by Cali Mann
“But shouldn’t we try to help them undo the curse?”
“You don’t think the human brother is better off not knowing that his sibling is an evil vampire?”
“He doesn’t seem evil.”
“Neither does your mother.” Papa sighed. “I don’t mean to be harsh—”
But he was being harsh. I frowned. I’d wanted to help my mom too. Couldn’t there be some way to bring them back from the brink? Were dark magic users really all evil? Bash certainly hadn’t seemed so. A jerk, fine, but not evil. He was fun-loving and mischievous. And Seb, he was just caught up in this whole mess. He didn’t even know what was going on for all his book smarts.
The waitress returned, setting heaping full plates of French toast in front of us. “Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you,” Papa said, lifting his fork.
I raised an eyebrow at the pile of food in front of him. “Will Dad approve?”
He laughed. “Likely not.”
We were all tempted by things we shouldn’t do, whether eating a bunch of carbs or dark magic. I was definitely tempted by the dark more than most. I’d fallen under the spell of that book so quickly. I hadn’t even touched it until I shoved it into my bag. What effect could it have on Seb, who’d been under a spell his whole life?
I dug into my food, trying to push Seb and Bash from my mind. Papa was right. I shouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the brothers and their problems. They were probably affected by the darkness more than they seemed. Could my physical attraction to them be just a reaction to the magic? I didn’t know if I could trust anything about our interactions. What if it had all been influenced?
Bash
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Seb was an idiot. He’d—we’d—had Greer right there on the study room table. I ran my hand through my hair. Seb was confused and affected somehow by that evil book, and it’d been so easy to breakthrough. I’d never done that before though. I’d always been a silent observer in my brother’s life.
But he’d wanted Greer as much as I had. He just would never let himself have her—but I would. I was sorry I’d let her leave the other day without saying anything, and I wanted to make it up to her. If I could. If she’d ever see me as anything other than an evil vampire. But a vampire didn’t have a reflection and I swallowed, thinking of Fiona’s master. Real vampires were evil and bloodthirsty. I didn’t know if it was my human half, or just how I was, but I never killed. I didn’t drink people to death. I might be made of dark magic, but I wasn’t bad.
I sighed, rubbing my forehead. Who was I kidding? Greer was never going to accept us. I’d let her go without an explanation and Seb had run out on her. She didn’t have any reason to return.
I could feel Seb rolling underneath my skin. He’d known something was up, but he’d been too freaked out and I’d taken over. He was the weak one. He couldn’t handle it when things were out of his precious order. So even though the sunlight still shone through the window, he was hiding inside me. I was the strong one, the one who could actually fight the terrors.
Except I couldn’t, no more than he could. We were two halves of the same soul and neither of us was vicious enough to take on a vampire master and his pack of trouble. Fiona was just going to keep sending her gifts and Seb was going to keep freaking out. We were never going to be free.
What if I gave in? What if I let the darkness take me? Seb would be lost. My brother, my other half, would be erased. What did he have to live for anyway? A stuffy job as a university professor like Cantrell and a boring life.
But our mother had tried to erase me. I knew what it felt like not to be wanted. Seb would go mad watching the horrors carried out by the vampires. He wasn’t strong enough to hold on as I had been. He wouldn’t last, and we’d succumb to evil.
Greer
Professor Cantrell stopped me on the way into class. “Miss Rivers?”
“Yes, sir?” I asked. Without Seb’s tutoring, I was going to fail badly, but I just couldn’t seem to stop going to class. That felt like giving up. Papa said I shouldn’t worry about it, but I hadn’t listened.
“Have you seen Seb recently?”
I blinked. “Seb?” Had he been missing class? I shook myself. Seb would never miss class. He was too responsible.
“Yes,” the professor said, shaking his gray head. “He hasn’t been to see me in the last couple of days. That’s not like him.”
“Did you call him?” It wasn’t like him. At all.
“No answer. I was wondering if he’d been at your tutoring session?”
“Not since Monday.” When we’d had much more than a tutoring session and he’d run out. Was he still upset about that? Or maybe confused, because he didn’t understand how the book had been affecting us. I pressed my lips together.
Cantrell frowned and reached in his bag. He pulled out a slip of paper and offered it to me.
“What’s that?” I asked, my hand closing on it automatically.
“That’s his address,” he said, hoisting his bag up to his shoulder. Papers were bursting from every opening. “Would you go by and check on him?”
“No . . .” I said, pushing the paper back toward the professor.
“I would,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “But I have so much work to catch up on without Seb’s help.”
“I really can’t,” I said. “I have to get to class.”
A smile ghosted over Cantrell’s face. “Not really much point with your grades, is there, my dear?” With that, he turned and headed into the lecture hall.
I swallowed. Well, thanks for that. My eyes dropped to the address on the scrap of paper. Papa had warned me. I shouldn’t go anywhere near him. But if he was in trouble, I’d hate to think I hadn’t at least offered to help. We’d let Mom get carried away by the dark magic and hadn’t done anything. I’d been too young, but my dads, they’d just walked away. Wasn’t there at least a chance that she could have been saved? What if whatever maelstrom Seb was stuck in, he could be rescued. Didn’t I have an obligation to at least try?
