“It won’t be so bad,” Jack tried to sound cheerful. “I mean, I’m not so bad, right?”
“So what’s gonna happen?” I turned to look at him, but he just shook his head.
“I can’t really say for sure.”
“What do you mean you can’t say? You’re a vampire. You know what it’s like to be one,” I said incredulously.
“Yeah, but it’s different for everybody.” He wanted to let it go with that, but I just kept glaring at him skeptically until he continued. “You already know the basics. I don’t even know what you’re trying to find out.”
“This whole turning process,” I elaborated. “What does that entail exactly?”
“I don’t know,” Jack answered, and I scoffed. “What? I can’t really remember, and I’ve never seen anybody else turn.”
“How can you not remember?” I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, but it seemed pretty ridiculous to me that he couldn’t remember the most important event of his life, especially since it hadn’t been that long ago.
I could understand if Ezra had forgotten, but sixteen years was relatively short.
“Do you remember being born?” Jack countered.
“No, but I wasn’t twenty-four when it happened,” I retorted.
“Well…” He sighed and shook his head. We had finally pulled up in front of my brownstone, but we sat in the car as he tried to think of a way to explain it to me. “I know Mae can remember her turning pretty vividly, and I think Peter can too. But I can’t. Mine’s all hazy, like a dream I had a very long time ago. I don’t know. I just can’t remember pain very well, I guess.”
“So it is really painful?” I pressed, even though I wasn’t sure I’d want to know.
“Your body dies,” Jack said softly. “Not all of it, but enough of it where you can really feel it. Your whole system is changing and becoming something else entirely. But it only lasts a few days, and then everything feels really wonderful.”
“Is there anything they can do for the pain?” I asked hopefully.
“You’re really so much better off talking to Ezra about all of this.” His evasiveness led me to believe there wasn’t anything they could do except let it happen.
“Do you think I made the right choice?”
“I think you made the only choice,” Jack told me solemnly. Then he smiled crookedly, trying to brighten my mood. “Come on. Let’s go pack your stuff so we can hurry up and have a sleepover.”
“You make it sound so much more fun than it really is,” I muttered and got out of the car.
“Hey, any time you spend with me is a fun!” Jack insisted, following me out.
“Oh, yeah, last night was a total hoot.” I had meant it at as some kind of joke, but the hurt, apologetic look on Jack’s face meant that I had cut a lot deeper than I meant to. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Nah, you’re right.” He brushed me off and went into the apartment building in front of me.
The apartment looked the same as it always had, but it felt smaller somehow. Thankfully, my mother was at work, because I didn’t think I was quite ready to have an actual confrontation with her. It would be too hard trying to tell her Milo wasn’t coming home, even if I was just feeding her a line about staying in a vacation house that didn’t exist.
Milo’s room was immaculate, which made it easier to find the things that I needed to pack. For now, he mostly only needed clothes, so I just tried to pick out what I thought were his favorites.
Jack had tagged along for moral support, but he ended up being a huge motivator. I tended to just stand and stare at things until he prompted me to do something, like pick up a shirt. It was surprisingly hard going through all his stuff. It felt like an invasion of privacy, and like the kind of the thing I would do when he was dead.
After we packed Milo’s things, I went in my room to grab some of my clothes. As long as Milo was turning, I didn’t plan on leaving the house, so I’d need to have some things for me. While Jack had gone in Milo’s room to help me, I made him wait out in the living room while I was in my room. There were still some things that I tried to keep off limits from him, no matter how futile it seemed.
Before we left, I wrote a note for my mother and kept it as simple as I could.
“MomJack and his family have a vacation home on a lake up north. Milo and I are going to go stay up there for a few days. I’m not sure how long exactly. It depends on the weather, I guess. I’ll have my cell on me if you need anything. Otherwise I’ll see you in a couple days.
LoveAlice” In the car ride home, I said very little. My note to my mother didn’t sound very convincing, mostly because it was from me, and Milo was the one that usually did that kind of thing. Hopefully, she wouldn’t try to call his cell phone either, since he would be too incapacitated to answer it. I started worrying that she might try getting a hold of him, and when she couldn’t, she’d call the police and send a search party out after us. That really didn’t seem likely, but I was paranoid about everything.
“How long is this gonna take?” I asked finally. In my mind, I was thinking the sooner I got home, the better, and I was already trying to plan for it.
“The car ride?” Jack was willfully playing dumb, and I didn’t appreciate it. “Like five more minutes.”
“How long will it take for Milo to turn?” I carefully enunciated all the words.
“I don’t know, Alice,” Jack replied tiredly.
“What do you know?” I snapped.
“I told you that you need to talk to Ezra about all of this,” Jack grumbled. “I don’t know why you think I was kidding about it. We’re almost home now. Then you can run inside and interrogate him until your heart’s content.”
“I will.” I crossed my arms over my chest, as if I had won something.
“Yeah. I know you will.”
Being the gentleman that he was, Jack carried the bags inside when we got to his house. As usual, Matilda was waiting by the door for his return, but even she seemed oddly subdued. The entire mood of the house had changed. Everybody was on edge waiting for Milo to be okay, and under other circumstances, I might have found that flattering, but right now, it just made me even more paranoid.
