BASED ON HIS OWN TASTE IN CLOTHING, Jo knew he wouldn't let her arrive at a party by his side in anything less than perfection, but what he ended up buying for her at a boutique he frequents in Westbrook soared past her wildest expectations.
The night air is chilly against her skin as it blows gently down the sidewalk they hurry down. Their impromptu dress shopping only took forty minutes but cut into tonight's plans enough to make Harry pull her along a little faster from where their arms are linked together.
Part of her wonders if his powers include super-speed, which she's slightly embarrassed to admit comes from her adolescent obsession with vampire folklore that seems quite ironic now, but he hasn't said anything about his abilities yet. They were too busy delving into the intricacies of human-vampire politics to bother anyway.
He did, however, answer her question about why it's so gloomy all the time. The more powerful, ancient vampires can control the climate in this realm, and, since they avoid sunlight and heat, they chose perpetual darkness and overcast as the backdrop to their world.
Her heels click with each step on the cement leading up to the house, and she's so caught up in matching his swift pace, she almost walks right past the front steps when they arrive. Without acknowledging her awkward slip-up, he guides her back in the direction of the stairs and, before they go inside, gives her one single piece of advice.
"Never leave my side tonight. If you do, find Niall and stay with him. I don't trust anyone inside that house except for him and you shouldn't either."
With that, he turns the knob and opens the door before she can formulate a response other than a nod.
The faint sound of music playing eases through the room on a warm gush of air that soothes the goosebumps raised from the walk over here from his parked car. Upon her first impression of it, based on the front hallway they enter, is that whoever owns this home must have an abhorrent amount of money to their name. Sure, Harry may be rich enough to walk her into his favorite dress boutique and buy her the best gown she's seen in her entire twenty-five years of life, but this person is old money.
She can't help but turn her head in all directions to observe the scenery in quiet awe. Her family was never close to this level of wealth, so being here in this house, wearing something that likely costs more than everything she owns, is a shock to her system.
Amongst the music, she picks up conversations coming from the set of ornate, white doors they're approaching and hardly has the chance to prepare herself for what's to come by the time they reach them.
When they walk in, it feels to her as though every head in the room turned to look at her. Her, she noted, feeling her face heat up from the sudden attention, not him. Even though he's the kind of person your head turns to when he walks in, for some reason, multiple people in the room's eyes latched into her instantly. Her hand grasps tighter where it rests on his back, balling up the back of his suit jacket as they greet people and pass by a woman that gawks at her with a flirtatious gaze.
It's clear to sense the energy that ebbs and flows like a current through the main room shift in reaction to her arrival, but she doesn't know what to make of it. Is the dress too revealing or over the top? Is she making them uncomfortable? Perhaps since they were born and raised in older times, they retain those modest, backward standards to which women used to be held. If so, a warning would've been nice.
She leans up to him and whispers, hoping to be as quiet as possible as to not attract additional attention, "People won't stop staring...Is it because I'm a human?"
Harry's mouth tips up at the end in an infuriatingly charming half-smile, and he turns to meet her worried face with a hand moving to rest on the small of her back. The feeling of his cold palm against the skin left exposed by the cut of the dress sends a shiver rolling down the length of her spine until it reaches where their bare skin connects.
His eyes roam up and down, taking her in.
The dress is as closely fitted to her body as it could be without taking it to a tailor to modify it to her measurements, and it hangs off of her in all the perfect places like a waterfall of sparkling liquid gold. With a relatively low cut neckline that displays much more of her cleavage than she usually allows, one would think that would be the end of it, but the true star of the show is the plunging back. It dips all the way down from the thin straps hanging on her shoulders all the way to the base of her spine, right below where his hand touches her.
Her cluelessness makes him want to laugh. Out of all the plethora of dresses she had to pick from, she gravitated toward this and wonders why nearly every person in the room, regardless of sexuality, is making bedroom eyes at her.
He smiles down at her with a knowing look, as if to ask if she's serious. And, when she doesn't budge, he has to stop himself from thoughtlessly admitting his unfiltered response to her choice in clothing. He nearly choked on his own spit when she walked out of the fitting room wearing it, but, after all, anyone with eyes can appreciate the woman beside him. It isn't just him.
"I think," he says, "it's because they're seeing a very attractive woman in-uh-a tempting dress walk uninvited into their party on the arm of someone who typically never brings a date."
