Time After Time (Cora's Bond) Read online

  “Courtesy of our new friend Rebecca!” Lisette declared.

  The agnate was seated next to me at the end of the couch that stretched down one side of the bus, and as I filled up her flute, she smiled. “It was the least I could do. I detest bad wine.”

  Lisette turned the music up—not to the blasting level that I’d feared but to a loud-but-not-unpleasant volume that still allowed for normal conversation.

  To my surprise, I relaxed and began to enjoy myself. If Lisette was doing my bachelorette party wrong, I thought as the thong-clad men passed around trays of delicious hors d’oeuvres, I didn’t want to go to one that was done right.

  I joined in on the chatter when I felt like it—and when I didn’t, I let it flow over me. With Lisette and Sarah in the bus, there were two bubbly people to effectively take the spotlight off me any time I wished. That was something I hadn’t had much of a chance to enjoy in Dorian’s world, where I’d been the focus of far too much attention from the very beginning.

  Nothing of note had happened in the past week. Nothing at all. On Saturday, Dorian and I had attended the funeral mass followed by the burial of Jean and Hattie, and on Sunday, he’d gone alone to Dr. Sanderson’s funeral. And in the intervening hours, we’d spent a great deal of time affirming our own lives in a most direct way.

  During the course of the week, I’d frittered away countless hours with Jane Worth, dealing with the endless minutiae that had seemed determined to arise with the last-minute tweaks to the wedding plans, while Dorian continued to tackle the logistical problems that came from scaling the perfected test that his and Hattie’s research had found.

  There hadn’t been a peep from the Kyrioi, not even a trace of evidence that they were planning anything soon.

  Maybe Dorian was right. Maybe the Adelphoi had forced the Kyrioi to be more cautious, at least for the moment. If we could only be so lucky, it would last until after the wedding....

  I sat back and took tiny sips of the champagne as Sarah retold the story—again—of the outrage against her human rights that she’d suffered at the hands of the Student Health Center. Minutes later, the bus pulled up at our first stop, and everyone clambered out—“strippers” included, as they quickly pulled on dress-code-appropriate clothing over their skimpy costumes.

  Some bachelorette party, I thought. The ten women had eleven male escorts between them.

  “Oh,” Lisette said in disappointment, surveying the street front entrance of the first club. “There’s a long line. My research said that it doesn’t normally get bad until ten, and it’s barely nine o’clock.”

  “There may be a line for some people,” Clarissa said, flicking the hair of her short bob. “But it isn’t for us.”

  She walked forward confidently, and I followed, knowing what would happen even before the bouncer at the door waved us all enthusiastically inside.

  The club was louder than the party bus, but the rhythm was seductive, and the beat in my chest for once made me smile rather than want to find a quiet corner and surf the web or read a book.

  Lisette was right. This was my party, and I should enjoy it. I pushed past Clarissa and strode up to the bar, slapping down my freshly paid-off credit card.

  “This is my bachelorette party,” I said, “and the first round’s on me!”

  Lisette came up to my elbow. “The club-rating website says that this club is popular among young professionals, but sometimes a celebrity will make an appearance. Maybe we’ll see one!” she screamed above the music.

  I grinned and handed her the Mai Tai she’d ordered. She eyeballed the size of the glass and tapped through the apps on her phone.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled at her.

  “I’m the designated tour person,” she shouted back. “I have this sobriety app, and it tells me how much I can drink.”

  Yep. That was my best friend, all right.

  Christina and Chelsea had each grabbed a shifter guard by the hand, and together they dragged them onto the dance floor. They missed the first round of drinks wriggling in front of the two men who, it turned out, weren’t very good dancers at all. I decided that it a good thing that Lisette hadn’t asked them to perform in their thongs.

  I roared with laughter along with everyone else at their antics. At the end of the song, Christina and Chelsea thrust me at their former dance partners. I gamely—if clumsily—attempted to move to the music with them in what was quite possibly the most awkward club dance ever as the shifters carefully kept a respectful distance from the body of their employer’s future wife.

