Hexed and Bitten

Chapter 12

“Earth to Bella.”

Arabella blinked, pushing those spiraling thoughts away and focusing back on Tara, who was watching her with a curious, searching look on her face. She could lie and try to change the subject, brushing off the moment with a quick joke, but she knew Tara was too smart for that. With her magic and her natural intuition, Tara already knew something heavy was weighing on her heart.

“Why doesn’t it get easier?” She blurted out, the words breaking through the quiet of the room before she could stop them. “I have lived a hundred and thirty-four years, a hundred and fourteen of them a vampire, and yet it still breaks my heart when I have to let someone go. The inevitable moment when I have to break someone's heart and walk away.”

“Your heart’s too kind, Bella. It’s one of the things I love most about you,” Tara said softly, her expression softening into genuine affection. “Despite being what you are, and being a total badass, by the way, you still have so much empathy and love. You just need to find someone to share eternity with.”

Someone to share eternity with. Now that was a joke. Arabella leaned back against the cushions, staring up at the ceiling as the words echoed in her mind. She would never turn a human into a creature of the night; she could never bring herself to force that kind of dark, immortal existence onto another person. Sure, she could try to find another vampire, or perhaps a supernatural creature that lived long or was immortal like herself. But that came with its own set of complications.

Otto’s face flashed unbidden in her mind, his sharp features, his intense gaze, the memory of the man she had once wanted to spend her entire eternity with. He was the one she had begged to go with her, the one she had pleaded with to choose her over everything else. And he was the one who had broken her heart in a way that she didn’t think could ever truly heal. If soulmates truly existed in this world, like what the shifters had, he would have been hers. Life could be cruel, she had learned that lesson far more times than she liked. Closing her eyes, she took a deep inhale, filling her lungs with the familiar scent of her living room before slowly letting it out. Now was not the time for conversations like this. They had far more pressing matters to attend to. They had a stalker to get rid of. Opening her eyes, she looked back at her friend, shifting the focus entirely. “Are you sensing anything?”

“It’s the same as your loft,” Tara replied, not trying to steer the conversation back to Arabella’s love life, taking the silent hint that she didn’t want to talk about it. Her luminous eyes glowing with her power swepted over the surrounding space with sharp, focused magic. “It is as if there are two, and yet only one.”

“How is that possible?” Arabella asked, her brows pinching together as she tried to make sense of the conflicting magical signature.“That’s the winning question,” Tara sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Whoever this is, they're powerful.”

Great. That was exactly what she needed right now, some deranged and apparently very powerful vampire with his sights set squarely on her. To kill her, or maybe ask her out on a date, who even knew at this point? But she needed to figure it out quickly and get this psycho out of her life before things escalated. They continued on through the city, retracing Arabella's steps from earlier in the week. They visited her favorite quiet spot in the park where she often ran to clear her mind, and then made their way to the local diner for lunch, giving Tara time to do her thing and read the ambient lingering traces in the air. All over the city they went, tracking tiny fragments of old energy, until they eventually ended up back across the street where she had first seen the shadowed vampire standing beneath the dark trees.

“So you saw him here, but when you got here, he was gone?” Tara asked, standing near the curb and looking across at the line of trees shielding the property.

“Yes, whoever he is, he’s fast,” Arabella said, stepping over the pavement to stand beside her. “There were no footprints or anything to help me. No tracks, nothing for me to follow.”

“Now that is odd,” Tara murmured. “Even a vampire, like all creatures, would leave boot prints from walking or running, even with heightened speed. Unless...”

Tara tapped her chin with her forefinger, her eyes looking down at the damp dirt beside the sidewalk as if contemplating a sudden, strange thought.

“Unless what?” Arabella pressed, watching her friend closely.

“It’s nothing... there aren’t any known witches with that kind of power.”

“What power?”

“Projection, sort of. Most witches learn a basic form of it as they master their powers, but nothing to this level.”

