Milo was yelling, and that’s what woke me up. My whole body felt stiff and ached when I opened my eyes. Ezra had his arms around Milo, holding him back, and Mae stood in between Milo and Jack, trying to reason with him. He just kept screaming at Jack, demanding to know what he did to me and why he thought it was alright. Jack wasn’t saying anything. He just stood behind Mae, looking upset and remorseful.
“Why would you even think that was okay?” Milo shouted, futilely fighting against Ezra’s arms.
“Milo, she’s alright!” Mae explained as calmly as she could. Her hand was on his chest, more to calm him down than to hold him back. There was no way he could break from Ezra’s grip. “She’s just weak and this is where she wanted to lay!”
“When Peter finds out, she’s as good as dead!” Milo spat, and I saw tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You’re supposed to care about her so much and you just signed her death certificate!” Jack winced and looked at the floor.
“Stop yelling,” I grimaced. Trying to sit up was difficult, and I saw Jack move to start helping me, but then he stopped and took a step back. Mae ended up leaving her post in front of Milo and helped into the sitting up position. “My head hurts. And so does my neck. And every part of my body.”
“That’s from sleeping on a hardwood floor.” Mae rubbed my back and brushed the hair from eyes.
“Other than being sore, how are you feeling?”
“Tired. And a little a dizzy.” I ran a hand through my hair and looked up at Milo. He had stopped fighting against Ezra, but he kept an arm on him just the same. Sniffling, Milo wiped at his face with the back of his arm and tried to pretend like he hadn’t been crying.
“Jack, go in the medicine in the main bathroom and get the vitamins,” Mae instructed, pointing down the hallway. “There should be some iron and vitamin B12.” He nodded, without looking at me, and went down the hall to the bathroom. “Milo, why don’t you get her something to take it with? Something with sugar. We have some Mountain Dew or something, don’t we?”
“I’ll check.” Milo took a step towards the kitchen, but Ezra was still holding onto his arm.
“Can I trust you?” Ezra looked at him evenly, and Milo nodded sheepishly. “Good.” He let go, and Milo hurried over to the fridge to get a me a pop.
Jack appeared back with the vitamins and handed them to Mae. As soon as she took them, he quickly took several steps back from us. He stood all the way on the other side of the room, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at the floor. Milo came back in with a Mountain Dew, glaring at Jack as he handed it to me.
Naturally, I couldn’t open the can because I could barely do anything. Crouched next to me, Mae was actually holding me up with her hand on my back. She handed me a couple pills, and I greedily drank the soda. It tasted better than I remembered it tasting, which I thought was odd, and I gulped it down fast.
“Feeling a little better?” Mae pushed the hair behind my ear and watched me closely.
“I guess,” I shrugged, but I only felt slightly more alert than when I had passed out on the floor the first time. “Why did you guys even have vitamins? You don’t eat.”
“I bought them for you,” Mae answered absently, fixing my hair. I hadn’t brushed it since my bath, and I imagined that it was snarly and looked like hell. “We all knew this was a possibility.”
“Are you sure she’s okay?” Milo stood next to Ezra, looking at me nervously and fidgeting in place.
“She’s just so pale.”
“She’ll be just fine,” Mae assured him. “Do you hear her heart?” She paused, and Milo cocked his head, listening for the sound of it. “It’s a little fast, but it’s strong. That sound means she’ll be alright.”
“We should get her up off the floor,” Ezra suggested.
Mae took the can of empty soda from me, and Ezra bent down in front of me. I was a little surprised that he as going to be the one helping me, but I tried not to show it. I looped my arm around his neck and he lifted me up easily. Having never been that close to him before, I felt a little awkward, but I couldn’t help but notice how wonderfully male he smelled. Like sandalwood and spice, all woodsy and strong.
He set me on the couch in the living room, and Mae followed behind us, carrying a blanket. Once he put me down, Ezra crouched at eye level with me, his eyes staring intently at me and he breathed deeply.
