by Jayme Morse
As goose bumps creeped down her arms, Lexi glanced around the hallway. She suddenly felt weird knowing that the vampire who had most likely killed Anna’s mom had probably lurked around this very same hallway at one point.
“That doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me, either,” Anna murmured. She pointed her chin higher in the air, as though she were trying to prove that she was brave enough to say whatever she had to say next. “But how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
Darius stared back at her blankly. “Why would I lie to you about this?”
“It seems to me like you might be trying to divert the attention away from someone else—like maybe yourself. How do I know you’re not really the one who killed my mother?” Anna questioned.
Darius didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Lexi was positive she saw a look of pain pass through his eyes. “You think I killed your mom?”
Anna shrugged. “I’m not ruling you out as a suspect. Why was it so important to you for me to come here? You could have just told me this information over the phone if you really wanted me to know about your facility,” she said, pointing her chin at the hallway around them. “But you insisted that I come here to meet you instead. Why? So you could kill me, too? If that’s all you want to do, why don’t you just get it over with?”
Lexi noticed that Anna was reaching in her pocket for something. It took Lexi a moment to realize what it was, but when she did, her stomach tightened. Anna was reaching for a pack of matches; she was preparing to light Darius on fire in the event that he tried to attack her.
Lexi wanted to warn Anna that this was a bad idea. Hadn’t she paid any attention in Conflagration Studies—otherwise known as Fire Studies—class? Although it was possible to kill a vampire by using fire, it took a lot of planning in order to make it work. The vampire had to be locked inside a burning building long enough to actually die. Otherwise, their organs would simply regrow, and the flames and fumes wouldn’t actually kill them. It took hours for them to actually die.
Just as Lexi was about to take a step closer to Anna and pinch her wrist, to make sure that she didn’t actually go through with this, Darius spoke again, focusing his gaze on Anna. “Anna, the truth is, I didn’t kill your mother. I couldn’t have . . . I loved her.” He inhaled deeply. “The reason I insisted that you come here to our training facility, the reason I wouldn’t give you the information over the phone or by letter, is . . . I had to meet you. You’re all I have left of Annemarie.”
Anna shifted awkwardly in her shoes, but she pulled her hand out of her pocket. Lexi breathed a sigh of relief.
Anna wasn’t going to try to set Darius on fire. His words must have been believable to her—and why wouldn’t they be? Even Lexi found herself feeling sorry for the poor guy. Whether Anna’s mom was married or not, it still had to be sad to lose someone who you really love.
When Anna glanced over her shoulder at Dan and Lexi, her eyes also had an empathetic look in them. “Guys, would you mind giving me some time alone with Darius?”
Lexi tugged at Dan’s sleeve and smiled at Anna. “Sure. We’ll just go take a walk. Take all the time you need.”
As they began to walk away, Lexi heard Austin ask, “I get to stay, right?”
“Actually, Austin,” Anna said, a note of hesitation in her voice, “I would appreciate it if you could give me a minute or two with him, too. If that’s okay.”
“Oh.” Austin sounded surprised by Anna’s decision. “Okay. I’ll be back.”
Lexi and Dan stopped to wait for him. Once he caught up to them and they were down the long hallway, Austin whispered, “I don’t know why I couldn’t be there for this.”
Dan shrugged. “She probably just needs her privacy, dude. It’s gotta be tough, you know—finding out her mom had an affair and everything.”
“Yeah, I know,” Austin agreed.
As they rounded a corner, Lexi nearly bumped into someone.
“Watch where yer goin’,” a voice barked, until the woman turned to see who had almost bumped into her. “Lexi?”
“Gertie?” Lexi asked, laughing nervously as a mix of emotions washed over her. As nice as it was to see a familiar face, she also felt confused about what Gertie was doing at Westbrooke. She asked the first question that popped into her mind. “Are you a vampire?”
