Almost Everything

by Tate Hallaway

  Nik looked around wildly at that and went over to a chest. He started pulling open drawers and searching frantically. “Where’s the key?” he demanded of his mom.

  She shook her head mutely. Her eyes stayed locked on mine. “Please,” she said. “You’re one of us. If we don’t do this, the witches will do it for us. All of us agreed.”

  “Us, who?” I wanted to know.

  “The uninitiated,” Mrs. Kirov said. Her gaze flicked nervously as Bea struggled with her father and Nik continued to toss up the room in search of the key. “We had to strike first. The attacks have been growing. They’d soon turn to us. We were always the first to be sacrificed.”

  “What if there was another way?” I asked. I hadn’t moved from where I stood partially out in the hallway. “I think I might have an idea that won’t involve any death—uh, at least, maybe.”

  Everyone stopped to look at me then.

  “Another way?” Mr. Braithwaite repeated. “I thought the hunt is an unbreakable covenant between witch and vampire.”

  “That’s not helping, Dad,” Bea said with a sarcastic sigh.

  “Tell them,” Nik encouraged.

  I cleared my throat, uncomfortable with the attention but happy with the momentary cease-fire. “It’s really just a theory, but I think maybe there’s something in our blood—witch blood, that maybe we can, you know, reproduce with science or something.”

  Bea made a disappointed noise. Her dad actually scoffed.

  Okay, this wasn’t going exactly how I’d hoped.

  But, when I looked over at her, Mrs. Kirov was nodding thoughtfully. “Like the Ukrainian corpse walkers.”

  Now the attention shifted as we all stared at her. She was rubbing her arms, as if the thought of whatever these creatures were made her blood run cold.

  “That doesn’t sound like something you’d create in a lab,” Nikolai said. “Unless you mean Dr. Frankenstein’s.”

  “Just so,” she said, and then looking at me with accusation in her eyes, added, “This is very black magic you suggest, Ana.”

  “Uh, I don’t even know what a corpse walker is, though it sounds bad, like a zombie or something,” I said.

  “Worse,” she said with a visible shiver. “Back in the Old Country, to avoid the lottery, in the dark days, sometimes a corpse would be offered to the vampires. Of course, they wouldn’t touch dead flesh, so the body had to be reanimated.”

  “And that worked?” Bea asked.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Kirov said, “though it must be performed only on the recent dead, or the spell rebounds and the corpse walker steals the soul of the caster.”

  We all contemplated that horror in silence for a moment.

  “I wasn’t really thinking about anything that drastic,” I admitted. “I was thinking that, you know, maybe we could toss them a bag of blood from the Red Cross drive.”

  After a beat, the room erupted in laughter.

  My face reddened. “I’m half-serious,” I said. “I mean, there’s got to be a ton of our blood out there. That donation bus is at every big coven gathering.”

  That stopped them. Mr. Braithwaite had taken his glasses off to wipe tears from his eyes, and he squinted at me.

  I couldn’t tell what question lurked behind his eyes, but I continued. “It’s clear our blood is special. Why else would there be so many witches who are medical professionals?”

  Once again, Mrs. Kirov cut off the protests. “Of course, it’s our Neanderthal ancestress. Her genetic markers are in our blood. But bottled blood has been tried before. Death magic is essential to their hunt.”

  I felt everything start to come apart, and I slumped heavily against the doorframe.

  “Why does it work to offer corpses, then?” Bea asked. She seemed to wake up during the discussion. Her face had dried, and some of the redness had faded.

  “Reanimation returns the human animus to the body for long enough for the vampires to sense its departure,” Mrs. Kirov said.

  “What was that word you just used?” I said, standing up.

  She blinked at me curiously. “Animus. Why?”

  “Humans have them too?” I asked.

  “Of course. It’s the soul,” Nikolai’s mom said.

  I grinned like an idiot because I finally knew the solution. “Let Bea’s mom go,” I said. “I know what to do.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Animus.

  It wasn’t just what vampires called their souls. If I understood Mrs. Kirov correctly, it was also what we called our own.

