Crapcrapcrap. There was licking happening. He pulled his finger from his mouth with a dull suck.
What else would he want to taste? Frantic, I did a quick mental inventory of all my other bloody parts. It was not good. I needed something, anything, to talk about.
“And the book?” The words exploded from me, sounding high-strung even to my own ears.
Calm. I needed to calm the hell down. I didn’t want to rile him any more than he already was—I mean, did vampires get blinded by bloodlust? Who knew what happened once they got a taste of it. And I definitely wasn’t feeling equipped to find out.
Keep him chatting. I glanced back at the book. “I mean, what is it? You didn’t tell me. Which text is it? Is it original?” I tried to act avid and interested, but I was afraid I probably just sounded feverish.
“Ah, yes. My book.” Momentarily diverted, he dropped my hand, and relief prickled through me, sending a rush of blood to my head. “It was a very exciting development in the world of mathematics. This particular text was discovered only decades ago.” He smiled coyly. “It was later purchased at auction by an anonymous bidder.”
“Which was you,” I said baldly. If I hadn’t been so panicked, maybe I’d have spoken with more deference, but I was too freaked to think straight, particularly since Alcántara’s disciplinary techniques appeared to involve finger sucking. It gave my words a thoughtlessly casual edge. “You guys seem to have a lot of money. I mean you’ve had years to save up, right?”
But he didn’t seem to mind my informality—I guess licking on a girl really loosened a fellow up. He considered it for a moment, answering thoughtfully, “We have resources at our disposal, yes.”
I stalled then. I had nothing to say to that. My childhood had been a series of apartments in central Florida—luxury was when we’d made the leap to a two-bedroom.
He tilted his head, seeing the truth of it. “Little Acari. I dare say resources isn’t part of your parlance, is it?”
Oh no. Getting personal again. “We didn’t have much, no,” I said tentatively.
“It is true, this axiom men have on the importance of living well. And yet the old adage isn’t completely correct. You see, it’s living forever that is the best revenge.”
He smiled then, full-on, bearing two dagger-sharp teeth, which reminded me that, although he was undead, I could find myself very, very dead at the slightest provocation.
The image silenced me.
“But we were discussing my book.” His tone was almost jovial, as if he hadn’t just bared a pair of freaking fangs. “I’ve not yet told you the best part.” He picked up the tray and tipped it so the pages could catch the light. “Look at the writing. Can you guess what it is?”
Guess? I could barely read it. Archimedes had been an inventor—Alcántara was probably reading instructions on how to build an ancient Greek torture device. Position Acari’s thumbs between screws; tighten. “N-no.”
“Do you know what a palimpsest is?”
Where the hell was this going? I gave the barest nod. “I…Yeah.…It’s when they scraped the writing off a manuscript so they could reuse the pages. They’d just write over the old stuff.”
He gave me a courtly nod. “Clever girl. But of course you knew.” He turned a few pages, and the smell of mildew gave my nose a twinge. “It was once a common practice, when materials like parchment or vellum were too valuable to be squandered.”
I nodded, even though I was familiar with everything he was telling me. And what was with the minilecture, anyway? Because I knew he had a point—I saw it coming in the satisfied gleam in his eyes.
“Acari Drew, you are like that palimpsest. Scraped clean of who you were. Altered, yes?”
I’ll say. But was that a bad thing? I couldn’t figure out where he was going, so I just nodded warily.
“We are reinventing you. Writing over the former you, as it were.” He touched me then. It was the merest contact, outlining my shoulder, down my arm, but I felt the impact like a cannon shot.
I clenched my teeth, my knees, my elbows at my sides. Anything to keep my mind in control of my body. Because I made no mistake—Alcántara was trying hard to seize that control.
“Yet you still bear traces of your former self. All the best Watchers do.”
He told me these things, and I was baffled, unsure whether there was a compliment or a reprimand in his words. But then his eyes raked my body, and again that na**d feeling seized me, and I thought there might be something else in his words, too.
“Your body is the same—stronger, yes, but the same height.” He brought his hand to rest heavily on my shoulder, his other hand on my head.
I had the absurd—and frightening—urge to cry.
“You, like those old sheets of parchment, are still recognizable. Your hair is shorter perhaps—a regrettable consequence of the Challenge.” He sounded disappointed as he stroked his hand along my head. But rather than comfort me, the gesture made me feel like a pet whose pedigree he was considering. “And yet your hair still holds the same texture, the same brightness.”
Moving from my hair, he extended a finger and touched it over my heart, pressing gently into the soft flesh above my left breast. I held my breath, my world reduced only to his touch and the shrilling alarm bells in my head.