by L. J. Smith
“Well, with a picket from the fence,” Kestrel said.
“She was already dead?” Mary-Lynnette said to Rowan. “But then why on earth did you bury her in the backyard?”
“It would have been disrespectful to leave her in the cellar.”
“But why didn’t you have her taken to a cemetery?”
Rowan looked dismayed.
Jade said, “Um, you haven’t seen Aunt Opal.”
“She’s not looking so good,” Kestrel said. “Kind of hard and stiff. You might say mummified.”
“It’s what happens to us,” Rowan said almost apologetically.
Mary-Lynnette slumped back against Mark, trying to get her new world view into place. Everything was whirling.
“So…you were just trying to hide her. But…you did do something to Todd Akers and Vic Kim—”
“They attacked us,” Jade interrupted. “They were thinking very bad things and they pinched our arms.”
“They—?” Mary-Lynnette sat up suddenly. All at once she understood. “Oh, my God. Those jerks!”
Why hadn’t she thought of that? Todd and Vic—last year there had been rumors about them jumping some girl from Westgrove. So they’d tried it on these girls, and…
Mary-Lynnette gasped and then snorted with half-inhaled laughter. “Oh, no. Oh, I hope you got them good….”
“We just bit them a little,” Rowan said.
“I wish I’d been there to see it.”
She was laughing. Rowan was smiling. Kestrel was grinning barbarically. And suddenly Mary-Lynnette knew that they weren’t going to fight anymore.
Everybody took a deep breath and sat back and looked at one another.
They do look different from normal humans, Mary-Lynnette thought, staring at them in the moonlight. It’s so obvious once you know.
They were inhumanly beautiful, of course. Rowan with her soft chestnut hair and sweet face; Kestrel with her feral sleekness and golden eyes; Jade with her delicate features and her hair like starshine. Like the Three Graces, only fiercer.
“Okay,” Rowan said softly. “We seem to have a situation here. Now we’ve got to figure something out.”
“We won’t tell on you,” Mark said. He and Jade were gazing at each other.
“We’ve got Romeo and Juliet on our hands here is what we’ve got,” Mary-Lynnette said to Rowan.
But Kestrel was speaking to Rowan, too. “No matter what they promise, how do we know we can believe them?”
Rowan considered, eyes roving around the clearing. Then she let out a long breath and nodded.
“There’s only one way,” she said. “Blood-tie.”
Kestrel’s eyebrows flew up. “Oh, really?”
“What is it?” Mary-Lynnette asked.
“A blood-tie?” Rowan looked helpless. “Well, it’s a kinship ceremony, you know.” When Mary-Lynnette just looked at her, she went on: “It makes our families related. It’s like, one of our ancestors did it with a family of witches.”
Witches, Mary-Lynnette thought. Oh…gosh. So witches are real, too. I wonder how many other things are real that I don’t know about?
“Vampires don’t usually get along with witches,” Rowan was saying. “And Hunter Redfern—that’s our ancestor—had a real blood feud going with them back in the sixteen hundreds.”
“But then he couldn’t have kids,” Jade said gleefully. “And he needed a witch to help or the whole Redfern family would end with him. So he had to apologize and do a kinship ceremony. And then he had all daughters. Ha ha.”
Mary-Lynnette blinked. Ha ha?
“So, you see, we’re part witch. All the Redferns are,” Rowan was explaining in her gentle teaching voice.
“Our father used to say that’s why we’re so disobedient,” Jade said. “Because it’s in our genes. Because in witch families, women are in charge.”
Mary-Lynnette began to like witches. “Ha ha,” she said. Mark gave her a skittish sideways look.
“The point is that we could do a ceremony like that now,” Rowan said. “It would make us family forever. We couldn’t betray each other.”
“No problem,” Mark said, still looking at Jade.
“Fine with me,” Jade said, and gave him a quick, fierce smile.
But Mary-Lynnette was thinking. It was a serious thing Rowan was talking about. You couldn’t do something like this on a whim. It was worse than adopting a puppy; it was more like getting married. It was a lifetime responsibility. And even if these girls didn’t kill humans, they killed animals. With their teeth.
