On the door, as on the doors of all Novitiates’ rooms, was a small corkboard. A placard bearing my name had been pinned to it, as had a photo from a magazine: two waifish young starlets stretched across a velvet chaise in front of a deep navy background. Lindsey had replaced the girls’ heads with small, unevenly cut pictures of us.
With Ethan behind me, I unlocked the door and opened it. The room smelled faintly of dust and the rose-scented perfume I liked to wear in colder months. Since the bottle was upstairs, the fragrance must have lingered on my clothes.
There wasn’t much to the room, especially compared to the splendor of the Master’s apartments. It was a small rectangle of space. A twin bed sat in one corner, and there was a bureau on the opposite wall that still stored all the personal effects and clothes I hadn’t yet taken to Ethan’s apartments. Two doors led to a closet and small bathroom.
“Home sweet home?” he asked.
“Something like that.” He walked inside, and I closed the door behind him. For a moment, I was struck at how truly different my life had become since I’d been made a vampire. In those early nights, I’d been convinced Ethan was my enemy, the vampire who’d taken away my human life without so much as a second thought. I’d actually been grateful my room was on the second floor, one floor removed from his, so I wouldn’t have to face him any more than necessary.
And now we were lovers. Confidants. Partners. I’d come to admit that he’d saved my life, not taken it away, and he’d accepted that I wasn’t one to blindly follow orders. Our romance had not been simple, and it hadn’t been easy. It still wasn’t easy, as there was always some kind of supernatural drama interfering with our lives.
But perhaps that was the point? That plans, however well-intentioned, were ultimately irrelevant? That we had to learn to adapt, and the best-case scenario was finding a partner who was willing to adapt alongside us?
If I hadn’t adapted, we might still be enemies. I might still be refusing his advice and counsel, and he might have picked a House consort to fulfill his needs. My Red Guard membership would be less about helping the Houses than spying on Ethan. We’d have been enemies, engaged in a private war against each other.
Instead, over the course of the last year, we’d joined forces. We fought together against factions that sought to tear apart the House. And even in this tiny, cold, and sparse room, I was home, because he was with me.
Ethan looked at me curiously. “Are you all right? You’re making the room buzz.”
“Just thinking,” I said, smiling a little.
“About?”
“How much things change.”
He walked toward me and pressed a hand to my cheek, smiling slyly. “You were thinking about us.”
I nodded. “About what we were, and what we’ve become.”
“And how I wooed you with my brilliance and sophistication?”
“Or your narcissism,” I teased. “I’m going to change clothes.”
Ethan lay down on the bed, one arm behind his head, ankles crossed. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Dirty. Old. Man,” I repeated. But he had a point. There was one small room, and not much privacy.
“I’m not going to strip for you,” I said, turning to the bureau and flipping through a drawer. Everything in my current clothing rotation was upstairs. The bureau held the remainder—college and grad school T-shirts and slightly out-of-style numbers that I hoped would be more popular next year.
With minutes before the sun rose, I grabbed an old NYU T-shirt, pulled off my jeans and shirt, and slipped it on.
“That was hardly worth the cost of admission,” Ethan commented.
“The cost of admission was free,” I pointed out. “And I was changing for my benefit, not yours.” I gestured grandly toward the room. “The stage is yours, my friend.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
I sat down on the bed and mirrored his posture. “I expect you to take it off, and I expect you to shake it. In that order.”
“Hmmph” was all he said. As I looked on, he stood up, pulled his shirt over head, and kicked off his shoes.
By my calculation, that left a Master vampire in the middle of my bedroom, shirtless and staring back at me with a predictably arched eyebrow.
“You aren’t done,” I pointed out, but with waning enthusiasm. Not for the subject—he was as hot as ever—but for consciousness. The sun was nearly on the rise, and sleepiness had begun to set in.
Either sensing my sudden exhaustion or faced with exhaustion of his own, he slipped off his trousers without a performance.