Soul to Keep Read online

  The text was from Papa. It was a picture of a bushel of apples.

  Fresh from the market. We’re making pies.

  When I got back to my room, I almost texted him back, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened the night before. And then I got a text from James.

  LOL what the fuck is this and who the fuck is that?

  A picture of Tokyo and me kissing popped up. I could only imagine which one of the OBA boys had taken it and sent it to James’s phone. I texted him back first.

  Long story. Her name is Bridgette. I’ll tell you about it later. I’m a little hungover.

  Not surprised. Kaleb said you were wasted. Sorry I missed it. LOL

  I’m not. Later. Please. I hit send then tossed my phone on my bed beside me.

  I’d gotten very drunk. And I’d made out with Tokyo, a lot. I remembered all of that. I didn’t remember even seeing Kaleb at the party though, but I did remember what I’m sure the girls were seeing in the video. The moment I’d dry humped her against a tree on the way back to the house. She was trying to get me home. We’d only made it a few feet away from where’d I’d taken a little nap on the curb. It was definitely time for me to get back to the house and in bed, but I was having too much fun drinking, and making out, and trying to get off on my pretend-girlfriend’s leg. I was having too much fun with Tokyo.

  Thinking of the whole night made me wet. I’d been completely out of control, but I remembered wanting to have sex with her so bad. I remembered how good the kissing was and just how turned on it made me feel. I almost wished I’d asked Skylar to send me the video. Something to remember the night by just in case it didn’t happen again, in case our fun was over.

  It wasn’t about fun though, was it? It was about science. And my theory. I had to see this experimental relationship through until it came to its natural conclusion. That’s how real relationships worked, long or short. You gave them a chance and then you could look back and see what you learned, or you could hold grudges while you pretended to move on. So I would see this through, to the sex at least.

  I picked up my phone and closed out of James’s text screen and went back down to Bridgette’s. I typed what came to mind.

  Sorry I left in a hurry. I don’t think Ginger would have let us talk alone.

  The little bubble with the three dots let me know she was already texting me back.

  I know. She gave me an earful.

  Can we talk today?

  Later, okay? I have to be a vampire for a while.

  She was making complete sense so I don’t know why my heart sank. I’d just seen her. I had just spent the whole night with her. I was pretty sure I could manage a few more hours without seeing her again. I answered her text so she didn’t think I was moping.

  Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll see you later.

  Yeah, you will. Have this in the meantime.

  A photo collage popped up on my phone. Pictures of Tokyo, looking like Bridgette, and me kissing, laughing. Smiling. Cute pictures, nothing like the sloppy display Kaleb had captured. It was something people in relationships did, take pictures of each other, with each other. Smile.

  I saved the picture to my phone. Maybe we could take more pictures later.

  Chapter Nine

  Tokyo

  When Ginger didn’t come back right away, I figured she was waiting for the right moment to properly cuss me out. It made more sense just to go to her. I wanted to spend more time with Jill, as her experimental, fake girlfriend or whatever. Keeping some secrets from Ginger was easy, but I couldn’t keep secrets like this. Not from Ginger under her own roof.

  I found her back in her apartment watching football with Carrie and Camila. “Come on in,” Camila said, nodding toward the open armchair next to their cuddle pile on the couch.

  “Thanks. Ginger, can I talk to you for a sec?”

  “Yeah, but shhhh until halftime. Like two minutes.” Ginger was obsessed with the New England Patriots, but they were watching the Ravens at Arizona.

  I sat quietly as the clock wound down to a 14-14 score at halftime. The camera zoomed in on a large black guy as he pulled off his helmet.

  “Hmmm, weird.”

  “What?” Ginger asked.

  “LaDanion Warren. I banged him once.” Camila didn’t say anything, but Ginger flashed me a disgusted look. “What? He feeds Moreland. Camila knows him too.”

  “I know, but come on. Care, why don’t you go grab us something from the kitchen?”

  “It’s okay,” Carrie said. She scooted up to her knees then kissed them both on the cheek. “I have two papers due tomorrow.” She grabbed the ABO quilt she’d brought down with her then headed out the door. Once it clicked behind her, I got to the point. The Visa Halftime wouldn’t last forever.

  “Jill asked me to pretend to be her girlfriend for the sake of her human sexuality project. She has no dating experience. I did not have anything to do with how drunk she got last night, but none of the girls ever want to be social with her, and I think she felt she could unwind because she was with me.

  “She wants me to keep this up until she reaches some sort of conclusion to her hypothesis. I just figured since we’re all pretending to be some approximation of what we’re not, pretending to be her girlfriend for a few weeks isn’t that big of a deal.”

  Ginger’s eyes narrowed. “Why you?”

  “I told you. Right place, right time. I just happened to catch her when she was up one night working on the shit. I asked her some questions that helped her corral her ideas. I think she appreciated that. And she asked me to keep helping her.”

  “So you came up with the idea for the survey?”

  “I got her there.”

  “Oh. Well, that makes way more sense.”

  “Than what?”

  “Well. Not to be a dick, but it makes more sense than her actually liking you. I mean—that’s not what I mean. It’s like you two have literally never talked before last week and then all of a sudden she’s asking me if you can help her with her homework.”

