“You have all the time in the world,” Rob says and Coby nods and we turn around.
He and Rob end up talking about music, and it seems they have the same band love in common. Nothing can bring two people together like the same musical tastes. Then Rob starts telling a story about concerts and Coby is over the moon. I watch him in wonder.
“So Ava, how is your control coming?” It’s easy when you don’t have to breathe to carry on a conversation.
“Um, fine?” I think I know where this is going, and why he asked me to come on this little interlude.
“I was thinking that since you did so well learning, that you could come with us when we go hunting next time.” When he says hunting, it makes me think of people wearing blaze orange and sitting in tree stands.
“Yeah, sure. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I can try.” I have no idea if I’ll be helpful. I’ll probably make it worse, honestly.
Coby is still enamored of his new form, and I wonder how long the honeymoon will last. He seems unconcerned at this moment that he just killed an inn full of people and that he’s gabbing with a complete stranger.
This worries me, and I know it worries Tex. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it seems like it’s going to take a quite a few of us to prevent him from eating a village.
Twenty-Eight
Peter
Ava and I need to go back to her house, and Texas and Jamie each need to go to theirs.
“I don’t know if I can do this. They’re going to do search parties and be on the news and I’m going to have to cry and pretend like I’m a heartbroken sister and I’m gonna have to lie to the police. What if they make me take a lie detector test? I can’t fool a lie detector test!” Texas has reached her breaking point.
Ava tries to comfort her, but Viktor has to step in and hold her.
“One thing at a time.” He says it to her over and over, but she doesn’t seem to be hearing him.
Ava’s phone rings as Texas and Viktor are talking, so she goes to answer it. Brooke and Coby and Rob are in the living room playing some game that Viktor had bought. Coby is winning.
I study them, especially Rob who seems to have fallen into our group in a matter of hours with only a few words and smiles. I am not so ready to trust him, but he seems to be helping with Coby and the two have formed a bond that would normally take years to forge, so I am not going to say anything about it for now.
“Hey Dad,” Ava says, giving me a look and going upstairs to have some semblance of privacy. She motions for me to follow her.
“Where are you? I called earlier but you didn’t answer. I thought you’d be home by now.” It is almost dark outside.
“I know, but Tex ended up dragging me shopping, and we’re on our way back. I’ll be home in time to make you dinner, okay? I miss you.”
“I miss you too, Ava-Claire Bear. You have a safe trip home.”
“Okay, Dad. I will. Love you.” She smiles at me and I want to kiss her, but don’t.
“Love you, too.” She hangs up and looks at her bag, which isn’t packed yet.
“You know, I should just leave a lot of these clothes here, if we’re going to be coming here a lot. I ordered a bunch of stuff online and it’s getting shipped to the house.”
She takes a shirt and folds it.
“I feel bad about leaving, but I know I can’t stay here. I can’t believe that I considered leaving. If only everyone could be in the same place. But I guess travelling is going to be easier with the flying and all. So we can come back at night and during the day when I’m supposed to be working. I just hate lying to him, even though it’s a lot easier now, but they’d better not hook me up to a polygraph because they’re not gonna find a heartbeat.” She smiles so I know that she is joking.
“Tex does have a point, but maybe it won’t come to that. If Coby leaves a note and all. Her parents are kind of wild cards. They act like they don’t care, but then they might. We’ll see.”
We had watched the local news about the inn fire, and it was blamed on a faulty gas line.
“Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be,” Texas had said. Viktor and I had experience with this before, many, many times.
“I remember what you said, about people not wanting to accept things that they don’t understand,” Ava had said as we’d watched the newscaster talking with the fire marshal who used a lot of fancy words to explain a simple gas leak. Or what they had termed a gas leak.
“Ready to go?” She gathers up the things she’s going to bring home, including my clothes and we go downstairs to say goodbye. We will be back later tonight.
Texas is lecturing Coby when we get downstairs.
“Now I’m only going to be gone for a few hours, so you’d better not eat anyone. Understand?” She admonishes him with her finger, and he has the sense to not make any remarks. He might be the immortal one, but she is still his older sister.
“I will make sure he stays in line,” Rob says with a lazy grin. Texas shoots him a glare before turning back to Coby.
“Okay, okay,” he says, his eyes straying back to the game.
“Okay then,” she says, and then hops on Viktor’s back.
~^*^~
“So where’s Peter tonight?” Ava’s father says as he digs into the lasagna she’s made for him, meat and all. Once again, she claims she’s already eaten. He seems to be accepting her lies for now, but I am not sure it will last.
“He’s at home. With his mom.”
“You two haven’t been spending as much time together lately, it seems.” This is a pointed question. A fishing question.
“Subtle, Dad.” Of course Ava spots it right away. I smile and I can hear her smiling as well. “We’re fine. He’s just been very busy and I have too. There is no breakup coming, if you’re worried about me sinking into a deep depression that only massive amounts of ice cream and chick flicks and lots and lots of crying can cure. He’s the real deal.” She sends her love and devotion up the stairs and I am drowning in it.
“That’s good. I’m not sure if I could deal with a boyfriend breakup right now.” He actually does sound relieved.