Almost sadly, he looked away and then stood up. Mae wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, and left her arms with them, cradling me to her as she set next to me. Ezra stood in front of us, resting his hand on his chin, just watching me. Milo and Jack were standing off to the side of the room, and I could feel them looking to Ezra expectantly. A decision was in the process of being made right now, one that I didn’t understand.
“Guys, I’m okay, really,” I told them meekly, hoping to ease the tension in the room, but it didn’t do anything.
“We know, love,” Mae whispered, squeezing me briefly to reassure me. Her eyes were locked on Ezra, though, and there was this collective feeling everyone looking at him and thinking “Well?”
“Yes,” Ezra nodded infinitesimally, and his expression was regretful. “You can smell him on her.”
“Fuck,” Jack said under his breath and turned away, so his back was to us.
Mae sorrowfully let out sigh and rested her forehead on my shoulder. I understood what Ezra said as soon as he meant it, but I just shook my head, in disbelief. Milo ran a hand through his hair and looked as if he was about to start crying again.
“I’m wearing his clothes.” I touched at my shirt, but Ezra shook his head. “It just happened, too.
You can’t be sure. And I don’t even know why it matters. So what if I smell like Jack?” I looked over at Jack helpfully, but he still had his back to everyone. “Who cares? Right? Does it even matter?”
“It matters.” Mae lifted her head up, looking sadly at Ezra. “But there’s still things we can do. Isn’t there?” Ezra was just kind of staring at me, to the point where I almost felt uncomfortable, and he was ignoring her. “Ezra?”
“Mae…” Ezra shook his head helplessly.
“What does that mean?” Milo demanded, his voice high and shaky. He rushed over to us, looking up at Ezra with huge brown eyes that were pleading with him. “What do you mean?”
“It means that Peter’s not here.” Ezra put his hands together, like he was praying, in front of his mouth, then gestured widely. When he looked over at Milo, he tried to smile. “He’s not here. He can’t do anything. And that’s what we’ve got.”
“That’s all you’ve got?” Milo had tears in his eyes and he was biting his lip to hold them back.
“Milo, it’s okay,” I said, and somehow my tone was calm and even. Maybe I was too tired to really feel scared or sad yet. “I’m okay. We’re okay. There’s nothing to worry about. Not right now.
Okay?”
For whatever reason, that was when Jack had enough. He abruptly stormed out of the room, and I heard his feet as he ran up the stairs. Matilda ran after him, but he apparently slammed the door before she could make it into this room because she started barking and clawing at the door.
“Matilda!” Ezra roared, and she fell silent.
“Milo, can you go get my phone?” I asked, looking up at him. “I think it’s in Mae and Ezra’s room somewhere.”
“Try the bathroom,” Mae offered helpfully.
“Sure thing.” Milo looked better being put on a task. If he was doing something, anything, it felt better than just standing there trying to figure out if I had a death sentence.
Once he had hurried out of the room, I turned my focus onto Ezra. I was a little surprised to find my eyes swimming with tears, but I imagined that the being incredibly tired and suffocating in Jack’s feelings of guilt probably added to it. In truth, I didn’t feel like Peter was that big of a threat.
If he were around, he’d probably kill me and/or Jack, but he wasn’t around.
“Tell him not to come back,” I told Ezra, and a heavy lump started growing in my throat.
It didn’t seem right, but part of my sadness came from knowing that I would never see Peter again. That sounds stupid since the reason I can never see him is because he’d kill me if I did, but it didn’t change the way I felt. My body still felt intertwined with Jack’s, even more so than before. He wasn’t even in the room, but I could feel his terror and shame coursing through my veins. On top of that, I some part of me still felt pulled towards Peter and didn’t understand how I could possible survive the rest of my life without seeing him again.
“You really want that?” Ezra furrowed his brow, trying to get a read on exactly how I felt.