The door to the classroom slammed closed, signaling the start of class.
I bit my lip, then turned and headed out of the building. I’d just check in on him. I didn’t need to do anything more, but just make sure he was okay. If the book was still affecting him somehow, maybe he was doing something crazy.
My boots crunched through the fallen leaves as I crossed the campus. I didn’t head up to the main road but cut across through buildings in the shortest route possible. When I turned the corner and spotted Seb’s building, I froze, blinking.
I’d walked home this way after I’d met Bash. There couldn’t be two basement apartments that looked exactly the same, could there? My gaze swept the area looking for a building with a similar construct, but there weren’t any. Off-campus buildings varied in structure and style. None of the ones I could see had the same windows lining the basement floor as Bash’s did.
Had Professor Cantrell given me the wrong address by mistake? I blinked. Or had I been a fool, taken in by the brothers’ lies? They really did know each other, and they’d been playing me this whole time. Why? What could they possibly have to gain? It didn’t make any sense.
I marched toward the door, heat flushing through me. I wasn’t someone who got angry easily or often, but I was pissed now. When I reached the step, I stared at the clean surface. He’d washed it in bleach, wiping away all signs of the dead raccoon. I slammed my fist against the wood. “Seb! Bash! Open up.”
No one answered. The wind rushed by behind me, rustling the leaves, and I spun, staring at them. Then I shook myself and knocked on the door again. “Seb!”
After several more minutes, I heard slow footsteps approaching. “Greer?”
“Yes, let me in.”
“Go away,” he growled.
“Professor Cantrell is worried about you,” I shouted through the door. “Is Bash home too?”
“Bash?”
“Yeah, your
brother.”
The door cracked open, and Seb’s wide eyes gazed at me. “Who the fuck is Bash?”
I pushed the door open and stomped inside. “Bash, I know this is your apartment too. You can stop playing now.”
Seb was dressed in plaid pajama bottoms and a plain gray tee shirt. His feet were bare against the tile floor. His dark eyebrows squished together as he watched me.
I spun on my heel and took off through the apartment. Same kitchen, same gray couch, same bedroom, same bed—I blinked back sudden tears. He’d told me that his brother didn’t even know he was alive, and they’d been living in the same apartment. I’d felt sorry for a vampire, a being of dark magic. Seb probably wasn’t even cursed. He just had fuzzies from living with his vampire brother.
“Bash, where are you?” I spun on Seb. “Does he sleep in a closet or something? Like some creepy TV vampire?”
Seb ran a hand through his hair. “What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?”
I curled my hands into fists and glared. “Your vampire brother.”
“You’re nuts,” he muttered. “I don’t have a brother, and I don’t believe in vampires.”
“I was here in this apartment. Bash and I had sex right there, in that bed.”
He frowned. “In my bed?”
“In Bash’s bed,” I said. He honestly seemed bewildered. Overtired and depressed and confused—what was going on? “Why haven’t you been going to work?”
Seb crossed his arms over his chest. “I haven’t been feeling well.”
“Why didn’t you call the professor? He’s really worried.”
Rubbing his head, he looked down at the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember.”
I pushed by him, heading back to the kitchen. I needed out of the darkness; I needed to see the light. Glancing back, I inspected him for the black magic, and I could still make the fuzzies out against his shirt. He was full of it. I bit my lip. Opening my third eye would tell me the truth, but could I look at that much dark magic without losing it? I’d been taken in by that book so easily, much more easily than I ever anticipated. I worried that the same thing would happen to me now. There was no question that I found these men physically attractive. And I liked them, or at least I had before they’d turned into jerks. Was there more to this than I was seeing?
I had almost convinced myself to do it, to open my third eye, and know the truth when the doorbell rang. I blinked. I didn’t even know they had a doorbell. I turned to face the door, and everything that followed seemed to happen in slow motion.
Seb opened it and caught the falling young woman in his arms. Blood poured over his hands. The woman’s neck had been cut and she was bleeding from an artery, at least that’s what I assumed due to the amount of blood. She’d die in seconds from that kind of blood loss.
“Call 911,” Seb gasped, trying to stem the flow with his fingers.
Hurrying over, I raised my hand to cast a spell to save the young woman.
“We have to do something.” Seb’s eyes flashed up at me and their piercing blue went dark. He opened his mouth, and fangs had descended along his upper teeth.
“Save her,” Bash cried out, his whole body tensing as he scented the blood.
My thoughts froze as I stared at him, but I forced myself to nod. I didn’t have time to think this through. Instead, I lay my hand along the girl’s throat and murmured the words. The magic pulled on my spirit, stealing my energy, but I pushed through it. My stomach swirled, and I gritted my teeth. It hurt and I shook like I hadn’t eaten in days, but I didn’t stop until the wound was sealed.
Bash gazed down at the woman, his body unnaturally still. “I want to lap it up, to feast on her injury,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“It’s okay,” I said, reaching for him. I swayed, dizzy from my own energy loss, and dropped down to the tile floor beside Bash. I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. The brothers weren’t brothers. They were two sides of the same person, the same dhampir. I didn’t need to open my third eye to see what was happening in front of my face, even if it had taken me too long to recognize it. “It’s your nature.”