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere.”
No, I am not.
They spend the evening in the living room, and this time instead of sitting on the chair, he sits with her on the couch, his arm around her. They talk about little things, and I feel like I am an intruder, so I let my wings out and go out the window.
For a while I circle the house, just letting the wind race over me. Ava and I need to fly more together. Once things have settled down with Coby.
If they ever do.
Tex
My parents barely bat an eyelash when I come home that night. They don’t even ask if I had a good time.
“Have you seen your brother?” Mom asks about five seconds after I walk in the door. Um, technically yes.
“No, I just walked in,” I say with what I hope is my normal amount of sarcasm. If I’m nice to them, they’ll get suspicious.
“Well, can you go up and see if he’s in his room?” I bite back a snarky response as my dad thumbs through a book catalogue. He’s almost always reading one of those or some other periodical about bookselling. He thinks he’s going to find some magical way to sell books that someone else hasn’t thought of since Gutenberg and the printing press in 1450.
I walk up the stairs, and of course Coby isn’t there, but I slip the note out of my bag, being careful not to get my fingerprints on the paper, except when I pick it up.
Viktor comes up behind me, and if I couldn’t sense him everywhere he is, I probably would have jumped out of my skin.
“I always wanted to be an actress. You know, like Audrey Hepburn. But I didn’t have brown hair, and I had bad eyesight and I’m not that tall and my ass is too big. But now I’m going to have to do the best acting job of my life,” I say, and he rubs my shoulders. He doesn’t say anything comforting because there isn’t anythi
ng comforting to say.
I love that he knows that about me.
“Here I go,” I say and he leaves.
I take one deep breath before yelling out, “Mom! Dad!” It takes them longer than it really should to get their butts up the stairs. I put on my best shocked face.
“He’s gone,” I say, keeping the talking to a minimum. I’ll start talking too much if I let myself and then something will slip out that shouldn’t. It’s a trait Ava and I share, and probably one of the reasons we’re so close.
“What do you mean?” Mom’s mouth open and closes, and it would be funny, but it’s totally not. I hand her the note and her eyes scan it and then she passes it to Dad and starts tearing through the room, ripping drawers open and throwing things around. I’m pretty sure that isn’t what you’re supposed to do, but I stand back and let her do her thing. When Mom gets like this, you stay the hell out of her way.
Dad reads the note probably fifty times and then sits down on the bed. I didn’t read the note before Coby wrote it, so it would seem more authentic.
“I can’t believe this,” Dad says, still staring at the letter as Mom keeps ripping the room apart. “Sue, stop. We need to call the police.” He doesn’t sound convinced, and Mom doesn’t stop what she’s doing until he actually stands up and holds her. She fights him, and for the first time I see that there are tears in her eyes.
“This can’t be happening.” Dad holds her from behind and speaks into her ear.
“Shh, we need to stay calm and call the police, okay? One step at a time.” That’s exactly what Viktor had said to me when I was freaking out earlier.
“Mom? It’s gonna be okay,” I say, going to hug her side as she breaks down. I don’t have to fake anything now. The tears, the pain at what’s happened, and the fact that I have to hide it, start running down my face and the three of us sink to the floor.
~^*^~
A few hours later we have several police officers in our kitchen and several cars with blue lights flashing in the yard.
It’s freaking annoying, but I put on my “sad sister” face, which isn’t too hard. I make them coffee and let Mom and Dad do most of the talking, which is what the police want anyway. They do ask me what happened when I found the note, and when I last saw him, but the lies are easier than I thought they would be. Probably because I know the truth isn’t possible in this situation. The lie is all I have. Even if I told them the truth, they wouldn’t believe it, so it isn’t even a consideration.
It’s late by the time the cops leave and I’m absolutely exhausted, but Viktor and I have to go back to the noctalis house and check on Coby, even though Brooke and Rob (seriously, who is this guy and why is he still hanging around?) are with him. Neither of them have any obligation to him. I do. He’s my freaking brother and even though I’m so worn out I want to cry, I tell Viktor to turn around so I can get on his back.
It’s like I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep even if I wanted to. I close my eyes and all I can see is Coby covered in blood.
“You did well,” Viktor says as I hold onto his back while he runs through the woods. I’ve never wished he had wings more than I do right now.
My eyes are clamped shut because sometimes I get a little motion sick if I keep them open. Plus, the way he dodges trees kind of freaks the crap out of me and my heart can only take so much right now.
“Thanks. Do I get that Oscar now?”
“You’d be a winner in my book. I could probably find one for you online and put your name on it, if you want.”
“No thanks, I think I’m good.”
The house is all lit up when we get there, even though it’s the middle of the night. I pray that my parents aren’t going to check on me during the night to make sure I haven’t run away, but I have the perfect reason for being out of bed if they do. I’m just so concerned about Coby that I went out to look for him. I hope I won’t have to use it, but I have my phone on me just in case, and my car isn’t in the driveway.
“Hey! We’re back,” I call when I walk through the door. “No killing?”
