Chapter 22
If I could have melted into the seat itself, I would have. The level of exhaustion was unlike anything I had ever felt in my entire life, and I wasn’t sure I would ever recover.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, having nearly forgotten about it the entire night. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head.
Fifteen notifications? More surprising—every single one was from Xandra.
At first, she was returning my text messages and phone calls, apologizing for not getting back to me sooner. Next, she asked what was happening, wondering if Byron had showed up again. When I didn’t reply, she started to freak out, and it gradually got worse and worse, with threats to call my parents, as well as to call the police and report a missing person.
That last one was from fifteen minutes before I got in the limo.
I hastily sent her a reply, assuring her that I was fine, and that no, Byron had not sucked me dry like a little kid with a straw and a glass of chocolate milk. I told her that I had a whole crap ton to tell her, though, and that tomorrow, if she was free, we needed to get together somehow.
Xandra was typing a reply when another message blipped up on my screen.
Sorry I didn’t get to meet you. You caused quite a stir.
My mystery texter.
I debated sending a reply. Probably not worthwhile—whoever was on the other end of the phone hadn’t exactly been forthcoming during our last exchange. The night flashed through my mind again. It didn’t seem real to me, any of it.
Yet it had happened—and somehow, the mystery texter knew—or at least knew that I was now en route away from the party, alive and neck intact.
Fear pulsed through me at the thought of someone having discovered Theo’s body. They must’ve by now, surely?
A worse thought sidelined me. Had I left too early? Should I have stayed until they found the body so that I didn’t look suspicious?
How could they find me, though? They didn’t even know my name.
I put that thought away and sent another reply to Xandra, telling her that I was almost home, and that she didn’t need to come to my house.
How do I know it is really you and not Byron? How do I know he didn’t steal your phone?
Good point.
Your mom owns a ramen shop, and you snore when you sleep in Spanish class.
The text that came in reply was a grumpy emoji face, followed quickly by, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m going to bed—finally. Thanks for keeping me up half the night making me worry.
I smiled. I guess that meant that she cared about me. Which felt sort of nice. But she didn’t know what it felt like to be sleep deprived. What was I going on now, three nights in a row of little to no sleep?
The idea of sliding in between my cool sheets and laying my head down on my pillow was almost like a drug, and I sighed heavily. I needed to get home, to sleep.
I looked out the window, still considering texting my mysterious benefactor back. What did they know? And if they knew too much, then how much did others back at the party know?
And the better question was … what was going to happen next?
I’d killed a vampire. The idea was both exhilarating and horrifying. I was sure that I would never forget the feeling of the small piece of wood sliding into his chest, the give of his skin, and the weight of his body on mine as he died.
And yet—I now knew that it was possible to kill them. They could die. I wasn’t entirely without power. Byron, though he might be persistent, had lost some of his edge over me—not just to the stake, but to sunlight, and fire. I had weapons now—and this one, I would not let out of my sight again. Maybe I would even give it a name, like how some people named their cars. Slayer sounded like a good one. Or Night Killer.
I was just starting to get excited about the idea when I realized the limo had stopped, and the chauffeur appeared at the door, opening it and offering me his gloved hand.
We’d stopped near my house, although not close enough that the engine would wake my parents. The lights were off inside, so they were back, and asleep—which meant that my best bet was to come in through the garage, where the door inside was as far from the stairs that led up to my parents’ room as it could be.
The garage door was operated by a keycode. Luckily, I hadn’t forgotten the number, infrequent that my use of this entryway was, and I punched it in. The lock released, and I slowly pulled the door open, now just as afraid of getting caught by my parents as I had been walking through a room full of vampires.
That appointment with a shrink was sounding more and more sensible by the second.
Getting inside was easy enough, although every noise—the garage door, the locking mechanism when I was in, my own damned footsteps—was awfully loud.
The inside of the kitchen was dark when I got in the house, the only light in the room coming through the windows from the street lights outside.
Boots discarded so I could sneak more easily in my socks, I thought, Sneaking in after two in the morning—this is the normal life of a high school girl. I might be creeping back after a date, or a visit to the movies—or hell, a club with Xandra, thanks to a fake ID. Any of those things would be better than the actual reason I was sneaking in.
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and turned on the screen. I dimmed it, as low as it would go—
A lamp clicked on in the living room, practically blinding in the darkness.
I sucked in a gasp. There were my parents: my dad, leaning over the lamp, and my mom, seated on the couch with her arms folded.
Busted.
Chapter 23
Tonight I killed a vampire. And yet still, somehow, my parents manage to make getting busted for sneaking out seem strangely intimidating.
For a few seconds, we all just sort of stared at each other. Me, kind of hunched over, standing on my toes in mid-sneak, and them, having caught me in the act.
Dad spoke first.