  Maintaining Lisette’s grueling tour schedule, which was set to end precisely at my two a.m. pre-arranged meeting time with Dorian, we were soon off to the next bar—which was, incredibly, country-western themed, complete with a mechanical bull.

  I obediently clambered onto the saddle amid the cheers and jeers of my college friends as the rest of the party watched from the bar. I tensed as it started up, my grip tightening on the leather strap as the operator eased into the controls and it began to move under me.

  It rocked and turned gently at first, then harder, and then even rougher until it bucked and swooped and spun. My headband flew off , and I crowed with the sheer exhilaration of it. All too soon, the ride was over, and Lisette jumped over the barrier to hug me.

  “Look at you!” she shrieked. “You’re like the best bull rider ever!”

  I thought it smart not to mention that my cognatic strength had its advantages. But Lisette’s comment must have reached more than my ears, because just then, Rebecca left her seat at the bar. As she strolled over, every human man’s gaze snapped over to follow her progress. She could have pierced hearts with her stiletto boots.

  Rebecca stopped in front of the mechanical bull operator.

  “This one’s on the house,” she assured him in her throaty voice.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said in his faux-Texan accent with more vehemence than he typically used.

  I retrieved my headband, and Lisette and I left the bull-riding circle as Rebecca entered. She swung one leg over the contraption and nodded at the operator. “On high, please, or whatever it is that you call it. For everything.”

  The bull leaped into motion, raring and whirling until my head spun with it. And on the top, one hand holding the strap and the other resting lightly on her thigh, Rebecca perched casually, almost carelessly, only the bobbing of her French braid betraying the force with which the bull was moving.

  When she stopped, the entire bar burst into applause, and with a tiny smile of satisfaction, she inclined her head regally to the other patrons and returned to the bar.

  I looked at Lisette, and she looked back at me for a long moment before we both burst into giggles.

  “Best bull rider ever? You totally miscalled that one,” I said.

  “Okay, okay, maybe I was a little too enthusiastic in my praise,” she admitted. “It’s what best friends are for.”

  We continued on, hitting pubs and bars and clubs. Soon, the shifter guards weren’t even bothering with their pretense of being strippers between the stops. Few of us cared, and those who would have—specifically, Chelsea and Christina—were quickly too drunk to notice.

  As it got later, the crowds got rowdier. At one bar, I found myself dragged onto the karaoke stage with all my friends for a rousing, if badly off key, rendition of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” By this point, Paquita and Marie were tipsy enough to give in to Lisette’s urging despite their assurances to her that they had never heard that song before or seen karaoke performed by anyone. But given the state of Chelsea by then, that hardly seemed like the biggest handicap to be working with.

  Lisette’s clear voice had more than a tinge of impatience as she tried fruitlessly to herd our ragged chorus through the song, but by the end, even she had given up and dissolved into hoots of laughter as the crowd alternately cheered and catcalled us.

  “Oh, come on, you can’t disappoint them like that,” I said to Lisette as
we stumbled off the stage, weak with giggling. “Do a good one. Just you.”

  “Oh, no, this is your night,” she said.

  “Do it for me, then.” I waved at the karaoke DJ. “Hey, put on ‘A Natural Woman,’” I bellowed at him.

  “You’ll have to wait your turn again,” he said.

  I shot a look at Clarissa, who was sitting at a table in the front row, and she stood up, rolling her eyes. “Manipulating people is only bad when it isn’t for your benefit, I see,” she murmured to me as she passed by.

  “No,” I corrected, “it’s only bad when it’s less harmless and I’m more sober than I am right now.”

  Seconds later, the first strains of “A Natural Woman” rose over the stage, and I pushed Lisette into the center of the spotlight. She blinked at the audience for a moment, but when the first word of the lyrics began, she was there, her voice carrying clearly over the music without the need for the microphone that stood several feet away.