Gertie laughed. “Little ‘ol me? Naw, of course not!” She glanced down the hallway nervously before turning back to Lexi. “It was my husband who was the vampire, you see. Well, my late husband, that is. He passed on a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Lexi couldn’t help but feel truly sorry for Gertie. Even though her mom had never trusted the woman, Lexi did. She was one of the few people who had ever been nice to Lexi since she had arrived in Briar Creek and although she was known for not being able to keep a secret, she had been able to hide this from Lexi until now.
Lowering her voice, Lexi asked, “Did he have Wilkins’ Syndrome?” If she found out that Gertie’s husband had died from Wilkins’ Syndrome and she hadn’t done anything to prevent it, it was going to make her feel extremely guilty. The only person who she had ever bothered to attempt to save was Uncle Tommy. Saving him was the whole reason she’d become an immortal. Aside from that, though, she hadn’t tried to help anyone—mostly because it seemed like everyone was selfish, deranged, and out to get her.
Gertie shook her head. “No, my husband . . . he wanted to die. It sounds morbid, and maybe it is, but he wanted to die quietly at home.”
Lexi couldn’t ignore how sad Gertie looked talking about her husband’s death, and it made Lexi wonder. Had her husband really chosen to leave her behind? Lexi understood not wanting to be an immortal. It wasn’t the right decision for everyone. She knew that Gabe had sometimes struggled with it. But why had Gertie’s husband opted to leave her behind instead of waiting to die after she was already gone? It didn’t make very much sense.
“My husband was having an affair,” Gertie explained, as though she were reading Lexi’s mind. “He had a whole other family and kids with a woman who I never knew anything about. He felt too guilty to go on, so he asked a friend of his to put a stake through his heart while we were at home.” Gertie shrugged her shoulders, and her eyes moistened a little. “Screw him. I’ll be better off without him.”
“What brings you here?” Dan asked, politely.
Gertie glanced over him, registering that he was there for the first time. “Well, even after her husband dies, a woman has needs, if ya know what I mean. Just because my husband’s gone doesn’t mean I have to give up vampires altogether, now does it?”
Dan smiled at her. “Of course not.”
“I heard about this place, and I just figured it would be better to come here and be a blood donor than to just find any old vampire off the street,” Gertie explained. “I know there’s old Ronnie and old Gilbert who would drink from me in a heartbeat, but those men have reputations as ladies’ men! Coming here was just the classier thing to do.”
“How did you hear about this place?” Lexi questioned, realizing, for the first time, that it was sort of strange that Gertie knew that Westbrooke even existed. In all of the time she had spent in Briar Creek, no one had ever mentioned Westbrooke. It made her wonder if any of the vampires from Briar Creek had ever come to this training facility before.
“Oh, I . . . I don’t quite remember, actually,” Gertie replied, tapping her chin in thought. “I think it might have been one of the Brewer boys who mentioned this place.” She shrugged, glancing over at Lexi. “Beats me, but I really need to get going. I hope this isn’t the last I’ll see of y’all. Will ya be comin’ back to Briar Creek eventually?”
Lexi hesitated. She hadn’t actually considered recently whether or not she’d ever go back to Briar Creek. There were so many haunting memories there . . . memories of a time when she had been so alone and so afraid, memories of the mystery (at the time) surrounding her mom’s death, memories of Justin’s death.
There were also memories of Mary-Kate, the sister who she had always wished for but who had turned out to be nothing but just another enemy. Mary-Kate was gone now—as far as Lexi knew, she was never coming back—so there wasn’t much for her in Briar Creek.
Or was there? “Actually, I did promise Uncle Tommy that we would go to visit him eventually. Or that Austin would, at least,” Lexi replied, glancing over in her cousin’s direction.
Austin darted his eyes away from her and down at the ground. Lexi had mentioned to him that Uncle Tommy was expecting a visit from them over the next month or so once everything settled down, but her cousin hadn’t seemed too enthusiastic about the idea. Lexi had a feeling that it was because he still harbored a lot of anger towards his father.
“Well, I hope y’all will come down to the diner when ya come into town,” Gertie said with a small smile. She narrowed her eyes at Lexi. “You do still need to eat food, don’t ya?”