“Well?” His tone was quieter than I would have expected. It sounded almost like he had given up on me a long time ago, and that he was less than surprised about this.
“Well … what?” I replied.
Mom laughed, but it was hollow and bitter. She was wrapped in her luxury white bath robe and was wearing her slippers. Exhaustion lined her face—she hadn’t slept yet tonight.
“You’re joking, right?” she said. “You’re out all night now for the second time this week, and that’s your answer?”
I couldn’t help it, I looked down at my feet. She was right, she was totally right, but she didn’t understand. If she knew what had happened to me in these last few nights, if she knew the danger I was in, maybe she would wipe that disgusted look off of her face and care about me for a minute.
For the first time, anger filled me, pushing all of the fear completely out of my head. It wasn’t fair, any of it. And I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Whatever,” I said, and I started for the stairs.
“You get back here right now, young lady.”
I stopped with one foot on the bottom stair.
“You don’t understand anything,” I said.
“What?” Mom asked.
“I said that you don’t understand anything!” I shouted.
I glared at them as I turned back around to face them. “If you knew what my life was really like—”
“Oh yes, your life is just terrible,” Mom shot back, dripping with sarcasm. “You live in a beautiful home, you’re clothed and fed, healthy, you get almost everything that you have ever asked for—” Her voice caught in her throat. “And parents who love you more than anything.”
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to not lash out again. My chest heaved. I focused on tempering the cadence of my breaths to calm myself.
I didn’t have the energy to try to explain any of this to them.
I was vaguely aware that they were speaking, mostly to each other. Mom’s voice was sharp, and Dad was trying to calm her down. But it
didn’t matter. Nothing they could say would change what had happened tonight.
What would they think if they found out that I had killed someone? Would they see it as murder? I mean, would it even matter if I told them he was trying to kill me?
Self-defense. It was all in self-defense.
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling myself starting to shiver, almost uncontrollably. I was definitely in shock. There was no way a rational person would be so okay with killing someone the way that I had.
“You’re such a typical teenager,” Mom said. “You think that you’re unique. Everything is hard. You think that no one has ever gone through what you have gone through.”
“You have no idea.”
Mom rolled her eyes, and Dad just opened his arms in exasperation.
“Look, sweetheart, we’re trying to understand here, but we can’t help if you don’t tell us,” he said. His tone was steady, but I could tell he was frustrated.
“I …” I started.
“Is it a boy?” Mom asked. “Are you sneaking out to meet a boy, and …” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t bear to say what she was thinking.
“No, Mom, it’s nothing like that!” I grimaced.
Mom must have reached her limit, because she swatted at the air like she wished she could push me away like an annoying fly. “I don’t have the energy for this right now. I have a mountain of paperwork and have to be at the office at seven tomorrow. Now, thanks to you, I will probably be late.”
I clamped my mouth shut. I did feel guilty for making them worry, for always ruining their lives. That was never my intention.
Damn it. Why couldn’t they have just gone to bed without checking on me?
I wished more than anything that I could have just stayed home tonight. I could have slept, and I wouldn’t be a killer. Because, whether I could defend myself against the vampire threat now or not, I knew that after tonight, my life was forever changed.
No. That wasn’t true. My life changed when Byron appeared next to me on that sidewalk.
This was all on him. He’d forced me to do this, to totally mess up my entire life. He backed me into this corner. Tears filled my eyes.
“Oh please,” Mom spat. “I’m not buying this contrition act.”
I bit down on my lip until I could taste blood, hoping the pain would quell the tears. It didn’t help.
“Go to your room,” Mom said. “We’ll deal with you tomorrow. And I expect you to tell me exactly where you have been going, otherwise you’re getting lojacked the first chance I get.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t wait for an answer as I marched up the stairs to my room. I thought that I would feel safer here, away from the party. But climbing the stairs, their disappointed gazes following me, I just felt like a stranger, like this house was no longer my home, no longer a sanctuary.
Honestly, though, after attending the vampire party, seeing just how many there were roaming the streets … I didn’t think I would ever feel safe anywhere ever again. I had nowhere to turn. Not my parents. And I had no friends really apart from Xandra, who hadn’t got sucked as deep into this rabbit hole as I had, and who could retreat at a moment’s notice to the safety of her own life when things got too heavy.
My room, the safest space I had known since moving here, felt just like a room now. It didn’t matter that all of my belongings filled it, all of my clothes, my books, my school backpack. It might as well have been occupied by some random girl at my school.
I closed the door without switching the light on and threw my shoes into my closet; no point trying for silence anymore.
The dark and quiet were a small comfort. But my head still throbbed with the beat of the music from the club, and then the confrontation with my parents … it was all just too much.
How was anyone supposed to deal with any of this? None of it made any sense to me whatsoever.