Her bemused expression falls into one of embarrassment. She tries not to acknowledge the fluttering sensation in her stomach at the idea of being the only person he has brought as a date to one of these events.
"Oh, is it too much? I knew I shouldn't have picked this one, it's too—"
"No"—he shakes his head and glimpses down at her with a sincerity she never expected—"s'not too much. You look, well, like everyone in the room wants to fuck you."
Jo smirks at him and asks, just for the sake of playfully teasing to distract from her embarrassment, "Everyone?"
It's rare that anyone renders him speechless, yet here they are, and here he is reaching blindly from something as sharp and witty as what she jabbed him with as a response. It was asked with such poise and innocence, he almost missed the implications the small word carried until it hit him a second and a half too late.
The first time he saw her, he didn't get the chance to notice her beauty, so, yes, his mind may have wandered in the same direction as everyone else's. If strangers who have no knowledge of her kind heart and tempestuous personality are allowed to see her in such a way, why'd can't he? It's only natural.
He's opening his mouth to speak, eyes still locked onto hers, when Niall walks up to them.
"Josephine," he says as a way of greeting, then stops to look at her with wide eyes, "you look different."
Not missing a beat, she says, "So do you. You clean up nicely, blondie."
The last time he saw her, she had a bandage on her head and was covered in Harry's oversized clothes, so his reaction to her new look doesn't surprise her. She probably looked like she clinging to the edge of death the last time they saw one another.
Her dainty gold bracelets clink quietly as she reaches forward to shake his hand, but he pulls her in for a hug instead—a hug she didn't realize she desperately needed until this moment. It became so lonely in the time she has spent in their world, especially with Harry always being out of the house to track down the rogue group of vampires that attacked her, and she hasn't known the comfort of another person's arms until now.
She can see why they're such good friends. He seems like the kind of sweet soul that can sense when you need comfort or humor or to be humbled in a moment of arrogance. Honest, she thinks, he seems utterly honest.
As soon as they pull away after a second of embracing, the cold touch of Harry's hand returns to her waist as if it were tugged by the pull of gravity itself.
Niall looks at him for a second, eyes narrowing, and looks back at the other vampires talking amongst themselves around the room.
"Does she know?"
Before Harry can answer him, she says, "I do. Trust me, I don't think he'd bring me here unless I did. Even then, I kind of had to beg him to let me come."
It took a few moments of conversation on the drive over for her to understand the rules of the situation, but she thinks she's doing well enough so far.
Her only role tonight is supposed to be acting as the human arm candy to a powerful, handsome vampire, and, while she'd usually be offended at that, she understands why it has to be this way. She's simply acting as the naive little human everyone expects her to be, a distraction in a glittering dress while Harry finds an opportunity to extract information from the woman they're here to see.
And, as if the thoughts summoned her, a woman who fits the exact description walks in from another connected room.
Adeline Monroe.
According to the rundown he gave in the car, she's been married to the man they encountered in the woods for over seventy years. She was reported to be showing up in a blood-red cocktail dress that falls to her mid-thigh, and that's how she knows it's her as she strikes up conversation with another woman across the room. There's a set of teeth marks on the inside of her wrist that makes her head tilt in curiosity while watching her reach for a flute of champagne from the table.
"Why does she have those marks on her if she's a vampire? You can only feed on humans, not other vampires, right?"
This catches both Niall and Harry's attention, subtly taking turns to catch a glimpse at what she saw. But they aren't nearly as curious as she is about it, and Niall dips out to greet someone else by the time Harry explains it to her. Secluded against the far wall of the room, he still keeps his voice at a hushed tone to keep everyone's heightened sense of hearing from picking up what he says.
"It's not from feeding, it's from a blood bond."
And, upon how lost she looks, he remembers that she isn't familiar with the terms that are so casual to him.
He elaborates, "A blood bond is when two vampires, sometimes a vampire and a human, connect their souls in a bond stronger than any other familial, romantic, or platonic relationship. If it's broken, the people involved will never be the same, and they can never bond with another person again."
"So, does that mean she knows that he died today without having to be there?" When he nods, she continues with her endless supply of questions, "How is the bond done? I'm assuming there's some kind of ritual surrounding it."
Now that she's aware of how deep the blood bond goes, that you can feel it sever when the other person dies, she can sense the looming sadness that surrounds Adeline on her half-hearted greeting tour around the main room. Perhaps the dress is a distraction, just like her own, and she's only using it to misdirect everyone from her melancholy eyes. As they are with every emotion, the eyes are the simplest way to search for sorrow.