Lexi laughed, knowing exactly what the woman was really asking her. “Yes, Gertie, I still need to eat. I’m not a vampire.” She was actually surprised to find out that she still needed to eat when she first became an immortal. She had assumed that since she couldn’t die, she wouldn’t need to actually eat, like a vampire. But as it turned out, when she didn’t eat, her body felt weak. That’s when she reminded herself that vampires did have to eat; it’s just that they refueled with blood rather than with food.
“Good. I’d hate to never get to serve ya yer breakfast special again,” Gertie replied with a grin, referring to the scrambled eggs with salsa breakfast that Lexi had always ordered as a child. It was still one of her breakfast favorites.
Lexi laughed. “I’ll come back for it.”
“Well, I’ll see y’all another time then,” Gertie said.
As the old woman was about to walk away, Lexi stopped her. “Wait, Gertie? I just want to say, ‘thank you’. I know you tried to help me a long time ago when I was in the hospital and you came to visit me, but you were turned away,” she said. “It means a lot to me. I’ll never forget it.”
Gertie’s lips tilted upwards and she waved her hand at Lexi. “Awe, shucks. That wasn’t a big deal. I was always trying to watch out for ya, though. I would have done more if I knew you had stuck around for so long, but that aunt of yours told me that you went back home at one point when I tried to see you.”
Lexi cringed at the word aunt. She had such a hard time now thinking of Violet as her aunt after everything the woman had put her through. “Violet told you I left town?”
Gertie nodded. “She did. Otherwise, I woulda tried to do more to help ya. I’m sorry things escalated to what they did. It’s a damn shame.” She shook her head in disgust. “Goodbye, Lexi.”
“Bye, Gertie.” Lexi watched as Gertie walked down the hallway and pressed the button to call the elevator. Once the doors dinged open, she stepped inside and the elevator closed behind her.
“Does anyone else think that was weird?” Dan asked quietly.
“Did we think what was weird?” Austin questioned, sounding confused.
“Well, I mean, Anna said her tip came from Briar Creek, right? What are the chances that we see Gertie here the same day we come?” Dan glanced over at Lexi. “It doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence to me.”
“Are you saying you think Gertie is the one who sent the letter?” Lexi questioned. “Because I thought Anna already knew that Darius was the one who sent it. And even if he hadn’t, why would Gertie send it? She’s just a little old lady. All she’s ever been is nice to me.”
Dan shrugged his shoulders. “I really don’t know what to think. It just seems weird to me is all.”
Lexi sighed. “I don’t think Gertie has anything to do with this. I’m sure she doesn’t know this Geoff guy.”
Austin met her gaze. There was a nervous look behind his turquoise blue eyes. “Lexi, why do you keep telling people that I’m going to visit Tommy?” When he said the words, his eyes flashed with anger, but it quickly passed.
Taken back by the question, Lexi replied defensively, “I haven’t told that many people! I only told Tommy and Gertie.”
Austin sighed. “Well, I hate that you’re lying to everyone. I’m not going to see my dad. I can’t.”
“Oh, Austin, get over it. Tommy already apologized for what they did. If I can forgive him, you should be able to forgive him, too,” Lexi pointed out.
“It’s not that,” Austin replied quietly. He lowered his eyes to the floor nervously.
“Then what is it?” Lexi asked softly.
Austin glanced over at her. “I killed my mom . . . or the woman who used to be my mom. My father has to live for the rest of his eternal life without the woman who he once loved, and it’s because of me.” He shook his head in frustration. “What type of person kills their own mother?”
“What type of mother plots to kill her own kid?” Lexi shot back at him. “Look, if you don’t want to see Tommy because you’re still angry with him, then fine. But if it’s just because you feel guilty—or whatever it is that you’re feeling—about killing your mom, you need to suck it up. Tommy’s already forgiven you for what you did. Now you just need to forgive yourself.” She looked away from him and rolled her eyes in frustration. She didn’t feel any sympathy for Austin—especially not when she knew, deep down, that he had done the right thing by killing Violet.
