, jostled by a parade of smiling waitresses with trays of drinks in short glasses. I sat in front of a slot machine with dials that spun in random increments, occasionally slowing to showcase a single image. A stake. A raindrop. A curl of fire.
Ethan stood beside me, a gold coin between his thumb and index finger. It spun slowly on its axis, the light catching each rotation like a gold-edged strobe light.
“Two sides of the coin,” he said. “Heads and tails. Wrong and right. Good and evil.” He lifted his gaze to me. “We all have choices, don’t we?”
“Choices?”
“Between bravery or cowardice,” he suggested. “Ambition or contentment.”
“I guess so.”
“Which choice will you make, Merit?”
I knew he meant something important, something heavy, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “What choice do I have to make?”
With a flick of his thumb, he popped the coin into the air. The ceiling seemed to rise as the coin flew upward, so that if gravity hadn’t worked its peculiar magic, the coin might have lifted forever, never touching the ceiling. Over and over it flipped, heads and tails and heads