"Witches are..." he trailed off, perhaps too many words coming to his mind at once as he tried to formulate his response before he took another sip of his drink. "Frustrating, irritating, arrogant, pain in your ass, take your pick," he said as he exhaled sharply.
"I've only ever met one," I told him. "Gwendolen Blackwood."
The mention of Gwendolen's name seemed to have an innate response in Andrew, like an electric shock going through him that he was helpless to stop.
"And the only one you've met is a few cards short of a whole deck. Enough to turn you off the whole bunch," he said.
"Everyone seems to say the same thing about her, but no one will tell me why. Something to do with her cousin?" I said.
"Her cousin. Yeah. That's not even the tip of the iceberg. Gwendolen's issues start genetically, in my opinion. Her father had a few screws loose, too. Just lose her number, don't answer the door, and don't give her the time of day if you feel particularly attached to a simple life,"he said.
A simple life, if only, I thought to myself.
"Note taken," I replied before asking him, "you are not a fan of witches, but you work for one?"
"It's complicated," he replied. "And not all witches are bad, just the bad ones seem to be the ones that come to mind first."
Complicated. That seemed like a very good word to describe tonight, my life, or anything in general right now.
"I take your complicated and raise you absurd," I retorted. It was the only word I could think to describe my life now.
He scoffed. "What could be so absurd about living under the patronage of billionaire he-witch Charles Greymalkin?" He asked. "I think it's quite grand."
I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
"Is this the part where I tell you my life story and how much being a vampire sucks?" I responded.
"Why? Does it?" He asked me. He seemed genuinely interested in the answer.
"It has its perks," I replied, taking another sip of my drink. It was quickly becoming cool and reminding me of the cold, artificial taste of what Cormac served me. "But I find the drawbacks to outweigh the perks."
"Everything has its drawbacks," Andrew agreed with me.
"Tell me, does being a werewolf have its drawbacks?" I asked him.
"Let's just say, we both have our bloodlust," he told me. His response was enigmatic at best, but it surprised me.
His frustration was clear as he returned to his food, but I wasn't sure what he was really frustrated at. Himself? My line of questioning? He seemed to have just as much trouble coping with what he was, as I was having with being a vampire. What was more shocking was that he seemed to have had longer to cope with himself. He rolled up his sleeve, revealing the same outline of a tattoo on his forearm that I had noticed the first night I met him.
"Yes, but at least you can go outside in the middle of the day without the worry of burning your skin off," I told him.
"What do you know about being a werewolf?" He shot back. His tone was abrasive and off-putting, to say the least. I knew werewolves could be temperamental, more so than vampires, but this took it to a new level.
I reached across the table, taking his hand gently before letting my finger trace up his forearm to get a better look at the tattoo. Just as I suspected, it was the sigil of the Lycaonite.
YOU ARE READING
Charlotte After Dark
Vampiri{Part of the Bloodlines Histories} Waking up in the morgue is not how 18-year-old Charlotte Alders expected to end her first Halloween in college. While enjoying a night out with friends, she realizes too late that she has fallen into the hands of...