  When Luis got all grossed out by my not having chosen sides, he’d said something about how I had two animuses. Now I think I understood what he meant: I had one witch and one vampire soul. Maybe that was how my magic worked—the friction of the two souls working against each other. Maybe that was why it always felt like the polar opposites of a magnet pushing against each other.

  But if I had two souls, did that mean I had one to spare?

  I thought it must. The logic seemed good; after all, wasn’t that what Luis was all freaked out about? That I hadn’t gotten rid of one?

  If Dad could abdicate his soul in death, maybe I could use the same magic to get rid of my extra one … only without the dying part.

  I was nodding my head as I thought through this, feeling more and more positive it would work.

  Despite my confidence in my plan, Mrs. Kirov didn’t instantly move to release Bea’s mom. Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your plan, then?”

  “I’ve got an extra animus,” I explained. “I’ll abdicate it or whatever. That can be the death magic.”

  Nikolai sat back against the dresser he’d been raiding and rubbed his head as if I’d given him an instant headache. “Didn’t you hear my mom? Your animus is your soul, Ana.”

  “I know,” I said, “but vampire souls are different. I have two souls. I know I can live without one of them, because I’m pretty sure that’s what the vampire Initiation deal does—kills the witch soul.”

  Mr. Braithwaite nodded. “I believe you’re right about that, but that’s because, in its own way, the vampire Initiation is a little like what happens when you bring a vampire over from beyond the Veil. You remove the human soul and replace it with the vampire.”

  Wow. Dad never told me that part of the deal when he showed up at my door and said I should run off with him and become a princess.

  Bea frowned deeply, considering. “So Ana has been carrying around a potential vampire since she was born? How does that work? I thought they all came from the Other Side.”

  “Maybe we do too, in our own way,” Mr. Braithwaite said. “Who knows where the human soul comes from?”

  This conversation was getting really deep, but I thought I understood what Mr. Braithwaite might be implying. Maybe dhampyrs were like those eggs you sometimes come across, with two yolks—a twin, only on a soul level.

  “Let Kat go, Mom,” Nikolai said. “Dad has no idea you have her locked in the attic, does he?”

  His mom shook her head, sending curls cascading around narrow shoulders. That seemed to me like the sort of thing that might cause a divorce, especially considering how hardheaded Mr. Kirov could be. She sighed. Her shoulders dropped as if she had let go of a huge weight. “My sewing circle is going to be royally pissed off at me if your plan backfires,” Mrs. Kirov said to me.

  I tried to look hurt that she’d lack such confidence in me, but I couldn’t blame her. I might have come up with a possible solution for the “death magic” part of the hunt problem, but I still didn’t know what we were going to do about the blood requirement.

  Maybe if I could fake death with the sacrifice of my animus, I could offer my own. It seemed the responsible thing to do as the princess, but the idea scared me to death, no pun intended. There were a lot of vampires. Even if all of them took only a small bite, wouldn’t I be drained in no time? I guess it depended on which part of the hunt was more important. Was it the blood or the “eating of the soul,” as it were?r />
  Maybe Dad knew. I had to talk to him soon, anyway. I couldn’t have Dad killing himself before I had a chance to explain my theory to him.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Kirov had gotten a bucket of hot soapy water from their upstairs bathroom. She was proceeding to wash the attic door. Bea and I exchanged a curious look. “Witch magic was defeated by dirt?” I asked.

  “No,” Nikolai said quietly. “By a hex.”

  I didn’t think Mrs. Kirov had Real Magic. How had she been able to infuse a hex with the kind of power that the combined forces of Bea and her dad couldn’t penetrate?

  Nik must have read my confusion on my face, because he said, “Mom’s people have always had protections against Real Magic. No one knows why it works.”

  I nodded, leaning heavily against the doorframe. Mrs. Kirov removed a key from her pocket and unlocked the attic door. Bea and her dad pushed past her and rushed up the set of steep stairs. I heard happy noises above. Since I knew that Bea’s mom was going to be okay, my lack of sleep suddenly caught up with me and I felt ready to collapse.