"Typically, each person drinks blood from the wrist of who they're bonding with, s'why she has the permanent bite mark on her wrist. Then..." he trails off.
"Then?"
He turns to see her when he speaks this time, and she feels pinned in place by his gaze, scarcely able to breathe while he's making eye contact with her. It almost makes her angry how different tonight feels compared to every other moment they've spent together.
"They consummate it."
There's a split-second of pause, then it clicks in her head. Suddenly, his gaze makes her skin flush with the current context of the conversation.
"So, it's like a marriage?"
His face falls at the audacity of comparing such a sacred bond to something as flimsy and breakable as marriage is. While he himself has never bonded with anyone and once, long ago, accepted that he never would, the seriousness surrounding it isn't lost on him. That's why, no matter how much he loathes the human-killing piece of filth he murdered for her today and his complicit wife, he can't help but feel bad for her. No one here can imagine how it feels to experience a bond like that breaking.
In a moment of surprising vulnerability, he opens his heart to her.
"I loved a human before. Her name was Melanie..." His voice is hushed enough for no one in the room to hear. "But it didn't work out. That's why most of us don't bond outside of our kind. We love for the rest of our lives, not the way some of you promise forever and break up two years later."
Her attention is wholly focused on him. Nothing else in the room matters. Even if Arabella walked into the room to whisk her away and take her home, which has been the nightly fantasy that has sung her to sleep every night for the duration of her time here, she would be hanging off of his every word.
He gathers himself and says, "A blood bond isn't marriage, it's eternity."
She tries to pedal back to his newfound openness. Gently, though, always gently, or else he'll get scared off like a frightened animal.
"Did you make a blood bond with her?"
Due to his naturally private nature, he has always known much more about her than she has him from the start of their companionship. Yet for the first time, here he is admitting something about himself to her. She can only imagine what it felt like to watch someone you love to grow old and wither away while you stay frozen in time. It would only be worse if they bonded, she assumes by the way he speaks about it.
"No," he says, allowing her to see him with a transparency that hasn't existed between them until now, "I didn't. When you bond with someone, you feel it like an urge deep inside of you. When the time comes, y'know that it's the right person at the right time. And, as much as I loved her, it didn't feel right."
The space between them feels somewhat quiet and solemn in his memory of her and her vivid imagination's take on his past. Although he hasn't aged a day since he became a vampire, she lets herself imagine a younger version of him. Full of boyish charm, he probably felt as though he was struck by lightning when he first saw the woman on one of his trips to the human realm. Though she hasn't got a clue of how old he is, it was probably way back in the day too, when he was freshly changed into what he is now and still clinging onto aspects of his human life with everything he had.
It's somewhat intoxicating to let herself get lost in the possibilities of him. There's so much room to imagine and discover with how mysterious he is, and now that he has given her a glimpse behind the smoke and mirrors, all she wants is more.
"I guess I should've known since you don't have a mark on your wrist anyway."
It's this sentence, so casually said as she motioned at the hand shoved into the pocket of his pants, that jolts him into the reality of their situation and reminds him what they're here to do. Particularly, it reminds him what they forgot to do to make this charade they have going as believable as possible.
The hand Harry has on her waist tightens up, tucking her in closer to his side so he can whisper in her ear.
"I fucked up," he whispers in a mildly panicked, low voice as his lips almost brush the edge of her ear. "You're supposed to be here as my human and y'don't have a single bite mark on you..."
His words send a chill down the length of her spine, not particularly because of what he said, but what it implies between them. The closest he ever came to drinking her blood was when she cut herself on the broken wine glass he spilled and he licked the tips of his finger clean when they were soiled with drops of her blood. At the time, she scrunched her face with confusion and wondered why he was doing that, but, now, she looks back on the memory and understands.
"Oh," she murmurs so quietly, he can hardly hear her.
She hasn't given herself the chance to think about him drinking her blood yet since she was told this morning, but now that it's at the forefront of her mind, she doesn't know what else to say. With the intensity and stakes of the situation they're in, she cannot refuse him. He's right in assuming that if they're meant to be together, with the nature of the relationship they're pretending to have, it'd be suspicious if she didn't have a feeding mark.
"They'll know we're full of shit if you don't have a mark from me," he says, "but if you don't want to, we won't do it."