Jack headed upstairs and I started following him. I planned on checking on Milo again and getting our things settled in, but Ezra appeared at the top of the steps. Something about the way he looked made me freeze, but Jack just kept on going, brushing past him with our luggage in tow.
“Did something happen?” I asked Ezra sounding panicked. Anymore, I couldn’t help but assume the worst.
“He’s fine,” Ezra reassured me and descended the stairs gracefully. “But I don’t you should see him right now.”
“Why not?” I felt myself straightening up for a fight. Nobody could keep me from my brother, not even an all-powerful vampire, but then he placed his hand gently on my arm, and some of my anger relented.
“Let’s talk.” Moving his hand to the small of my back, he ushered me towards the living room, and I let him, although I still felt nervous.
“Are you sure nothing happened?” I repeated.
“He woke up,” Ezra allowed carefully, and my heart sped hopefully.
“He did? Is he okay? What did he say?” My excitement was overwhelming, but Ezra gestured to couch.
“Please, sit. We need to talk.”
“What?” I collapsed back on the couch, feeling nauseous. I was on a constant roller coaster between terrified and hopeful, and my heart could hardly take it anymore.
“He is turning, and rather rapidly, at that,” Ezra told me warmly and sat down next to me. “He’s young and strong, and the change should be completely over within a few days. He’s going to be alright.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” I breathed deeply. A weight lifted off my shoulders, and a surge of relief went through me. Then I noticed the grim expression on Ezra’s face. “So why do you still look like you have bad news?”
“I d
on’t. Not really,” Ezra qualified, forcing a smile. “You just can’t see him for awhile.”
“What do you mean?” I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to understand why I possibly couldn’t see my brother.
“At least until the change is complete and we can get a grip on his hunger,” he elaborated, and then I remembered what Jack had said in the car. “You can’t go near him until things are under control.”
“He’s going to try and bite me?” I shook my head, disbelieving. “He hasn’t fully turned yet. He just woke up.”
“He’s already eating, Alice.”
For some reason, that stung painfully. My chest tightened and my head started to swim. I thought I still had time. I don’t know what I possibly planned on doing with that time, but I thought he’d be human for just a little bit longer. But he was drinking blood less than twenty-four hours after biting Jack. He was Milo, the vampire, and he would kill me if I got too close to him.
“It will get better. I promise.” Ezra placed his hand on mine, trying to comfort me. “You can be around all of us without any problems, and it will be much the same for Milo. It just takes a little bit of time to get a handle on things. At the rate he’s going, it shouldn’t be that long.”
“So…” My mouth felt dry and I swallowed hard. “Do I need to go home?”
“No, of course not. We wouldn’t expect you to go home while all this is going on, and for the most part, Milo is still fairly incapacitated. He shouldn’t even leave the room for a day or two. By the time he does, he should be in control enough to be in the same room as you.” He smiled at that, as if that was reassuring in some way.
“Awesome,” I replied wryly.
“I know the situation isn’t ideal, but he’s going to live, Alice,” Ezra looked at me earnestly. “And he’s going to be better than he was before. You’re not going to have to worry about him anymore.”
“I know, I know.” I closed my eyes, trying to get it all to sink in.
I knew that in a way, I should be grateful to them. They saved Milo’s life and gave him an amazing gift, but somehow, it didn’t really feel like it then. When it came to my little brother drinking blood and turning into something that would rip my head off, it felt a lot more like a curse than a gift.
“But did he say anything?” I asked, once I started to get my bearings on the situation.
“Nothing that’s very coherent,” Ezra shook his head. “He’s not exactly conscious.”
“But you just said that he woke up and he’s eating,” I persisted, bewildered.
“Yes, but he’s more…” He paused, trying to think of how he wanted to phrase it. “Delirious? He’s not completely there yet. It’s more instinct and confusion than anything else.”
“Has he asked for me?”
“He hasn’t asked for anything. He only mumbles complaints of pain and hunger. He’s not completely awake yet,” Ezra reiterated. “And Mae is doing her best to see to it that he feels as little pain and hunger as possible.”
“So… what happens next?” I asked. “He turns, and then what?”
“Let’s just get through the turning, and take things from there,” Ezra hedged the question.
“Why? What does that mean?” The panic that had started abating threatened to return with a vengeance.
“There’s no blanket answer for this. We’ll have to see exactly how Milo reacts to everything before we can say with any certainty what’s going to happen. So far, he’s turning differently than anybody else I’ve encountered, but again, I’ve never seen a vampire so young turn before,” Ezra explained carefully.
“You’re supposed to know everything!” I snapped, growing frustrated. “What’s the point of all this knowledge and immortality if you can’t just answer a damn question about your own kind?”
“I understand your impatience, but there’s really nothing more I can tell you.” Ezra smiled sadly at me, but I knew he was lying. There had to be more he could tell me, but he didn’t want to worry me unnecessarily, which probably was a wise decision on his part. He was telling me that everything was going well, and still, I was a worried wreck. But he was keeping something from me, and that just made me all the more nervous.
