“Are you hungry? I just made dinner, or, um, ordered it,” Aj says when I walk into the kitchen. Here we go.
“I just ate with Tex on the way back, so I’m good right now, but thanks.” I don’t mention having leftovers later, because I want to draw attention away from the fact that I won’t be eating food, ever again.
“Okay, well, there are leftovers whenever you want them,” Aj says, still staring at my eyes. I look away and start talking to Dad, asking him about going back to work.
He’s chipper, which is a nice change of pace, so we talk for a while and I make up stories about my trip and Aj cleans up the kitchen.
“Great,” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can. An hour is about as much as I can stand, so I go for what I hope is a convincing yawn and tell Dad and Aj that I’m going up to bed. It’s not unreasonable, because a trip like that (especially with Tex) would leave me exhausted.
I give them both short hugs and speed upstairs again.
“Do her eyes look different?” Aj says as she and Dad go to watch the news in the living room.
“Hm? I didn’t notice,” Dad says and I know that it’s only a matter of time before he does.
Peter
“I should probably go back to my room,” Ava says the next morning as we’re lying naked in the sun in a little clearing not far from her new house. We went to New Hampshire again to find someone to feed on, and she was able to leave all three people alive. She’s getting better and her confidence is growing, and she’s needing less blood as time wears on.
“I can smell Aj making pancakes. God, why is this food thing so complicated? I mean, am I going to have to say that I want to eat them in my room and then throw them away? What happens if I try to eat them?” I brush a blade of grass from her shoulder.
“You will choke and get sick immediately.”
“Hey, that might work in my favor. Or maybe I could be on a new diet. I’m a vegetarian, so maybe I could go vegan. I love having her here, but I wish she’d go home. With Dad at work all the time, it’ll be a lot easier to deal with.”
I rub my hand in circles on her shoulder and she closes her eyes.
“Has she said when she’s going back?”
“I thought maybe if Dad was going back to work, that would be her cue to go, but I haven’t heard anything. You’d think she’d want to get back to her life and her boyfriend. It sounds pretty serious.” She sits up and jumps to the overhang on the roof under her window. I follow her and watch as she gets dressed.
“Your hair is a little out of control,” I say, so I brush it for her. The house continues to fill with the smell of pancakes, confirming Ava’s fears.
“I think I’m going to have food poisoning until we can get her out of here,” she says as I put her hair up in a ponytail for her. I’ve gotten good at this, if I do say so myself.
“I’ll drop some heavy hints and see where they go,” she says, giving me a quick kiss. “I’ll see you at the car.” It takes a lot of willpower to break the kiss, but I do and watch her leave the room. The absence of her heartbeat is something I knew I would miss, but it is only in times like this that I realize how much a part of my own life it had become.
She declines the pancakes and feigns food poisoning, which her aunt seems to believe, offering to get her something else, but Ava says she’ll be fine and needs to get to work. That starts a conversation about her staying home, but Ava refuses.
Her father says that he is going into the office, which distracts Ava’s aunt for a while as she tries to talk him out of it.
“I’m fine, Jenny, stop fussing. I need to get back to my life. Or, what is my life now. Don’t they need you at the university?” Ava didn’t even have to bring it up.
“I just thought that—“ Aj starts to say, but Sam interrupts her.
“Jenny. I’m fine. I lost my wife, but Ava and I need some time to be together and grieve. I love everything you’ve done for us, but I’m back on my feet now and I can take it from here.”
Aj tries to protest again, but stops.
“If you don’t want me here anymore—“
“That’s not it, and you know it. Come here.” Sam and Aj share a hug and Aj goes to the guest room to begin packing her things. I hear Ava say something so quiet her Dad wouldn’t be able to hear it.
“In the clear,” she says. “See you in the car.”
She says goodbye to her Dad and gives him a brief hug before going to her car and pretending to go to work.
She will not be able to work in an enclosed space with so many people for a while, so we’re planning on practicing feeding again.
I get in her car when it is far enough from the house for her father not to see me.
“That turned out good,” she says, giving me a relieved smile.
“Yes, it did.”
I ask her if she wants to go feed, but she says that she doesn’t need it and just wants to be in the sun all day, so we go to an abandoned house she says she’s been to before.
The ground is littered with red plastic cups and empty beer bottles. I don’t have to worry about her cutting her skin on them, which is a relief.
Her phone rings and she looks at the screen before answering.
“James! How are you?” She has barely talked with him, and I know it is because she is scared to tell him everything.
“I miss my Ave. Where are you now?” She looks at me and hesitates before answering.
“I’m just hanging out with Peter. I have to kind of stay away from groups of people, for obvious reasons.” She gives me a tight smile, and I put my hand on her shoulder to calm her.
“I wish I could see you, but I understand. When . . . when do you think we can be in the same vicinity?”
“I don’t. Maybe . . . maybe I can swing by your apartment and you can stay inside and I’ll stay outside and you can wave at me through the window.”
Jamie laughs at that.
“Or, maybe we can use this fancy thing called the internet and do a video chat. Brooke installed Skype on my computer.”