  The jeers hushed instantly, and as she reached the chorus, the rest of the conversations dropped into silence as everyone turned to look at her. Even the agnates, the men and women alike, looked stunned. Finally, the song ended, and in utter and complete silence, she left the stage.

  “Well,” she said, frowning as she stepped down. “I might not have hit everything perfectly, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

  And then the room exploded into applause, and a ragged cheer of “Maid of Honor!” rose up from the tables.

  Lisette grinned and preened slightly. “Well, that’s more like it.”

  At our last stop, we sat at a quiet clutch of back booths and sipped what were supposed to be the best, hottest, and most original cocktails in the District. To my not-very-discerning palate, mine tasted like fruity booze, which suited me fine.

  I’d drunk myself into a light buzz, and I was content to stay there. On the opposite end of the sobriety spectrum, even Christina had been moved to cut off Chelsea’s supply of alcohol, so the latter was now nursing a soft drink and a bad mood while trying repeatedly to put the moves on a massive man who I happened to know was a bona fide bear shifter.

  Lisette frowned at her phone.

  “Over your drink quota?” I asked. “Or out of storage for selfies?”

  “Neither,” she said. “It’s Geoff. He’s here, Cora. He said he tried to text you but didn’t get an answer.”

  I pulled out my phone. “I must not have noticed it buzz.”

  I’m at the main bar. Lisette posted the schedule for your party on Facebook, his message said. I know this may not be the best time, but I really need to talk to you—before your wedding.

  I sighed and stood up, nodding to two of the shifters to follow me. Clarissa would be more than happy to come with me, but I didn’t fancy trying to talk to Geoff as her presence turned his brain to jelly.

  I wove my way through the maze of tables. Coming around a partition, I saw him, the down-lights glinting off his golden hair as he sat with his back toward me. It was near enough to closing that the place was mostly empty now, and I sidled up to the bar stool next to him and climbed up, my two bodyguards hovering in the background.

  He was leaning on the bar, nursing an amber-colored drink in a lowball glass. He looked at me. “Hey, Shaw,” he said, lifting his chin in greeting.

  “Hey,” I returned. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, I realized. He’d attacked me under the thrall of the agnate Cosimo. It hadn’t been his fault, but just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t even think about him without feeling sick. Now, I only felt the faintest twinge of regret.

  I didn’t know what had flipped that switch inside of me or when it had happened—whether it had been the deaths I’d seen or nearly losing Dorian or neither of those. And I supposed that it didn’t matter either way anymore. Now all he was to me was a former friend with whom my relationship could never be the same, a part of my old life that I’d chosen to leave behind.

  “The veil suits you,” he said.

  I raised my hand to the headband. “Oh, yeah. I forgot I was still wearing it.” I folded my arms on the bar top. “So what’s so important that you had to crash a bachelorette party to tell me? And please, don’t let it be that you love me or that I’m making a big mistake with my life. I know what choices I’m making. Better than you ever could.”

  “No!” he said hurriedly. “No,” he repeated in a more measured voice, “it’s not that. Well, okay, so maybe a part of me still wishes that you’d chosen differently, but.... ” He broke off. “I went to your birthday party.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  “And I met someone there.” He turned his glass slowly in his hands. “Clarissa.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “You don’t want a part of that. You may think that you do—”

  He laughed, and it had a darker side than the all-American, golden boy chuckle that I was used to. “I’m not stupid, Shaw. I figured out what she was. And I confronted her about it. Did she tell you?”

  I shook my head. “Clarissa isn’t exactly the sharing type.”

  “Yeah. Well, she explained a lot of things to me.” He cleared his throat. “Did some things that were better than explaining, actually. And you know what? I’m not dying, but if I passed that test of yours.... Well, let’s just say that whatever odds you were given, it’d be pretty tough to say no.”

  “So you understand, then,” I said with a wash of relief.