Her heart begins to pound, which he picks up on from where he stands so near to her, from the vivid mental image of him sweeping her hair to one side and sinking his teeth into the sensitive curve of her neck.
It's not as if she doesn't trust him, because she does. If she didn't, she wouldn't have taken his hand and followed him back into the house after he saved her life this morning, but any sane person would be apprehensive of letting a vampire drink their blood whether they trust them or not. Yet she can't help but think about their situation, about how easily she could fuck everything up after begging him to let her come, and look past her fear for the sake of what they're here to do.
"Okay," she agrees after what felt like five minutes of thinking but was actually only a moment.
He stops her from walking toward the staircase and searches her eyes for any sign of doubt, "Okay?"
She glances for the stairs that lead to the second level, then back to his worried features, and takes a deep breath before speaking.
"I'm okay with this"—she starts to guide him away from the party as subtly as possible—"If I weren't, I'd tell you."
Without sparing another word, she takes his hand and sneaks him away from the party without any suspicious glances from other guests. The stairs creak as they ascend to the second story of the house, and he swears he can hear her heart still beating at a pace he rarely notices it at.
Her heartbeat always picks up a little when she sees him, which is a fact he tries to ignore whenever he walks into the same room as her, but this is different. This isn't the kind of racing heart she got when he came downstairs in his suit and slicked-back hair, this is the kind of racing heart you get from fear. And, despite her being adamant about her consent to what's happening, it makes him want to stop her from guiding him into the grandiose bathroom at the end of the long hallway.
Thanks to the decorative runner carpet lining the herringbone wooden floor, her heels are noiseless with every step they make until she reaches the cracked bathroom door. A warm, bright light shines through the open space, illuminating the color of her hair and the intricacies of how she styled it. For the second time, he sees this image of her, haloed like a goddess in the light, and his first overwhelming instinct is to paint it.
The last time he felt like painting her, she was standing up above him on the stairs while he kneeled to clean up the broken glass. The stained glass window on the landing cast her in blues, greens, and reds, and she clutched the dagger he gave her for dear life.
By the time he turns back around from locking the door, she's leaning against the sink counter with her eyes trained on the floor. It looks like she's inspecting her shoes for the sake of having something other than him to look at, turning her three-inch heel to the side as if it's the most interesting thing in the world.
Harry walks across the room to her slowly and shrugs his suit jacket off of his shoulders once he comes to a stop in front of her, folding it up and setting it down between the sinks.
He leans in close to her, closer than they've ever come to one another before, and rests his hands on the counter on either side of her—subsequently making her heartbeat pick up again. It's flattering, honestly, that all he has to do is lean a little too close to her and she turns to putty in his hands.
Human women have always been much more reactionary and emotional than vampire women who have been alive for centuries beyond what humans dream of experiencing. Though he has made it a rule to never date humans again after what happened between him and Melanie, he can't deny how much he loves the effect such minuscule actions has on them.
"Are y'nervous?" he asks, hand leaving the counter to fiddle with the strap of her dress hanging onto her shoulder. "You don't have to do this unless y'want to..."
Her head instantly shakes in objection, and she reaches forward to brace her hands on his hips to match how he had his caging her in on either side of her body. Chest rising and falling in even breaths, she tries to keep herself together with all things considered. Their noses are so close, they'll brush if either of them makes the slightest movement.
The cobalt blue velvet suit is soft to the touch beneath her palms as she drags them along the sides of his hips, so transfixed by the beauty of it, she forgets that he's waiting for a response from her.
When she doesn't respond for half of a minute, he tilts her chin up with his fingertips to meet his gaze. It makes her thighs press together tightly beneath her dress, and Harry, who never misses a thing, has to suppress a smirk.
"I'm nervous, but it's okay...Does it hurt?"
"You'll feel it for a second before it goes away. S'kind of like when you get blood drawn."
The hand holding beneath her chin slides down the side of her neck at a painstakingly slow pace, moving all the way until he finds a spot he prefers at the stretch of skin where her neck and shoulder bridge together. The tip of his thumb caresses the spot with a tenderness she never knew he could have.
His eyes flood with a certain longing that she assumes is because of what they're about to do as he says, "I'll be gentle with you."
She doesn't get the chance to tell him he better or else she'll banish him to Niall's townhouse for the rest of the week, because he's sweeping the hair off of her neck, just like he did in her imagination, and leaning down to the spot on her neck without a second to spare.
