Chapter 12 Peeping Tom
POV: Carly
The library was supposed to be empty.
That was the whole point.
It was nearly closing time on a Tuesday which meant every other student with a social life was either at dinner or getting ready for whatever was happening at The Hole tonight. The librarian had done her rounds twenty minutes ago and hadn't come back. The overhead lights had dimmed to the after hours setting, leaving everything in that specific quiet grey that Carly had come to associate with the only part of her day that belonged entirely to her.
She needed it tonight more than usual.
Her planner was open in front of her with three different color coded sections and none of them were helping. The homecoming theme page had exactly four crossed out ideas and a small drawing of what appeared to be a flower but could also have been a sun depending on how you looked at it. Her grimoire was open to a severing spell she had read four times. Her phone had seven unread messages from her mother that she was going to answer tomorrow.
She propped her elbow on the table and dropped her chin into her hand and stared at nothing.
The honest reason she was here had nothing to do with studying.
She needed space. From Whitney's knowing looks and Tommy's oblivious ones. From Katy existing in her room with a cooler full of blood bottles and no concept of personal boundaries. From her own brain which had been running the same loop on repeat since the hallway outside the lecture hall and showing absolutely no signs of stopping.
She picked up her pen and wrote the word HOMECOMING at the top of a fresh page in block letters.
Then she stared at it.
Then she drew a flower next to it. Or a sun.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
The bang came from somewhere behind the bookcase to her left.
She was on her feet before she fully registered standing up. Her heart was going at twice its normal speed and the goosebumps were already covering both arms and she stood completely still in the grey quiet of the library and listened.
Nothing.
Then a sound. Low. Almost like a groan but quieter than that. More satisfied.
The rational part of her brain said pack your bag and leave.
She was already moving toward the bookcase.
She came around the end of the shelf and stopped.
Niko was on the couch.
A girl was cradled against him, head tipped back, his face buried in her neck. One of his hands was fisted loosely in her brown hair, the other arm wrapped around her waist holding her steady. His eyes were closed. The sounds coming from him were low and rhythmic and she had never heard him sound like that before, nothing like the controlled sharp version of him she was used to.
The girl wasn't screaming.
That was the first thing Carly's brain registered and immediately couldn't let go of. She had always imagined it more violent than this. More desperate and gory and loud. She had grown up hearing stories about vampires feeding like it was an act of terror, like it left nothing behind.
This looked nothing like that.
The girl's eyes were closed and her face was completely relaxed, lips slightly parted, body loose in his arms like she was somewhere between sleeping and dreaming. Her hands rested open in her lap. She wasn't fighting. She wasn't afraid. She looked like someone who had been set down very gently and hadn't quite reached the bottom yet.
Carly stood at the end of the bookcase and could not make herself move.
She watched the way his jaw worked slowly and his grip on the girl's waist tightened slightly as he took what he needed, careful and deliberate. Nothing like the monster she had been told about since childhood. Nothing like the creature she had been preparing herself to face every time she walked into a room he was already in.
It was quiet and strange and she was aware that she had been standing here for too long and was not leaving.
Niko pulled back.
The sound he made when he did was somewhere between a groan and a sigh and it landed somewhere in Carly's chest that she immediately blocked off and refused to examine.
His face when he lifted it was different from any version of it she had seen before. The red in his eyes was deep and satisfied, not threatening the way it looked when he was angry. The dark veins had spread softly under his cheekbones. His lips were fuller than usual and darker and there was a smear of red at the corner of his mouth and he looked more alive in that moment than he ever did in any classroom or hallway or cafeteria.
His fangs were still out when he smiled at nothing in particular.
Something entirely unwelcome moved through her from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet and she mentally slapped herself so hard she nearly winced out loud.
"Your transition into a peeping Tom is a rather interesting development." Niko said it to the air in front of him, still not turning around. "I'm honored to be your subject."
Carly's face went immediately hot.
She straightened up from the bookcase and crossed her arms and arranged her expression into something that communicated she had absolutely not been standing there for as long as she had been standing there.
Niko turned to face her.
The full effect of it hit her square in the chest. His eyes still that deep wine red. Veins still visible. Both layers of fangs present and unhidden. A slow smile stretching his blood stained lips that managed to be both the most unsettling and the most disarming thing she had seen all week.
He swiped his tongue lazily along the edge of one fang.
She forced herself to hold eye contact.
"Could you not be disgusting for one single day." She said it flat and even.
"Where's the fun in that." He tilted his head. "Besides. You were the one snooping."
"I was not snooping. I was investigating a noise."
"In my direction."
"In the direction of a loud bang in a library that is supposed to be empty."
"And yet." He gestured loosely between them.
She hated him. She genuinely hated him. "What are you even doing here. It's almost closing time."
"I could ask you the same, love." He caught himself. "Carly."
She noticed that he corrected it before she had to and filed that away somewhere she wasn't going to look at right now.
"I asked first." She said.
The corner of his mouth lifted. "Same reason as you, I'd guess. Quiet. Isolation. Somewhere to think." He glanced down at the girl still unconscious against the arm of the couch. "And dinner."
Carly followed his gaze and felt her stomach turn over slowly. Not from disgust exactly. From something more complicated than that and she resented every part of it. "Feeding on other students is against the rules."
"You and your rules, McPherson." He shook his head slowly like she had said something both predictable and a little sad. "Not many places on campus where I can do this without someone filing a formal complaint."
"Maybe because drinking from your classmates is generally considered a problem."
"Generally." He agreed pleasantly.
She opened her mouth and then didn't have a follow up for that so she closed it again.
