by Alina Banks
For a few seconds, all I could do was stare at him. “You’re a Conway.”
“By blood, yes.”
“Is that part of the reason you’ve chosen to help us? We’re family.”
“Yes, and no. If my vampire family knew I cared at all, they would have done whatever they had to in order to break the connection, so I’ve kept it from them as best I can, but when I’m here, I do what I can to help, even though it’s never going to be enough. There’s nothing I can do to save Delilah if she chooses to fight us, Ana. Making that decision is going to make it far harder for me to be able to help you.”
Explaining my decision to Alex was never going to be easy, but it was something I knew I had to do. Maybe he wouldn’t understand, and it would cause problems between us in the future, but that wasn’t a reason not to suggest it. Damien was right. I needed to focus on staying safe, and if they thought I’d come to actually care about him…I raked a hand through my hair. All I had to do was keep up an act. Nothing more. It wasn’t as though Alex and I had ever really said we were together. We’d just never acted like we weren’t. He didn’t care about being in danger, so that wasn’t an argument I could use. At least, not without mentioning vampires, and doing that wasn’t a good idea.
When he stepped into the library, I looked at him. He looked back at me. “This isn’t a conversation I want to have, is it?” He smiled as he sat down opposite me. “You said this morning things were going badly, and I almost expected something like this to happen today, because I know what you’re like. You want to protect me from whatever’s coming next.”
“Actually, I want to protect both of us.” I ran my tongue over my dry lips. “What’s coming is so much more complicated than what we went through before.”
“Not that I even really understand that.”
I nodded. “You made the decision. If you want to know, then I have nothing against telling you, but it will change everything, and that’s something you said you weren’t ready for.”
“Honestly, Ana, I’m still not, but if I need to know…”
“You don’t need to know. Not really.” I sighed. “It might be better for you to know, so you can understand some of the choices I’m making, but that doesn’t mean you need to know anything more than you do.” I studied him. “We’ve never officially been together, which…nothing about this conversation is going to be easy. I care about you. You know that. Sometimes I wish I didn’t, because it would make things simpler, but it is what it is. Our relationship means you are in danger. I’m also in danger, but for slightly different reasons, so I wanted to talk to you about something that might protect both of us…and might also lead to you never wanting to see me again.”
“Do you really think that’s possible?”
“Maybe.” I bit my lip. “Damien suggested the two of us act like we’re in a relationship. He thinks it will protect me from what might be coming.” I shook my head. Nothing was coming out right, but then, I had no reason to think it would be. “I don’t care about him the way I care about you, but knowing what I do, it may well buy me some time to prepare for what I need to do. I hate being so cryptic, Alex. I wish I could tell you everything, but you said you aren’t ready for that, and I’m not going to push you. What I want is for you to understand that I’m not doing this because I don’t want to be with you.”
“But there’s a part of you that doesn’t, because you always worry about me.” He reached out to take my hand. “You’re always asking yourself if being with me is the right choice. I know that, and I had a feeling the time was going to come when we’d have this kind of conversation.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. Your reality is different than mine, and I’ve always known that. You believe being with Damien will protect you.”
“Hopefully. Damien believes it will.” When I told him about Mom’s plan, he was certain it was something that would affect me, since I’m a part of the coven, even if I wasn’t a part of the actual attack. But if I was with him, he’d be able to buffer me from the majority of the damage. At least, he thought he’d be able to. “I want to believe him, so I’m willing to give him a chance, even if I’m not entirely certain it’s the best choice I could be making right now.”
“When this is over, we’ll be able to get back together.”
“As far as I know, yes, but I don’t know how long it will be until this is over.”
He smiled again. “I’m willing to wait as long as I have to.” He squeezed my hand. “I trust you, Ana, and we will find a way to make this work.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sabrina stared at me like she couldn’t quite believe what I was saying, while James nodded. He understood. Of course he did.
“Why?” She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Things change.” I shrugged. “I’m not going to say I don’t still care about Alex, because I do, but this…I need to follow my heart, Brina, even if you don’t understand why I’d have made this choice.”
“Follow your heart?” She studied me. “It was not so long ago that you were telling me you didn’t trust Damien. You are making the decision…it’s not like you.”
“Sometimes we make those kinds of choices.” I smiled at her. “Choices that don’t seem to make sense. But I’m doing this because I have been spending a lot of time with Damien recently. He’s not who I thought he was. I don’t know if things will work out between us, but it doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t. What matters is that I’m willing to give it a chance.”
“You haven’t been spending that much time with him that I’ve seen.”
“We’ve been meeting up outside of school.”
I thought she was going to keep arguing with me, as though she thought it would be enough to get me to stay with Alex. Then, sighing, she pulled me into a hug. “I’m not going to say I approve of your choice, Ana, because I’m really not sure if I do, but if you really do want to be with him, then I hope things work out.”