"You're eager," she teases.
"And you're tense, y'need to relax," he fires back, then lowers his voice to a low, purring murmur that caresses every inch of her soul, "I've got you."
And she just melts in his arms at that.
It's truly pathetic to her, but it makes some cold, cracked corner of his heart that died long ago grow warm and lively again, if only for a moment.
In the half-excitement, half-anticipation of the moment, he doesn't even scold himself for it either. Instead, he allows himself to lean into the warmth she sparks at the center of his chest and basks in it. It feels foolish to allow himself to be so close to her, even with the rush he's getting from the prospect of feeding from a human like this again for the first time in years, but he can't see past the thrill it brings him.
The hand wrapped up in her hair tilts her head back, but she helps him out once she understands what he's doing and relaxes her head into his hand, extending her neck in a silent invitation. It provides a cozy little space for him to dip his face into, and he takes the opportunity with a gratefulness she'll never understand.
If it were a human nosing their face into the crook of her neck like this, she would feel the heat of their exhale, but all she feels is a soft peck of his lips against her before his teeth poke out from the glamour he used to appear more human-like to her and break the sensitive skin below. It draws a gasp from her, on instinct, and he was correct in likening the pain to the prick of the butterfly needle she uses to do labs at work because it goes away as soon as his teeth are settled in place below the surface of her skin.
While one hand squeezes his hip with the strength of a vice, the other falls back onto the counter for support as she exhales shakily. She can't help but sink into the comfort of his arms in the midst of it all, giving in to the urging gravitational pull that calls them together. Maybe it has something to do with the act of him drinking her blood, but she's surprised to find that a blanket of calm—a sense of safety—fell over her as soon as he began.
Their bodies lean further over the counter as the moments pass in what feels like hours to her and mere seconds to him. Anytime she relaxes in his grip, leaning more onto the counter, he follows her with an arm wrapped around her waist for support.
He expected her to stop him as soon as he started, to push him off and rush away in a fit of fear, but what he hadn't expected was for her to let out a soft, hardly audible moan at the sensation of him sucking at her neck. It almost makes him falter, at first. He thought she was trying to say something and tell him to cut it out before he realized it was a sound of pleasure, not pain. It fuels his curiosity as to how it must feel to make a lovely noise like that fall from her lips—does it feel like a love bite? Or is it more of a pleasure derived from pain that only appeals to certain people?
Regardless of what it is, the sound makes him hold her tighter and nudge his hips against her once before he catches himself and wills his body to not react on its own accord. She may not have even noticed the noise she made, so he can't let himself get too swept up in an interaction that is solely for the sake of getting through the party without raising suspicion.
With that in mind, Harry forces himself to retract his teeth from her neck and runs his tongue up her skin to catch the blood that drips from the bite mark. It doesn't bleed too much, thankfully, and he keeps his lips pressed firmly against the marks in a mimic of a kiss until it clots enough to be left alone.
Jo only comes back to the moment when they're standing upright again, her body still leaning on his for stability, and his face pulls away from its cherished place: burrowed in the warmth of her freshly-bitten neck.
She breaks the silence between them by whispering, "Your eyes..."
Somewhat dazed, he doesn't catch on to what she means until he looks past her into the mirror mounted on the wall above the sink.
The eyes she became so accustomed to seeing as the green they were when he was a human are now a vibrant shade of red to match his blood-stained lips. At this point in his immortality, using his near-endless well of power to do something as simple as changing his eye color or hiding his fangs is as natural as breathing once was during his short human existence. It isn't a hard trick to maintain for a skilled vampire like him, but it slipped from the grasp of his subconscious mind while he drank from her.
"You never told me that your eyes can turn red."
With an order from his mind that he doesn't even have to think to give, the color shifts instantly back to the green she's familiar with. He meant to conceal the true color of his eyes until the news of his identity settled with her, but he couldn't have accounted for having to drink her blood and become distracted by everything that came with doing so.
He releases his firm grasp on her hair and watches it cascade down her shoulders again in a tousled, beautiful mess from his incessant touching. No one should be able to pull off having their hair messed up so much, yet she finds a way.
"They don't turn red," he says, stepping away from her and straightening out his suit as if nothing happened, "they are red. I kept them green because you didn't know. That's what color they were when I was a human, so it felt familiar enough."
The sounds of the party downstairs beckon them back as they wake from their respective trances, too caught up in one another to remember why they snuck away to the secluded upstairs bathroom in the first place.
