“You’re really beautiful when you sleep,” he murmured softly.
“I am not.” My cheeks reddened deeply and I buried my face deeper in the pillow. He laughed brightly, and reluctantly, dropped his hand from my ever warming face.
“Dibs on the shower.” The bed moved as he got up from it up, and I turned my head so I could get a better view of him as he went over to the closet.
“There’s like twenty-seven showers in the house. Are you calling dibs on all of them?”
“Maybe,” Jack laughed and went into his closet.
I didn’t really mind him showering first. It gave me more time to lie in bed, burying myself deep in the covers. Besides, more time in bed meant less time being yelled at for getting too close to Jack, and that was always a good thing. I knew that many a love story had been written full of longing glances from across the room and that could sustain a smoldering romance, but I couldn’t see how. I had spent the night curled up in Jack’s arms, and that wasn’t enough anymore.
Chapter 7
It wasn’t a lecture. Ezra sat on the couch, and Mae sat on the floor next to him, resting her head on his knee. I had barely seen her in days, and that had probably gone the same for Ezra. Her long honey waves of hair cascaded around her, and he absently ran his fingers through it. Jack was sitting on the other side of living room, stretched out on the chaise lounge with Matilda by sprawled out over his feet. Milo stood off to the side, fiddling with the floor length curtains next to him.
Under the bright lights of the living room, Milo was even more brilliant than when he had waken me in the middle of the afternoon. His dark brown hair even looked glossier. He was still clearly my brother, but like what he would’ve looked like in a few years if he worked out more and had a stylist. It was hard not to stare at him when I walked in the room, but something felt unsettling and distracted me.
They were all poised around me like it was an intervention. Milo didn’t really seem nervous, but he wasn’t exactly comfortable either. Jack sat up straighter when I walked in, and I surmised that they had been talking about me while I had been showering. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him go first. I sighed and made my way over to a chair to sit and wait for whatever they were going to dump on me that would probably ruin my life a little bit.
“So,” I said when it appeared nobody else would speak. “What’s going on?”
“I heard you had a visitor last night,” Ezra began, his accent lilting with a hint of dissatisfaction.
His eyes flitted over to Milo just briefly, and Milo cringed visibly.
Milo touched at his hair nervously, but that seemed to do little to settle his unease. His cheeks colored lightly, and I was rather surprised to find that vampires could blush. Absently, he pulled at the curtain and almost yanked it down. He reddened even deeper and sheepishly spouted apologizes that Mae just brushed away. There was something clumsily graceful in his movements. The way his slender fingers picked at everything was oddly elegant, but there was also the sense that he didn’t understand how to control it or have any mastery of his strength.
“Sorry,” Milo muttered again. When he took a step away from the curtains, it was too wide, and he almost stumbled into the chair but caught himself with any amazing ease. Everything was suddenly much easier for him, and learning how to handle that made things harder.
“The good news is that this is all perfectly normal.” Ezra watched Milo with a bemused smile. He finally just gave up on movement of any kind and collapsed into a nearby chair.
“You’re just getting your bearings, love,” Mae purred reassuringly. “We’ve all been through it.”
“Not all of us,” I whispered under my breath, and Jack shot a disappointed look my way. That solidified my belief that whatever news they were breaking here was bound to be bad.
“This is just so weird!” Milo lamented.
He meant to just lean back in the chair, and he nearly tipped it over. He scoffed at himself, and underneath his perfect new features, I saw the frustrated little boy had always been. Whenever he uncovered a problem he couldn’t solve, he furrowed his brow intensely and his eyes got sad and faraway. There was something incredibly reassuring about seem him look that way again. I didn’t want him to be frustrated, but it meant that he was still under there.
“As you can see, he turned quite smoothly,” Ezra turned his attention back to me. “Better than expected, actually. He’s had very little problems, and he seems to have a rather large amount of self-control.”
“This is the least amount of control I’ve ever had in my life!” Milo retorted incredulous.
“You’ll get it all back, plus so much more,” Mae told him, her voice soft and gentle. “You should’ve seen Jack after he first turned. He was a horrible mess.”
“Thanks,” Jack added dryly.
“Everyone is a little out of control in the beginning,” Ezra continued gravely. “Which is exactly why you never should’ve gone into Alice’s room last night.”
“I’m sorry!” The way Milo said it, I knew he’d already apologized for it a hundred times. “I’ll never do it again!”
“Everything turned out fine.” I waved off Ezra’s concern. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Yeah, it kinda was,” Jack said seriously, looking over at me. “If I hadn’t woken up…”
“If he hadn’t eaten before he saw you, there wouldn’t have been enough time for anyone to intercede,” Ezra agreed. “Before you came downstairs just now, Milo ate, and we’re all here too. Being around him like that is far too risky.”
“Great.” I felt oddly exasperated and I had to fight the urge to through my hands up in the air.
Milo looked guilty in the chair across the room from me, and I hated the idea that he could kill me.
They could all kill me, and according to Milo, they all wanted to. So it didn’t seem fair that he was the only one that felt guilty about it and required a chaperone. Or three of them, as it were, and they still acted like it wasn’t enough.