Chapter 16
When Anna left Westbrooke, she wanted to burst into tears. It felt like her whole life—her whole entire childhood and maybe even her own existence—had changed. Anna’s mother was still her mother, but she was no longer the mother that Anna once knew. This mother was one who did things behind her family’s back—a mother who had secretly loved someone besides her father, even while Anna believed that her parents had a happy marriage all of those years.
Now that Anna knew the truth about her mother, she wanted to vomit. Nothing had ever made her feel sicker to her stomach in her life.
And then there was Darius. Anna wasn’t sure what to make of him. On the one hand, she wanted to hate him. After all, her mother had lied to Anna and her father; she had betrayed them in order to continue this love affair that she’d had with Darius. But on the other hand, Anna could tell just by looking in his eyes that Darius really had loved her mother. He still loved her mother . . . and that made Anna angry. Not because he had loved her but because he hadn’t protected her.
Why hadn’t Darius kept her mom safe if he loved her so much? That was the million dollar question that burnt through Anna’s mind. It was the only thing that she truly despised about Darius—that he could have done something to stop Geoff from killing her mom and hadn’t.
“Is everything okay?” Austin asked her, as he hit the button to unlock the doors of Anna’s Ford Escalade.
Deciding that she was too distraught to drive herself, Anna decided to let Austin drive again. She shrugged at him. “Everything’s fine.”
Once she climbed into the car and buckled her seatbelt, Anna sunk down in the seat of the car and wrapped her arms around her waist. She sighed.
Lexi and Dan all kept quiet, not saying a word as Austin pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
Anna blew her breath against the window, clouding it up. She used her finger to draw a tiny sad face.
Was she really sad, though? Anna was sad to find out that her mom was a different person than she’d originally thought. But she had always thought that she would be relieved to find out who might have killed her mother, but now that she knew, the only thing she felt was anger. Aside from that, Anna still didn’t have very much to go on; Geoff had left Westbrooke over a year ago. No one actually knew his whereabouts. Maybe she would feel better if she actually knew how to locate Geoff, but as it stood right now, she didn’t have anything to go on.
Unfortunately, since she wasn’t a biological vampire hunter like some of the other students at Huntington, Anna couldn’t just find Geoff through tracking. It didn’t work th
at way. And from what she understood from her Vampire Geography and Tracking class, there were only two ways vampire hunters could track down a vampire. The first was if they sensed that there was a vampire nearby; this generally applied to vampires who were within a one-hundred mile radius. The second was if there was a certain vampire who they felt very passionate about finding. If Anna were to ask a biological vampire hunter to help her find Geoff, the only way it would actually happen was if she could somehow convince them to be angry enough at him for what had happened to her mother.
“Are you sure your mom really had a relationship with this Darius guy?” Austin questioned, as he turned onto a side street. “I’m not sure I would trust everything he has to say.”
Even though Anna could feel Austin’s eyes flit over at her, she kept her own eyes focused on the road ahead of them. “He’s not lying. He showed me pictures.” In fact, Darius had showed her one too many pictures of him and Anna’s mother. Her mom had been smiling and appeared to be happy in all of them—happier than she’d ever looked with Anna’s father. It was hard to believe that her mom had been able to spend all this time with Darius without even tipping her family off in the slightest that she was having an affair.
“Are you going to tell your dad?” Austin asked, glancing over at Anna.
“I don’t know, Austin. I haven’t had time to process this yet,” Anna snapped at him. The truth was, she actually had thought about whether or not she was going to tell her dad. Even though she hated keeping secrets from him, she had already decided that she wasn’t going to tell him about this. Anna felt like she needed to keep this one secret of her mom’s; if her mom had wanted Anna’s father to know about the affair, she would have told him herself.
That wasn’t the only reason Anna had decided it would be better to keep the truth from her father, though. It was more for his sake than it was for her mother’s. Anna didn’t want to destroy the image that her father had of Anna’s mother—the same image that, up until today, Anna had also had of her mom. She’d been an amazing cook, a great saleswoman, and she loved to travel.