He shook his head violently. “No. I don’t want to hurt people, but she keeps shoving them in my face.”
“She?” I asked, but somehow I knew who he was talking about. Fiona.
Bash glanced at me. “We’re not evil, Greer. We’re cursed and broken, but Seb’s a good guy.”
I gave him a soft smile. “You are too, Bash. Fiona shoved temptation in your face, and you’ve turned away from it time and time again.”
“It’s getting harder.” Pain was etched over his face.
“Why is she doing this?”
“She got turned, and she wants us to go dark with her,” he said, laying the young woman down on the floor. Her chest rose and fell. “Something about making her master happy.”
I took a breath. “Why?”
“He’s amused by a dhampir, constantly fighting with its own nature.” He sighed, rubbing a bloody hand along his forehead. “And Fiona’s climbing a different kind of corporate ladder.”
“But how could you go evil?” Maybe I was dense with exhaustion, but I didn’t understand.
“I’d take over our body, and never let Seb out again. I’d erase him as our mother once tried to erase me.”
“Oh.” I shook my head. “But you wouldn’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t I?” he asked. Then Bash turned to me and reached out for my hands. “Help me, Greer, help us.”
We did end up calling emergency services. The girl still had a lot of blood loss, and while I could keep her from dying, I couldn’t replace it all magically, at least not without harming myself. We explained to the medics as best we could, but we didn’t really know what had happened, only that she’d arrived at Bash’s door feeling faint.
Bash settled me on the couch as soon as the paramedics had gone. “It’s after 11,” he said, studying me. “You like Chinese?”
I nodded. “Sesame Chicken.” I wrapped my fingers in the flannel blanket he’d covered me in. Seb and Bash were the same person. They were two halves of a whole. Once I’d realized it, it had made perfect sense.
“Anything to drink?” he asked, setting the phone down on the counter. “I think Seb has some sodas in the fridge.”
“Seb drinks soda?” I asked. “And yes.”
“Gotta fuel those study sessions somehow.” Bash said with a shrug. He flipped the top on a can and poured it into a glass. Then he carried it over to me.
“Sit,” I commanded, and took a sip of the bubbly soda. The sugar was just what I needed to refuel.
Bash sat, his shoulders hunched as if he expected me to yell at him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I didn’t think you’d understand.”
My lips twitched. “Dhamphirs are rare. I expect cursed ones even more so.”
“Our mother did hate me, well, this side of me. But the curse didn’t exactly work as intended.”
“And you know about Seb,” I said. feeling out the truth of it. He had been honest with me. Well, as much as he’d been able. “But he doesn’t know about you.”
“He’s starting to figure it out, I think,” Bash said. “Because of the dark magic book and the effect it had on us.”
I swallowed. “You were there in the library.”
He nodded. “I haven’t been able to take control during the day, but recently, the bonds seem to be loosening.”
My eyes went to the blood spot on the carpet. “Tell me more about Fiona.”
Bash
I stared at Greer, on my couch—on our couch—looking at me with so much sympathy. Didn’t she understand this was my fault? If I hadn’t exposed myself to Fiona—accidentally, of course—she wouldn’t have known that vampires existed. I squeezed my hands into fists. If I had died when the curse was cast, if I’d been eradicated as our mother intended, none
of this would be happening. Fiona wasn’t torturing Seb. He was just a confused bystander. I was the one she hunted.
The girl’s blood had called to me, even as she lay dying in my arms. I couldn’t control my reaction to food, and Fiona used that against me over and over again. Even now, with the thin afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, she’d gotten to me. The vampires must have humans working for them during the day. What kind of compulsion must they be under to hurt someone like they had that girl?
Seb was freaking out. He was like an itch under my skin, begging to get out. This was his time. I shouldn’t involve Greer anymore than I already had. It was unfair of me to ask her to help us. Dark circles still lay under her eyes, a sign of how much the magic had taken from her. This wasn’t her problem. I wasn’t her problem.
Fiona—well, I had to take care of her and I would, tonight when I was stronger. For now, I let go of my hold on our body. Seb would make Greer leave, and I’d be able to go after Fiona tonight by myself. I’d take down Fiona. That I could do.
What I couldn’t do was this . . . look in Greer’s gray eyes and see the hope there. The feelings that she shouldn’t be having, for the vampire no one wanted.
And the flutter in my chest that said maybe I wasn’t so dead after all.
I turned my face away, letting go, and Seb rushed back in. This time I didn’t watch from behind his eyes but crept back into the darkness of our mind. This was where I belonged. Alone and forgotten.
Seb
Greer was on my couch, eating sesame chicken and looking at me expectantly. I searched the room, but the bleeding woman was gone. Her bloodstain still marked the floor by the door. I swallowed.
“Bash?” Greer asked.
I spun to her, my eyebrows pinching my forehead. Why did she keep saying that name? Who was Bash? I rubbed my temple. I remembered something, running on the green grass of my yard, Mother calling me from the porch . . . “Who . . . what are you talking about? Bash?”
