Chuckling, I stood, wrapping the afghan around me. My fingers touched my neck to find the skin sore but unbroken. I wouldn’t say it had been wrong to take advantage of the sensitivities Ivy set into play, but the vehement need of it had me concerned. Almost too exquisitely intense to control … No wonder Ivy had such a hard time.

Thoughts slow and speculative, I dug about in the bottom drawer of Nick’s dresser for one of his old shirts and made my way to his shower.

Fourteen

“Hello.” Nick’s recorded voice came from my answering machine, sounding smooth and polished. “You’ve reached Morgan, Tamwood, and Jenks of Vampiric Charms, independent runners. They are currently unavailable. Please leave a message and let us know if you would prefer a daylight or evening return call.”

I gripped the black plastic of Nick’s phone tighter and waited for the beep. Having Nick leave the outgoing message on our machine had been my idea. I liked his voice, and I thought it very posh and professional for us to appear to have a man as a receptionist. ’Course, that all went out the window when they saw the church.

“Ivy?” I said, wincing at the guilt I could hear in my voice. “Pick up if you’re there.”

Nick walked past me from the kitchen, his hand trailing across my waist as he went into his living room.

The phone remained silent, and I rushed to fill the gap before the machine clicked off. “Hey, I’m at Nick’s. Um … about earlier. Sorry. It was my fault.” I glanced at Nick doing the “bachelor tidy shuffle” as he swooped about, shoving things out of sight under the couch and behind cushions. “Nick says he’s sorry for hitting you.”

“I do not,” he said, and I covered the receiver thinking her vamp hearing might catch it.

“Hey, umm,” I continued, “I’m going to my mom’s to pick up some stuff, but I’ll be back around ten. If you get home before me, why don’t you pull the lasagna out and we’ll have that tonight. We can eat around midnight? Make it an early dinner so I can get my homework done?” I hesitated, wanting to say more. “Well, I hope you get this,” I finished lamely. “ ’Bye.”

I clicked the phone off and turned to Nick. “What if she’s still knocked out?”

His eyes tightened. “I didn’t hit her that hard.”

I slumped to lean against the wall. It was painted an icky brown and didn’t go with anything else. Nothing in Nick’s apartment went with anything else, so it kind of fit—in a warped sort of way. It wasn’t that Nick didn’t care about continuity, but that he looked at things differently. The time I found him wearing a blue sock with a black, he had blinked at me and said they were the same thickness.

His books, too, weren’t cataloged alphabetically—his oldest tomes had no title or author—but by some ranking system I had yet to figure out. They lined an entire wall of his living room, giving me the eerie feeling of being watched whenever I was there. He had tried to get me to store them in my closet for him after his mother dumped them on his doorstep early one morning. I’d kissed him soundly and refused. They creeped me out.