“Did he fight well?”
“He fought like a man with something to die for. All he ever wanted was to be a hero.”
“I don’t get it. Why, if you lose compassion for my kind when you turn, why did he want to be named a hero, I mean, why did you even bother fighting for us in the war?”
“Well, I can’t answer that last question for myself, Ara, because you won’t like the answer. But as for Jason and his heroic dreams, that was just him. He…” David drew a breath and let it out with a huff. “He never lost all compassion for your kind. Well, not until…”
Until you killed Rochelle. “And what about your reasons for fighting in the war, why can’t you answer that question?”
He sighed. “Just drop it, okay?”
“Why?”
“Ara. Drop it.”
“Is it because you cared and you don’t want to admit it?”
“Ara?”
“Really, is that it? Because, I know you’re a vampire and caring isn’t cool, but you don’t have to pretend with me, I—”
“Ara, it’s not that.”
“Then, what is it? Why won’t you tell m—”
“Because I don’t want you to hate me,” he said loudly, turning away. “You, with all of your morals and your compassion, I don’t want you to see me for what I really am.”
“David.” I walked up and touched his arm from behind. “Don’t you know? Immoral vampire or not, I love y—”
“Do you?” He spun around with a jerk, his narrowed gaze splitting right through me. “Tell me honestly, Ara, do you love me? Am I enough for you?”
“Is that a joke? Of course I do, David, you’re everything to me.”
“What about Mike?”
I exhaled through my nose, biting my lip. “It’s intense being around him. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t want to feel that way, and I know it hurts you, but I can and will get past it.” I reached across and held his fingertips gently. “However, being without you is not something I can get through. I just…” I shook my head, trying to understand my own words. “I don’t understand my feelings for him, but I do understand my feelings for you.” And if what Jason said was true—that my feelings for Mike were because of the blood addiction—I wondered why David didn’t tell me that here and now.
“And you speak the truth?”
I touched my chest. “From the bottom of my heart.”
“Then, while I’m still here you’ll deal with the feelings you have for Mike and you won’t let him touch you again?”
“I promise.” I held out my pinkie.
He pushed it aside to wrap me in his arms. “That’s all I needed to know.”
“But, David?” I pushed out from his hold, sensing a change in things I wasn’t sure I wanted: safety. If David felt safe in this relationship—safe that I’d always be his—he’d leave again. He was only here because he wanted to make sure I’d never forget him, never move on from him. I had to keep up the ‘friend façade’ until he agreed to stay with me forever. “That doesn’t mean we can be more than friends. As long as you’re clear on that.” I studied his face with questioning eyes.
“Still gonna play this game, huh?”
“It’s no game. I’m serious.”
“It won’t make me stay, Ara-Rose.”
“It’s worth a try. And I have a date with Eric this week, so you better make up your mind.”
“Eric?”
“Yes.” Okay, so now I actually needed to book a date with Eric.
“Fine.” David smiled—his secret smile. “Go ahead. Go out with De la Rose. See if I care.”
“Fine.” I folded my arms slowly. “I will.”
15
I perched on the stool with my back to the piano, feet up on the ottoman between Emily and me, quietly rereading my favorite book while Emily ventured into the romantic worlds of Nicholas Sparks. But I couldn’t focus on the words no matter how hard I tried, because the constant roaring between enemies lifted my mind from the plot every five seconds.
“You know,” I said to her, “I think I’ve reread the same line about six times.”
“Just tune it out, Ara,” she said in that flat tone she’d used with me since the Mike-and-the-lake-of-mistakes incident.
“I can’t. I don’t know how you can. You have better hearing than I do.”
She shrugged, eyes staying on her book.
I studied her carefully for a minute. Everything about her looked the same, except for her face. I mean, her features hadn’t changed, but her lips were set with a sort of impassive look, replacing the goofy smile she usually wore while reading that tattered old book.
“What?” she said with a huff, her thumb holding the binding to mark the page.
“I’m sorry. I just… don’t you like romance novels anymore? You don’t seem to be getting the same kind of buzz out of it.”
“Maybe I just no longer care for the insignificant quests of the human heart.”
She went back to her book, and I held still for a moment, sitting across from the friend I knew so well but suddenly knew nothing of at all. She really had become a vampire—losing all compassion for my kind in the process, too.
“Die, you wretched—Oh, damn!” Mike said loudly. “You actually killed me that time!”
“Told ya I’d get better,” David said.
“Right. That’s it!” I slammed the book down on the ottoman and stomped out to the roaring battleground that used to be my lounge room. “Good to see you two getting along.” I grinned and sat on the arm of the sofa next to Mike. “But can you keep it down?”
David, sitting beside Mike with a game controller in hand, shifted his shoulders in the direction of his thumbs. “This is harder than it looks.”
“No, you’re just a newb,” Mike said, looking relaxed beside David’s anxiousness. He glanced up at me then, making a kill without watching the screen. “I thought playing this game with a vampire might be a challenge.”