  “I think that’s why she asked me. I’m the least connected to her. Maybe ’cause I’m the least connected you,” I said since we were both being bitches.

  “Okay. Well, as long as it’s for science. It’s fine.”

  “I just have one request.”

  “Please fill me in.”

  “Don’t tell Jill we talked about this. I do think it’s important that the girls don’t think we’re controlling their lives, and this especially? I don’t know. She wants this and it’ll fuck everything up for her if she knows you’re in on the gag so to speak.”

  “So why tell me? Why not just keep her secret?”

  “Uh, ’cause I actually respect you even if you don’t respect me. And you’d kill me and ’cause Camila would kill me. But really, even though you’ve made up your mind about me not giving a shit about anyone, I do. I care about Jill’s feelings.”

  Ginger turned and looked at Camila. Camila shrugged. “I think you know what the call is here, Red.”

  “Thank you, Camila,” I said, a little shocked that she was siding with me. “We used to be friends once, before you got married. I’m glad you remembered that.”

  She threw me a wink. “I got you.”

  “Fuck both of you,” Ginger whined. “I won’t tell her. But I don’t know care if it messes with her project, tell me if anything crazy happens. She is mine, ya know.”

  “Deal. Everything else on the up and up? I haven’t heard anything else from Dalhem.”

  “Yeah, so far it’s been quiet. No demon sightings. No feeders have suddenly gone missing. Oh, and Pax was nice enough to cover with the girls last night. You should thank him.”

  “He’s a great guy. I think I will. I’ll leave you to your football.” I vanished back to my place, knowing that football would only be their focus until they remembered they were attached at the genitals, then they’d spend the rest of the day in bed. I had to make some calls and check in o
n something for Navaeh, but first I looked up a good florist.

  ❖

  Jill

  I didn’t see Tokyo at all for the next two days. She sent me silly texts and pictures when she could, but between my classes and the fact that she couldn’t set foot outside in human form until after sun down, it made it all that much more difficult to actually keep up with this whole girlfriend thing. However, the more I thought about it, I realized not seeing her would play well into my experiment. I didn’t want to date a girl in the house. If Tokyo were a real college student, she’d have her own schedule, her own homework and activities to worry about. I wouldn’t be able to see her whenever I wanted. Her absence would add another element to the situation that I hadn’t seriously considered. Longing.

  Monday afternoon I sent her a text, something to ease the strange pull in my stomach that appeared when I came back to the house to discover she was gone.

  Handling something for Dalhem, was the text she sent back.

  The pull in my stomach moved to my throat, and I thought for a moment I might be feeling a hint of disappointment. And a hint of jealousy. I wanted to know what she was doing. Ginger and the other sister-queens were pretty transparent with what was happening in and outside of the house, but I knew there were plenty of things they kept from us for our own safety. Given the true nature of what they were, of what Dalhem was, what they kept from us in confidence was definitely for the best. An existential crisis based on knowing that demons were in fact real was not something I needed to deal with just eighteen months away from graduation. So I tried my best to let her absence slide. She had responsibilities and so did I.

  Monday night, Faeth did bed check. My smile dropped the moment I realized it was her. She thought I was expecting Ginger though, not her other sister-demon. I didn’t correct her when she laughed in a good-natured way.

  Tuesday, I was too busy trying to get more surveys filled out to do much texting, and right after dinner, James and Van came to the library with me so I could meet Brayley. She’d gotten a good amount of our surveys filled out, but we only had two hundred, and Maryland University had a student body of about twenty thousand. Dr. Miller agreed to have all of her anthropology classes take the survey, but we still needed a bigger sample.

  “Could your sorority set up a table on the quad and just ask people to fill them out as they walk by?” Brayley suggested.

  “I suppose I could do that myself. I don’t think the girls care about this.”

  “Well, some of them do. They filled out the surveys pretty seriously.”

  “No. You’re right.”

  “We can man the table with you,” James offered.

  “And I’ll help you too.” I looked up to see Tokyo, or should I say Bridgette, standing next to our table. She was in full college student mode. Messy bun, MU sweatshirt with tattered hood. A backpack that appeared to be weighed down with actual books. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Here. My stats teacher let me poll the class, and I got these from the ladies of Gamma Ro and the Tri Pis.” She put another hundred or so surveys on the table.

  “Whoa! Thank you.” Brayley glanced between Tokyo and me. My face was still frozen. “Um, who are you?”

  “Bridgette. Nice to meet you. I’m…um…Jill’s. I’m Jill’s.”

  “Oh! That was—” Brayley stopped herself.

  “That was what?” I probed.

  “Fast. Last week—you know what? Never mind. Thanks, Bridgette. These will help a lot.”

  “Sorry, this is Brayley and James and Van.”

  “Nice to meet you,” James said, a little smile hitting the corner of his lips. I kicked him under the table. “Ow. What?”

  “You know what.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too. Mind if I study with you guys?” She looked at me when she asked the group. Of course I didn’t mind, but what the heck was she going to study?

  “Ah, sure.” I jumped up and pulled a chair over from the empty table behind us. Tokyo sat down and pulled out a copy of Ellison’s Invisible Man.

