I dried myself quickly, planning on grabbing a small hand towel and shoving it between my thighs until my underwear was moderately clean and dry. But just as I reached for the linen folded by the sink, my vision intensified. I could see the individual fibres of the cotton. The sound of the water under the tires echoed so close it was like I was being submerged in water. And the smell of the room was rank, like festering mould and… I gagged.
I wore every one of my silver rings still, but not my mom’s gold one. The ring wasn’t responsible for Emerson’s dissociative pause, or my preternatural senses, then.
Focusing on my hands, I noticed the scarring looked different with preternatural eyes. The fresher scars were smoother, like moonlight cracks between my unmarred flesh. I looked down to my stomach, the worst of the scarring. My hand skimmed over what had always been ridged with uneven scarring, pink and angry looking despite the age. Instead, I was met with even skin. The pink stretched scars were faded almost to a white, barely visible degree.
How long had they been like this? I rarely looked at myself in the mirror. I showered with my eyes closed most of the time. Not because I was self-conscious of the damage, but I’d always been aware that seeing them might trigger a memory of Darren and that night – looking at myself on the computer screen and wishing for Death. I never looked at myself if I could help it.
I turned around, turning my head at an awkward, painful angle, trying to see my back and the stab scars back there. It took a moment for my enhanced vision to ignore the scratches of the mirror, and the droplets of condensation, and focus on the reflection. Beyond the haziness of the steam, I could see that not only were my scars faded, but the colouring of my tattoo had gone from a deep black to an aged grey.
I thought back to Grayson’s words: what if the last attempt Death had on my life hadn’t just been an attempt. What if Death had succeeded when I crashed my bike and I had somehow been brought back, triggering a dormant change in me. If that was possible, could it also be true that Death bringing me back didn’t just stop at healing me from the damage of the crash, but healing me from all my past injuries?
Vampires were re-made perfect. Lost limbs were reformed, eyesight returned, scars and wear from life were wiped clean. It was what appealed to those lamia who had not been whole in life: a fresh slate to be born anew. Like with the preternatural senses, I was getting a taste of this, too.
I closed my eyes, ignoring my enhanced sight, and snatched the hand towel, tearing the covers from the bed and switching off the lights.
Shit.
I had to go back.
Not because I owed it to Emerson to be given the choice whether he wanted to risk his life having me in it (what insane person would choose that option?) but because back there was the only place that had answers to what was going on with me.
If whatever had made it seem like I was slowly becoming lamia was picking up speed now, there was a possibility this would all reach a climax on my eighteenth. It would be just my luck that between the anniversary of my parent’s deaths and my grandma’s – that sweet spot where my birthday resided – I lost my humanity and became something entirely other.
Maybelle’s messages were filled with panic and overly caring concern for my wellbeing. Through the alarmed babble in her voicemails, I caught the main facts that Gi had explained what had gone on at school and Emerson covered for me when he came to drop off my school bag at the house.
Apparently, Maybelle and everyone else, had been informed by the Son that I was spending the weekend with some friends to collect myself after this awful bullying attack. I had no doubt that Emerson had made it sound entirely reasonable. It was oddly unsettling how close to the truth he’d come.
I text Maybelle to tell her I was coming home. I didn’t tell her that doing so required me not only to shoplift some tampons, but abandon Emerson’s car somewhere in Woods Creek and sneak aboard three separate buses.
I managed to get back to Maybelle’s just before it got dark. I nodded through the lectures Ken gave me, the hovering by Maybelle and agreed to whatever punishment they’d decided to give me. As they’d only believed I’d spent the night at a friend’s and skipped one day of school, (rather than fled to visit a federal prison and had been planning on running for good), I was simply told I needed to hand over the keys to my Porsche and I’d get them back in a week.
‘No problem,’ I said, going into my spare coat in the mud room and pulling out the keys I hadn’t used in weeks. ‘But I can’t use it anyway. Emma stole and vandalised it weeks ago. Wasn’t even worth saving for parts by the time I found it.’