She actually takes a second to pause and appreciate the obscenely large bathroom as she makes herself presentable in the mirror again, because she hadn't gotten the chance to take it all in before he bit her. All she could see was him at that moment, but now she glances around while running her fingers through her hair hastily and finds herself tempted to ask how on earth anyone can afford to have a bathroom the size of her bedroom in her parents' house.
But the question opens up another curious side of her brain that has yet to be satisfied, and she makes eye contact with him through the mirror while he fixes the tie she unknowingly disheveled.
"You have a lot of money," she says—a statement, not a question.
He looks somewhat confused as to how the topic came up, but nods.
"I do."
With a quick glance away from him to break the ever-present tension that lingers between them no matter what she does, she turns around so her back faces the mirror, and her body, somewhat tired from all the blood it lost, leans onto the counter again.
"But all you ever leave to do is track down the gang that wants to kill me, which Niall said is less of a business and more of a vigilante thing you guys do for the sake of saving humans."
All he does is hum in agreement.
Finally concluding her round-about way of asking him how he's the kind of man that can afford to drop thousands on a dress for a party she wasn't even invited to, she asks, "So, what do you do?"
Considering the vigilante-thing and the downright enviable amount of wealth he appears to have, she assumed it was dirty money that lined his pockets, but reality is a far different story. If someone told the version of her that woke up to an inhuman presence in his guest bedroom that he isn't a shady, creepy criminal, she probably wouldn't have believed them.
However, after everything that happened today, she'd be a fool to not trust him. He could've decided to kill her a moment ago, with her neck revealed so easily and his teeth not too far from her carotid artery to change their course, but didn't. He could've let Adeline's husband murder her today, but didn't. There have been plenty of chances for him to betray her that he never took, so she has no choice left but to trust him.
With his hand returning to its place on her waist, he starts to lead her out of the bathroom and into the hallway again.
"Y'know how I told you that I don't usually feed directly from humans, and there's a lot of other ways to distribute blood to vampires?" he asks, to which she responds with a nod and prompts him to continue. "Well, that's what I do."
"So, you distribute blood to vampires like human companies would with food or drugs?"
The hallway seems to stretch on forever as they walk back to the party, but they finally reach the top of the staircase.
"Exactly."
The short train of her gold dress makes a soft rustling noise with every stair it drags down behind her, and she's too busy thinking about the logistics of his business to pick it up for the rest of the way.
It makes sense now that she thinks of it. For all the time she has spent near him, he has never seemed inclined to drink her blood, except, maybe, when she cut her finger on the broken wine glass.
The entire time he spent cleaning her up and bandaging the wound, his jaw was clenched and his words were short, clipped, and to the point. And when he sucked the blood from his fingertips, she should've put two and two together, but why would she? As a human who never believed in things like ghosts or vampires, she tried to make sense of every oddity that faced her in his world by coming up with the most logical solution to it possible. The only problem was, she had trouble finding logic in everything the longer she spent here.
And when she let him drink her blood, none of her fears came true. He hadn't been waiting for her to let her guard down so he could swoop in when she least expected him to and go in for the kill. He may have been eager and excited for it, but he had no intention of hurting her, not even for a second.
The party is in full swing when they reach the bottom of the stairs, slipping back into the ropes they've created for themselves.
It's somewhat easier for him.
The role he has to play is himself, but a version of himself that no longer swears off the affection of a human. He became so adamant about not fraternizing with her kind after Melanie died all those years ago, that's why he stopped feeding directly from them and started his business in distributing blood to people like him who wanted to keep their distance from humans. It'd be hard for those who know him to believe that he'd have a human by his side again, but none of the guests except for Niall know about Melanie, so it shouldn't be too difficult.
For her, it isn't as simple.
She isn't accustomed to his world. It's all so shiny and new, she isn't familiar enough with being someone's personal blood supply/arm-candy to know how people act in these situations. He told her that it's incredibly common for a vampire and a human to have an agreement like this with one another. In fact, there's a lot of money in it for the humans involved, so long as they devote the rest of their life to serving the vampire they're paid to feed.
So, to the rest of the party, she must appear to consensually belong to him.
The sound of his voice wakes her from her thoughts, "We should find Niall—"
He's interrupted by a familiar voice exclaiming, "Harry!"
Their heads turn in search of the person who called him, slipping seamlessly into their roles, only to find Liam walking across the room to them.
