TWO | HAUNTED

“What the hell happened to you?” Harper cried, rushing over to help me sit down.

“I’m fine,” I sighed, waving a lazy hand through the air. My eye stung, but it was a relief to be home. 

“You don’t look fine, Cals,” Harper muttered, gnawing at his bottom lip anxiously. His dark brown skin had a strange pallor to it, as though the blood had disappeared from his face. 

I settled closer to him on the sofa, running my fingers across his short, textured hair. His dark eyes watched me worriedly, darting between the sharp line of the cut and my tired gaze. “You’re sweet,” I murmured, letting my head sink against the warm expanse of his chest. 

My cheek brushed against the tight knit of his worn jumper, and I smiled to myself. He’d worn this same jumper on our first date, saying that he wanted me to see him at his worst, straight away. The jumper was a charity shop find, faded burgundy in colour, but I’d loved it. I hadn’t shown it, though – he’d been subject to my barbed teasing all afternoon as we’d walked hand in hand through the Christmas market, sipping hot chocolate and buying gifts for our families.

That date had been three years ago, now. I’d liked him, and then, like wrapping yourself in the same cosy blanket, night after night, I’d loved him. Harper was home, and he was safe. And it was because he was home, and he was safe, that I’d had to keep a part of me from him.

It had been easier to hide at university. But then we’d graduated, and it had been the easiest thing in the world to say yes when he’d suggested moving in together. I’d had to compile a list of excuses for situations like this: early morning runs, late night training practices, an endless list of sports and strategy meetings and extra shifts at work, all designed to hide the truth from him.

Because if Harper knew that I was a hunter, he wouldn’t be safe anymore.

I was leading two different lives, and I couldn’t let him know.

“Hey, Callie, you’re still bleeding,” he whispered, his voice hushed with worry, with tenderness, as he gently pulled my face towards him, the pads of his fingers soft.

“I’ll be fine.”

“How did this even happen? I thought you were at boxing tonight?”

I shook my head, our living room flashing past my eyes, my vision blurred with blood loss. It hadn’t taken long to finish off the last of the vampires, but it had taken long enough that my blood had dripped onto my stomach.

“I must’ve said the wrong thing. Tonight was – tonight was knife defence. My Dads thought it was a good idea for me. Walking home late from the diner, you know.” I added a laconic shrug, which might have been taking the act a step too far, had Harper not been distracted by my wound.

There was a log fire crackling in the hearth. Harper must have lit it while I was gone. It was chilly – we were well into the autumn – but I didn’t think it was cold enough that we needed a fire. Then again, Harper had always been softer than I had.

“I’ve got some butterfly tape in the first aid box. Stay here, Cals, and I’ll get you cleaned up. Okay?”

I nodded weakly, the flames burning my retinas. I had to be up early again tomorrow – I was meeting my Dads for a patrol – and I didn’t have time to be coddled. But, loath as I was to admit it, there was something nice about coming home to Harper and letting him take care of me.

I supposed it was a side effect of living a double life. I was hard-edged, a sword, on the battlefield. Harper softened me, dulled my blade; he made me warm and comfortable, a fat cat luxuriating on a blanket by a cosy fireplace.

And that was okay. It was okay to have a weakness, a soft spot, as long as the enemy didn’t know, and couldn’t find out. So Harper was kept separate, and he was kept safe.

The living room was warm. Harper slung a blanket over my shoulders, and pressed a kiss to my forehead as he went into the kitchen. 

My head throbbed as I lay back. I’d cleaned most of the blood and gunk off before I’d come home, stopping at my Dads’ house on the other side of town before driving home. Dad especially had been proud of my quick thinking, though Paps had been worried about my decision to use myself as bait.

I’d shrugged, wincing at the shudder of pain ripping down the side of my face. “Rule number four, Paps,” I’d grinned, carefully arranging my expression so that my cut didn’t pull or tug as my muscles shifted. “Rely on each other. I trusted my team to do the right thing.”

“It was the right call, sweetie,” Dad had beamed. He’d looked rugged and worn-down, his dark skin greasy and splattered with gore, but his eyes had watched me with pride. 

They’d sat me down in their bathroom, neutrally decorated save for Paps’s collection of celebrity rubber ducks on the side of the tub, and mopped up the worst of the blood. Part of me – the non-hunter, small-town girl part – wanted to go straight home, to let Harper care for me. He was softer, less brusque. But he couldn’t see me with blood filling my eye socket, and leaking onto my front, dripping almost down to my sleek black trousers.

So I’d driven home with one hand holding a wad of tissues to my eye. Paps had considered taking me to hospital, but I hadn’t seen the need. It would lead to questions that I didn’t want to answer – didn’t feel capable of answering – so I’d assured him in quiet, hushed tones that I was okay, that I’d be fine, I just needed a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

Our cosy living room swam before my eyes. Old, creased sofa, covered in old, faded throws and misshapen cushions. Orange-yellow glow from the log fire painting the wooden flooring and pale green walls in long flickers. The footstool one of our housemates had left behind in our shared university house, with a red wine stain down one side. A selection of burnt-down candles littering the coffee table and mantelpiece, in a variety of autumn-themed scents. 