Maybelle was left standing in the hallway, her mouth open and closing like a fish. I stopped by the bathroom on the way to my bedroom and grabbed a handful of tampons before I slammed my door shut. I wasn’t planning on getting out of bed until Monday.
Maybelle dropped me off at school by the time Monday rolled around. I wasn’t sure what to expect exactly. I knew what it would be like from the general high school populace; I’d lived through it all before. But with the AA Team and Emerson…
The AA Team knew nothing about my history – and the first thing they really learnt was the worst of it. I very much doubted that this would have the same reaction that Nowak appearing with a Porsche had. At least Gi would finally give up pressuring me to commit to being Emerson’s girlfriend. There’s no way she’d want someone like me dating her perfect best friend.
I think I could safely say, though, that the one thing I didn’t expect was for everyone to ignore me. Not even in the pointed leper way, but the type of ignorance I used to get before Emerson started talking to me; like I was neither worthy of note good or bad. Even my homeroom teacher didn’t pay me any mind as I walked in through the door and sat at the back of the classroom like I always did. By the time the bell rang for first period, I thought I was insane. Had I imagined the whole of last Friday?
Gi and Emerson were waiting outside the door to my homeroom.
‘I’ll cover for you in first period,’ Gi told Emerson. She gave me a shy smile, before she left down the corridor to her class. There was something different about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t have enough time before she’d gone to study what it might be.
Emerson looked like he was about to say something, then he stopped himself and screwed up his face, looking down slightly. ‘You’re on.’
Hell. For all his preternatural senses, I’d never had to worry about sense of smell before. I didn’t exactly have a body odour problem. Emerson could smell that I was on my period. Wasn’t that delightful?
‘The joys of womanhood,’ I said, sarcastically, shouldering my way past the few students who were still in the halls trying to get to their class on time.
Emerson was obviously confused. That made two of us, but I’d had the weekend reminding myself of the pain of using tampons and awkward sneezing fiascos to really wrap my head around it.
‘You don’t…’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘But now I do. Another thing to add to the list of “what’s freaky with Liv”,’ I said. ‘My scars and tattoo have started fading as well.’
Emerson swore, then grabbed my sleeve stopping me from walking. ‘Liv, stop. Where are you going?’
‘To class.’
He gave me a look as if to tell me to stop being so literal.
‘You ran off. You didn’t tell us where you were going or if you were okay. You didn’t answer any of our texts or calls. You took my car. Can you just stop for a minute and tell me if you’re alright?’
‘I’m alright,’ I said, shrugging off his grip.
It had only been a weekend, but somehow, I’d forgotten what it was like to be in the presence of his glamour and feel the bond between us.
Christian’s words played back in my mind. How he thought Emerson loved me. Emerson liked me; I knew that much. He’d repeated it often enough. But he didn’t love me. He couldn’t love me. He had a history with Charlotte. That’s wh
o he really cared about. I was just an interesting mystery.
‘Liv?’ Emerson asked again.
‘What?’ I ground out.
He didn’t say anything, he just watched as I clutched onto my bag and tried to look everywhere but him.
‘Just – here.’ I shoved his keys into the palm of his hand, mindful not to let my rings catch him in any way. ‘Your car ran out of gas on the way here. It’s somewhere in Woods Creek. I can get Ali to text you the exact location and Charlotte can drive you to pick it up. I have to get to class.’
I tried to walk away, but he stopped in front of me.
‘I don’t care about my car. The last time I saw you was when you were in the middle of a seriously bad panic attack and then you just disappeared. I didn’t even see you go. Martha freaked the hell out and I had to try and cover for you.’
‘Thanks for that, but I don’t have time to talk.’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘No, Emerson, we don’t.’