“Well, it’ll never happen again, and I’m still alive,” I shrugged.
“You have like no sense of self preservation,” Jack looked at me skeptically.
“Obviously not,” I returned his gaze evenly. If I cared anything for my life, I probably wouldn’t spend all my free time with a pack of vampires.
“That leads us to now,” Ezra interjected, but I didn’t follow so I looked at him quizzically. “Milo can’t go home, for many reasons. He’s got to stay on with us.”
“Sure,” I nodded.
While I hadn’t really thought of it until then, it did make perfect sense that we lived here now. Milo couldn’t go back to his normal life at school, and with everything going well for him, I would just turn, and there wouldn’t be anything tying us back to our old lives. In fact, we’d be a threat to everyone we knew until we got things under control.
“You, on the other hand, will not.” Ezra spoke slowly, letting the weight of his words sink in, and looked at me apologetically.
“What?” I shook my head, disbelieving. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I stay? Milo was the only reason I even wanted to go back to my life, and he’s here now!”
“Alice,” Ezra held a hand out to calm me, and I could feel Jack struggle to reign in his own emotions to soothe me. When I was anxious, it was much harder for me to reflect what he felt, and he seemed almost as upset about the decision anyway.
“It’s not like you won’t be able to come out here all the time anyway,” Jack offered helpfully, pleading with me with his soft blue eyes not completely freak out.
“I don’t understand. If… if I can be here all the time, then why do I need to go?” A lump was wedging itself heavily in my throat, and I prayed that I wouldn’t start crying. They suddenly didn’t want me anymore, and my heart felt like it was shattering.
“It’s not safe for you,” Ezra tried to reason with me. “Milo’s very dangerous to humans right now, and he wou
ldn’t be able to live with himself if he was responsible for something happening to you.”
“Why…” I trailed off, unable to even form the words so I desperately wanted to ask. Why couldn’t I just turn? Was this their way of saying they no longer wanted me to? Maybe I was more trouble than I was worth…
“And there’s your mother,” Ezra continued, ignoring my open ended question. “You went home and left a letter indicating that you and Milo were going away with us for awhile. If both of you were to just suddenly disappear, she would find that rather suspicious and send the police out after us, which wouldn’t really do anybody any good.”
“But if Milo just vanishes, you think she’d be fine with that?” I asked dubiously.
“No, no, we’ll have an explanation for that,” Ezra shook his head. “We’ll have that all figured out by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” It was starting to feel like I had been punched in the stomach. There was a dully ache growing and the wind had been knocked out of me.
“Yes. You’ll go home tomorrow,” Ezra explained.
“That’ll give Milo enough to time to ready himself to visit your mother, one last time, and us enough time to get things in order,” Mae elaborated, smiling at me. As if this were something to smile about.
They were kicking me out, pushing me away from everything that I cared about, and they were doing it with a smile. Before I came over the night Milo got hurt, I hadn’t really expected to spend the rest of my life here. It shouldn’t really matter to me that I was leaving, because nothing had really changed from a few days ago. But somehow, everything had changed. If Milo had been leaving too, it wouldn’t have hurt so much. But like this… it was like getting left behind.
“I know this is hard for you, but it’s for the best,” Ezra said, and there was a finality to his voice where I knew this wasn’t open for discussion. He had decided what was best, and that’s what everyone would do.
“No, it’s no problem,” I shrugged and blinked hard to fight back tears. I stood up before I could decide where I wanted to go, so I mumbled a lame excuse. “I’ll be right back.”
I had no intention of being right back. I wasn’t leaving the house or anything, but I needed to get away from them. Mae called after me, and Milo watched me apologetically, but I just walked past them, through the kitchen, and out the French doors onto the patio bathed in cold moonlight.
After spending the past three days entirely inside frigid air conditioning, the warm humidity of the night hit me like a sauna. Fire flies were dancing through the branches of the weeping willow by the lake, and I walked out on the dock, wiping painfully at my eyes. I looked the planks of wood stretching about before, at the source of all my problems. If Milo had never slipped, if he’d never hit his head, then everything could just back to normal. My grasp on normal was getting very tenuous.
I just didn’t like this hurt and confusion welling up inside me. It had the definite sting of loneliness, and that was one thing that I had become unprepared for. With everyone I loved becoming immortal, it never occurred to me that I would be left alone.
Heavy footfalls echoed on the boards behind me, and I wiped quickly at my eyes. I didn’t want to even be crying, let alone have an audience. I kept my arms wrapped tightly around me, as if I was warding off an icy wind instead of a hot one, and I refused to turn back to see Jack as he came up behind me.
“Alice,” Jack said softly, and I felt him fighting the urge to reach out for me. “It’s really not so bad.”
“No, I know,” I nodded in agreement. My tears had stopped enough where I felt I could look at him, so I did. “I just wasn’t thinking. If I had been, I would’ve realized that I’d have to go soon.”
“Alice,” Jack groaned, and I could tell he completely saw through my façade. “Its for your safety, and ours.”