I heard Jack lumbering down the stairs, and I wondered if he was responding to the quickened beat of my heart. He was so sensitive to that, and he usual stayed way for my safety, but it also alerted him whenever I was upset about anything. He could read my emotions almost better than me since he had a direct link to my heart.
“How is everything going down here?” Jack was full of forced cheer, and his overly broad smile masked the anxiety underneath it.
“How do you think they’re going?” I grumbled, casting a look at him.
“Well, I just checked in on your brother.” He ignored my glare and tried to give me information he hoped would comfort me. But until I was talking to Milo and could visibly see it was still him buried underneath his new vampire exterior, there would probably be very little to make me feel better.
“He’s asleep again, but he’s looking really good. I think you’re gonna be really happy when you see him.”
“He’s not a house that you’re remodeling,” I grimaced at his poor choice of words. He made Milo sound like some kind of fixer upper that they were working on, and while that wasn’t very far from the truth, I didn’t want to think of it that way.
“Sorry.” Jack looked apologetic and shifted uncomfortably. “Mae sent me down here to feed you.”
“I’m not hungry.” This wasn’t exactly a lie since stress tended to destroy my appetite, but I hadn’t eaten in a very long time and my stomach had already started reminding me of it.
“Why don’t you let Jack make you some food and I’ll go make sure everything is going well with Milo?”
Ezra posed it like a question, but there was no mistaking it for anything but an order.
“I’m perfectly capable of making food for myself,” I insisted as I stood up. For some reason, I had resorted to refuting their generosity with pouting. I knew I was being rude and unreasonable, but I couldn’t seem to help it.
“Fine, I’ll watch you make food then,” Jack rolled his eyes.
In the kitchen, I made a show of slamming things down and banging drawers. Jack just sighed and watched me make the angriest peanut butter sandwich in the world. I think he had given up on trying to get me to relax or cheer up and was mostly just happy that I’d actually taken his advice to eat. But for all the stomping around and tantrum throwing I did, I wasn’t really angry with Jack or Ezra or anyone. Really, I was just scared.
Chapter 5
Even standing in the hallway, I could still smell Peter and hated what it did to me. The ache I had been trying to ignore burned unbearably inside me and my heart sped up so quickly, it made me weak. Thankfully, Jack was downstairs, trying to do his penance by doing my laundry. Under normal circumstances, Mae would be more than happy to do it, but she had been preoccupied with caring for my brother, who apparently required 24-hour care. I’d been here for almost two days, and I had seen almost nothing of her, and I hadn’t seen Milo since Ezra warned me that it was better if I didn’t.
That left me with a lot of time to wander around the house feeling rather lost and confused. Jack tried to console while me while simultaneously trying to keep to his distance, and it did very little to make me feel better. He had camped out on the couch downstairs last night, leaving me with his room. I puttered around for a bit, looking through his drawers in hopes of finding something incriminating, but it was mostly just as I suspected. He had a trunk of graphic novels in his closet that I leafed through, but I was finding it hard to keep my mind focused on anything. All of this had really taken me by surprise, and I couldn’t keep up. There was so much up in the air now.
I knew that in a way, I should feel some comfort in this, because it meant that I would never have to give Milo up. We could always be together, and I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting sick or d
ying or anything like that.
Maybe if I had already turned I would feel that way, if I could completely understand what was in store for him. Instead, I had Jack’s vague assurance that being a vampire was awesome, and that was about it. Ezra and Mae both offered contradicting stories about it being a curse and a blessing, and I wasn’t sure what it would feel like to Milo.
What if it did something horrible to him? And he got sick or died or turned into something completely vile? What if he stopped being Milo, the timid over protective geek I loved, and turned into some overzealous blood sucker? Or what if he turned out fine, but he hated me for letting him turn? And for lying to him about what Jack and his family were, and letting him hang around them all the time when I should’ve known how dangerous it was. What if I had to spend the rest of eternity with him hating me?
When I finally tired of searching through Jack’s room and driving myself mad with worry, I finally gave into the scent. I stood in the hallway for a long while, just breathing in the perfect intoxicating tangy scent that Peter left behind, before deciding to step in further. Since Peter had taken off last spring after that horrible (and yet somehow wonderful) incident in which he nearly killed me, Mae had simply shut the door to his room.
There was no real talk of whether or not he would be back, although he hadn’t packed any of his things, but I think the unspoken consensus was that somehow, Ezra would find a cure for our
“love” and life would go back to normal. Not that I even knew what it would mean to be “back to normal” anymore.
Carefully, I opened Peter’s bedroom door, checking the hall both ways just to make sure that Jack wasn’t around. Nobody had specifically forbid me from entering his room, and I doubted that Mae and Ezra would care at all, but Jack was liable to take offense. Even mentioning Peter’s name made him tense up horribly, and I hoped that someday, he’d be able to move past that. I was beginning to doubt that Jack would ever want anything to do with Peter again, regardless of how our relationships resolved themselves.
His room was just as he had left, but I barely noticed it. I closed my eyes, breathing in even more deeply, and a wonderful heat surged through me. There was a physical pull inside me and I was drawn into his room. Peter had been long gone for months, and my body still clamored to get in every last possible drop of him.
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