by Jayme Morse
“You should rest, then,” Austin agreed.
When Dan came back with the bag of blood, Lexi wrinkled her nose. “Okay, I’m going to let you eat that in privacy. The sight of blood kind of grosses me out, but then I guess it should. Unlike you guys, I don’t need it to live.” She left the room.
Anna smiled. “Thanks for the blood, Dan. Where do you get it from?”
“The Briar Creek Hospital gives it to us for free,” Dan explained. “I’m pretty sure Westbrooke also has a blood bank you can get blood from.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I ever want to go back there,” Anna replied, wrinkling her nose at the idea of Darius. If it weren’t for him, the past few days would have gone so much differently. Of course, maybe what had happened was for the best. Even though there were still vampires left in Briar Creek, hopefully all of the ‘bad’ ones were dead now.
Anna turned to Austin. “Eventually, you’ll have to teach me how to drink from people in real life.”
Austin sighed. “It’s going to make me jealous as hell for you to drink from other guys, but okay. We’ll have to go out to find blood together sometime.”
“Don’t be jealous,” Anna told him. “At the end of the day, you’re the only guy for me. I would have never done this,” she said, motioning to her newly changed vampire body, “for anyone except for you.”
“I know,” Austin said, planting a kiss on her lips and licking at the blood that was dripping down them. “I couldn’t be any happier.”
Chapter 34
Once she was back inside her room, Lexi flopped down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. She was in desperate need of a nap, especially with all of the craziness that had taken place that night.
Just as she felt like she was about to drift off to sleep, a familiar male voice said, “Lexi?”
Lexi opened her eyes and glanced at the ghostly-looking guy standing in front of her. “Justin?” she whispered. Even though her ex-boyfriend had come to visit her once, he hadn’t been back since then. She’d assumed that something had happened, something that would prevent him from being able to visit with her. He’d compared himself to being similar to a guardian angel once before, but she wasn’t sure how much guarding he had done over her lately.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Justin said, a wide grinning crossing his face. “I saw what happened tonight, Lexi. You did a great job. You were very brave.”
“Thank you,” Lexi replied. She hesitated. “I know it’s going to sound weird, considering he killed you and all, but do you think I’m wrong for forgiving Gabe?”
Justin shook his head. “No, Lexi. I think it’s a good thing. It shows that you’re a forgiving person. I might not like the dude myself, but it seems like he’s done enough to make it up to you. Not to mention the fact that maybe he was right. Maybe the only way to stop all of the vampires from being so nuts was for me to die so you could stay here, instead of going back to New Jersey with me like you planned.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Lexi murmured, running a hand through her hair as she considered it. “Am I going to see you often?”
Justin shrugged. “I wish I could tell you for sure. All I can say is you’ll see me when you see me. But just know that I’ll always be watching, so don’t say anything bad about me, okay?” He grinned.
“I would never,” Lexi replied with a laugh.
“Good. Bye, Lexi,” Justin said, as he disappeared into thin air.
Lexi shifted onto her back and stared up at the ceiling again. It wasn’t more than a few minutes after Justin had left that she felt her mom’s presence in the room. It seemed to get cold and sort of comforting, oddly enough.
“Hi, Lexi,” her mom whispered, coming closer to her and caressing her cheek with an almost transparent hand.
“Hi, Mom,” Lexi replied with a smile. It had been a while since she had seen her mother, but her visits were always so meaningful.
“There are a few important things I need to tell you, Lexi,” her mom said, sitting down on the bed next to her and staring into her eyes with a serious look. “You have to listen carefully.”
“What is it, Mom?” Lexi asked, feeling a knot tighten in her stomach. Her mom’s advice was always important, but for some reason she got the feeling that it was even more important this time.
“You have to take care of your father,” her mom said. “He has Darlene and the kids, but he needs you, too, Lexi. It might be easy for you to forget that sometimes, but he will always need you.”
“Okay,” Lexi replied. “I’ll remember that.”
“Next, remember that you must always follow your heart. There are going to be times when you’re not sure what the right thing to do is, but you need to trust your gut instinct. It’s the only way you’ll ever know that you’re making the best choice,” her mom said.
“Okay,” Lexi replied quietly, wondering where her mother was going with this and what it had to do with anything.
“Don’t blame yourself,” her mom went on. “It might be easy to feel like the reason so many people died is because of you, but the truth is . . . people will also get better because of you, too.”
Lexi raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you everything, but you have to trust what I’m saying,” her mom replied. “Things are going to change, and you will be the reason they change.”
“Okay,” Lexi replied, even though she wished that her mom could tell her exactly what she meant.
“Don’t forget to tell the people who matter to you that you love them,” her mom told her. “There might come a time when you can’t say it anymore. Treat every day as though it’s your last, even if you are an immortal.”
That piece of advice was something that Lexi already understood too well. If she could go back in time, she would have spent much more of it with her mother.
“And, Lexi? Don’t become a doctor,” her mom said. “I know you wanted to become a doctor because you felt like it would make me happy. But I know it’s not the real place where your heart lies. You need to follow your own dreams, not try to follow in my footsteps.”