“No, I know!” I insisted. “I get it! Completely! You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Nobody blames you for being hurt.” He was growing frustrated by my little act, which made me want to keep it up all the more.
“I’m not hurt!” I snapped, and he rolled his eyes disgustedly.
“Why do you always have to be so damn obstinate?”
“I’m not. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I shook my head.
“Alice!” Jack growled, exasperated. Then he exhaled and decided to try a different approach. He reached out for me, but I pulled back from his touch, and he let his arm fall to his side with a weary sigh. “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I had nothing to do with this.”
“It’s your fault Milo’s a vampire,” I pointed out, and then instantly regretted it. He looked so wounded, it hurt, and I wanted to say something to take it back, but I couldn’t think of anything.
“You’re right,” Jack replied thickly. “You’re absolutely right. This is my fault.” He lowered his sad blue eyes and swallowed hard. “You take as much time as you need. I’ll be in the house if you need anything.” He started taking a step backwards, looking so totally forlorn, and I hated myself for making him look like that.
“Jack,” I said, but he just shook his head.
“Take all the time you need, Alice.” He turned and walked back to the house, his footsteps heavier and slower this time.
I groaned inwardly and stared out at the black water surrounding me. Jack was right. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and I wasn’t actually mad at him. He almost never did anything wrong, but he and Milo tended get the brunt of my anger or frustration because they took it so willingly. It wasn’t fair to them, and led me to believe that I was most likely a pretty terrible person. It was no wonder they didn’t want me around anymore.
In reality, I was incredibly angry with myself. For not taking their offer when they gave it to me.
For going inside when Milo got hurt. For deciding that Milo should turn. No matter what the repercussions for myself, I’d always be happy that I had chosen the way for Milo to be alive and safe. That wasn’t what bothered me.
It would all just be so much simpler if I had been the one that had slipped on the dock and hit my head instead of him. I was jealous of the fact that he had almost died.
Chapter 8
Since Milo was highly intelligent and managed to get Ivy League grades, it wasn’t a stretch to think he’d been offered a scholarship to some kind of fancy boarding school. Even that he hadn’t mentioned it to our mother wouldn’t seem that extraordinary. With her work schedule, they barely had time to exchange words, although they did speak much more frequently than I did with her.
Ezra had printed off a couple of documents to certify that Milo would soon be attending Alexander Landon Preparatory School just outside of Albany, New York. The semester was slated to start one week from today, and it was recommended that students get out there a week early to acclimate themselves with the school. Or at least that’s what the letter claimed.
They had an extensive story to go with it that I’d heard Milo going over with Ezra and Mae all morning, or evening, as it actually was by definition. Jack had done his best to try and cheer me up, but there was very little he could do alleviate my mood. As time dragged on, I only managed to get more and more nervous and upset as I thought about the life I would be returning to.
Milo called our mother on his phone, skillfully disguising his voice to sound very much like it used to, and arranged a time for them to talk. Unfortunately, Mom had somehow managed to get a night off, and she picked a time much sooner than we had expected. Mae hurried to help me pack up my things, talking feverishly the entire time about how things were going to be so much more fun this way. Her reasons almost entirely depended on the phrase “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but I nodded and smiled like I actually believed anything she said.
Once Mae’s Jetta was loaded with my things, I stood in the entryway, waiting by the garage door.
Jack was standing next to me, twirling his car keys around his fingers, and I didn’t really understand w
hat the hold up was. We were waiting for Milo, but since he didn’t have to pack, I didn’t get what could be taking him so long.
“What is he doing?” I grumbled, pulling absently at the hem of my shirt. Admittedly, I did not want to leave the house, but waiting around like this only succeeded in making me irritable and nervous. If we were going to leave then I wanted to hurry and get it over with.
“He’ll be down in a minute,” Jack replied vaguely. He scratched the back of his neck and looked away from me, which was a clear sign that he didn’t want to tell me something.
“What?” I looked at him sternly. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s eating,” Jack answered reluctantly. Then he looked at me and shrugged regretfully. “He’s going to be out in the world with people for the first time. It’s better if he’s not hungry.”
“Do you need to eat?” I asked pointedly.
“No. I’m good. Thanks for asking, though.” His eyes inspected me curiously, looking for revulsion or fear, but when he didn’t find any, he eventually looked away.
“Is he gonna eat my mom?” Truthfully, there was a serious risk of vomiting every time I thought about Milo drinking blood, but apparently, I did a fairly good job masking it. I managed to keep my voice even when I talked about him possibly killing our mother.
“That’s why he’s eating,” Jack said dryly. “We’re hoping to avoid that entire situation.”
“Excellent,” I sighed.
“I’ll be there to bodyguard, too,” Jack reminded me. He flexed his muscles to prove that he was up for the job and grinned at me. “It’s gonna be fine.”
“I know,” I smiled grimly. “Everything’s always going to be fine. Great. Good. Okay.”
“He’s just about ready!” Mae declared, interrupting the worried look Jack was giving me. He quickly replaced it with a smile when she rushed into the entryway. I should’ve known that she’d have to see us off.
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