“Do I even have a choice?” I swallowed hard. “He’s going to kill me and Jack.” I breathed out heavily and looked down at the corner of the blanket, which I had begun fiddling with. “I know you still talk to him. So just try and convince him not to come back. Tell him he’d be… happier starting a new life or something.” Then I shook my head, realizing how selfish I was being. “No, that’s not fair. Maybe I should just leave. Then Peter will never know, and he’ll never have any reason to hurt Jack.”
“Nobody wants you to leave, love,” Mae insisted, stroking my hair. “Especially not after what happened last night.”
I was about to ask why Jack biting me would make them want me to stay even more, but then I realized she was talking about the fight at the club. There were vampires hunting me, on top of this whole other mess. It would be imprudent for me to go home, when I didn’t really know the status of their hunt. They might find my apartment, since I didn’t live that far from the clubs, and apparently, I had a really distinct scent to track.
“Oh hell.” I had to gulp down air to keep from crying, and Ezra shifted uneasily.
“We’re going to protect you, Alice,” Ezra affirmed. “We just haven’t resolved everything yet.”
“Have you resolved anything?” I hadn’t meant to sound so glib. After all, these were my problems he was talking about, not his own, and it wasn’t their responsibility to fix them.
“We will,” Ezra replied finitely.
“I found your phone.” Milo stood at the edge of the room, holding my phone out towards me and looking unsure. When he had left, I was mostly okay, but now I was hunched over, hugging myself tightly, and fighting desperately to keep from sobbing.
“Thank you.” I held out my hand towards him and he brought it over. I was surprised there weren’t messages or missed calls from Jane, but it was still fairly early in the morning, and I saw how badly Milo had knocked her out last night. “I need to get home. I have school tomorrow, and I still have to talk to Jane, and I don’t even what I’m gonna tell her yet.”
“It’s still very early. You’ve barely gotten any sleep, and you have plenty of time to worry about all later. Why don’t you stay here and get some rest, and we’ll take you home in the morning to get you ready for school?” Mae suggested.
“Why in the morning?” I looked over at her, puzzled. “Why not tonight?”
“We’d just feel a little safer if you were here tonight,” Mae explained, running her fingers through my hair.
To me, it seemed more dangerous having me around Jack, but then I realized that he was probably the least of my worries. My blood was already tainted. There was nothing worse that he would do to me than what he’d already done. Outside of this house, however, there were Lucian and Violet, and not to mention Peter. On top of all that, I still felt incredibly weak and tired, and it probably wouldn’t hurt for me to be under observation for a little while.
“Why don’t you two take the master room? And I can take the couch in the den,” Ezra offered.
“I couldn’t kick you out of your own room,” I tried to refuse demurely.
“I insist.” He turned to Milo, who was still standing awkwardly to the side of us. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get some sleep? We’ve all had an incredibly long night. Mae will be with your sister, and I’ll just be right next door. Nothing will happen.”
“You’re sure you’re okay, Alice?” Milo looked at me with eyes full of concern, and I just nodded.
“I’m just gonna get some sleep, and he’s right. You really need to the same.”
Reluctantly, he walked out of the room, and I heard his feet softly padding up the stairs. After last night, he had to be exhausted, too. He’d been in his first fight ever, and it’d been with a pissed off vampire. That had to take a lot out of him. He’d only managed a few hours sleep on top of it, so I was a little surprised he wasn’t as bad as me.
When I stood up, I almost fell over, and instantly, Ezra’s arms were around me, carrying me. It felt safe in his arms, but it felt weird too. I had become accustomed to the feeling of Jack’s arms and the way the made me feel perfect and safe. It wasn’t that I thought Ezra would drop me, but it felt familiar and unusual all at once.
He left me on his bed, which felt very rude, on my part. This was his enormous, extravagant bed that I was taking over, and he was going to sleep on a couch in the den. Not that he seemed to mind, but I felt guilty anyway. He kissed Mae softly on the lips before departing, and then she smiled wanly at me and walked over to the bed.