Lexi smiled. “Okay, Mom. I won’t become a doctor.” Secretly, she had already sort of decided that she wasn’t going to become a doctor already, but her mom reaffirmed that decision. It made her happy to know that not becoming a doctor wouldn’t disappoint her mom. “Why are you telling me all of this now, though?”
“Because this is the last time I will ever be able to come talk to you again,” her mom told her sadly, and for the first time, Lexi noticed that her mom’s ghost-form was less transparent than it normally was. “It’s time for me to move onto the other side.”
“But I don’t want you to,” Lexi protested, the tears welling up in her eyes. “I want you to stay here, forever.”
“I wish I could do that, Lexi, but unfortunately, I can’t. We can only linger until we’ve resolved all of our unfinished business, and after tonight, I have nothing that needs to be resolved. You’re going to be okay here on your own, without me. Everything is going to be okay. And, no matter what, I will always be watching.”
The tears were pouring from Lexi’s eyes now, but she only nodded because she knew that she had no other choice. She was lucky to have had the opportunity to talk to her mom this many times after her death. Did she really think it would last forever?
“Okay, Mom,” Lexi said, trying to use the bravest tone she could muster. “I understand.” She tried to swallow, despite the lump that had formed in the back of her throat. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Lexi,” her mom said, caressing her cheek again. “How about I stay here with you until you fall asleep?”
“I would like that,” Lexi agreed. She rested her head against her pillow and eventually dozed off, with her mom’s cold arms wrapped around her the whole time.
Epilogue
“Do you want to hold the baby?” Lucia asked, carrying the little girl in her arms.
“Yes, I do,”
Lexi said, reaching out to take her baby from the woman holding her, feeling an immediate sense of protectiveness. Once she had her in her arms, she kissed her forehead and whispered, “Mommy loves you, Eileen. Daddy loves you, too.”
Lucia smiled. “She is the world’s cutest baby. So charming.”
“Thank you, Lucia,” Lexi replied with a genuine smile. “You may go home now, though. We’ll be okay here by ourselves.”
“Are you sure about that, Mrs. Nichols?” Lucia questioned. “Mr. Nichols made it very clear that I was to stay here until he came home from work. He doesn’t want you to burn out too quickly, you know.”
Lexi laughed. “I know, Lucia. Dan is a little over protective sometimes. We’ll be fine here until he gets home.” She glanced at the clock. “He’ll be home in less than an hour, anyway.”
The woman stared at her for a moment before sighing. “Alright, then. I’ll just pack up my things and be on my way.”
As Lucia pulled on her jacket and grabbed her purse, the doorbell rang. “I’ll just see who that is before I leave,” she told Lexi.
Lexi nodded. “Thank you. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it!” Lucia said, beaming. She stared at Lexi for a moment with a dimpled smile before running to the door to see who it was.
Lexi felt a slight twinge of guilt. She was going to talk to Dan about letting Lucia go once he got home from work. Even though she knew that Dan meant well by insisting that they have someone there to help out during the day because he worked long hours as a doctor specializing in vampire medicine, having a nanny just felt too excessive. They weren’t rich, by any means, and a nanny was just an unnecessary expense.
Lucia opened the front door, and Lexi heard her say, “Why, hello, Mr. Hunter! Lexi and the baby are in the baby nursery.”
“Thank you, Lucia,” Lexi’s father said.
A moment later, he appeared in the doorway of the nursery, holding a stuffed teddy bear in his hands. “There are my girls!” Lexi’s dad said with a smile.
“Hi, Dad,” Lexi said.
Her father came closer to them, smiling as he stared at the baby adoringly. It wasn’t the first time her father had seen the baby—the first time had been at the hospital—but every time he saw Eileen, who they had decided to name after Lexi’s mom, his smile seemed to get even wider. It made Lexi worried that he was going to break his face, eventually.
“How are you doing, kiddo?” her dad asked, sitting down in a chair across from her.
“I’m good. Tired, but I guess that’s to be expected,” Lexi replied with a giggle. “How are you?”
“Good,” her dad replied. He stared at her for a moment, smiling, before saying, “And I have some news for you.”
Lexi raised an eyebrow. “What type of news? Tell me while you hold Eileen.” She held the baby out for her father to take from her.
Her father cradled Eileen in his arms. “It’s good news. Very good news, in fact.” He glanced over at Lexi. “Wilkins’ Syndrome no longer exists.”
“What do you mean?” Lexi asked with wide eyes.
A smile tugged at her father’s lips. “I mean, the curse has been broken, Lexi.”
“How do you know?” Lexi asked. As happy as she was to hear that no one was ill anymore, she couldn’t believe her ears.
“This morning, I heard the news about the curse being broken,” her father explained. “I didn’t believe it at first, but then Eleanor Stratt—who comes to the office regularly and who happens to have Wilkins’ Syndrome—came in to see me today. It looked like she de-aged by about ten years. It was obvious to me that she was cured. So I went to Briar Creek, and I found that it was true. Everyone looks healthy again.”