But so did people. And not always for food. Was it worse to drink deer blood than to make baby cows into boots?
Besides, strange as it seemed, she felt close to the three sisters already. In the last couple of minutes she’d established more of a relationship with Rowan than she ever had with any girl at school. Fascination and respect had turned into a weird kind of instinctive trust.
And beside that, what other real choice was there?
Mary-Lynnette looked at Mark, and then at Rowan. She nodded slowly.
“Okay.”
Rowan turned to Kestrel.
“So I’m supposed to decide, am I?” Kestrel said.
“We can’t do it without you,” Rowan said. “You know that.”
Kestrel looked away. Her golden eyes were narrowed. In the moonlight her profile was absolutely perfect against the darkness of trees. “It would mean we could never go home again. Make ourselves kin to vermin? That’s what they’d say.”
“Who’s vermin?” Mark said, jolted out of his communion with Jade.
Nobody answered. Jade said, with odd dignity, “I can’t go home, anyway. I’m in love with an Outsider. And I’m going to tell him about the Night World. So I’m dead no matter what.” Mark was opening his mouth—to protest that Jade shouldn’t take such a risk for him, Mary-Lynnette thought—when Jade added absently, “And so is he, of course.”
Mark shut his mouth.
Rowan said, “Kestrel, we’ve come too far to go back.”
Kestrel stared at the forest for another minute or so. Then suddenly she turned back to the others, laughing. There was something wild in her eyes.
“All right, let’s go the whole way,” she said. “Tell them everything. Break every rule. We might as well.”
Mary-Lynnette felt a twinge. She hoped she wasn’t going to regret this. But what she said was “Just how do we do this—ceremony?”
“Exchange blood. I’ve never done it before, but it’s simple.”
“It might be a little bit strange, though,” Jade said, “because you’ll be a little bit vampires afterward.”
“A little bit what?” Mary-Lynnette said, her voice rising in spite of her.
“Just a little bit.” Jade was measuring out tiny bits of air between her index finger and thumb. “A drop.”
Kestrel cast a look skyward. “It’ll go away in a few days,” she said heavily, which was what Mary-Lynnette wanted to know.
“As long as you don’t get yourself bitten by a vampire again in the meantime,” Rowan added. “Otherwise, it’s perfectly safe. Honestly.”
Mary-Lynnette and Mark exchanged glances. Not to discuss things, they’d gone beyond that now. Just to brace themselves. Then Mary-Lynnette took a deep breath and flicked a bit of fern off her knee.
“Okay,” she said, feeling lightheaded but determined. “We’re ready.”
CHAPTER 10
It felt like a jellyfish sting.
Mary-Lynnette kept her eyes shut and her face turned away as Rowan bit into her neck. She was thinking of the way the deer had screamed. But the pain wasn’t so bad. It went away almost immediately.
She could feel warmth at her neck as the blood flowed, and, after a minute, a slight dizziness. A weakness. But the most interesting thing was that all at once she seemed to have a new sense. She could sense Rowan’s mind. It was like seeing, but without eyes—and using different wavelengths than visual light. Rowan’s mind�
�her presence—was warm red, like glowing embers in a campfire. It was also fuzzy and rounded like a ball of hot gas floating in space.
Is this what psychics mean when they talk about people having an aura?
Then Rowan pulled back, and it was over. The new sense disappeared.
Mary-Lynnette’s fingers went automatically to her neck. She felt wetness there. A little tenderness.
“Don’t fool with it,” Rowan said, brushing at her lips with her thumb. “It’ll go away in just a minute.”
Mary-Lynnette blinked, feeling languid. She looked over at Mark, who was being released by Kestrel. He looked okay, if a little dazed. She smiled at him and he raised his eyebrows and shook his head slightly.
I wonder what his mind looks like, Mary-Lynnette thought. Then she said, startled, “What are you doing?”
Rowan had picked up a twig and was testing its end for sharpness.
“Every species has some substance that’s harmful to it,” she said. “Silver for werewolves, iron for witches…and wood for vampires. It’s the only thing out here that will cut our skin,” she added.
