Page 2 of Born Wicked

The elevator is loud and shaky as we rise up to the thirty-second floor. If I weren’t a vampire, and one who can’t die, I might be a little nervous. I certainly wouldn’t trust it. But out of everything in this world, I now fear death the least.

I pull out my keys when we reach my floor and unlock the door.

And my heart just feels lighter when I step inside, and everything in me sighshome.

I got the keys to my new place three days ago. Yesterday, all my new furniture was delivered.

As exciting as that was, it also kind of filled me with grief.

Elena was with me when I picked this place. She’d had all kinds of ideas on how to furnish it. I thought I was going to have to do this all myself. Making that many decisions was overwhelming.

But at ten in the morning, I got a call telling me the delivery truck would be there in one hour.

Elena picked it all. She’d arranged everything.

And my best friend knows me so well. After the delivery people brought everything inside, they handed me a very large bill.

I hate it when she tries to pay for everything for me, so I fight her when it comes to stuff like this. But I trust her sense of style, almost always without question.

There is now a beautiful, oversized emerald green couch in the living room, accompanied by two brilliantly white arm chairs. A glass-topped table sits in the dining area with black chairs pushed under it. In the bedroom, there is a bed with a massively tall, black headboard. A green comforter tops it, nearly the same shade of green as the couch. Matching nightstands sit on either side of the bed, and there’s a dresser at the foot of the bed.

It's perfect.

Even though Elena picked all the furnishings, it still feels like me. If I had any coordinated style, this is what I would have picked.

“You want all this in the closet?” Jon asks as we walk through the apartment.

“Yes, please,” I answer with a nod. Roman follows behind Jon, and they dump my filled garbage bags in the huge walk-in-closet. I set the rest of my things in the bathroom, alongside the things I brought from Roman’s secret church.

“By the way…” I start as I walk to one of the bags in the bathroom. I fish out the makeup bag, the black one with the green polka dots. Inside, I find a stack of cash, my dash money. I pull out a few hundred-dollar bills and hand them over to Roman. “Told you I’d pay you back.”

“I didn’t doubt it,” he says with a light smile. I’m glad he accepts it without fighting me. He simply pulls out his wallet and slips the bills inside. “Need anything else today?”

I shake my head, sliding my hands into my back pockets. “I don’t think so. I just need a day to unpack, and then I have to get back into the hospital. With Sebastian gone this long, things have been chaos there.”

“Trust me, Juliet, the way you run that ship, it is far from chaos,” Jon says with a smirk.

He’s been there every day, trying to help in any way he can, while I’ve been trying to run interference with the disaster Sebastian left behind.

“I don’t know, being a doctor and being an administrator are two very different things.” I place my hands on my hips and take a deep sigh as I look around my new space.

“You were elected council member for a reason,” Jon says as he raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re a natural-born leader.”

Another sigh drags out of me as I look back at my father. It’s weird having cheerleaders these days. My entire life, there was never anyone cheering me along.

“Thanks again for your help,” I say. And the two of them catch the cue. They both head toward the main door. “Once I’m all settled in, expect an invitation for dinner. Do not, however, expect a homemade meal.”

The both of them chuckle. I am not a cook. When it gets down to it, I can handle the essentials. But in the weeks I have lived at the church, I haven’t touched anything in the kitchen that wasn’t already made by Roman’s hands.

“We look forward to it,” Roman says. I catch his brilliantly blue eyes as he turns to walk away. And something surprising and unfamiliar strikes me in the chest. I haven’t been alone since my world came crashing down. From the moment I stepped out on my engagement party, Roman has been there for me. He’s had my back during what have been some of the worst times of my life.

I’m going to miss him.

“Have a good night, Juliet,” Roman says. Something in his tone, in his words, and the way he says it, reaches all the way down to my soul and ties itself around me. I think that, just maybe, he’s going to miss me, too.

“'Night,” I mutter. And I watch as the door closes between us.

There is something cathartic about starting over. I mean, it’s hard to call this a true, new beginning. These are the same things that I’ve had for nearly a year now. But there is something about a new place. New surroundings. New furniture. New rooms.