  I rubbed my eyes. I still had things to do. As Nik spoke softly to his mom, I pulled my cell out of my pocket. There were a number of messages on it. Most of them were from Thompson. I must have been so caught up in all the excitement that I never even felt them buzz.

  Scrolling through them, I looked for anything from Mom. I didn’t find anything, so I typed, “Found B’s mom. Everything OK,” and I hit Send.

  I was just stuffing the cell back into my pocket when it buzzed. It was Mom calling, so I answered.

  “Where was she?” Mom asked without preamble.

  Nik’s head was close to his mom’s. You could really see the family resemblance. They had the same nose and hair. Even though kidnapping Bea’s mom was pretty evil, I didn’t really want to get Mrs. Kirov in trouble with the coven, especially since Mr. Kirov didn’t know anything about the “sewing circle’s” ambush.

  “She’s okay,” I said, as if Mom had asked a different question. “I’m glad you called, actually, because I think I have a solution to the hunt. You guys can call off all your lotteries and double-crossing, okay? I’m going to take care of it.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to give up my second soul,” I said.

  There was silence on the other end. “How is that going to work?”

  I probably should have been angry that Mom didn’t even ask what I meant when I implied I had an extra soul. She knew about this whole double-animus thing the whole time. As I thought about it, it made sense. She’d never told me why, but she was super against my going through the vampire Initiation. I suppose she must have known I’d lose my human soul. “Do you know about vampire abdication?”

  “I’ve heard about it,” she admitted. “Victor has talked about the nosferatu in the Old Country, how they’re crazy strong after stealing souls. But what does that have to do with the hunt?”

  “Apparently, a vampire can give up his soul willingly too. Sort of like what happens at the vampire Initiation ceremony.”

  “They don’t have an Initiation cere—” She stopped herself. She sounded horrified as she realized what I was saying. “You mean the rite of passage—for dhampyrs.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m thinking I can use that same process to mimic my death. You know, so that the murder magic can be fulfilled.”

  “If you do that, you’ll become a full vampire,” my mom said.

  “But it won’t kill me, right? And, if Luis is any indication, I can still walk around in the daylight.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  But I did. I’d finally found a solution that would solve this problem without anyone dying. So what if I had to become a full vampire to do it! It wouldn’t solve the problem long term, but it would buy me time—a full generation, twenty years—to figure out something more permanent.

  “Tell everybody we’ll do it tomorrow night. I need some sleep.” I held back a yawn with some effort. “Don’t let anybody do anything stupid in the meantime.”

  “We need to talk more about this,” she said.

  “Thanks, Mom. Love you,” I said, ignoring her. Before she could continue her protest, I hung up.

  Nikolai and his mom were watching me carefully. Mrs. Kirov’s face was pale.

  “I didn’t tell her anything about you,” I said.

  Just then Bea and her dad came downstairs, supporting her mom between them. She looked groggy, as if she’d been sleeping. She smiled goofily when she saw Mrs. Kirov. “Great tea,” she slurred happily. “You’ve got to give me the recipe!”

  “I can’t believe you drugged her,” Bea snarled in a whisper as she passed Nik’s mom.

  I got out of the way as they maneuvered Bea’s mom out the door. She smiled at me too. “Ana, I didn’t know you were part of the sewing circle. Is the party still going on? I want more tea.”

  “I think you’ve had plenty of tea,” Mr. Braithwaite said, flicking on light switches as he went.

  “Bill, just look at this place. It’s like a presidential palace.” I heard her speaking as they staggered downstairs. “It’s a little somber, but it’s very impressive.”

  “I like our house,” Bea said. “I can’t wait to get home.”

  The door swung open and shut. They were gone.

  Nik wrapped his mom in a tight hug. I hoped there would be no fallout from the kidnapping, but I couldn’t imagine Bea was going to let bygones be bygones very easily. To be fair, I’d probably be feeling pretty vengeful if someone drugged my mom with plans to sacrifice her to hungry vampires. Still, the last thing we needed on top of everything else was a war between the Initiates and non-Initiates of the coven.

