Wicked Ever After (A Blud Novel Book 7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

considered me with cloudy blue eyes, so like my own but glittering with a Bludman’s magic.
    “Call me Ruby, sugar. I don’t feel much like anybody’s Nana anymore.”
    She frowned and walked away. She didn’t answer my question.
    She didn’t have to.
    “She’s a glancer, Crim.”
    He stroked my hair back, curling it over my ears. “What of it, love?”
    “My grandmother is a glancer, and a Bludman, and a cougar, and maybe a MILF, and she says I need to call her Ruby.” Hard as I’d been trying to keep it in, a hot tear streaked down the side of my nose.
    “Don’t know what a GILF is, but I fear I’m going to have to give you a speech similar to the one you gave me about Demi when she wanted to leave the caravan . Time to let the little bird fly from the nest?”
    I sniffled. “This little bird jumped out of the nest, landed among the bludbunnies, and is now spitting out their bones and whistling ‘Yankee Doodle.’ ”
    “Is she happy?”
    I had to look away at the frankness of his gaze. He could always see right through me. “She walked away before I could really ask. I don’t even know where she is or what she’s doing. I thought . . . I don’t know. I thought I could show her the caravan, get to see her enjoy the magic for the first time. There’s no magic in our world, on Earth, not really. I thought she would be grateful. Or at least friendly. That she would still want to spend time with me. But she doesn’t even seem to like me.”
    He pulled me closer, wiping tears away with a glove. “What did you think would happen, darling? You would bring her to Sang, and I would turn her, and she would remain a happy old woman content to bake cakes for you? She was a corpse, and now she’s a predator. She’s been dying for years. Maybe she wants to live a bit now.”
    “But I miss her.”
    The corner of his lip lifted. “So join her. If you truly want to know what she feels like, let me blud you. You’ve always said she was the only thing that kept you human.” He leaned over, and the rasp of metal on wood brought my attention to my locket, where he dragged it around on the bedside table. The bright-red stone was gone, just a curled black smudge twisting the metal where it had been set. “You can’t go back now, you know. It took me years to find that ruby and bewitch it, and we both paid dearly for our happiness. I believe I can say with confidence that your world is permanently closed to you. The witch’s magic always takes its price. So whatever’s left to hold you back from being bludded is merely . . . fear.”
    “No, it’s . . .”
    He waited, patient as ever. I racked my brain. As was my tendency, the worst images pushed to the fore: Bludmen stoned in the ghettos of large cities, the violence and mess of my grandmother’s recent bludding, the thought of putting aside coffee and ice cream and rabbit dumplings and chocolate mousse and ingesting nothing but human blood for the rest of my life. I’d never wanted it, never longed for Eric Northman and glittering eyes and Gothic sensibilities. Perhaps, faced with terminal cancer and trapped in a frail body, I would have seen it as Nana—sorry, Ruby—had. But even here, in my rapidly aging body that ached and wrinkled more than it should have, I wasn’t done being human.
    Criminy held my bare hand up, turning it to show me the age spots speckling the back before he kissed it. “Think about it, pet. The process is different between lovers. You’ll enjoy it. I promise.”
    But still, I wasn’t ready.
    I found her in the dining car—after I’d cleaned up the tears and picked my guts up off the floor. She’d raised me to have a spine, and I wasn’t going to turn tail just because she’d hurt my feelings. I had to try seeing things from her point of view: she’d been given a second life, and it wasn’t reasonable to expect that her first priority would be her granddaughter’s desire to take her to the fair.
    The wagon