“Regardless, I beg you to come.” He took several steps backward, retreating into the library. Naturally, he didn’t trip or stumble. Instead, he was all regal grace, sweeping his arm in welcome as if he were the man of the house and I’d come calling. “I will tend to you.”
I went on high alert. Why was he being so gracious? I’d come because I was in trouble, and here he was, looking ready to offer me a spot of tea. I followed him inside, and wariness made my movements stiff and hesitant.
He reached past me to shut the door, his body very nearly brushing mine. I locked my knees to keep from trembling. What kind of punishments would I endure behind a closed door?
“Are you nervous, Acari Drew? Or are you merely in pain?” Alcántara stepped back and scanned my body, lingering overlong on the bloody bits. There were just a few—and really, I’d had much worse—so why did it feel as if I were standing there in a string bikini?
Nerves or pain? How to answer that one? With the truth, I thought. Alcántara was too smart for anything but some version of it. I confessed, “I’m not certain how to answer that.”
He startled me by laughing. “A lovely reply. As usual, I find your verve refreshing.” His grin faded as he studied me. “Nerves,” he said. “Nerves, not pain, have you suffering so. I remember enough of what it was to be human to imagine that, if you were in pain, your jaw would be tighter. Speaking through gritted teeth, yes?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“You are nervous that you’re in trouble?”
I gave the merest nod, hoping desperately that I wasn’t making any missteps on this very strange conversational minefield. Then again, maybe this was my punishment. I’d get the crap scared out of me until my heart failed from the stress.
“Come then, and I will take your mind from these nerves.” The overstuffed sofa creaked as he sat. The leather was the color of burgundy…or blood. He casually perched an arm up along the back edge. “I was reading when you arrived.”
I assessed the scene, which didn’t take long, seeing as I spent as much free time as possible in this very room. There was dark furniture, a fire blazing in the hearth, and towering bookshelves all around.
My choices were to remain standing, to sit on one of the armchairs facing him, or, the most unsettling option of all, to simply sit next to Alcántara on the couch.
He patted the cushion beside him. “Come, come. We have much to discuss.”
I swallowed hard. Next to him on the couch, then.
“I must examine you. But first, something to take your mind from your troubles.” The glint in his eyes sent chills up my spine.
I had no idea what he could possibly bust out that’d take my mind off this freaky scenario, because I sure seemed to be facing some pretty deep troubles.
The leather creaked as I sat, sounding overloud in the room. I wondered what my punishment was going to be, and when it would begin. By that point, I just wanted to get it over with—all my speculation was shaping up to be quite its own torture. I was stiff and chilled, my body in a state of panicked readiness.
But I’d learned that vampires adored their theatrics, and so I forced myself to roll with it. I tried to get comfortable and feel normal, adjusting my tunic and leggings, and willed the fireplace to warm me.
Alcántara surprised me then. Instead of probing my wounds, or beheading me, or whatever creative gruesomeness he had scheduled, he simply ignored me and reached for a book.
Or rather, it was something that had been a book once. Now it was ancient and fragile, kept cushioned on white flannel and cradled in a tray. It looked as if it’d been buried in dirt for the past several hundred years. And who knew? Maybe it had.
“This is what I was reading when I sensed your arrival.”
Okayyy. Was it a handbook of arcane tortures for unruly girls? Because surely the disciplining would begin at any moment.
He lovingly turned a page, and it crackled like the peel of an onion. “I think perhaps this is something you will appreciate.”
Here it comes. I couldn’t fight the curiosity—I had to glimpse what was in store. Adrenaline dumped into my veins, making me jittery and chilled, but still I managed to inch ever so slightly closer to him on the couch. Must know. “What is it?”
“It is a rare text, written by one of my favorite mathematicians.”
Huh? Total disconnect. I gaped, trying to adjust what I’d thought would happen with the reality. “Mathematician?”
He paused for a subtle dramatic flourish. “Archimedes.”
“Wait, what?” Archimedes was born in something-crazy BC—the book would’ve been as old as dirt, not buried in it. I sucked in a breath, the inconceivable truth blotting all other thoughts from my head. “Holy cr…crow. That’s older than Christ.”
His black eyes pinned me in my seat. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly and confiding. “I knew that, of all the others, you would most understand.”
Ru-roh. I inched back to my original spot on the couch, chilled again to my bones. That had sounded really personal, and it seemed to me personal was a thing one did not get with vampires. “Y-yes.” I did a quick scan of my memory banks. “The text must be twenty-two hundred years old.”