My ears washed back to the conversation when I heard my name. “Huh?” I looked over at Sam.
“You see?” He laughed, pointing at my face. “She still does it.”
“Does what?” I looked at David. He just smiled.
“You still zone out,” he said. “We were just talking about Mike and Emily being together now, and Sam asked how you felt about it.”
“Oh.” I sat taller and leaned on my hand. “Um. I think it’s great.” Not. I felt betrayed, unwanted, rejected and second best.
David nodded, continuing the conversation and taking my verbal response as if it were fact—almost as if he ignored the truth I just offered him privately. And a part of me wondered if that’s what he wanted to believe, if maybe he ignored those thoughts so he didn’t have to face them.
I looked at my dad then, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me. He couldn’t read minds, but he wasn’t fooled by my self-sacrificing façade either. He knew I was hurt about Mike and Emily, and I knew he wanted me to admit it. But Mike and Emily were only half the problem. The other half was that David believed I was okay—made himself believe it so he could leave me without feeling guilty for the rest of eternity. Nothing had changed. Not for me, anyway. David would go, Mike would be with Em, and I’d never be okay again.
* * *
I let my body drift with the flow of the notes, my fingers scaling easily over the keys, filling the room with melancholy. As the song came to an end, I smiled to myself, shifting over slightly to make room for my vampire.
“No student today?”
“No,” I said softly, rubbing the tops of my thighs. “I cancelled them. I need time to think.”
“Time to think about what?”
“You should know, you’re always in my head.”
“No, Ara. I’m not.” He closed the cover on the piano and took my hands. “Sweetheart, I haven’t been hearing you lately.”
“What? What’d you mean?”
“I mean, I…” He looked down almost remorsefully. “I keep missing things. Thoughts you direct at me are clear, but… at first, I thought you just had a quiet mind. But this is different. It’s… empty.”
“My head is empty?”
“No. I mean, yes. It’s… I don’t know. All I know is that, when I woke this morning, I thought you were dead for a second. There was nothing.”
“Not even dreams?”
“Nothing. I never really pay much attention to peoples’ thoughts. I hear them so often they become like wind or distant traffic, but the absence of them is like suddenly becoming deaf. And I just thought maybe I’d not been paying enough attention, but when I stopped to listen to you thinking, there was nothing. I got worried.”
“Worried?” I said, unconvinced. “Worried people don’t smile.”
“Well, I’m not worried anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not me, it’s you.”
“Okay, that makes me feel better.” Not.
He laughed. “You’ve mastered it, don’t you see? Ever since we met, Ara, you’ve been trying to shield or control your thoughts. You’ve just finally found a way.”
“I have?”
“Yes.” He kissed my nose. “It’s not perfect, I still hear you if I try really hard or if you’re reading a book or have song stuck in your head, but most of the time, there’s just”—he tapped his temple—“nothing.”
“Hm.” I thought for a second. “I’m not sure what to think about that.”
“And I’d have no idea, even if you did.”
“So, can you hear me now?” I thought about the color blue.
“No.”
“Now?”
“Not a word.” He shuffled an inch closer, keeping his eyes on our hands. “What is it you do when you block me out?”
“I—” I thought about it. “It’s a blanket—a dark blue one. I think of it like shaking the rug out by the lake. I imagine it covering my thoughts.”
“And that’s it? That’s all you’ve been doing?”
I nodded. “Even when I met Eric, I was practicing then. I always felt like he could read my mind, like he was in my head.”
“You could feel him in there?”
“I don’t know. I used to think I could feel you in there. Around Eric, in fact, even not around him, I sometimes had that same feeling.”
“So, you’ve been practicing all this time? Even with me here to protect you from him?”
“Especially with you here.”
“Why especially?”
“Because.” I stood up. “I have thoughts I don’t want you to hear.”
David stayed seated, smiling at the piano. “Like the thoughts you have about Mike.”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“It’s no different to when we were in high school, Ara.” He turned to me then. “I’ve always had to share your heart with him, even before you knew you loved me, and nothing changed after that.”
“Except that now I admit how I feel to myself.”
“Yes, then there’s that.” He tapped his foot, chewing the inside of his lip. “I’d rather to read your thoughts, even if I don’t like them. This”—he motioned between the two of us—“this disconnection, this inability to be a part of your every path to conclusions, it makes me feel uneasy.”
I laughed internally. I bet it does.
He looked up and grinned.
“What?” I said.
“I heard that.”
“Oh.”
He stood slowly, his movements silky and elegant, coming closer, his hands sliding along my waist. “See? Not perfect yet.”
“Yet.”
“Do you have any idea how infuriating that is?” he said.
“What?”
“That.” He pointed to my face. “You have this look in your eye, and I know you’re thinking cheeky thoughts—thoughts you’re not sharing with me.”
“You’ll just have to get used to it.” I hugged him, resting my face to his chest. “Am I the only human to ever block you out?”
“No. All humans are capable, just without the need they don’t know they have the strength—like a lot of things. And you’re not really blocking me out, by the way.” Something in his tone said he didn’t like the idea of not holding the reigns. “I can get in if I want to.”