The last time they saw each other, she still thought Harry was a human. It felt like a different world compared to what she knows now, but she isn't sure if she even misses it. Before, he had to leave her alone for days on end and deliberately hide much of his personal life to conceal the truth about his identity. It left her lonely and suspicious, constantly trying to unravel the web of clues he spun for her, but it's different now—better.
"Liam," he says, voice steadier than she thought it would be considering the surprise of seeing him and, well, what happened upstairs. "It's nice to see you."
Before either of them can object, Liam snakes his arm around his shoulder and pulls him away from her. Her mouth opens and clothes like a fish, unsure of what to say now that her security net is being taken from her as she's left, stranded, in a house full of vampires.
Harry glances over his shoulder at her with a look that she knows means, "Stay with Niall," without him having to say it aloud to her. Hoping to set him at ease, she nods, trying to convey that she'll be alright, and watches him disappear into the room connected to this one by a set of open French doors.
With no clue as to where Niall is, she makes good on her promise to find him and remain glued to his side for however long Harry is gone by wandering through the main room, along the side of the long mahogany table, until she reaches the front hallway that leads to the other side of the house. Due to their excursion upstairs, they didn't have the chance to explore the rest of the party, but almost every room she passes more lively and energetic than the last.
She tries to avoid calling too much attention to herself, however, as the only human guest wearing what she's wearing, attention is inevitable. Once she reaches a library on the farthest end from the center of the house that she takes a deep sigh of relief upon seeing no one but herself and one other woman in the room.
Windows line the far wall in which the other woman sits in front of her with her head hung to look down at her lap. Jo is too busy admiring the crystal chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that are stuffed to the brim with everything from old classics to the modern, smutty romance novels she pretends to not see Harry reading after he comes home for the day. She doesn't take notice of the blood-red mini-dress, nor does she take notice of the pin-straight sheet of black hair that cascades down her back like fine silk.
By the time it clicks within her mind, Adeline whips around to see her with sharp eyes and a tear-stained face.
Apparently, she wasn't the only one who thought to explore this part of the house, except they both are wandering for two very different reasons. One of them is searching for a friend while the other is hiding in this secluded library for the sake of hiding her sorrow. After all, her husband and blood-bonded partner was murdered today, which must make it quite difficult to sit through something as comparatively insignificant as a dinner party.
The tears trailing down her gorgeous face almost make her feel sympathetic until she remembers why they're here, until she remembers that the partner this woman is mourning tried to murder her less than twelve hours ago. There's no way you bond your soul with someone so wicked without retaining some of that wickedness yourself.
Adeline's look of surprise slips away into her previous sadness as she says, sniffling and wiping her nose with a tissue, "I thought you were Harry for a second there."
It makes her head tilt to the side in confusion.
"Why would you think I was Harry?"
Her hand, clad in one ostentatious diamond ring on her left ring finger, gestures vaguely in the direction of her newly marked neck as if it were obvious. And, in her defense, it is obvious. It's as plain as day, but that was the whole point, wasn't it?
"You reek of him." The other hand that holds the tissue in a tight fist reaches up to dab the downpour of tears away, and her voice sounds nasally from the emotion when she speaks, "I know you're human, but you can't be that clueless. He did explain that when he feeds off of you, it masks your scent with his, right?"
It comes to her attention as a lightbulb flickering on above her head, just like the cartoons, as she recalls that vampires retain magically qualities. Supernatural strength, sight, hearing, and, of course, scent. Countless other powers vary from individual to individual, but those are the basic gifts of the most common vampires. It doesn't surprise her that Harry is gifted with more than that, though. Nothing about him can surprise her anymore.
With an opportunity to turn around on her heels and walk away to find Niall within grasp, she finds herself hesitating. It would be safer with him by her side, but when will any of them get the chance to get Adeline alone like this again?
A decision bounces around her mind from one corner to the next...should she stay or leave?
She inches forward a few steps, remembering how he acted while approaching her after the attack this morning and mimicking his timid movements, until she reaches an armchair opposite to where the other woman is perched upon her own.
If he were human, Harry would have a heart attack over this.
With a sigh of exhaustion, she sinks back into the plush material of the chair and relishes in the relief it provides her aching feet. After having ample time away from work, she isn't used to being on them so much, let alone wearing stilettos.