‘You don’t want to talk about Friday, fine,’ he threw up his hands. He lent his head closer to mine so he wasn’t shouting, barely talking above a whisper. ‘But tell me what’s going on with your scars and you starting your period. I’m still helping you figure out what’s going on with you, aren’t I?’ I didn’t answer him. ‘Liv? Aren’t I?’
I groaned, annoyed, but nodded. That was the one reason I’d come back.
We found an abandoned classroom and I sat on the teacher’s desk whilst Emerson stood by the door.
‘I’m not sure how long my scars have been fading for. I don’t really pay attention to them, but the ones on my back have mostly disappeared and my tattoo looks grey, not black. I think the damaged skin on my stomach has smoothed out a bit as well, but it’s still bad.’ I didn’t think, I knew, but the qualifier lessened the impact and I needed it not to be as big of a deal as it was.
Emerson ruffled his hair. For the first time since we’d become friends, I noticed he wasn’t wearing a cap. He was also dressed how he used to: t-shirt and baseball jacket over pressed khaki pants and sneakers. I didn’t know how to interpret that.
‘And your period?’
I tried not to be that girl who was embarrassed talking about a bodily function that happened to half of the population. ‘I’ve not had one in years. I take a contraceptive injection to stop them because after the school shooting the pain was too much for me. It came back Friday night.’
‘Severe stress can mess up your hormones enough that it could disrupt your cycle,’ Emerson said.
‘But start my cycle?’
‘It does seem more… supernatural,’ Emerson admitted, ‘especially as your birthday is coming up. At least with it coinciding with your scars and tattoo fading and all your senses getting messed up.’
‘That was my thought.’ I sighed. ‘What’s going to happen on my eighteenth?’
‘I don’t know,’ Emerson said. He sounded worried.
‘What happens to lamia?’
‘There’s no knowing if you’ll go through anything like our choice,’ Emerson said.
‘I know. I don’t exactly follow any of the usual patterns. I just want to know, in case it’s something like that.’
The Cassidy Grimm files had simply said that there was a choice. It had never gone into the specifics of what happened when the choice was made or how it was posed.
‘There’s not an active ritual, though we used to have blessings on the eighteenth. My grandma’s generation was the last one who really enforced those.
‘For most lamia it’s an intense lucid dream. You feel exhausted the days before until you can’t keep your eyes open. Then, within the dream – you choose.’
‘That’s it?’
‘It’s different for everyone,’ Emerson explained. ‘Only a small percentage of the population dream with action like you experience in life. Some see colours, images. Others can’t put into words what they dream about, or even remember.
‘Michael said his dream was like being suspended, floating on a river. He had a choice between which bank to ride up to. One was calm, endlessly peaceful with a still plain. The other was chaotic, always changing, moving too fast to comprehend.’
‘Which one did he choose?’
‘He was Michael,’ Emerson said, a smile in his voice. ‘He chose chaos.’
‘Chaos was being a witch?’
‘Chaos was life. Death is orderly and straight forward. No surprises. We all know it happens. Vampires are just suspended until it takes us.’
I tried to ignore the blatantly obvious reminder that Death was waiting around the corner for Emerson because of me.
‘Can we go back to class now?’ I asked.
Emerson stepped in front of the classroom door. ‘Promise me you’re okay.’
I was about to promise but he interrupted me.
‘I couldn’t help you. You were panicking and lost to me and I couldn’t help. I didn’t like that feeling, Liv,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave me in that feeling again, okay?’
Guilt swept over me. Emerson only experienced life and moved on from it when I was with him. As soon as I left, every moment would have been dissociated from him, leaving him to return again and again to the last moment of me disappearing in front of his eyes. I managed to be selfish even when I was trying to be selfless.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, truly meaning it. ‘I promise.’
He nodded once, like he believed me. I just hoped this time I could keep my promise to him.
I got through my classes by the sheer luck of everyone treating me like a ghost. If the silent treatment was how NRHS bullied the freak – I was totally down for it. But by lunch, it was just weird. I felt like I’d entered a different timeline where Friday had never happened.
