This was exactly why he’d been so against Mae turning Daisy in the first place. He knew nothing good could come of it, and he couldn’t clean it up.
“This is so messed up.” Milo leaned back against the couch and let out a deep breath.
“Did Peter say how bad things were?”
“He didn’t go into graphic detail but things were definitely not good. Some people might be dead.”
“And now she’s coming here?” Milo looked up at me.
“And now she’s coming here,” I repeated.
“I want to help Mae, and I don’t necessarily want Peter to die.” He stood up straighter and crossed his arms over his chest. “But what are we supposed to do? Daisy is dangerous, really dangerous. And even if she wasn’t, her poster is plastered all over town. Mae kidnapped her, remember?”
“I know,” I nodded. “She can’t live here, not in the city.”
“Where else can she stay?” Milo asked.
“I don’t know…” I trailed off, thinking. “But Olivia is the oldest vampire I’ve ever met.
She might know something about child vampires.”
“You’ve only met like five vampires. That doesn’t really mean anything,” Milo said.
“I’ve met way more than that,” I scoffed. “And she’s still like six-hundred-years-old or something. She has to know something about them.”
Jack groaned from the other room, and I remembered that I’d heard him fall while Milo’d been arguing with Ezra.
“I gotta go take care of Jack, then I’m going to Olivia’s,” I said. “You can come with me if you want.”
I went into the kitchen and found Jack passed out between the island and the counter. When I pulled him up, he barely even stirred, so I carried him up to our room and dropped him off. I’d never seen Jack this knocked out before, but I’d never seen him drained either.
Watching Jack sleeping on the bed, looking peaceful and vulnerable, I had this weird sensation. He’d never been the weaker one before. But lately, things had been shifting.
I’d become stronger as a vampire, and thanks to my training with Olivia, I’d become a better fighter than him. We’d done some play fighting the other day, and I’d tackled him without really trying. I was growing more powerful than Jack, and it felt… disorienting.
“Are you gonna just stare at Jack or are we gonna go?” Milo asked, poking his head into the bedroom.
“Hold on. I gotta change real quick.” I hurried into the closet to throw some clothes on, and Milo stood impatiently by the door, texting on his phone. “Who are you talking to that’s so important?”
“Bobby. I’m telling him not to come over after class.”
“Why not?” I started walking towards the stairs, and Milo followed, still typing away on his phone.
“Because it’s not safe here anymore,” Milo said. “You saw what happened in Australia. He can’t be around Daisy anymore. I won’t risk it.”
“Yeah, but she’s not here now.” I glanced back at him as went down the stairs.
“That’s exactly what he said. I think you two spend too much time together.”
“He’s the only human friend I’ve got,” I shrugged.
“I’m pretty sure he’s the only friend you’ve got,” Milo sighed.
Just as we reached the kitchen, Bobby walked in from the garage. Apparently, he planned on ignoring Milo’s texts of warnings.
“Turn around,” Milo said.
“Look, she’s not here now. I’m not going anywhere,” Bobby insisted.
“Well, we are.” I brushed past him towards the garage. “We’re going to Olivia’s if you wanna come with.”
I quickly regretted inviting Milo and Bobby to tag along. The car ride downtown consisted of the two of them arguing about whether or not it would be safe to visit the house. Bobby pointed out that he hadn’t signed up for a dorm this semester, so he didn’t have anywhere else to stay.
Milo relented and said Bobby could stay for tonight, and they’d figure something else out in the morning. But that only happened after ten minutes of constant bickering.
While I understood the beauty of the glass walls of the penthouse suite at night, during the afternoon, it made no sense to me. The sun had started to set, so it was level with the windows. Even though they were tinted, the bright pink rays stung my eyes and skin.
Her place looked clean, but Milo brushed off her sofa before sitting down, as if he thought he might catch something from it. Bobby had been here with me a lot more often than Milo had, so he was more comfortable with the surroundings and flopped down on the overstuffed sofa.
I’d tried convincing Milo to come here and train with me, but he wasn’t into it. He didn’t really care for Olivia, mostly because he thought she was a drunk, and he didn’t like fighting either. He wanted to live a normal life, the same kind of life he would’ve had if he hadn’t turned, and in his normal life, he wouldn’t have done combat training. That was his stance.
Before I could knock on her bedroom door, she opened it. It scared me so much I gasped. She smiled tiredly at me, wrapping her silken robe more around herself. She wore her long black hair braided down her back, swinging like a rope as she walked out.
“What are you doing awake?” I asked.
“Trouble sleeping.” She waved her hand vaguely and went over to the couch.
This wasn’t the first time she mentioned trouble sleeping. I’d said something about it to Ezra once, and he’d explained that insomnia could be a side effect of her cutting down on blood. Drinking that much blood that often had become a sleep aid for her, and without her excessive daily dose, she was having difficulty learning to sleep without it.
“Hello, Olivia.” Milo forced a smile at her, doing his best to be polite.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Olivia asked. She sat on the couch across from Milo, sprawling out and the robe slipped up over her slender legs.
