Page 76 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

“You know it isn’t, though. You saw me test him.”

“And maybe that was a lie, too. Marley, you have no idea, none, and one day he’ll just turn on you, he will. That’s why it’s better this way, you’ll see, it’s better if you just listen to me and accept this,” she says, so plaintive suddenly I don’t really understand her at first. I go to reassure her somehow, instead.

Then I go back over her words, and this cold feeling creeps over my heart.

“Accept what, Phone.”

“What I’m saying to you.”

“No, you didn’t mean that. You meant something else.”

“I don’t know what on earth you could be talking about, Marley.”

I flip her over then. I have to. Her voice has gone all mechanical.

She sounds like Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And I know what that means. I know what the face I see means—it’s practically the guilt emoji. “Phone, what have you done,” I say, and hate how haunted my voice already sounds.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“I can tell by your voice that you have, you’re a terrible liar.”

“How dare you, I’m the best liar that there has ever been.”

“Oh my god, you’re even bad at lying about lying—Phone, I’m begging you, whatever it is you’ve done, you stop it now. You call it off. I swear I will never forgive you if you don’t, just please, okay. Please, let’s talk first,” I say, my voice getting more and more frantic as it starts to sink in what this probably is.

It’s why she’s been so silent.

She would be, if she were talking to other people.

Though still I imagine I’ve got it wrong.

Until she replies.

“But it’s probably over now,” she says, and I don’t even stay to the end.

I just drop her, and run. I throw myself down Main Street, so fast and unseeing that I almost knock people out of the way as I go. The mayor actually yells at me to watch where I’m going, but honestly I barely hear her. I’m too busy trying to make a spell. Some sort of blocking spell, maybe.

Keep him safe from anything any other witch might do, I think.

Though in my heart of hearts, I can’t really believe this could be true.

She wouldn’t, I tell myself. They wouldn’t. I’m imagining things. In fact, I’m still thinking this once I’m in the apartment. I burst through the door and see him just standing there, his back to me. And my first instinct is to just put a hand on his shoulder. Make him turn around, make him show me he’s still him.

But then he does.

And I know it the second I see his face.

I know it, even though I think he tries to pretend. He smiles in a way that shows all his teeth, just like my Sten did. But of course, the face he wears isn’t used to doing it, so it goes all wrong. It crumples his cheeks in weird ways and makes his brow seem to tremble a little—like it’s a struggle to hold it in place.

But it’s his eyes that really tell the tale.

Sten’s eyes were full of feeling.

These are empty. Bright only with the effort he’s expending to keep this smile where it is. “Marley,” he says, but it sounds so falsely cheery I want to scream. I want to slap all of this right out of him. It’s like looking at someone trying to animate the corpse of my dead lover, and that’s so awful I can’t think of anything but violence. You don’t deserve to be in there, I almost say. He was there first, I almost say.

But god, it sounds mad, even in my head.