Lexi shook her head. “I . . . I don’t understand. How is it possible? What happened to break the curse?”
Balancing the baby in one arm, her father pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Lexi unfolded the piece of paper, which had a small piece of tape holding it together. Her eyes fell on the words: The one who is Destined to Die must. She glanced down at the bottom of the page, which was numbered as page ninety, and she gasped.
It was the missing piece of the Hunter family book—the spell book that had once belonged to Belinda, which Lexi kept upstairs in her library. It was the page that had been torn out before she and Dan had been sucked into the 1800s many years ago; the page that had never been relocated.
“W-where did you find this?” she managed to ask, wondering who had torn the other part of the page, the part that had been in the book, and taped it together.
“I found it on my desk early this morning, but I don’t know where it came from,” her father said, shaking his head. “It seems like maybe someone knew where it was this whole time and they were hiding it from me. Unless . . .” He trailed off.
Lexi met her father’s gaze. “Unless what?”
Her father hesitated before explaining, “I felt this gust of wind and something cold touched my skin when I picked it up. It’s going to sound crazy, Lexi, but I think . . . I think your mother’s spirit may have delivered it to me. It was almost like I felt her presence.”
A knot tightened in Lexi’s stomach. It had been years since she’d seen her mother—or any signs that might indicate that she could still be there, still lingering somewhere and watching. If her dad was right and her mom was the one who had delivered this paper, why had she given it to him and not Lexi? It didn’t make much sense.
“It doesn’t matter where the page came from, Lexi,” her father said softly. The look in his eyes told Lexi that he knew what was running through her mind. “What matters is what’s written on it. Read it for yourself.”
Lexi glanced down at the page and read the words that had been scrawled on it.
The one who is Destined to Die, dubbed as such by the corrupted town, is the only one who has the ability to break the curse. The Chosen One will be a Hunter, and it will be a female. She mustn’t become a vampire in order for the curse to be broken; rather, she must remain a human unless she chooses to become another type of immortal being.
The Chosen One must prove that vampires and humans (or other beings) can unite and that they can truly live in harmony with one another. She must do this by falling in love with a vampire, who she will later go on to marry. It must be a sincere, genuine love that cannot be broken. On the day the Chosen One gives birth to their first child, the spell will be broken and the curse will no longer exist.
Lexi looked up at her father, a confused look on her face. “So, Eileen is what broke the curse?”
Her father nodded. “Yes. I could hardly believe it when I found out. That’s why I had to rush over here to let you know.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Lexi insisted. “When I talked to Belinda, she told me there was no way the curse could ever be broken. She said there was nothing we could do.”
“She must have found some way around it,” her father replied with a shrug. “I don’t understand it completely myself. I also don’t understand why someone tore the page out, or how it ended up on my desk this morning. I don’t think we’ll ever know the answers, but the important thing is that it worked. The curse is broken. Wilkins’ Syndrome no longer exists.”
So that must have been what her mom had been referring to that day, the last time she had seen her so many years ago when she had said that everything would change one day because of Lexi. Technically, the curse had been broken because of both Lexi and Dan, but together, they had changed everything.
At that moment, Lexi’s cell phone blared from its place on the baby’s nightstand. She glanced down at the caller ID and then hit the ‘talk’ button. “Dan?” she asked into the phone.
“Lexi, you won’t believe it! I have the most wonderful news,” Dan told her. Lexi could hear the excitement in her husband’s voice, and if there was any doubt in her mind that her father was telling the truth, it had completely washed away.
/> “I already know about the news, Dan,” Lexi said, smiling. “And you’re right. It is wonderful.”
*
4 YEARS LATER
“Mommy, when is Lily going to get here?” Eileen asked.
“I just spoke to Anna. They should be here any minute now, sweetie,” Lexi replied, as she smoothed out her daughter’s white flower girl dress.
At that moment, the door to the church was opened and Lily, Austin and Anna’s three year old daughter, bounded into the room.
“Is it okay if Lily and I go get ready over there for the wedding?” Eileen asked, pointing to a corner of the room.
Lexi laughed, knowing that her daughter wanted some privacy because she was so shy, and the room was beginning to fill up with people she didn’t recognize. “Of course it is. Just be careful.” The last time she had talked to Anna, she’d told her that Lily was having a difficult time controlling her blood cravings. They were trying to teach her about controlled feedings, but it was a little more difficult to teach a young child than it was to teach an adult vampire.
Even though Eileen hadn’t been able to become a vampire because Lexi was part of the Hunter bloodline, Lily hadn’t had much of a chance at being born as a human, since both her mother and her father were vampires.
Lexi glanced over at Anna, who was walking towards her, wearing a short purple bridesmaid dress that matched the one Lexi was wearing. The only difference was that there wasn’t a round belly bulge under Anna’s dress.
“Hey, Lexi!” Anna said, flinging her arms around her in a tight embrace. Even though they talked on the phone and through Skype regularly, Anna and Austin had moved to California a few years back. Austin had wanted to get as far away from Briar Creek as possible, and Anna had wanted Lily to grow up near her Grandpa Lancefield.