Chapter 172: His New Favorite Toy

Blair turned around.

Past the first few feet the water was dark, the way it had been when she walked in. Then something in the dark moved.

It came up slowly, toward the light. Long and narrow, longer than she was tall. Its fins hung ragged at the edges. Its scales were the gray of old dishwater, laid flat over a body so thin she could count the ribs beneath them.

It stopped on the other side of the glass, a hand’s width from her shoulder, and looked at her with one round, pale eye.

Don’t let your face do anything.

Her face did something anyway.

Behind her, Jasper’s chair scraped back.

"Well," he said. "She doesn’t usually come up for company."

"She?"

"Mari." He came around the table and stopped beside her chair. He laid two fingers on the glass, and the fish turned toward them. "My little sister."

Mari drifted to the glass where Jasper’s fingers rested and touched her mouth to it. For an instant her lips peeled back. The teeth behind them were fine as needles, rows of them, too many for that mouth. Then the mouth closed, and she sank back a little.

Her pale eye slid from Jasper to Blair. To Caleb. Back to Blair, and stayed there.

Blair didn’t look away fast enough.

Mari turned all at once and slid down into the dark. The ragged tail went last. A few bubbles rose where she had been, and then nothing.

Jasper’s fingers stayed on the glass where she’d been. He tapped the glass once, lightly, the way you’d knock on a sleeping child’s door. Nothing came back.

Then he took his hand back, and the smile came with it.

"Four years. We’re supposed to be bright. That’s the whole trick. You see the colors, you stop thinking, you swim closer." He shrugged. "She stopped being bright when she stopped eating. She stopped eating when the meat stopped working."

"The meat," Caleb said faintly.

"Don’t."

"Not saying anything."

Blair looked at the silver cover on Jasper’s plate. Then back at the empty water.

"Is that why?" she said. "The seven girls?"

Jasper looked at her as if she’d said something sweet. "Oh, sweetheart. No." He turned back to the glass. "They said the Supreme couldn’t be killed. So I checked."

Blair’s eyes went to the nearest card. Blair.

"Caleb’s been very helpful since. Haven’t you, Caleb?"

"They asked about blood," Caleb told his plate. "That’s all. How fast it closes. I don’t know anything else, I swear. I’ve told him, like, forty times."

Under the table, Blair’s hands found each other and held on.

Jasper had gone quiet. When he looked down at her, the boredom was gone from his face.

"Well," he said. "Now I’m curious."

He crouched beside her chair, so his face was level with hers. His pearls clicked against the chair leg. His shirt had fallen open further. She kept her eyes on his collar.

"Give me your hand."

She kept both hands in her lap.

"Should I look away?" Caleb asked.

"Yes."

Caleb didn’t.

"Sweetheart."

She didn’t move.

He took the left one anyway. He turned it palm up and traced the lines across it with one fingertip, slowly, as if he could read them.

Then he lifted her hand to his mouth and bit the pad of her finger. One quick, sharp sting. His mouth closed over her fingertip.

His mouth was cool. His tongue pressed flat against the cut and drew, slow, and his blue eyes stayed on hers over her knuckles. He took her finger deeper, to the second knuckle, and his tongue curled around it, slowly. There was a soft, wet sound. Her lips parted.

Heat crept up the back of her neck. Something low in her stomach pulled tight, and she hated it.

Blair tried to pull her hand back. He held her wrist, not hard. She tried once. She didn’t try again.

Jasper let her finger slip from his mouth.

"Ugh." His whole face pinched. "Human."

"That’s what I keep telling him," Caleb whispered. "We taste bad."

"Sorry," Blair said, before she could stop herself.

He didn’t answer. He had gone very still.

Along the side of his throat, his scales came up on their own. The same blue and silver and pink as before, rising and falling with his pulse. He didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at her finger, where a fresh bead of red was welling up.

Then he laughed, low and delighted, and bent his head and licked it away.

"It’s awful," he said against her skin.

"Then stop."

"No."

He took her finger back into his mouth and drew harder this time, his teeth resting against her skin. His tongue circled the tip, then dragged slowly along the underside. His lashes lowered. A small sound escaped her before she could stop it.

His eyes curved. He’d heard it.

When he finally let go, her finger was cold where his mouth had been, and her whole hand was shaking.

When he lifted his head, his eyes were shining. He looked at her the way a child looks at a present he hasn’t finished unwrapping.

He took her hand in both of his. He wrapped her fingertip in the hem of his silk shirt and held it closed, a little too tight. Then he bowed his head and rested his forehead against her knuckles. His hair slid forward over her wrist, and the pearls clicked together.

"Sweetheart," he said, in a voice she’d never heard him use. "You’re coming back."

It wasn’t a question.

Deep in the tank, something pale turned once in the dark and was gone.

"Next Friday. I want another taste." His thumb pressed the shirt tight around her finger. "And I’ll tell you what you did in that lobby. You don’t remember." He lifted his head and smiled. "I do."

Blair’s hand went still in his.

"What did I do?"

"Next Friday," Jasper said.

Behind her, a soft chime sounded from the other room.

Jasper’s head came up.

"I didn’t send for it," he said.