I have not heard of what he is talking about, but I know Viktor has.
“I know I have dark hair, but I swear I have blonde moments sometimes,” Ava says, her smile turning genuine.
“So does that mean I’m going to see your face?” Jamie says, and his hope is palpable in his voice.
“Yeah. We can do that. How about tonight at eight?”
“Perfect. See you then, Ave.”
“See you.” She hangs up and a bright smile bursts forth and she throws herself at me.
“Happy?” I say, knowing the answer.
“Right now? Yes.”
Good.
Tex
Ava was supposed to work today, but for obvious reasons, she can’t. It’s pretty easy to make an excuse for her as to why she’ll be out for a few weeks, and Mom is still so smitten with Viktor that she doesn’t really care all that much, as long as he’s around to carry around heavy boxes of books and move them wherever she wants. Seriously, I think she just likes to pretend they need to be moved so she can watch him do it, which is pretty sick when you think about it.
Mom doesn’t know that Viktor and I are together, but even if she caught us doing it on top of a box in the storeroom, I’m pretty sure she’d look the other way. Mom never sees anything she doesn’t want to see.
“Oh Viktor, would you mind moving this oh-so-heavy box for me?” I say in a breathy voice, walking toward him as he’s doing just that.
He gives me a look and I start laughing.
“Your mother is very . . . persistent.”
“Please don’t tell me she’s groped you.” The thought of that makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
“A few times.” Oh, God, that is a visual I did not need. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to get it out.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Why?” he says, setting down the box. “She is young, compared to me.”
Great.
Now he’s going to bring up the age thing. I hate it when he brings up the age thing, because any way you slice it, it’s skeevy. I mean, if he were human, he’d be the equivalent of a guy even older than Hugh Heffner and that’s just nasty.
“But you don’t look old. You look just right.” I sit down on one of the boxes and try not to pout, and pretty much fail.
“You can’t pretend that there isn’t a difference. You just have to decide it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
He gives me another look, because we both know I’m lying. I hate that he knows when I’m lying.
“Hey, just because you know I’m lying, doesn’t give you the right to point it out all the time.” I try to be grumpy, but he’s just so damn good-looking he makes it pretty hard.
Viktor
I know she doesn’t like thinking about our age difference, and it’s one of a number of things that she chooses to ignore about my life. Despite her vampire fascination, and her insistence that she is fine with how I am, I know that it scares her.
With Ava and Peter it had been different. She had been scared of him, yes, but her fear stemmed more from the fact that she felt so strongly about him and was afraid of losing him. Now they will be together and she doesn’t have to fear that, or death.
Distantly, I wonder if I should be jealous that my brother is getting what I only briefly had with Adele. Those pure moments of happiness that were so long ago, but still taste so sweet when I call them forward.
I have never told Texas that she reminds me of Adele, and not just the way she looks, but I am sure someone else has.
“So could you just do me a favor and not hit on my mom? I know you had to sort of flirt with her to get the job, but you need to tone down the charm or else she’s going to wake up and realize that Dad’s boring and she needs a Russian stud in her bed. And that would be really awkward for all involved. I’m just asking you to be less attractive. If that’s at all possible.” I get down on my knees, so our faces are level as she sits on the box.
“I will do my best.” I pull her chin toward me and give her a kiss. Kissing Tex is always like being hit by lighting. Hot and forceful and almost painful. The pain part comes from wanting to bite her lips and suck a few drops of blood. I’ve done it before and she didn’t seem to mind, but I don’t want to push my luck.
She licks my bottom lip and I am tempted to bite her tongue, but I pull back from the kiss. I almost let the words that I’ve been trying to say fall from my lips, but I pull them back at the last moment. Her eyes widen and I shut the door on our connection. I have been doing that a lot and I know she is suspicious. Or at least she should be.
“We should get back to work.” She pouts and I yank her to her feet.
“Ohh, forceful. I like that.” I have never unleashed my full force on her. She wouldn’t survive that.
Eighteen
Ava
I’m able to make it through the next week without killing Dad or Aj. She leaves the day after I get back, and she hugs me for a long time, and stares at me for a long time too. I’ve got Skype installed on my computer now, and she’s got it, so there will be lots of video chats in the future. Not sure how I feel about that, given the fact that she’ll be watching my eyes and trying to figure out why they’re different now.
She wasn’t born yesterday, and I expect her to confront me, or at least get Dad to confront me, but she doesn’t. Just gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and makes me promise to email her as much as I can and if I need anything, she can be back in an hour, if she drives fast.
I smile and tell her that Dad and I will be fine and go back in the house to make a pie. I have absolutely no idea what to do with it, but I figure making a pie will help keep up my human façade.
“So where’s that boyfriend of yours?” Dad says as I’m rolling out the piecrust. I pause with the rolling pin mid-roll. Dad hasn’t mentioned Peter in a while, and I’ve been hesitant to let Dad see him. I just didn’t think he needed to worry about Peter and me on top of everything else.
“Oh, he’s just been really busy. Working a lot and saving for college.” Wow, lying is so easy now. It makes me wonder how many times Peter lied to me about stuff. But really, do I want to know? Probably not.