“Go on then,” I challenged. “Try to read what I’m thinking now.”
He leaned back a little. “Are you thinking now?”
“I’m always thinking.”
“Okay, strengthen your blanket and think of a color.”
The cover on my thoughts became black instead of dark blue, and I imagined it thickening from paper to cardboard, hiding blue, no red, wait, blue.
David laughed. “Pick a color, Ara.”
“I did.”
“You can’t choose two.”
Fine. Blue.
He opened one eye and smiled at me.
“You know which color it was, don’t you?”
“Gray.”
“Liar. You’re just saying that so I’ll drop my guard around you.”
“If I want you to drop your guard, Ara, my dear girl, I don’t need to lie to you.” He grabbed my hand and drew me into him, his lips to my brow, his gentle breath on my face with the promise of a kiss. But he hesitated, softly tracing my skin with his lips. “If I want you to drop your guard, I can just do this.” He finally kissed me. “And I can see all the color I want to see.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Blue. It was blue.”
He kissed me again and said, “I know.”
“David!” We both looked up as the front door slammed, Mike’s distressed voice searching every corner of the room. “David!”
“Stay here,” he said to me and evaporated.
My frown mingled with incredulity. “As if.”
“Ara, I mean it,” he called from the front entrance, shadows dancing around the walls. “Give her to me.”
“Just help her,” Mike said, an
d my heart stopped for a beat. I wandered toward the front of the house, freezing as David turned around and met me face to face. Across his arms lay Emily’s limp body, her hair tinged orange with blood, the whites showing in her dead eyes.
“What happened to her?” I covered my mouth.
“I’ll give you one guess,” David said, his voice near to breaking. He pushed past at human pace, cradling Emily so close one might’ve thought she was precious to him. And I knew what he meant—knew this wasn’t an act of violence done to her by Mike or some random attacker. She’d met with a vampire.
“Mike?” I reached for him as he followed David to Emily’s room, but he didn’t notice; he was caught in some voiceless, airless vortex—his eyes forward, hand smoothing slowly down his chin.
I pinched myself to make sure I still existed.
“Clear that pillow away,” David ordered. “Right. Lay her down here.”
A pillow flew out into the hall from her room.
“Should I get some towels?”
I paused by the wall, feeling David’s silence like a knife through my heart.
“We won’t need them,” he said, and that silence hovered for a moment on the cusp of the past and the present, before all that was would no longer be. She’d been bitten. And that meant only one of two fates.
My feet squared the debt with my fear suddenly then, leading me to the doorway of Emily’s room, but forbid me another step. I leaned on the frame, watching David paw over her, turning her head from side to side, shaking his own.
“Silly girl,” he said softly.
“Is it bad?” Mike asked.
David took a step back, rolling Emily’s face away so we could see the sticky mess of hair and blood clinging to the wound across her shoulder. It looked like someone unsealed her with a can-opener and peeled back the flesh.
“That’s no bite,” David said, his voice shaking. “Her throat’s been all but ripped out. She went after Jason, didn’t she?”
Mike snapped from his voiceless trance, and the hand to his brow seemed to push his body back to the wall. He coughed out the words, “She went to him—confronted him, and he just… he attacked her.”
“Attacked?” David sounded almost surprised.
“Oh God.” Mike folded over, pressing his palms to his forehead. “I didn’t know what to do. I knew hospital couldn’t help her.”
“No.” David stepped away to place a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “No, you did the right thing. There’s nothing they can do for her now.”
“Aw, David, man.” Mike fought for air, anger bleeding in the veins of his eyes as he looked back at Em. “This isn’t right. She shouldn’t look like that.”
“It’s okay.” David grabbed his arm and helped him to the floor against the wall. “But you need to sit, bro, or you’ll fall down.”
My fingers twitched, warmth slowly crawling through the veins again. I walked toward Emily and stroked her face, gently weaving my fingertip over the lines of blood across her eye, nose, and lip. “She isn’t gonna make it, is she, David?”
She looked so twisted and awkward, her face absent of the life, of the glee it always held, even when she was sleeping. It was like someone had not only killed her, but stolen her last breath of happiness before they did.
“Right now?” he said. “I can’t say.”
“How could he do this?” I looked up at him where he hovered near by, his eyes fixed on our Emily. All the things I’d started to believe about Jason—that maybe he had some small manner of humanity inside him—just slipped away, lost to this tragedy before me.
“Believe it or not, Ara, this isn’t like him,” David said, his gaze distant.
“What do you mean? He’s a monster!”
“I mean, this”—he turned Emily’s head to show the laceration that took out nearly half of her throat—“this looks like an attack; something my brother was never capable of.”
“He attacked me! How can you say he—”
“He didn’t do this to you, Ara. He didn’t rip your throat out! Your bite,” he yelled, grabbing my face gently, turning it to see the mark. “Yours was a focused, calculated bite.”
“But this wasn’t.” I held up my forearm, showing the jagged scar Jason’s teeth had left.
“No, Ara.” He grabbed my wrist. “I saw this—I saw the moment he did it, saw his thoughts—everything. He didn’t mean to tear your skin like this, but whatever Emily did, whatever she said to him, he meant to kill her in the worst way.”