“I didn’t mean that. I meant why,” Mary-Lynnette said, but she knew why already. She watched redness bead in the wake of the twig as Rowan drew it across her wrist.
Exchange blood, Rowan had said.
Mary-Lynnette gulped. She didn’t look at Mark and Kestrel.
I’ll do it first and then he’ll see it’s not so bad, she told herself. I can do this, I can do this…. It’s so we can stay alive.
Rowan was looking at her, offering her wrist.
Copperbloodfear, Mary-Lynnette thought, feeling queasy.
She shut her eyes and put her mouth to Rowan’s wrist.
Warmth. Well-being. And a taste not like copper, but like something rich and strange. Later, she’d always grope for ways to describe it, but she could only think of things like: well, a little bit like the way vanilla bean smells, and a little bit like the way silk feels, and a little bit like the way a waterfall looks. It was faintly sweet.
Afterward, she felt as if she could run up mountains.
“Oh, boy,” Mark said, sounding giddy. “If you could bottle that stuff, you’d make millions.”
“It’s been thought of before,” Kestrel said coolly. “Humans hunting us for our blood.”
“Talk later,” Rowan said firmly. “Blood-tie now.”
Kestrel’s mind was gold. With brilliant knifelike edges sending glitters in every direction.
“Okay, Jade,” Rowan said. “Mark. Enough, you guys. Let go of each other now.”
Mary-Lynnette saw that she was physically pulling Mark and Jade apart. Mark was wearing a silly smile, and Mary-Lynnette felt the tiniest stab of envy. What would it be like to see the mind of somebody you were in love with?
Jade’s mind was silver and lacy, an intricate filigreed sphere like a Christmas ornament. And by the time Mary-Lynnette sat back from drinking Jade’s blood, she felt light-headed and sparkling. As if she had a mountain stream in her veins.
“All right,” Rowan said. “Now we share the same blood.” She held out a hand, and Jade and Kestrel did the same. Mary-Lynnette glanced at Mark, then they each reached out, all their hands meeting like spokes in a wheel.
“We promise to be kin to you, to protect and defend you always,” Rowan said. She nodded to Mary-Lynnette.
“We promise to be kin to you,” Mary-Lynnette repeated slowly. “To protect and defend you always.”
“That’s it,” Rowan said simply. “We’re family.”
Jade said, “Let’s go home.”
They had to finish burying Aunt Opal first. Mary-Lynnette watched as Rowan scattered pine needles over the grave.
“You inherit our blood feuds, too,” Kestrel told Mary-Lynnette pleasantly. “Meaning you have to help us find out who killed her.”
“I’ve been trying to do that all along.”
They left the deer where it was. Rowan said, “There are already lots of scavengers around here. It won’t be wasted.”
Yep, that’s life, Mary-Lynnette thought as they left the clearing. She glanced behind her—and for just an instant she thought she saw a shadow there and a glint of greenish-orange eyes at her own eye level. It was much too big for a coyote.
She opened her mouth to tell the others…and the shadow was gone.
Did I imagine that? I think my eyes are going funny. Everything seems too bright.
All her senses seemed changed—sharpened. It made it easier to get out of the woods than it had been getting in. Mark and Jade didn’t walk hand in hand—that would have been impractical—but Jade looked back at him frequently. And when they got to rough spots, they helped each other.
“You’re happy, aren’t you?” Mary-Lynnette said softly when she found herself beside Mark.
He gave a startled, sheepish grin, white in the moonlight. “Yeah. I guess I am.” After a minute he said, “It’s like—I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like I belong with Jade. She really sees me. I mean, not the outside stuff. She sees me inside, and she likes me. Nobody else has ever done that…except you.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“Listen,” he said. “I think we should start looking around for you. There are lots of guys around here—”
Mary-Lynnette snorted. “Mark. If I want to meet a guy, I’ll meet a guy. I don’t need any help.”
He gave the sheepish grin again. “Sorry.”
But Mary-Lynnette was thinking. Of course she’d like to find somebody who would accept her completely, who would share everything with her. That was everybody’s dream. But for how many people did it come true?
And there weren’t lots of guys around here….