Mentally breathing a sigh of relief, I hugged her back. “I know it’s hard to understand. This isn’t something I could have imagined happening a few days ago either, but Damien isn’t a bad person. I’m not going to say I like his family much, though. Fortunately for me, I’m not going to be dating his family, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”
Nodding, she stepped back, her eyes meeting with mine. “How did Alex take things?”
“The way Alex always does. He understands.” I shook my head. “I don’t know that I was expecting anything different, but he always surprises me with how understanding he really is, and that…whatever happens, we are still friends. This isn’t going to affect that. At least, for now. Maybe it will get harder with time, but I hope it won’t.”
James studied me for a moment, and I knew he wanted to ask more questions, but they weren’t questions he could ask around Sabrina. Fortunately for him, that was when the bell went off, to tell us we needed to be moving to class. Even more fortunate, we happened to be going in the same direction. After waiting for a few minutes, we were far enough away from Sabrina that she wouldn’t see what we were doing, he drew me to one side, his eyes meeting mine. “What are they, Ana?”
“Ever heard of vampires?”
“Only in stories.”
“Yeah, because before I met you, I’d heard of kitsune outside of stories.” I shook my head. “Our life is a story, James, and I think the time has come for you to get used to that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I thought I mostly had, but vampires…” He looked into my eyes. “I know you aren’t lying to me. I trust you, but this…I never thought vampires were something we’d have to deal with. Demons and their minions were complicated enough.”
“Technically, the vampires are minions of the demon we dealt with before. I know it’s hard to believe, but this…it’s complicated.”
“Like everything else we’ve dealt with.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I
f they’re vampires, why have you ended things with Alex to be with Damien?”
“Something Mom is going to do might well lead to even more problems I’ll have to deal with. Damien…going into all of this is going to take longer than we have, but basically, he doesn’t want to be a vampire. He believes that I might be able to free him and has made the decision that he’s going to do what he can to protect me. If the two of us are together, it will make that easier.” I sighed. “Nothing about any of this is easy right now, James, but I’m making the best choices I can, considering the information I have right now. All I can do is hope things are going to work out.”
Damien was waiting for me outside after the last bell rang. I studied him. “Well, it’s done.”
He nodded. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m fed up with lying to the people I care about. Only James knows what’s really happening, Sabrina knows almost nothing, and Alex…there’s a part of me that really wants to tell him, but he isn’t ready to hear the truth.”
“Of course he isn’t. Clermont is a hard place to call home. When I was younger, back before all of this happened, I knew it back then. My cousin was keeping secrets from all of us, but we all knew there was something strange happening. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions. If she had, this might never have happened. I may have been able to avoid the demon, but he chose us because of who we are related to. He thought it was a good way to get rid of at least some of the witches, and it worked out when it came to both my parents.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I keep calling them that. They aren’t my parents. You know that.”
“Habit. You’ve gotten so used to calling them your parents, you have no idea how to stop.” I smiled at him. “I get it. Nothing about what any of you went through was easy, and I can understand why they would accept what happened to them. Finding out I was a witch…I’m not going to say it was easy because it wasn’t, but I was able to put the pieces together before I knew. There’d always been something a little unusual about me and about Mom. Her keeping it from me didn’t change that. I think she thought it would. At least, it seemed like that during the first month we were here, because she didn’t want to tell me what she knew. She wanted to hide it from me, maybe because she thought I was going to be like her, but I wasn’t. I embraced being what I was. It wasn’t as though I had any other option.”
“You don’t. I might.” He looked down. “Trying to be like them was hard. I did what I thought was right because they said it was right, when really, all I was doing was losing a part of myself. That part is entirely lost to them. Jessie…I want to say she’s better, as she is, at least, willing to listen, but she’s more like them than she is like me. I want to believe she’d be willing to become mortal if that was offered to her, but I highly doubt she would. She’s too used to being a vampire.”
“After so long, that’s kind of inevitable. You’re different than them because you didn’t give into that inevitability, and that’s why you’re still clinging on to a part of who you were, when they never bothered.”
Mom stepped into the sanctuary. “I hear you’re now in a relationship with a vampire.”
I turned to look at her. “Maddy, I assume.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to say that’s not what I wanted her to believe, but things are more complicated than that, Mom.”
“They took my memories from me.”
“Did you really think I’d forgotten that?” I studied her, seeing the emotions in her eyes, and I knew she was reacting with those, rather than being logical. “How about you talk to me about this, rather than getting upset about it, because it’s obvious you don’t understand why I made the choice I did.”
“You really think that matters?”