The ottoman in front of her is tempting too, but the voice inside of her mind warns her away from propping her shoes, although brand new, onto a fine piece of furniture like this one. Despite being a grown woman far away from the human world she once knew, she fears that her mother's sixth sense will tingle if she doesn't keep them firmly planted on the ground instead.
Feigning aloofness, she shrugs and says, "He did, but this is the first time we've gone out in public together, so it hasn't been brought up by anyone until you."
It's not like she's completely lying. This is the first time they've gone out in public together, but not under the circumstances everyone assumes they are.
"Well, consider yourself warned. Not everyone is as fond of your boyfriend as I am, they might not react the way I did."
Jo chuckles, eyes turning down as she feels her cheeks burn at the casual use of the word boyfriend.
Being linked to Harry in such an intimate way shouldn't have such an instantaneous effect on her, but she rationalizes it by telling herself that it's only natural. Just like his reaction to seeing her in this dress, it's a natural reaction that doesn't have to mean anything they don't want it to. At least, that's what she thinks it is, God only knows what he thinks.
"He's not my boyfriend, our relationship is just"—she tries to search for a word that captures selling your blood and soul to a vampire for the rest of your life—"transactional."
"Does he know that?" Adeline asks.
Those teary red eyes peek at her from over the rim of her fourth champagne glass of the night, and if she didn't hate the woman by association so much, she might have told her to slow down with the alcohol for her own sake. An hour and a half has passed since they arrived, so if she keeps drinking how she has been, tomorrow morning won't be pretty.
However, she is more focused on what she said rather than what she's drinking. Every word that leaves her mouth next is careful.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she explains, not wasting a second as she readjusts and tucks her legs up onto the forest green armchair with the rest of her body, "does he know that? Last time I checked, men in transactional relationships don't look at their business partners like he looked at you."
Well, she's definitely more observant than Jo let herself believe. The whole time she was parading around the room to greet her friends/acquaintances/whatever's, she must have been watching them out of the corner of her eye.
It sets her on edge. Harry told her that no one knows of his secret side job as an investigator into human murders. He said that everyone here, Adeline included, should only know of his job in blood distribution, but this makes her wonder if Adeline does. Knowing that she was paying attention, that she had her eyes on them from the beginning of the party, makes her want to run and find Harry again, but she can't.
Instead, she chooses to delve deeper, effectively hammering the nail in her coffin should this impromptu interrogation end in anything other than success.
With a pointed glance at the ring, she asks, "Are you married?"
Any person with the slightest bit of intelligence in body language could see that the words struck a nerve inside of her. The tipsy, half-asleep posture turns rigid in the span of a few seconds.
All she says is, "I don't want to talk about it."
Jo relaxes in her chair and crosses one leg over the other, the slit in her gown allowing a glimpse up the length of her thighs, as she clings to the knowledge that Niall and Harry are only a couple of rooms away. It's the only thing that keeps her from bolting out of that door at this point. If she didn't have backup, she'd be hatching an escape plan.
"Oh, I'm sorry." She turns meek and naive and subservient in all of the ways vampires as ancient as the one in front of her would expect. "I didn't realize it was a sore subject, I just assumed that because you have a ring..."
And it works like a charm, reeling her in exactly how she expected it to.
Adeline sags in the chair again, as if the small moment of tensing robbed every drop of energy from her body, and rests her head against the throw pillow propped behind her back.
"You didn't know...I just miss him so much and wearing the ring made it feel like..."
She doesn't hesitate to finish her thought, shifting into the kind tone she once took while comforting patients at work, "Like he's still here?"
Perhaps Harry was going about this interrogation the wrong way. He planned to lure her away from the main crowd of the party and question her with force, but that wouldn't have worked. Witnessing how torn this woman is over the death of her partner only strengthens her belief that his plan would not go smoothly.
If Adeline suspected that either of them had a hand in his murder, she would rather be threatened with violence and tortured than give them any valuable information about the gang he was a devoted member of.
But if she befriends this woman, the armor may come down after a while, and she may reveal things she hadn't intended to. Being a human could work in her favor in this endeavor too since none of them see her as a true threat, but rather a sweet, smiling plaything for a vampire that is to be seen and not heard.
The notion of being perceived as such a downright sexist caricature of a woman makes her blood boil, but not enough for her to miss the opportunity offered up to her on a silver platter.
There are advantages in being underestimated, and, as soon as Adeline's eyes well up with tears, she knows that one of those advantages just revealed itself.