“Ha! You’re dead now, brother.” David slowly leaned closer and closer to the screen.
“Not a chance.” Mike smirked, killing David again.
“You—you’re kidding me!” David shrieked.
Mike laughed loudly—the old Mike. My carefree best friend.
“You wait, human.” David nudged him with his elbow. “I’ll get better at this eventually, then you’ll know what a real fight is.”
“Ah!” The boys both roared at the screen, dropping their controllers on the coffee table.
“Maybe we should team up instead, against those guys.” Mike nodded at the scoreboard on the screen.
“Why? I had more fun killing you.”
“Mate.” Mike’s brow rose. “I was the only one you actually killed. And that was only because I went easy on you.”
David’s eyes warmed with a cheeky grin. “Try me in hand-to-hand combat then. Let’s see who wins.”
“I’ll pass, thanks,” Mike said and looked up at me. “Go on, Ara.” He handed a controller to me. “Show this vamp he’s the only one around here who sucks.”
“What, Ara can play?” David practically grunted.
“As a matter of fact, I can.”
“Prove it.” He laid his arm over the back of the couch.
“You know, she can wipe that smug grin off your face, mate. She’s almost as good as me.”
“Won’t change the fact that she’s a girl,” David scoffed, instantly shrinking behind raised palms. “I was kidding. That was a joke!”
I punched him anyway. “Not funny.”
“Sorry. I was just teasing.”
“Go on, Ara,” Mike said. “Teach him a lesson.”
I wasn’t one to show off, but Mike’s eager smile and the anticipation to do one thing better than David was irresistible. “Okay. Move over,” I said, and Mike made room as I slumped down between him and David, pressing the green button on the controller. “You ready for this, newb?”
“Bring it on.” David’s dimple
showed as he smiled back.
The countdown on the screen started. I leaned forward a little. There was no way he could beat me. I’d spent years working on my skills while I sat next to Mike for hours with nothing better to do than play video games.
David and Mike observed my victories with roaring protest—of different sentiments—while I smiled, displaying my rapture modestly. In the end, I took the final kill.
Game over.
David dropped his controller on the table and sat back, wearing a playful punch in the arm from Mike. “Beaten by a girl,” Mike said.
“I resent that sexist comment.” I stood up, handing the controller back to Mike.
“Sorry. Beaten by a human.” He looked up at me. “Better?”
“Better.” I nodded and stepped over their feet, leaving David and the last remains of his pride to fester in my victory.
Emily didn’t even look up to give me a ‘Girl Power’ smile as I sat back down, knocking her foot with my own. “Oh, come on—tell me you didn’t miss all that?”
She gave me half a glance. “I might have caught it. I was rooting for the vampire, though.”
“Guess nothing’s changed then.” I sat back, delivering as much spite as she just had.
She shook her head, obviously seething. But instead of bursting into flames or enraged fits of yelling, she broke into tears.
Guilt washed through me. “Em?”
Only a deep but high-pitched sob responded.
“Crap.” I landed on the couch, wrapping my arms all the way around her. She willingly laid against my chest, making my shirt wet with sadness. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to be fighting with you, Ara. You’re my only friend. But I”—she looked up at me, wiping her face—“I’m so goddamn mad at you.”
I swallowed. “I know. Em, I know. And I’m so sorry about what happened with Mike, I—”
“That’s not why I’m mad.” She stopped crying.
“It’s not?”
She looked toward the front of the house. “No.”
“Then”—I sat across from her on the ottoman, leaning close to whisper—“why are you mad?”
“Because I don’t get it. Do you have, like, magic pheromones that those guys can’t resist, or something? You’re not even that pretty!” She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
It felt like a flower had opened out upside down in my chest, spilling dread onto the floor.
“I really didn’t mean that,” she said. “It’s just—what have you got that I don’t? Why does he love you so much?”
“We’re soul mates,” I said. Was it so hard to believe he could love me?
“I thought David was your soul mate?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Well, I was talking about Mike, dummy!” She looked at me with severe eyes, slapping my knee.
“Oh. Mike? You’re sulking over Mike?”
“Who else?”
“I—sorry. Um, okay, this is weird.”
She sat back a little, huffing quietly. “I don’t like David that way, Ara.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever believe that, nor would I believe he didn’t have any feelings for her. “Well, how come you still care who Mike wants? I thought you’d lose that when you lost your compassion for humans.”
She sobbed again. “You don’t lose that if you love one of them.”
I shuffled forward a little more, peeling her hand from her face. “So, you really love him? Like, love-him-love-him?”
Her glassy eyes sparkled. “Is that so hard to believe? Ara, he’s amazing. You know that.”
“I do.” I glanced back at the archway toward the front door. “And… for what it’s worth, I also know he loved you.”
“Yeah—the girl. The human.”
“Right. So there’s no reason he can’t love the vampire. I mean, you’re so much prettier now,” I said with a smirk.