It was rugged, and it was cheap, and it was full of leftover mementos from our time at university. There were well-used board games next to a stack of cook books that neither of us had ever used on the shelving unit in the corner. There were framed photos of us: dressed up in costumes for themed society nights out in the students’ union; one of us gazing lovingly at each other, our eyelashes tipped with snowflakes; another of us with our final year housemates, stood shoulder to shoulder, our arms around each other.

None of them had known who I was – who I really was – either. Our friendships had been forged on early-morning coffee and late-night tequila shots; the deceit had felt less penitent, I supposed, because they didn’t love me. They weren’t in love with me, not like Harper was.

“Here,” he said quietly, brandishing a pack of antibacterial wipes and some butterfly tape. There was something else beneath them, something in a packet that made tiny crinkling sounds with every movement he made. Harper crouched down beside me, and the corners of his eyes crinkled, too, as he smiled gently at me.

“Thank you, Harp,” I whispered, pulling myself into a sitting position. The blanket slipped from my shoulders, and I shivered at the sudden brush of cold air.

“Brought you these, too,” he grinned, throwing me a packet of chocolate buttons. “Thought you might need the sugar.”

Despite myself, I grinned back at him, my eyes alight and teasing. “You give me all the sugar I need.”

He rolled his eyes at that, shaking his head at me, but he set to work on cleaning my cut. The firelight licked across his handsome features: soft brown skin and eyes, sharp cheekbones and solid jawline, large, plump lips, wide, strong nose.

I winced at the sting of antiseptic. Here, with Harper, at home, I could show a little humanity. I wasn’t the same – my edges were rounded off, less sharp. I was razor focused when I was fighting, but as I sank into the wilted sofa cushions, I couldn’t help but wish that I could just tell Harper everything. 

I couldn’t afford to be this soft on the battlefield, though. One wince, one flicker of pain – any sign of weakness at all – and it could all be over. It was a luxury to come home to this, to my Harper, and I needed to remember that. It could so easily be taken away from me.

“Why didn’t you go to a hospital, Cals? This looks bad.”

Defiantly, I ripped open the packet of chocolate buttons and popped one into my mouth. “I’m fine, Harp, honestly. It was my fault. I lunged when I shouldn’t have. It was an accident, a mistake.” I gave a half-shrug to help sell my story, my lie.

He clucked his tongue in disapproval, sticking a butterfly tape stitch across the top of the cut. “It might scar. I just feel like I’m always bandaging you up from your activities. Karate, kickboxing, plus all those sports you play. You even managed to get banged up playing lacrosse.” He huffed a laugh to himself. “I thought that was a posh person sport. No injuries, guaranteed.”

A pang of guilt punched its way into my chest, and settled solidly around my heart. “I must just be clumsy.”

“Yeah, like that’s true. Look,” he said, nodding to the photo of us together on the ice rink, noses red and eyelashes rimmed with ice, “do you remember that night? I almost fell over, and you pulled me back up. I’m the clumsy one, Cals, not you.”

“I didn’t realise it was a competition,” I teased, wanting to change the subject, to keep our chatter light and easy. 

“Well, that’s on you,” he replied, a little, joking smile of his own pulling at his lips. “You should know by now that everything is a competition.” Then he settled back on his heels, pressing the last of the butterfly tape into place. “There. You’re all done.”

“Thanks, Harp.” I pressed a soft, fluttering kiss to his lips, and then let my forehead drop against his. My hair brushed across my shoulders, and Harper tangled his hand in it, holding me close as he brought my mouth back up to his.

I woke up before my alarm the next morning, the green light flashing numbers at me. Blearily, I discerned that I still had nine minutes to doze. Harper’s arm was slung across my waist, and I cuddled back against him for a moment. It was still dark outside; no sunlight was bordering the closed curtains, none trying to push through the cheap, thin fabric. 

As I yanked my legs out from under the warm duvet, Harper stirring, ever so slightly, beside me, I tried to decide what excuse, what lie, to write on my note this morning. An early-morning run, perhaps, or a meeting at the diner before my shift started. Maybe the manager wanted to see me about extra shifts again. Maybe not – there would be no extra income to show for them.

I didn’t like having to lie to him. But, as I pressed a quiet kiss to his forehead, his face slack, relaxed with sleep, I knew that it was worth it. Harper was home, and he was safe. 

I slipped a couple of stakes into my tote back, and then bunched up a sweater and shoved it in on top of them. I’d go straight from the patrol to work – Harper would have less chance to ask me questions that way. I’d unload some of the stakes at my Dads’ house on the way; the crumpled jumper was enough of a cover up before the sunrise, but in the light of day, in a bustling staffroom, they’d be too obvious.

I wouldn’t jeopardise Harper’s safety. Maybe lying to him was wrong, but as I hoisted my too-full tote bag onto my shoulder, the wooden stakes clacking against my hipbone, I knew that it was a necessary evil.

I never thought for a second that he might, one day, find out.