“Not bad for your first time,” he said cockily.
“I think you cheat,” I announced, mounting the steps.
“How did I cheat? You left before me, remember?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure you did.”
“You’re just a sore loser,” he kidded with a grin, reaching out to wind one arm around my waist.
“Maybe you put a spel on me. Maybe you’re a vampire and a warlock.”
“A spel ? What kind of spel ?” Bo’s voice dropped to a silky purr and his eyes dropped to my lips.
“Some kind of love spel .”
“Why? Were you thinking about things other than running?”
The air felt suddenly thicker and sweeter. Much sweeter.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Wel then maybe I need to do a better job with my potion next time.”
“Potion?”
“Yeah, it’s a delicious cocktail that I brew up just for you.”
Bo leaned in, his lips only a couple of inches from mine.
“Delicious?” I was mesmerized, tantalized.
“Mmm,” he murmured as he traced my bottom lip with his tongue. “Want a taste?”
Al I could manage was a tiny nod.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, Bo lowered his mouth to mine. He teased my lips apart by rubbing his gently back and forth across them. I was breathless with anticipation as I waited for him to deepen the kiss. But he didn’t. Instead, Bo straightened.
“Maybe I’l just save that for another time. I think you’ve had enough potions for one day,” he said cheerful y.
Despite his casual attitude, I could sense the desire in him. He’d reacted to me as intensely and as immediately as I had to him. I could smel it. I could feel it.
“You suck,” I muttered, stil in the throes of his attentions.
Bo laughed, a deep rich sound that sent a shiver racing through me. “Maybe later.”
With that, he took my hand in his and we walked through Sebastian’s unlocked front door.
Even though we’d only left there a short time ago, walking into Sebastian’s house was like participating in an exercise of suspended disbelief. It was surreal to think of the events that had transpired there and the truths that had been uncovered inside the four wal s of the structure.
I stopped in the foyer to look around. Though I’d been inside the house more than once and walked its hal s for hours, it stil felt as though I was stepping into it for the first time. Maybe it was because I hadn’t real y known Sebastian at al . Maybe it was because so much had happened in the rooms above my head. Maybe it was the nearly-imperceptible ghost of darkness and malice that greeted me at the door. Whatever the reason, I was immediately uncomfortable.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Bo was tugging me slowly forward, taking in the gorgeous details of the house as he went, seemingly unconcerned.
“He won’t be back. He showed his hand earlier. Right now, he’s got nothing, which puts us on equal footing. We just have to be the ones to find a way first.”
“A way to what?”
“To kil him before he kil s one of us.”
“But you’re the boy who can’t be kil ed. It’s impossible for him to kil you, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“But I thought—”
“I know that’s supposed to be the case, but something makes me think that he’s found some sort of loophole.”
I thought of Lucius talking about the letter Iofiel, Constantine/Sebastian’s wife, had supposedly sent him. It was suggested that she’d found some way for Sebastian to kil Bo if he could manage to stay alive long enough. The problem was, even if that were true, we had no idea what was involved in such a feat. Therefore, we had no way to defend against an attack.
“Since al this legendary stuff is obviously true, that means that you should be able to read something important on my skin, right?”
Bo’s eyes slid to me for a fraction of a second before darting away again.
“Supposedly.”
“Wel , have you been able to see anything on me? Ever?”
“I’m not sure,” he answered without looking at me.
Though I had no reason to think he would lie to me, no reason for him to even try, I got the unshakable feeling that he wasn’t being entirely truthful.
“Bo, if you know something, tel me.”
“I don’t know that I do. It’s just something I…suspect.”
“And? What is it?”
Bo paused in his perusal of Sebastian’s house to look at me.
“Those couple of times that you got upset, you know when I was fighting Lars and when Sebastian was staking me?” I nodded. “Wel , I thought I could almost see something, but it’s like your body just wasn’t capable of…handling it I guess.
Like it literal y cracked under the pressure of it.”
“What do you think that means?”
Bo shrugged, resuming our walk down the hal .
“Just makes me wonder if it wil be different now that you’re a vampire. That’s al .”
That one postulation gave me so much to think about, I had to abandon the theory entirely just to concentrate on what Bo was saying. I’d have to pick it back up later.
“Who’s room was this?”
We had reached the end of the long hal that held both Lil y and Sebastian’s rooms, a hal which, at first glance, appeared to dead end. However, that was not the case.
The hal extended a ways past Sebastian’s room, at which point it looked as if it stopped. I’d never explored it that far, never realized there was anything down there. But there was.
There was a darkness on the left side of the hal , against the wal , that looked like a shadow upon casual inspection.
But it wasn’t. It was a short hal way that jutted to the left, just off the main hal . At the end of it was a bedroom.
Bo stopped in front of the open door. At first glance, it appeared to be a fairly dark and sterile entrance to a tiny bedroom. Only that was just as deceptive as the way the architecture concealed the smal hal way.
Once Bo and I stepped four or five feet into the gloomy interior, the room spread out before us in a suite that was easily discernible as the master quarters. Though I’d never been inside Sebastian’s room, I didn’t think it was possible that his space could be as large and grandiose as this one, not with it being situated between this room and Lil y’s.