She smiled. “I’m sorry I said that about you—that you’re not pretty. I didn’t mean it to come out the way it sounded.”
“It’s okay. You’re right. There’s no reason for both those guys to be chasing after me. I’m not even that nice.”
“Mike can’t help it,” she said. “He’s talked to me about it—about you and how he feels. Said you were his first love, and it wouldn’t matter how time changed things, he’d always love you in some way.”
“I know what he means.” I thought of David, but Jason’s face popped up in there for a second, startling me.
“He was my first love,” she said.
“Who? Jason?”
“No.” She scowled. “Mike. Why would you think I meant Jason?”
Guess I was just so used to having my mind read, I thought everyone could do it. “Oh, um, just… because you said you loved him, you know, that summer you spent with him and all.”
She shook her head. “Now that I’ve fallen for Mike, I know the difference between love and childhood lust.”
We sat quiet for a while before I said softly, “He just needs time, Emily.”
“No.” She sniffled, wiping her nose and chin. “He just needs you.”
My face dropped against my fingertips. She was half right; he hadn’t moved on from me, but he did love her when she was human, he admitted that. He needed her. He needed someone strong to help him move past what I’d done to him. If he would just look at her, even just for one second, he’d see her for the girl he fell in love with—the girl he thinks is lost. The girl in the emerald green dress.
“Come on.” I grabbed her hand.
“Where are we going?”
“To remind Mike why he fell in love with you.”
* * *
As the evening sky darkened and the house grew quiet, Emily and I put our plan into action.
A suit-clad David stood by the wall in the music room, his hands clasped in front of him, waiting for Emily. He watched her glide across the room toward him, as effortlessly delicate as she was when she was human.
Ryan and Alana, who had received their formal invitation via text late this afternoon, gently circled the space where the couch had been shifted away to make room for a dance floor.
In my red dress, I sat by the piano playing softly, and looked away when Emily took David’s waiting hand. I knew he’d kiss it, softly brushing his lips across her knuckles, but I didn’t need to see that.
“Emily,” he said, and then came the kissing sound, “you are a picture of beauty.”
“Merci.” I imagined she even went as far as to curtsy.
“May I have this dance?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
And it would be my pleasure to throw up on your shoes. This plan better work, that’s all I could say.
“Sure you don’t want me to play, Ara?” Ryan asked.
I smiled up at him. “I’m fine. It’s been a while since I played. I think I could use the distraction.”
“Well, let me know.” He waltzed away with the beautiful Alana.
I watched them carefully. It was so good to see them again. Even though they’d come here to have drinks shortly after we moved in, it felt like months since I’d seen either of them.
My eyes strayed across the room to Emily and David sashaying over the floor with the grace of a gentle breeze. He stood so tall, his shoulders straight and his head held so high I almost believed we’d gone back to the eighteen-hundreds, when his mother and father would have danced just like this at a dinner party or some other gathering. And Emily looked so effortlessly lovely in his arms, like she belonged there—her hair being the color of his mother’s, her slight frame so glamorous and so feminine against him. She glowed, and with the blood of the immortal flowing through her veins, she belonged in his life. They were two petals from the same stem.
My fingers stiffened over the keys. I changed the tune to a more somber melody.
“Now there’s a sound I ha
ven’t heard for a while,” Mike noted, walking into the kitchen with his nose in a newspaper.
His sudden appearance turned all my fingers to thumbs, and my pinkie hit a low C, making everyone look up at me.
“What are you guys doing?” Mike folded the paper, his face holding back a burst of obvious amusement.
“Dancing,” David said. “But we’re a man short. Care to take a hand so I can dance with Ara?”
Mike nodded his greeting to Ryan and Alana, trying to look past David to see the slender girl in the emerald green dress behind him. “Who… who’s that?”
David moved aside then, revealing Emily in all her loveliness, and Mike’s mouth hung open, frozen, as if stuck on a vowel. He dropped the paper on the dining table and walked in a trance-like state to stand before her.
“Emily?”
“Hi.” She looked down, pinching the fabric of her dress.
“But…” Mike whispered, his eyes washing slowly over every inch of her face. “You look exactly the same.”
“I am the same.” She stole a sideways glance at David, who sat beside me.
“No.” He reached out and tapered his fingers hesitantly down her bare arm. “You’re dead.”
“I’m not dead, Mike.” She placed his hand on her face. “I’m still here—see?”
“But I watched you die.”
“No, you watched me change.”
Mike shook his head again, a gaze full of thoughts brushing her brow, her cheeks, collarbones, then her lips, staying there, watching them, contemplating them before his own lips fell against them, both his hands clasping her face as he breathed her in.
David took my hand, a hopeful squeeze warming my fingertips.
Slowly, and with what looked like consideration, Mike pulled away, running his tongue across the remains of the kiss.
“Em,” Mike said, almost melting.
It worked. I knew he couldn’t resist her in green.
I smiled up at David as Mike pulled Emily in and whispered repeated words of apology to her.
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