  “I have to finish it tonight.”

  “Can we talk for a second?” I asked her. “Come to the bathroom with me.”

  “Sure.”

  I excused us and dragged Tokyo to the far stacks, in the general direction of the bathroom.

  “Hi,” she whispered when we were alone.

  “How’d you pull all this together?” I gestured to her outfit, but I was more concerned about the books. And the general impression that she was really enrolled at MU.

  “Easy. We have access to the chancellor’s office. There’s a girl in your Arabic class, Sara something. She doesn’t have a single class with anyone else from ABO or OBA. So technically, I could be her. I just looked up her syllabuses. Much easier now that everything is online. Omi use to have to hack professors’ personal computers, and before that there was a lot of breaking and entering.”

  “But the homework? You’re going to sit here and do homework?”

  “What? I like refreshing myself on how creative or wrong humans are sometimes.”

  “So you’re going to sit here and read while we work on our project?”

  “Yeah. And I’ll help if I can. I thought it would be nice to hang out a bit. I am your pretend girlfriend and all.”

  “That is true.”

  “Look, I can leave if you want me to. I get it. Really. This is kinda weird.” Tokyo’s tone was sincere, like she wanted exactly what I wanted. She wanted what was best for me. I knew if I asked her to go, she wouldn’t be offended, and even after that, she would probably be waiting for me at the house and still be my pretend girlfriend. She wouldn’t be offended at all. She tilted her head to the side and then reached up and twirled my ponytail.

  “No. Stay. You might get bored though.”

  “Nah. Ellison’s a good reread. Let’s go back.”

  “Okay, but I—I wanted to talk to you. About something else.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. What’s up?” She was so much easier to talk to than Ginger. Maybe because my whole being didn’t belong to her. Maybe because it was easier to talk to someone when you knew they didn’t have you bound to a critical obligation.

  “Well, I had a few questions. About Saturday night. And another one about something I saw in your room.”

  “Yeah, shoot.”

  “I…sort of mounted you. When I was drunk. I saw the video. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s video?”

  “Yeah, Skylar has it.”

  “Ooooh, I want to see it.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “Uh, no. Why would I be?”

  “Because I got drunk and didn’t get your consent.”

  “God, you’re great. Okay, listen. One, I can snap you in half, so whether I’m pretending to be human or not, there’s no way I wouldn’t be able to stop you from doing something to me physically. But I’m glad that consent matters to you. It should. Hold on to that. Two, this kind of clueless, inexperienced thing you have going on, mixed with how eager you get when you just relax has had me like crazy wet for days.”

  Just hearing her say that turned me on. “Really?”

  “Uh, yeah. You’re a good kisser too. And you were fun drunk. Not wild drunk. I would have told Ginger if you were wild drunk. Or dangerous drunk.”

  “That’s not really me. Either of those…types of drunk.”

  “What was the other thing you wanted to ask me?”

  “I noticed, when we were in your room—” I took a deep breath and just came out with the rest. I had no reason to be shy or embarrassed. “I saw the chains and things in your room. Hanging from the wall.”

  “Oh yeah, that.” She waved her hand between us. “We don’t need to worry about that. I used to do that with Cleo. And Natasha and Rodrick. And Camila, now that I’m thinking about it. That’s me. Not Bridgette. I have someone for that now.”

  “I understand that. I am asking because I was curious.”


  “Huh! Okay. Ginger will try to drain me, but I can show you, I guess.”

  “Next weekend?”

  “But that’s Halloween. And you’re going out with the girls, right?”

  “Yeah…” Halloween was one of the few times during the year I enjoyed doing things as a group. We were all going as food. We picked our costumes out of a hat. I was going as a bunch of grapes.

  “I usually have the most fun at my friend Moreland’s place. We’ll go there some time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s get back so you guys can science.” She took my hand and started leading me back to the table, but I wasn’t done yet. She looked back at me when she realized I’d barely moved. “What’s up?”

  “I want to kiss you,” I told her honestly.

  “All you had to do was ask.”

  I braced myself as she backed me against the wall, lightly cupping my face until our lips touched. That was what I had been missing. I’d been pretty drunk, but I remembered the kissing, and I wanted to experience that again, sober.

  I knew she was immortal. That was the only way to explain the softness of her lips. And her supernatural existence was the only way to explain how quickly my body reacted to the sweet citrus way she smelled and tasted. I wanted her closer. I wanted her to touch me, all over. Between my legs. It was her magic that made me think I was going to come right then and there.

  I kissed her deeply, sweeping my tongue into her mouth over and over. I pulled away though, when I felt her laughing a little against my lips.

  “What? What’s funny?”

  “You. I have to fuck you soon.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Tokyo gently touched my lower lip with her thumb. “Do you feel how worked up you are?”

  “I’ve never felt this before,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I meant.

  “I know.”

  “Can we make plans to see each other again?”

  “Of course, but normal plans. I don’t want to fuck up your experiment. It has to be organic, remember?” She leaned forward and kissed me again. “Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, we hang out. My dad needs the car Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, see. And Fridays, I have a previous engagement.”