“No killing!” Coby calls back. “Unless you count the computer generated dudes in the games.” There he is, my little brother. Rob’s next to him with a controller and Brooke is rolling her eyes and reading a book from Ava’s library.
I have to fight the urge to throw my arms around him.
“How did it go with Mom and Dad?”
“It was . . . oh, let’s be honest, it sucked balls. You owe me big time. Like, mega big time. Like, you owe me a flipping unicorn.”
He sort of smiles at me, and I realize I’ve seen him smile more in the past couple of days than I have in the past five years.
“How are you feeling?”
“Good. Not tired. So I’m probably going to get to the next level of WOW by morning, which is pretty sweet.” He’s totally into World of Warcraft, which I have never understood.
“Rob’s really into it, and also Halo, so we’ve been playing since you left.” He may be a bloodsucker, but he’s still a dorky teenage boy. I need to interrogate this Rob guy and find out what his story is, and I’m kind of pissed that someone else hasn’t done it yet, but I’m so freaking tired . . .
I yawn and stumble over toward the couch, which is one of those that’s so thick you kind of sink into it. The second I sit down, I know I’m not getting up unless someone threatens to kill me. Actually, in a house full of sort-of vampires, that’s not a very unlikely thing.
Rob and Coby have the volume on crazy loud, but I’m so flipping tired that my eyes close in the midst of what feels like the Gaza strip and just fade away.
Viktor
She is so tired that I am relieved when she finally falls asleep. I was mere minutes away from drugging her just so she would let her body rest. Her dreams are odd and scattered, flashes of images from the day sprinkled in with scenes that don’t make much sense. I’ve been watching her dreams since the beginning, and mostly I find them fascinating.
Tonight, they are filled with blood and destruction and everyone has fangs.
I sit on the couch between her and Coby and Rob, who are immersed in the videogame. It is one of my favorites and I am not ashamed to say that I have spent a significant amount of time when Tex is sleeping playing it.
“Did my parents care?” Coby says, pausing the game after checking to see if Tex is asleep.
“Yes, they did. Your mother wouldn’t stop crying and your father had to take several pills to calm down. He was afraid he was having a heart attack, but it was just panic. The police took their statements and asked the usual questions. They do not suspect foul play, given your history.”
“My history?” Coby tosses his head to get his hair out of his eyes, but it just moves back in front of them again. I will never understand this hairstyle. “Oh you mean being all dark and disturbed? Never thought that would work for me.”
“You planned well,” I say.
He looks at me like he’s not sure if I’m making a joke or not.
“That was a joke,” I say, slipping into my human self. Or the self I wear when I have to be the most human.
“Sorry, I got it.” His eyes flash back to the television screen. “So they really were upset?”
“Yes.”
“Huh. I actually wondered if they would be. You know, before all this. Back when I just thought about killing myself. I imagined my funeral for hours, but I could never picture my parents being there and crying. I had this nightmare that I’d be in the coffin and no one would show up and there would be some priest droning from a book. And then he’d get bored, check his watch, close the book and leave. And then it would rain and maggots would crawl all over me.” It’s the most I’ve ever heard him say at once, and I sense that if he were still alive, he would be blushing.
“Sorry, that was a weird thing to say.” He gets up from the couch.
“My mom didn’t notice for days when I left,” Brooke says, turning the television off. “My f
riend, Cara, and my almost-boyfriend were the ones that looked for me. I saw a couple of flyers they’d made, and I saw them once, from a distance, after I changed. I have no idea where my mom is. The house was abandoned when I went back. So I know what you’re going through. Sort of.”
Coby comes back to the couch and sits down.
“So you left and never went back again?”
She smiles, but it’s a grim smile. “There wasn’t anything to go back to. I didn’t have a sister that would punch me for being an idiot.” The smile morphs and she punches him in the arm to demonstrate her point.
“The only family I had was my friends, and I couldn’t go back to them because I would have killed them. Then I had Ivan, but that didn’t last, so now I’m here. And this is my family, I guess. It’s a lot better than the one I had.”
“I didn’t have a family,” Rob says, and it’s the first time he’s volunteered any information. “I was a child of the foster care system. Never knew who my real parents, or whatever you’d call them, were. I got into drugs, met a guy who said he could get me high, he gave me some blood and left me in an abandoned basement. It was a trip, all right. Took me a while to figure things out, but then I turned into this lizard thing and I thought I was still high. After that I just roamed around and drank a mess of blood and here I am.” It seems as if we’re all telling our stories since everyone has turned to me.
“What about you, Viktor?” Coby says. It’s the first time he’s said my name. “What’s your sad and depressing story?”
I’m not sure if my story qualifies or not, and I don’t exactly want to share it, but it’s been so long since I’ve met someone new to tell it to. Not even Tex knows all of my history.
I start with my childhood and move forward, to my early adulthood.
“I had a wife, and she was pregnant with my child. I never found out if it was a girl or a boy. After I was changed, I went home to see her, and I ended up killing her and our baby. We had only married because she was pregnant, but I did love her in a way. After that, I left and never went back, until I knew my family was long buried.” I tell them about Adele, and how she ended, and how happy we’d been together and that she was the first real love of either of my lives.