  He treated me to his boyish, lopsided smile. “I understand. It’s terrible what Dorian’s done to you. What they all do to us. It’s terrible because they make us want it so much.”

  My heart sank. He understood, all right—understood from the outside, and despised it.

  “He’s one of the good ones,” I said softly.

  Geoff just shook his head. “None of them are the good ones. Some of them are just the less-bad ones. For your sake, I’m glad you got the second. I don’t know. Maybe we can use them for something better. Maybe we can make changes with how the world’s run. There are others—a lot of others, actually, who think like I do. And maybe we can make a difference.”

  “Dorian’s already trying to do that,” I protested.

  He shook his head. “No. Dorian’s just wanting a slightly different shape of a heap with the vampires still at the top. But that’s not where they belong. They shouldn’t live among real people. They shouldn’t live on real people.”

  I knew then that nothing I could say could change his mind, so I chose silence instead.

  “Anyway,” he said, slapping down a tip as he slid off the bar stool and squared his shoulders. He was taller, broader than I remembered him being before. “I just wanted you to know that I’ll be at your wedding—not because I’m happy for it but because I’m happy for you. Because you’re alive. And whatever else happens in the future, I want you to know that I’ll never regret that you’re alive.”

  And with that, he turned and walked away.

  I sat at the bar alone, not knowing what to think, and let the minutes slide by, until an unmistakable presence roused me from my stupor.

  “Dorian.” I said his name as I turned to face him. “I’m sorry. Did I make you come in for me? I should have set an alarm—”

  “No, I’m early,” he said. His collar was open under his suit jacket, and his hands were thrust into his pockets as her approached the bar.

  My heart sang to see him, and it shocked me again to realize just how much I loved him. That I was even capable of that much love for anyone.

  “You looked sad just then,” he said. “Where’s the party? I was expecting to interrupt a scene of debauchery the likes of which has not been witnessed since Nero’s court.”

  “You witnessed Nero’s court?” I demanded, catching his hand and squeezing it in mine as I slid off my bar stool.

  “No, but I have friends who have told me stories,” Dorian said. “Do you need to say goodbye to your friends?”

  I craned to peer around the partition at them. Ch
ristina had managed to woo a patron into a booth with her and was busily doing things with him that I didn’t care to look too closely at, while Chelsea was snoring gently against the body of the bear shifter she’d tried unsuccessfully to seduce. The four agnates, Clarissa, Rebecca, Raymond, and Dalton, were already alert to Dorian’s presence, and they stood up with their cognates and made their excuses. My other friends were talking and laughing with one another, all except Lisette, who stood a short distance away deep in conversation or argument—it was always hard to tell which, with Lisette—with a curly-haired guy.

  “I can send them all a text,” I said, not wanting to get drawn into one of Lisette’s animated discussions. “Let them know we’ve gone.”

  “Good evening,” Raymond said to us as the group of agnates and cognates reached where we stood.

  “Thank you very much for the invitation, Cora,” Paquita added. “It was interesting seeing how much human customs have changed over the years.”

  I smothered my smile at the diplomatic phrasing. “Thank Lisette,” I said, nodding at my friend. “And I should be thanking you, not the other way around—for coming to the bachelorette party and also for agreeing to be in my bridal party.”

  “You’re welcome, and have a good night,” Paquita said, and then they were gone, four of the shifters trailing behind.

  “Good night,” Marie said as she walked out under Dalton’s arm with the other unfamiliar shifters in their wake.

  Clarissa just shot me a broad wink on her way out, and Rebecca gave us both a nod.

  I finished typing my farewell message and fired it off. I saw Lisette’s emphatic motions pause for an instant as my message arrived. She pulled out her phone to read it and then turned to give me a grin and a wave across the rapidly emptying bar.

  I raised my hand in return as Dorian turned and led me away.

  “I’m honestly not sure if that was just the wildest bachelorette party ever or the tamest,” I said, leaning against his body. The drink I’d sipped had left my stomach feeling warm, my face ever so slightly flushed.