“You should have him over. I got used to seeing him.” Peter had played the part of the supportive boyfriend to perfection with the funeral and in the first two weeks after we lost Mom. Dad had been in such a deep depression that he hadn’t seemed to notice or mind, so I hadn’t had to be as careful with him as usual.
“Why don’t you invite him over for dinner?” I’ve told Dad a thousand times that Peter is “lactose intolerant” and can’t eat most of what we make, but he can’t seem to remember that, no matter how many times I say it.
I’m also suspicious of his motive. Dad has never liked Peter and his sudden interest is freaking me out.
“He’s on a special diet because of all his food allergies, so he can’t really eat at anyone’s house. His own house has to be sterilized like crazy because it’s so bad.” I should have just used this lie in the first place, but it hadn’t occurred to me until now.
“I’m thinking about going vegan myself. I mean, I’ve always wanted to, and now seems like a good time.”
“What’s vegan again?” Dad squints at me and he looks so confused that I almost laugh.
“You don’t eat any animal products or by-products. Like butter.” I finish rolling out the crust and then use plastic wrap to lay it in the pie pan. This part can be tricky, but I get it on the first try. Score.
“So what are you going to do with the pie?” I shrug.
“Feed it to Tex?”
“But you love pie.”
“I know, but it’s not very good for you.”
I’m not going to lie; I miss pie. Not that I want to eat one now, but I remember what it tasted like and how much I enjoyed it. Blood has filled that place. Only blood. Sweet, hot . . .
“I don’t feel good,” I say, clutching my stomach and running upstairs as if I’m going to puke.
“Are you okay?” Dad runs up the stairs after me as I slam and lock the door of the bathroom and turn the water on.
I make a choking noise that sounds like puking.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a stomach bug. I’ll be fine.” He rattles the door, but I reiterate that I’m fine.
Is this what I’m reduced to? Fake puking? This would be so much easier if I was away at college instead of still in high school.
The bathroom door opens with a click, and Peter comes in. I give him a grim look and flush the toilet that I no longer need to use. I sometimes go in and flush it just to keep up appearances. It’s a good thing that my brain has more room or something to remember these little human things I have to do.
“This is not going to be easy,” I say, butting my forehead into his chest as his arms go around me. “But I’m going to be positive. It’s going to work out and be okay.” I paste a smile on my face with extra, extra glue and let out a little sound of frustration that doesn’t do much to make me feel better.
“I should probably go and finish the pie. Also, did you hear what Dad said about you?”
He blinks. That’s a nod.
“I did. I will come over either before or after dinner and behave in a normal human fashion.” Such a good boy he is.
“Sometimes I don’t know why you put up with me. I sure hope I’m worth it.” Ugh, I’m sounding very close to those needy girls who always need reassurance from their boyfriends that they are loved and wanted. I do not want to be one of those girls.
I am, apparently, the kind of girl who will make her immortal boyfriend turn her immortal too just so she won’t have to face the pain of growing old when he doesn’t. There was a lot more to my change than that, but I could see how someone might see it that way.
I wait a few more minutes, then go back downstairs and finish the pie. Dad watches me warily for the rest of the a
fternoon.
I make him dinner, but am able to fake the stomach bug as the reason I’m not eating. I pretend to sip some ginger ale and pour it down the sink when he isn’t looking.
He looks like he wants to talk, and I wish he’d just say what’s on his mind. I’m freaking out, but Peter is doing his best to calm me down. Outwardly, I know I’m fine, but it’s a whole other thing inside.
“We need to talk.” Ah, gotta love those words. Of course my mind goes to the worst possible place, and I start trying to think of excuses for the change in my behavior.
“I just . . . I was thinking about boxing up some of your mother’s things, but I didn’t want to do anything without talking to you about it first.” Oh. That’s unexpected.
“Mom’s stuff?” I have to repeat it to make sure that’s what we’re talking about here
“Yes. It’s too hard to have so much of her around. I can’t . . . I can’t sleep in that room anymore the way it is now. I keep thinking she’s going to walk in the door any moment and I can’t . . .” he doesn’t finish. I know exactly what he means. I also know that he’s been sleeping on the floor, and sometimes on the couch downstairs.
We non-verbally decided to keep everything the way it was when Mom passed. I even had an issue moving things in the kitchen. I’d almost wished we could have taken the entire house and put it in a plastic box and put it in a museum. Keep it untouched so I could go back and be in a moment when she was still alive.
“I know,” I say, getting up and giving him a quick and hopefully not-too-strong hug. “I understand.”
So the two of us hold hands and walk into her room. The peach light is the same. Her cosmetics on the vanity are the same. The words, “It is always darkest before the dawn,” are still on the wall in the same place.
It is the same, but it is not. Before, the room felt like it breathed her. Now it is a vacuum. Sucking all the air out. It’s a good thing I don’t need to breathe anymore.
We look at each other and have another unspoken conversation. It reminds me of the ones that Viktor and Peter have, as the two of us back up and close the door. Dad takes a shaky breath.
The Noctalis Chronicles Complete Set Page 90