She found herself thinking of Jeremy Lovett again. His clear brown eyes…
But she couldn’t hold the picture. It kept dissolving—to her horror—into eyes that flashed blue and gold and gray, depending on the way they caught the light.
Oh, God, no. Ash was the last person who would understand her. And she didn’t want to share a bus seat with him, much less her life.
“What I want to know is who made you guys vampires,” Mark said. They were sitting on oversize, overstuffed Victorian furniture in the living room at Burdock Farm. Rowan had a fire going in the fireplace. “Was it the old lady? Your aunt?”
“It wasn’t anybody,” Jade said, looking affronted. “We’re not made vampires. We’re the lamia.” She pronounced it LAY-mee-uh.
Mark looked at her sideways. “Uh-huh. And what’s that?”
“It’s us. It’s vampires that can have babies, and eat, and drink, and get old if we let ourselves, and live in families. The best kind of vampires.”
“It’s a race of vampires, basically,” Kestrel said. “Look, there are two different kinds of vampires, okay? The kind who start out as humans and are changed when a vampire bites them, and the kind that are born vampires. That’s the kind we are. Our line goes back—well, let’s say a long way.”
“The longest,” Jade broke in again. “We’re Redferns; we go back to prehistoric times.”
Mary-Lynnette blinked. “But you three don’t go back that far, do you?” she said nervously.
Rowan stifled a laugh. “I’m nineteen; Kestrel’s seventeen; Jade is sixteen. We haven’t stopped aging yet.”
Kestrel was looking at Mary-Lynnette. “How old did our aunt look to you?”
“Um, around seventy, seventy-five, I guess.”
“When we last saw her she looked maybe forty,” Kestrel said. “That was ten years ago, when she left our island.”
“But she’d actually been alive for seventy-four years at that point,” Rowan said. “That’s what happens to us—if we stop holding off the aging process, it all catches up at once.”
“Which if you’ve been alive for five or six hundred years can be quite interesting,” Kestrel said dryly.
Mary-Lynnette said, “So this island where you come from—is that the Night Worl
d?”
Rowan looked startled. “Oh, no, it’s just a safe town. You know, a place where our people all live without any humans. Hunter Redfern founded it back in the sixteenth century so we’d have somewhere safe to live.”
“The only problem,” Kestrel said, golden eyes glinting, “is that people there are still doing things the way they did in the sixteenth century. And they made a rule that nobody could leave—except for some of the men and boys that they trusted completely.”
Like Ash, I guess, Mary-Lynnette thought. She was about to say this, but Rowan was speaking again.
“So that’s why we ran away. We didn’t want to have to get married when our father told us to. We wanted to see the human world. We wanted—”
“To eat junk food,” Jade caroled. “And read magazines and wear pants and watch TV.”
“When Aunt Opal left the island, she didn’t tell anybody where she was going—except me,” Rowan said. “She told me she was going to this little town called Briar Creek where her husband’s family had built a house a hundred and fifty years ago.”
Mary-Lynnette ran her fingers through the silky tassels of a forest-green pillow. “Okay, but—where is the Night World, then?”
“Oh…it’s not a place….” Rowan looked uncertain. “This is—it’s kind of hard to tell you, actually,” she said. “You’re not even supposed to know it exists. The two very first laws of the Night World are that you never let a human find out about it…and that you never fall in love with a human.”
“And Jade’s breaking both this minute,” Kestrel murmured.
Jade just looked pleased.
“And the penalty for both is death—for everybody involved,” Rowan said. “But…you’re family. Here goes.” She took a steadying breath. “The Night World is a sort of secret society. Not just of vampires. Of witches and werewolves and shape-shifters, too. All the different kinds of Night People. We’re everywhere.”
Everywhere? Mary-Lynnette thought. It was an unnerving idea—but an interesting one. So there was a whole world out there she’d never known about—a place to explore, as alien as the Andromeda galaxy.
Mark didn’t seem too disturbed by the thought of vampires everywhere. He was grinning at Jade, leaning with one elbow on the arm of the dark green couch. “So, can you read minds? Can you read my mind right now?”