“You think this vampire might have a witch projecting them?” Arabella asked, the piece falling into place.

“Maybe. But usually with that, there is still a residual power left over in the air. And although I do sense something faint, it doesn’t feel like projection magic.” Pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, Tara let her eyebrows pinch together in deep concentration as she moved around the perimeter of the area one more time, testing the air with her fingertips. “It’s been a long time since I have found myself genuinely stumped,” she admitted, letting out a short, humorless laugh.

Heading back to her loft later that evening, they both flopped down onto the comfortable couch, ready to call it a night, enjoy a warm movie, and order takeout. The day had been less than fruitful, and Arabella could sense both Tara’s frustration and, oddly enough, her lingering excitement. Tara was used to being the most powerful person walking into any room, so to have been genuinely stumped by another possible witch had her hackles raised and her curiosity flaring up.

“Are you going to answer that?” Tara mumbled around a mouthful, grabbing another slice of pizza from the box sitting on the coffee table.

Not a minute later, Arabella's phone buzzed to life on the cushion beside her.

"I love when you do that," Smirking she looked down at the glowing screen her smile dropped seeing David’s name flashing across the caller ID. “I don’t want to, but I guess I should,” Arabella grumbled, picking up the device and getting off the couch.

She headed into her bedroom, pushing the door partially closed for a little more privacy, not that a door would stop Tara from knowing everything with her keen power, but it gave her the comforting illusion of space.

Pressing the screen, she brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey,” David’s warm voice came through the receiver.

“What’s up?” Arabella asked, slowly pacing around the hardwood floor of her bedroom.

She felt both excited to hear his voice and intensely annoyed at her own excitement. She really needed to get over any sort of emotional attachment she was feeling toward him.

“I’m back in town and I wanted to see if you wanted to meet up,” he said. His voice sounded so hopeful over the line, and a part of her didn't want to crush that hope, but she knew she couldn't give him forever.

“Sorry, I’m busy,” she said smoothly.

“Oh. Umm, well, what about tomorrow?”

“I have a friend in town and I’m not sure how long she’s going to be staying, so I don’t know when I can hang out next. But I can call you,” She knew she was being cold to him, but she needed to start pushing him away now before either of them got overly attached.

As much as she liked to pretend she didn’t care for him, he was genuinely growing on her, and she knew the longer this went on, the harder it was going to be when she eventually had to walk away.

“Oh. Okay,” David said. He went quiet on the other end for a long moment, and for the briefest second, Arabella wondered if he had accidentally or purposely hung up. “I’ll talk to you later, then.”

“Talk to you later,” she said softly, ending the call and tossing her phone onto the soft comforter of her bed.

Running both hands through her dark hair, she let out a long breath and shook the useless emotions away, refusing to sit there worrying about David’s feelings. She was a bloody vampire, this wasn’t her first rodeo with a mortal, and it certainly wouldn’t be her last.Pulling her shoulders back and putting her wall back up, she made her way back out into the bright living area to find Tara laughing softly at the comedy they had put on earlier. Tara's luminous eyes met Arabella’s as she walked in, that knowing, perceptive look settled comfortably on her face. She knew what had happened. She knew everything, that was her gift and her curse, depending on how you looked at it.

“You like him.”

It wasn’t a question, but a quiet statement, a solid fact. Tara didn’t press any further or start listing off all the practical reasons why a relationship with a mortal would never work out in the end. Instead, she got up from the couch, went straight into the kitchen, grabbed Arabella's favorite tub of Kit Kat ice cream from the freezer, and came back out into the room holding two spoons.

“You know me so well,” Arabella smiled, her guard dropping as she took one of the spoons from her friend.

“It’s a gift,” Tara grinned, settling back onto the couch cushions. “No, I don’t need my gifts on you. I just know you so well.”Cheering their spoons together with a light clink, they chuckled, diving into the ice cream together as both of them focused their attention back on the movie playing on the screen.