I slumped against the door, locking it as my hands found the doorknob. It was cold against my flesh, and I shied away from it.
I didn’t want anything in my life that reminded me of—
A calm voice pierced the quiet, sending a sick jolt through my stomach.
“I’ve been waiting for you all night. Did you miss me?”
Chapter 24
I wished that I was still holding my boots, because if I had been, I could have chucked them in his face.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that I could see Byron’s silhouette sitting on my bed. I wasn’t sure how I had missed it in the first place.
I ran my hand over the wall, my fingers making contact with a switch, and the lights flared to life overhead.
I felt a grim sense of satisfaction when he recoiled slightly, squinting, and leaning away from the brightness.
Handsome as always, like he had stepped right out of Hollywood. His hair had the fashionably messy just-rolled-out-of-bed look that actually takes half and hour and a jar of gel to achieve. His heavy-lidded eyes searched my face, but some of his usual snake-like demeanor was gone. It was like he was tired too.
Good. Let him suffer a little.
“I am not in the mood to deal with you right now,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
Byron folded his arms across his chest, his face smooth and unreadable.
I was so done with everything right then. I had just left a party full of vampires, murdered one, and then had to return home to one. It just wasn’t fair. Was I ever going to have time by myself ever again?
It didn’t seem likely.
“You look really nice,” he murmured.
I brushed it away, and moved to my closet, throwing clothes around, trying to find the biggest, bulkiest t-shirt I owned to sleep in. I didn’t want to make any sudden, surprising moves for the stake. Having already been in one fight with a vampire tonight, I knew that Byron’s speed and strength were overwhelming. Threatening him with the stake would have been similarly foolish; warning him of the danger I posed.
No. If I was going to stake my second vampire of the night … it had to be by surprise. Which meant another lie—acting like a teenage girl who’s just irritated by a stalker showing up on her. Very unlike how I actually felt.
I could feel Byron’s eyes on my back, and turned around, my hands snapping to my sides in exasperation. “What do you want?”
Byron, who was sitting as casually on my bed as if it were his own, shrugged his shoulders. “I just wanted to see you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah … okay,” I replied in a harsh, sarcastic whisper, and returned to my digging.
It was probably unwise to turn my back to a vampire who was desperate for my blood, but I was so done caring about anything that I probably would have welcomed it. I was done being a scared kitty, cowering before him.
I gently touched my pocket where I had slid the small vial of liquid that Mill had given me. Something about the way he had passed it to me so discreetly told me that I should not let Byron see it, no matter what. Somehow, it was a tool of some sort, something that would help me. Better than the stake, I hoped. I gently nudged it farther down into the pocket while my back was turned to him.
“Listen—” Byron started off, his voice quiet and steady.
I wheeled around, pointing a finger at him. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say to me. Do you understand that?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me, but he didn’t react. All he said, in a whisper, was:
“So, where were you tonight?”
I stared at him. He was joking with me, he had to be. He had known my entire life and schedule in the last three days, known where I was and what I was doing. Surely that extended to this too.
I clenched my jaw. Resisting the urge to reach up and touch the wooden stake in my hair, I answered, “None of your business,” keeping my voice low.
“I—” he began, but I held up a hand to stop him.
My parents were walking up the stairs, and there was a sharp rap of knuckles on the door.
<
br /> “Yeah?” I asked, masking my anger as exhaustion. It wasn’t hard to make convincing.
“Go to bed,” came the voice of my father. “I don’t want you to get sick on top of everything else.”
On top of everything else. If he only knew.
“I’m just changing,” I called back. “I’ll go to bed right after.”
“Well, goodnight then,” he said.
“Goodnight,” I said, glaring at Byron, who had suddenly conjured a smirk onto his face.
“Love you,” Dad said after a moment of silence. It seemed forced.
My heart sank.
“Love you too.”
I waited with my breath held for his footsteps to disappear down the hall.
Between my parents and Byron, I was going to have a heart attack any minute. I decided I should start writing up my will as soon as I had the chance.
“Trouble in paradise?” Byron asked.
I shot him a nasty look again. “Again, none of your business.”
“Oh come on,” he said. He patted the bed beside him. “I’ve been waiting so patiently for you.”
“You have no shame, do you?”
He shook his head. “If you’re wondering if I worried I might be caught, you have to remember: I have better hearing than all three of you put together and would have easily slipped out of the window before they ever saw me. So no, no worries.” He smirked. “And no shame.”
He cocked his head at me.
“You got all dressed up to go somewhere. After you hopped in that Uber, though …”
“Lose track of me?” I shot back.
He nodded, looking perturbed.
I smirked. “Good.”
He shook his head. “Seriously, where did you go?”
I ignored the question. “Why do you keep showing up here if you aren’t just going to kill me?”
No One Will Believe You Page 13