Niko stood from the couch in one fluid motion and the girl slumped gently against the cushions without him there to hold her. He was still in the grey Henley from class, jacket nowhere in sight, and he rolled one sleeve back down as he stood and looked at Carly with an expression she couldn't sort into any of the usual categories.
He collected the blood at the corner of his mouth with one finger.
Then he closed his lips around it slowly.
Carly stared.
She was not staring. She looked away. She looked back. She was aware that she had looked back and was furious about it.
When one of his fangs caught the pad of his finger and broke the skin she watched the small wound seal itself closed in real time, the skin knitting back together in under three seconds like it had never been there at all.
Her mouth fell open slightly.
Niko caught her expression and something in his face shifted. Less performance. More genuine.
He let her look.
She realized after a moment that he was standing closer than she had registered him moving and she also realized she had let him get there.
He reached out and took the notebook from under her arm.
"Hey." She grabbed for it but he lifted it above his head and turned away in one easy motion, flipping it open while she made two more attempts that accomplished nothing except making her feel approximately twelve years old.
She stopped trying and crossed her arms and waited with her best death glare.
Niko lowered the notebook and began reading through it with genuine attention. His eyes moved across the pages and then shot up to her face in amusement.
"Why am I not surprised you're a Brontë fan." He turned a page. "Underlined and highlighted. Very serious business."
"Because I have taste." She said. "Something you wouldn't know anything about."
"Is that what we're calling it." His grin widened and he turned another page then stopped.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked up at her and something in his expression had gone somewhere she didn't recognize. The performance had dropped out of it entirely. He looked at her the way he had looked at his sketchbook in class. Like something had his full attention and he hadn't decided yet what to do about it.
He took one step toward her.
She held her ground.
"He shall never know I love him." He said it quietly. "And that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am."
Her breath stopped.
He took another slow step and she was aware of the bookshelf behind her and the distance between them closing and the fact that she was not moving.
"Whatever our souls are made of." His voice dropped lower. "His and mine are the same."
The accent wrapped around the words in a way that made them land differently than they did on any page she had ever read them from. She felt them somewhere behind her sternum and hated herself for it.
She almost said something.
She had something forming in her throat, something real and unguarded that had nothing to do with deflecting or defending herself, and for one half second she was going to let it out.
Then she caught herself.
Her jaw closed.
Niko watched her do it. She could see him watching her pull it back and something flickered across his face that she couldn't name before he looked away first.
"Peculiar." He said softly.
"What is." Her voice came out less steady than she wanted.
He shook his head slightly. "Nothing."
He flipped to the homecoming page and his expression shifted back into something lighter. "Homecoming themes." He said. "Is that a class they offer here?"
"Give me that." She snatched the notebook out of his hand and pressed it against her chest.
He raised both hands in surrender and stepped back and the air between them normalized and Carly let out a breath she had been holding since he started reciting Brontë quotes in the dim library like it was a completely normal thing to do.
"I meant no harm." He said and he sounded like he actually meant that too. "But it looks like you're stuck and could use some help."
"Not from you."
"No of course not." He said easily. "You have it handled. The doodles and the crossed out ideas really indicate that."
"Do you ever mind your own business."
"Sometimes." He said. "You intrigue me." He added. Like it was a simple observation. Like he was commenting on the weather.
Carly stared at him.
Of all the things she had expected him to say in four years of knowing him that had never once been on the list.
She didn't know what to do with it so she did what she always did.
"That's obviously one of your games." She said.
He looked at her evenly. "Is it."
"Yes. Because we have hated each other since orientation and nothing about that has changed so whatever you think you're doing right now I'm not interested."
Something moved behind his eyes. Quick. Gone before she could read it.
"You keep making the friend thing very clear." He said. "I understand. I don't want to be your friend either. A lot of things interest me. That doesn't mean I want to braid your hair and talk about our feelings."
"Then what do you want." She said it before she could stop herself.
He looked at her for a long moment.
"Right now." He said. "I want to know what Carly McPherson is actually doing alone in a library at almost midnight when she has a coven and a boyfriend and a best friend and every reason in the world to be somewhere else."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"I'm studying." She said.
He nodded slowly. "Right."
He walked to the couch and picked up his backpack and his sketchbook and slung the jacket that had been draped over the arm over one shoulder.
He paused without turning back to her.
"You're not as easy to figure out as you want people to think you are." He said it quietly. Almost to himself. "That's all I meant."
Carly stood against the bookshelf with her notebook pressed to her chest and no response that felt adequate.
Niko walked toward the exit and stopped one more time with his back to her.
"She's not dead by the way." He said. Answering the question she hadn't asked out loud. "She won't remember much. Just a strong urge to get a full night's sleep." He paused. "You should be gone before she comes to."
He flashed.
The library went silent.
On the couch the girl stirred, a low groan coming from somewhere against the cushions. Her hand moved to her neck.
Carly grabbed her things off the table in four seconds flat and was out the door before the girl's eyes opened.
She walked fast down the empty corridor with her notebook clutched against her chest and her heart going faster than walking required.
She was not thinking about the way his voice sounded reading those words.
She was not thinking about the almost thing in her throat that she had pulled back at the last second.
She was not thinking about what he had said at the end.
You're not as easy to figure out as you want people to think you are.
She pushed through the door into the cold night air of Black River Falls and the fog wrapped around her immediately, damp and quiet and smelling like pine.
She walked back to the dormitory and told herself she was fine.
She almost believed it this time too.
Author's Note:
He quoted Brontë. He QUOTED BRONTE. In a dim library. In that accent. And Carly almost said something real and pulled it back and I want to shake her. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, what do you think she was about to say? Add us to your library because the next chapter is coming and we still have a lot of fallout to deal with including those wolves who saw way too much in that hallway!