I crawled under the covers, trying to get comfortable in their sea of blankets and pillows, and she climbed in next to me. She was still in her pajamas, as they all had been, because Jack and I had woken them up. Well, more so Jack, because I had still been asleep when he was making the scene that woke everybody up.
“Are you comfortable?” Mae asked me before she turned off the bedside lamp.
“Yeah,” I nodded, and she flicked off the light and settled into bed. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’m really glad you’re here, even with all of this,” Mae said warmly.
“Can I ask you something?” In the darkness of the room, it felt okay to address something that had been bothering me.
“You can ask me anything, love.” She moved in the bed, and although I couldn’t see her, I could tell she had turned on her side to face me and moved closer.
“Milo bit Jane last night, and it was… I don’t know.” I wanted to say animalistic or predatory, but that didn’t sound right and I didn’t want to say that about my brother. “But when Jack bit me, it was entirely different. And I know it was happening to me and I wasn’t witnessing it, but I don’t think that it looked the way it did when Milo bit Jane.”
“And you want to know why it was different?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. When Milo bit Jane, it had really freaked me out. When Jack bit me, it had been perfect and magical, and I wanted to do it again and again. I’d been afraid that Milo would tear my head off, but I’d never felt that way around Jack.
“For one thing, Milo is younger and much more inexperienced with that sort of thing,” Mae explained carefully. “For another, Milo was starving when he bit her, and Jack wasn’t, so Jack was able to have much more control than Milo.” She sighed, as if that wasn’t quite what she wanted to say.
“Forgive me for a better analogy, because I’m not saying anything against your brother when I saw this,” Mae went on. “But think of sex and rape. They’re both the same physical act, the same way that biting anyone is essentially the same thing. But one is for romance, and one is forced.
That’s still not exactly right, because Milo didn’t really force Jane, but he didn’t care about her either. When Jack bit you, he did it because he needed to feel close to you, and Milo did it because he needed to eat.”
“So… when Jack bites other people, is it like the way it was with Milo?” There was something simultaneously terrifying and comforting in that. For the first time, I understood what he meant when he said that it wasn’t the same when he fed on other people as it was with me.
“I wasn’t there with Milo, but I would say to a lesser extent, yes. Milo was much more aggressive because of his age and hunger, and depending on how hungry J
ack is depends on rough he’ll be,” Mae answered. “Does that help?”
“I think so.”
“Why don’t you get some sleep now? I know you’re exhausted,” Mae suggested.
I rolled over, so I was laying on my stomach, and she started gently rubbing circles on my back. It was the same thing my mother had done when I was little and couldn’t fall asleep. Not that I really needed that much help. I felt better than I had when I first woke up, but there was fatigue like nothing I had ever felt before. Even after Peter had bitten me and almost drained me entirely, the blood transfusion Ezra had given me had boosted everything before I felt the extreme effect of it.
Within seconds, I was out cold.
Chapter 20
I didn’t wake up until almost ten o’clock that night, but fortunately, I was still so tired that I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble falling asleep again before school. Jack was around the house, but he didn’t even look at me the entire time that I was there. That hurt like nothing else. We had shared something far more intimate than I had ever imagined anything could be, and then he won’t talk to me or look at me. He could barely even stand to be in the same room as me.
Milo made me supper, and everyone moved around me like they were walking on broken glass.
They treated me like I was dying, like a doctor had given me a matter of weeks to live, but I didn’t see an expiration date stamped anywhere on me. Ezra was gone by the time I woke up, and Mae explained that he had some things he wanted to look into. I didn’t know if he really did, or if he was going to talk to Peter and try to keep him away.
Jane sent me a couple text messages, demanding to know had happened last night, but I didn’t really feel like explaining vampires in text message form and I definitely did have the strength for that kind of phone conversation. So I just ignored her, even though I knew she deserved an explanation after my brother had bitten her.
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