“What do we do?” Mike asked, and everyone looked back at Emily.
“Nothing.”
I felt the terror rise in the room then, washing us all with cold realization.
“Will she change?” I waited, breathless.
“Her heart’s weak—”
A gust of air burst from Mike’s lips.
“It’s not likely she has the strength to take on the change,” David finished.
“That’s not fair.” Mike’s voice was so quiet, his teary eyes straining to change Emily’s fate. “She deserved better than this.”
“I know.” David bowed his head. “But she’s at peace now.”
“Peace?” Mike said, not believing that for a second.
Neither did I, but I had no choice. The numbness of my emotional shelter reseeded then, drawing on the fear, the truth I wouldn’t acknowledge, leaving me with nothing but tears to offer the situation. Useless tears. And my heart only hurt more for the watching, for seeing Mike’s lip tremble too, his hands, so large, so protective, which couldn’t save Emily, couldn’t help her, slowly fall toward her, slowly lift her in his arms and cradle her as he sat in the pool of blood on her bed, rocking back and forth. Unable to take it all back.
“She shouldn’t look like this, David,” Mike cried. “She doesn’t belong here.”
My legs shook too much to stand. I dropped softly to my knees beside the bed and took Emily’s hand. And guilt took over like a disease, showing me her future, the life she might’ve had if I’d not come here.
“Ara.” David touched my shoulder, squatting beside me. “You need to get Mike out of here.”
“No!” Mike raged, clutching Emily tighter. “I’m not leaving her.”
“You can’t stay here for this.” David stood. “It’s not right to watch a person die.”
“Please.” Mike’s tears fell over Emily’s golden hair. “Please, I only just got her back. She can’t die. I can’t lose her.”
My heart felt starved for oxygen, watching Mike fall apart over Emily. This shouldn’t have happened to him. He got caught up in my world, and now it’d hurt him like it had everyone else.
“I’m sorry, Mike.” I stood and backed away, one slow, breathless step at a time.
Mike didn’t even look up.
David’s round eyes searched mine, his hand reaching for me to stay.
No. I pressed both mine behind my back. I have to go. I can’t watch. I don’t need to see her wither away and die.
David nodded. “Wait for me in the music room,” he said softly, his voice smooth, unwavering.
My feet carried me, though I couldn’t remember the journey. I flopped on the couch by the piano and stared at a square of sunlight on the carpet.
Poor Emily. Jason bit her. Jason hurt her. Her last vision was of the boy she once loved, who talked with her about marriage and children and old age, grabbing her and, with dark eyes and a wild, hate-filled smile, hurting her.
“Oh, Em.” My head fell into my hands.
“Ara?” David slowly pulled me into his cold embrace. “I’m sorry.”
“How could he, David?”
“I can’t even begin to understand the method in his madness, my love. But, right now, we can’t think about that. There are more pressing matters.”
“How long?” I looked up, wiping my raw eyes. “When will we know if she’ll change?”
“Shortly.” He nodded. “Her heart’s giving out, but she’s too weak, Ara.” He squeezed
me tight. “I need you to know that there’s little hope she’ll—”
I covered my ears. “Please don’t say it. Just don’t.”
“Okay.” He kissed the top of my head.
“I don’t want this, David. Any of this.”
“I know.”
We sat back against the couch with the orange and red autumn sun setting the room on fire around us, and a fierce stormy wind battering the windowpane. It came on so fast—the storm, Emily, Mike’s love for her. Everything just happened so fast. I felt weightless, out of control, like sitting in a dinghy in the middle of a wild ocean.
The world was so unjust. I was here, safe in the arms of the only thing in this world that really mattered, while Mike was alone, crying for the first girl who ever loved him the way he deserved. He’d never find that again. Like the way I felt for David, if he lost Em, he’d lose everything. He’d die inside, and it was my fault.
David’s grip tightened around me. “Ara. Stop thinking, my love. You need stop thinking.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like where your thoughts are going.”
“Then don’t listen.”
“Fine, have it your way.” He traced a line across my hairline, so gently that a tingle of numbness blanketed me with a deep calm after.
I sunk into his arms, yawning. “I’m tired, David.”
“I know.” His warm palm cupped my forehead, pressing my face into his chest. “Just sleep, my love.”
“You’re doing that to me, aren’t you—you’re making me sleepy?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t… want… to… sle—”
* * *
It wasn’t the dark that woke me, but the sudden stillness in the air and the taught limbs of my vampire; his back straight, ears pricked, obviously listening.
I sat up, feeling groggy, overslept. “David, what is it?”
“Shh,” he said in short.
I shushed, trying to hear what had him so captivated.
His shoulders sunk then, making his whole body loose. “Stay here.”
“Wh—” I started, but fell into the empty space where David evaporated again. Although I had no intention of staying put, for some reason, I couldn’t move either. I knew there could be only one of two things he’d be running to, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know which one had come to pass. Either way, I’d lose a friend today, but right now, while I had no verdict, I could imagine everything would be okay—that Em would recover like I did, and we could all get on with our lives—normal lives.
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 94