“How could it not matter?” I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from yelling at her, because that was going to get me nowhere fast. Breathing in deeply, I did my best to stay calm. “Damien is my buffer. You’re making choices that are putting the coven in danger, so I thought it was best to do something that would protect me from what might happen. The Easons don’t know what I’m doing. They believe I’m in a relationship with Damien, and that was exactly what I wanted.”
For a long time, Mom just stared at me silently. I didn’t know what was going through her head, but the emotions in her eyes told me she didn’t believe a word I’d said. I wanted to turn back to what I was doing, but I didn’t think that would help the current situation.
Finally, she spoke. “Choosing him over the coven makes it obvious that I can’t trust you.”
“Are you even listening to a word I’m saying?” I felt a wave of irritation sweep over me. “Mom, I’m not putting Damien first. I’m putting me first.” I shrugged. “If you can’t see that, then you’re the one with the problem. You’re not able to see the forest for the trees. This is about so much more than what the vampires did to you, but that’s all you can see. That one thing is all you can think about. Yes, it was a sign of aggression, and we’re willing to do what needs to be done. But in order to do that, we need to understand the vampires better. Damien is one way I can do that. He already knows that I know he’s a vampire, and that means he’s willing to talk to me about what it means to be one. The more I learn, the better off we’re going to be when we do fight them.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Or, and this is the more likely scenario, they’ve chosen you as the next one to work on, and you’re falling for it. That’s why we need to make our move quickly, before Damien can turn you against us.”
Knowing there was nothing I could do to convince her she was wrong, I turned back to Violet’s journal. “Think what you want, Mom. I don’t have the energy to fight you about this anymore. You do whatever it is you believe is right, and I’ll do what I believe is right. At the end of it all, we’ll see who made the right decisions.” At least, I hoped we would. There was a chance things would go as badly as I feared they might, and if they did…well, I wasn’t going to let myself think too much about that. What I was going to do was focus on doing what was best for the coven, unlike Mom. “I’m sorry you can’t see why I’m making the choices I am.”
“Eventually, you’ll come to see I was right about all of this.” She sighed. “When you do, I just hope it won’t be too late.”
I heard her step through the door, and when she did, I felt more comfortable than I had felt in a long time. If she saw the notes I was taking, I was certain she would think I’d turned against her. “I know I’m making the right choices.” I looked over at where Sasha was curled up on my comfy chair. “Mom might not be able to see it, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong, and she’s never going to be able to see the mistakes she’s making.” I sighed. “I hate that more than I can put into words. I feel like I’m going to lose her, and there’s nothing I can do to protect her from her own stupidity.”
Chapter Eighteen
Another person stepped into the sanctuary, and I turned to look. I knew it wasn’t Mom. It didn’t feel like Miss Cane either. When my eyes met with Dad’s, all I could do was stare at him.
“Lilah showed me where the door was when we first came back to Clermont.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “She told me that you’re in a relationship with Damien now.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” I shook my head. “Mom isn’t willing to listen to me right now. She thinks I’m working against the coven because I’m not willing to go through with these harebrained plans she’s come up with.”
“Becca talked to me about what’s going through Lilah’s head right now. I’ve been doing my best to get her to see that she's going to end up making mistakes if she can’t see past her emotions, but it’s not really working. She believes this is the only chance she has to rid Clermont of the vampires. Both you and Becca think she’s wrong.”
“The little we know about the vampires isn’t enough for us to fight them. Mom, for some reason, thinks we can just throw ourselves into this fight without stopping to think about wh
at we’re doing, and that’s going to get us all killed. Damien offered to be my buffer, and I took him up on that.”
“He offered?”
“From what I know, he’s not like the other vampires. I highly doubt Mom would be willing to believe me if I told her, so I simply haven’t brought it up. That was the easier option. Convincing her that he does actually want to help me…” I shook my head. “There are other witches who dealt with Damien in the past, and they said the same thing. Violet was working on a spell that would free Damien from the curse he’s under. She didn’t have the strength to be able to make it work, but I might have enough power, so I’ve been working on that while also looking into ways I can weaken the other vampires. Unlike fictional vampires, they don’t seem to be affected by sunlight, because they’re walking in it every day. Damien said they aren’t using any special magic to be able to do that. They’re free to wander around in the sun however much they want. However, there are certain herbs that may work to weaken them.”
“But you’d need to convince them to take the herbs, and they aren’t going to be stupid enough to do that.”
“Maybe. I have been thinking that there might be another way. They did need to drink blood in order to survive, which means, logically, I could get their potential victims to drink a mix of the herbs. Then, when the vampires drank from them, they’d be weakened by the blood instead of strengthened. I think. I need to work this out in more detail, but I believe it will work. Damien said there are specific humans they’re more likely to choose, because of who the victims were related to in the past, and that should make it easy enough, with Sasha’s help, to work out who those victims are.”
“Then, when they are weaker, you can make your move.”