“What do you know about child vampires?” I asked. I didn’t sit down and kept my back to the window. The sun beat warm on my skin, and I tried to ignore it.
“I try not to know anything about them,” she answered diffidently.
“Is there a way to… like train them?” I asked.
“Why are you interested in child vampires?” Olivia glanced over at Bobby. “He’s young but he’s not a child.”
I exchanged a look with Milo. Olivia didn’t know about Daisy. We weren’t sure how other vampires would react to a child, and we didn’t really think she needed to know. But maybe she did now.
“Mae turned a child,” I said carefully, gauging Olivia’s reaction. “That’s why she’s been gone. She’s hiding out with the child vampire.”
“I’m sure that’s turning out marvelously,” Olivia laughed dryly but didn’t seem surprised.
“Do you know anything about child vampires or not?” Milo snapped. He’d grown very defensive of Mae, even if he didn’t agree with her choices.
“Honestly, I’ve tried to steer clear of the whole thing,” she sighed. “Vampires are just as likely as humans to dabble in that particular… fetish, and I know, for awhile, vampires were attempting some kind of child vampire sex trade.”
“Are you talking about pedophiles?” Bobby asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
“If that’s what you want to call it.” She smoothed out the silk of her robe and slid deeper in the couch. “There was a time, not that long ago, where it was common for men to marry girls as young as twelve.”
“You can’t possibly condone that.” Milo glared at her and put an arm around Bobby, in case Olivia decided to sell him into the sex trade.
“No, of course I don’t,” Olivia said, unruffled by Milo’s anger. “There’s very little I approve of that happened in the past.”
“So other vampires were turning children into vampires?” I asked, trying to return to the topic. “They had to have a way to control them.”
“Not really.” She shook her head. “Most
of them are incapable of ever learning restraint. They want to devour everything they see. And even the ones that can learn it, what good is that? Being trapped in a child’s body forever is torture. If Peter Pan had been real, he would’ve gone mad and killed everyone in Neverland.”
“Maybe the vampires you encountered were like that just because that’s what they were being forced to do,” I said. “If they were raised differently, maybe they could turn out better.”
“I can’t say,” she shrugged.
“Do you know anything?” Milo asked pointedly.
“Milo, don’t be rude,” I said.
“I’m not!” He insisted but his cheeks reddened. As much as he didn’t trust her, he didn’t want to be impolite. “I just meant that… Olivia never seems to know the answer to anything.”
“The more you know, the more you forget,” Olivia shrugged again.
“What are you guys doing out there?” A voice shouted from the bedroom next to Olivia’s, and Milo tensed up and narrowed his eyes.
“Who is that?” Milo leaned forward.
“It’s just me, and I’ve been trying to sleep.” Violet opened the bedroom door wearing an oversized tee shirt. Her blond hair was disheveled, and she sounded utterly tired. “But with Olivia getting up and moving around all day, and now you guys talking as loud as you want without regard-”
“What the hell are you doing there?” Milo hissed and got to his feet.
“What are you doing here?” Violet shot back, and she snapped awake. She moved like a livewire, and if she wanted to, she’d be over the couch and at Milo’s throat before he could even blink.
“Milo, it’s fine.” I stepped forward, moving in between them. “She’s just staying here for a while.”
Even though she’d been around and I’d run into her a few times, Milo hadn’t seen her at all since she’d had purple hair and hung out with Lucien. The last time he saw her, she’d been trying to kill us. He hadn’t seen the transformation from evil sidekick to sad homeless girl, so he was on high alert.
“You knew she was staying here?” Milo asked.
“Yeah, and it’s no big deal,” I reiterated. I failed to mention it had actually been my idea, but it was probably better if he didn’t know that.
“Take it easy, cowboy,” Olivia smirked at him. “I don’t allow fighting in the penthouse.”
“You take it easy,” Milo muttered, but he sat back down on the couch.
“Now I’m really awake,” Violet sighed and turned to walk back to the kitchen. “If I have to be up, I’m getting something to eat.”
“Is there anything at all you can tell us to help us?” I asked Olivia, ignoring the outburst. Milo tried to glare after Violet, but I moved to block his view.
“Stay away from the children.” Olivia cocked her head. “Why the sudden interest?
Hasn’t Mae had the child for a while?”
“Yeah but…” I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell her that they’d be in town. “I just wanted to help.”
“Sometimes you can’t help people,” Olivia said, sounding uncharacteristically sad.
“That’s probably the hardest lesson in life.”
Violet came back over to us, sipping blood out of a Big Gulp cup with a straw. The blood perfumed the air, and it smelled like it was pretty fresh. For once, I didn’t feel hungry. I was still too full from Jack to even consider eating yet, and that felt nice.
“Oh hey, it’s a good thing you’re here actually,” Violet said. She climbed over the arm of the chair and sat down, curling her knees up to her chest. She pulled the long tee shirt down over her legs and took a long sip from the cup.
“Who? Me?” I pointed to myself.
“Yeah.” She took another long drink and quickly swallowed down. “I was working the club last night, trying to keep the riffraff under control, and I saw this bloodwhore with a weird mark on her arm.”