As soon as I got to the auditorium and dumped my bag at the foot of the stage, I asked the AA Team what the hell was going on. Everyone was here, bar Gi.
‘Why is everyone pretending like Friday didn’t happen?’ I asked.
‘You’d prefer us to ask questions?’ Jenny asked, her eyes widening.
Martha rolled her eyes at her friend. ‘We don’t need you to explain anything. Emerson already told us.’
My eyes narrowed, my head whipping round to Emerson. He was casually leaning up against the frame of the proscenium arch. He had on his face the relaxed expression he usually held when he was being the “Son” everyone else knew him as. He had no cap to mess with, so instead was holding his phone like an accessory instead.
‘Told you what?’ I asked them.
‘I just showed them the actual news article,’ Emerson said, ‘not the spiced up one Lawrence wrote.’
There was only one paper who had wrote the facts of the case as close to what we’d experienced that night without the “spice” as Emerson put it. It wouldn’t surprise me if Emerson had found that one. Nor would it that he had looked into my history in the first place to know what the real truth was. Just like I’d broken into his car and asked Ali to investigate his history, the Sons would have done the same for me when they found out a human knew about the Blood World.
‘We’re really sorry you had to go through all that,’ Jenny said. ‘But there’s totally no need for you to be embarrassed or anything. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I’m not embarrassed. I don’t care what people think.’
‘But, urm, you had a panic attack-’ Robbie pinched Jenny’s side. ‘Ow!’
I groaned, rubbing my temples. ‘Panic attacks don’t happen because you’re embarrassed,’ I said. ‘At least not for me. I sometimes get stressed if something triggering reminds me of that night. I’ve learnt to get over it.’
‘Oh,’ Jenny said. ‘Oh. Like when you freaked out about Emerson having a picture of you on his phone.’
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to remain calm even though I hated talking about this shit. ‘Like that.’
The auditorium doors opened and Gi marched through the door. �
��What are all you guys doing in here? I text you ages ago.’
‘We’re having lunch,’ Robbie said, slowly, like Gi had gone crazy.
‘Not here we’re not. We’re going to the cafeteria.’ Maybe she had gone crazy.
‘I’ll pass on that shit show,’ I said.
‘No. You’re coming. You all are.’ Gi had never looked so intense before.
Jenny was willing to go along with anything, and where she went, Robbie went. Martha didn’t look pleased, but she’d go along with her friends.
‘What’s she up to?’ I asked Emerson, who had told me to just trust Gi as we walked to the cafeteria. My last memory of the place didn’t exactly inspire warm and fuzzy feelings.
I ate on the way there. It didn’t take me long to eat the sandwich and chips Maybelle had hastily gotten together for me in the morning.
We walked through the doors together, Gi in front, the AA Team next and Emerson and I taking up the rear. Jenny held Robbie’s hand, the only sign that she was slightly uncomfortable with this situation. Everyone’s eyes were on us. Martha simply tilted her nose upwards, demonstrating her holier-than-thou attitude for all to see.
My eyes swept over the madness that was high school lunch time. The only other time I’d been here, I hadn’t had much of a chance as I’d zeroed in on Emma and my dumped stuff all over the floor. Like the rest of the school, it had that subtle nod to wealth separating it from the public schools I’d been to before. The white walls and floors were impeccably clean, and the dinner queue led to what looked like vending stalls rather than a prison lunch line up.
I couldn’t see Emma at all. Lisa and Hope were sat with the cheerleaders, but there was no spare seat reserved for their absent mistress. Was it possible Emma had been caught responsible for spreading a NSFW (or for high school in this case) story and had been suspended? Could perfect queen bees even get suspended?
We walked past their table to get to where Gi was leading us.
‘Hey, Gi! I’ll see you at rehearsals tonight?’ Lisa simpered.
‘Sure,’ Gi smiled back before she turned away, her attention on Marcy who was waving her over to the long table filled with a mix of cheerleaders, footballers and baseball players.
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