  When Nikolai gently kissed the top of his mom’s head, I felt like an intruder. I turned to go.

  I had made it only as far as the landing when Nik called out, “Where to next?”

  “I should find Elias,” I said. I waited as he bounded down the stairs to catch up to me. “Or my dad. I need to talk to a vampire. I have to make sure this will really work.”

  He nodded and fished his car keys from his pocket. “To the underground kingdom, then.”

  I shivered at the idea of going back there again, but I supposed that was the place to go. I put a hand on Nik’s arm. It was great that he was willing to play chauffeur, but I felt guilty taking him away from his family. “Is your mom going to be okay?”

  “She’s really scared, Ana. I blame my dad. From what I can tell, he comes home every night with horror stories of what things will be like if the hunt doesn’t happen soon. To hear him talk, it’s the freaking vampire apocalypse.”

  I didn’t much care for Mr. Kirov, but I decided to keep my opinion of Nik’s dad to myself.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Nikolai said, with a glance over his shoulder. “Mom and Kat have been friends forever.”

  “I can’t imagine they still will be when Bea’s mom sobers up,” I said.

  A short-haired black cat padded out from the darkened living room to twine around my legs when I stopped in front of the door. Nikolai shooed it away with a gentle nudge of his toe. “You’re an indoor cat, Inky.”

  The cat sat back on its haunches and regarded Nikolai. “No,” it seemed to meow.

  “Yes, you are,” Nikolai admonished with an exaggerated wag of his finger.

  The cat blinked and quite deliberately turned its back on us.

  Nik opened the door for me, and we slipped through. Inky turned to watch us indignantly but didn’t make a break for it. Nikolai stuck his head back in for a moment before latching it, and he told the cat, “Take care of Mama, Ink. She needs some love.”

  I swear I heard the pad of feet as the cat went off to do Nik’s bidding.

  “Smart cat,” I said.

  “Hmm?” Nik said, as if it never occurred to him that normal cats might not follow directions so well. “I suppose.”

  When we stepped out onto his porch, he took my hand.


  “You were really amazing in there,” Nikolai said. He leaned forward and put his lips on my forehead.

  I ducked back. “Nik,” I said, “we can’t date. I’m seeing someone else.”

  He looked down at our hands, which I hadn’t quite had the good sense to release. “Hmm.”

  Lifting our hands, he kissed my knuckles. It was a very romantic gesture, so I had to pull away. He grabbed my fingers and wouldn’t let them go. I tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he just held on, smiling.

  “I told you I’ll wait until you’re bored with your mundane,” he said. He let go so quickly, I nearly stumbled backward. He turned on his heels before I could react. “We should go.”

  I followed him down the sidewalk, frowning at his back. Of course, he had a point. Thompson could never understand my world. I mean, I barely understood all the animuses and abdications and all that, but Nik was so dismissive of my relationship with Thompson. It wasn’t fair, on so many levels, not the least of which was that it had only just started. I hardly even knew what it was going to be like to go out on a real date with Thompson, and Nikolai was already planning for when it was over.

  The breeze brought with it the light scent of moonflowers. Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, I breathed it in. I closed my eyes. I decided to let go of my frustration over Nikolai’s weird, smug assumptions about my future with Thompson. Instead, I tried to focus on my bond with Elias. Maybe I could get a sense of where he was.

  A strong sense of camaraderie brought a smile to my lips. My body was warm, strong, and content. I tasted something malty.

  When I opened my eyes, Nik was watching curiously over the roof of his car. Arms folded, he rested his head on his hands. The electric light of the streetlamp brought out the contrast of his pale skin and jet-black hair. The tattoos on his arm stood out darkly.

  “I think Elias is at a bar,” I said.

  “I guess they won the fight if they’re celebrating.” Nikolai laughed. “Do you suppose they stopped to get dressed, or should we google nudist bars?”