“What kind of mark?” I asked.
“At first I thought it was a big ‘U,’ like the letter ‘u,’ but I really don’t know what it’s supposed to be,” Violet said. “When I asked the bloodwhore about it, she told me a vampire branded her. It turns out this vampire has been branding a lot of the bloodwhores.
”
“Branding them? You mean like cattle?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh he can’t do that,” Olivia said disdainfully. “You can’t brand girls unless they’re in your harem.”
“I don’t know if they’re in his harem or not,” Violet shrugged. “I just thought it seemed like suspicious behavior.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She took another drink, but this time it was to buy herself some time to think about what she meant. “I asked the bloodwhore why the vampire did it, and he’d told her, ‘I want everyone to know that you belong to a vampire.’ Something about that just sounded off to me. Like everyone would know she belongs to a vampire.”
“Huh,” I said, but a chill shot down my spine.
“Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know since you were asking about that girl’s murder,” Violet said off-handedly and went back to finishing her beverage.
I felt Milo’s eyes on me as soon as she said it, and I decided that we better get out of there before Violet or Olivia let it slip exactly how interested I was in looking for Jane’s killer.
I thanked both Olivia and Violet for their help as nonchalantly as possible, but Milo noticed my hasty exit. He waited until we were the elevator, trapped in the long ride to the basement, before bringing it up.
“What exactly did Violet mean that you were asking about that girl’s murder?” Milo asked, his eyes locked on me. Bobby hid next to him, hoping Milo wouldn’t realize that he’d been helping me too.
“She was my best friend, Milo.” I stared up at the ceiling. “You think I’m not gonna ask at all?”
“No, but you better not be really looking into this,” Milo warned me. “The police have it under control.”
“I’m not looking into it, but if the police have it under control, what would it matter if I did? If they can handle it, I definitely can,” I countered.
“Alice, you don’t have the tools or equipment to really solve this,” Milo said wearily.
“You’d just end up getting yourself in trouble. And what would you do if you did find the killer? You couldn’t prove that it was him, and you would never know for sure so you wouldn’t want to kill him. What good would it do to track him down?”
“It wouldn’t,” I said. “That’s why I’m not. I just asked a few questions. It’s not like I launched an investigation or something.”
“Good. That’s all it better be.”
“Why?” I looked over at him. “What happens if it’s not?”
“I’ll tell Jack about all those longing gazes you shared with Peter when we were in Australia.” Milo said evenly and my jaw dropped.
“We- I- ugh!” I groaned and looked away from him. “That’s not even fair!”
“I’m sick of you almost getting yourself killed, Alice!” Milo yelled. “And if you won’t wise up on your own, then I’ll force you into it! Stay away from this, okay?”
“Fine!” I hit the elevator button, hoping to make the ride speed up somehow.
I didn’t need Milo narcing on me for something that didn’t even happen, or… barely happened. I mean, it was innocent, but I didn’t need another big fight. I promised Jack I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him anymore, and I meant it.
At the same time, I wasn’t about to let Jane’s killer go free. Especially not when I had something new to go on. It may not be a big lead, but Violet’s tip had been more than I had yesterday.
“Promise me you’ll leave this alone,” Milo insisted.
“I promise,” I said, knowing I would break that promise as soon as I got the chance.
12
Every day when I woke up, I found more books added to the stack of my studies. When I saw how few book
s Milo brought home compared to my workload, I regretted letting Ezra homeschool me instead of going to actual school.
I’d finished To Kill a Mockingbird and my chapters in the history book, but I skipped out on anatomy. Turns out, I didn’t have much of an interest in becoming a doctor.
Even with all that, I managed to sneak in a moment alone with Bobby. We both thought something was going on with the vampire branding girls. I wanted to check into it more, but we definitely couldn’t do anything in front of Milo. He’d made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want us involved with this.
Since I’d finished To Kill a Mockingbird, I woke up to find On the Road by Jack Kerouac and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway along with a law book added to the growing stack of textbooks Ezra left for me by the couch. On the Road wasn’t as horrible as I’d envisioned it being, and I sprawled out on the couch to read it.
“How are you finding the book?” Ezra asked when he came into the living room to check on my progress.
“It’s okay.” I shrugged and sat up more, setting the book aside so I could talk to him.
“How do you decide which books you want me to read?”
“I’m picking at random from the most critically acclaimed books of the last century.”
He picked up the worn copy of A Farewell to Arms , flipping through it absently. “This is one of my favorites. I was hoping you’d pick that one first.”
“I read Old Man and the Sea in high school and almost died of boredom. I’m holding off on Hemingway, if I can.”
“Well, you’re going to read it.” He set the book back down on the couch and crossed the room to sit down on a chair.
“What about the law book? How did you decide on that?” I asked, gesturing to the new textbook.
“You didn’t seem that interested in anatomy. I thought law might suit you better.”
“So what’s your plan? Try everything until you find something that interests me?”
“My plan is to educate you.” He smiled. “It’s up to you to find out what interests you and what you’re passionate about.”
“Law might interest me.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
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