Twice Bitten

by Diana Greenbird

  I still had almost a month to go before I was of legal age, which meant a month where Maybelle was legally entitled to track me down and bring me back kicking and screaming. As much as she’d hovered over me and taken an interest in my life, I had a feeling that if I left without a word then she would do exactly that.

  When I’d been planning on hiding out in New York, that hadn’t been a problem. Try as she might to find me, I wasn’t coming back. But if Maybelle was looking for me at the same time as the Mors Exercitus were – that put her in the danger zone. I didn’t know what my parents had done to enrage them enough to veer off the accidental-death path, and I couldn’t risk Maybelle becoming collateral damage.

  I’d written her a letter explaining why I was leaving – some concocted lie that was made even more believable by the smattering of truth in there.

  I wasn’t going to graduate. I was “bullied” by the cheerleaders. I was tired of living under other people’s roofs, by other people’s rules. I wanted to see the world. The last truth: I was scared that if I stayed, I would start to believe that I could have this life, these friends, the popular kid as a boyfriend who would stand by my side and defend me. And that wasn’t in the cards for me. I wasn’t that girl. I didn’t get that life – and anyone I hung around with would be brought down, and they didn’t deserve that.

  I’d left the note on my desk, knowing that Maybelle was likely to go into my room after I disappeared when the play finished and would find it there.

  I couldn’t take anything with me. That would have been an obvious sign in case the Mors Exercitus were watching me. No clothes, no books. It would all be left here in this room for Maybelle to throw out when she realised I was never coming back.

  Whilst I should have been getting ready to head to the high school for the last rehearsal, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and pulled out the box of mementoes Brianna had collected for me. It felt like a final goodbye to my old life, to everything I would leave behind when I walked away tonight and never came back.

  As I pawed through the memories of my year with Christian, my phone began to buzz on the table. It was probably Gi or one of the AA Team asking me when I was getting there, whether Emerson had picked me up yet, but as it continued to ring, rather than peter off as text messages usually did, I pulled myself up from the floor and grabbed my phone.

  I didn’t recognise the number on the screen. I answered the call.

  ‘This call will be recorded and monitored. This is a call from,’ the line went quite for a moment and then Christian’s voice came across. ‘Christian King.’ The automated voice returned. ‘An inmate at Coyote Creek Department of Corrections. Your telephone service provider has been set up with a prepay account to allow collect calls from Coyote Creek Department of Corrections. Please stay on the line for your call to be connected.’

  I stayed on. In a few seconds, the automated buzz stopped, and I heard breathing on the other end of the line.

  ‘Hey, sweetheart.’

  My heart clenched as I heard those words. I’d missed him more over the past few weeks than I’d done in the years between us seeing each other – probably because the visit had reminded me of everything that there was to miss about him.

  ‘Hey, you,’ I said. I feigned a light-hearted tone. When I left tonight, this would be my last opportunity to ever speak to him. No more letters sent to him from foster homes. No promises that one day I’d be right there when he walked out of those gates forever. ‘How are you calling me right now?’

  ‘Ali got a message to me,’ Christian said. ‘Said something about how you were going on holiday. Thought I might like to be given a chance to say sayonara.’

  Tears threatened to fall. I closed my eyes, the burn behind my eyelids becoming stronger.

  ‘Bit presumptuous of you to think I’d want to hear your voice again,’ I said, but I couldn’t get across the right tone. Instead, the lump in my throat made it more of a croak.

  ‘You know me, I’m as conceited as they come. Ego for days, baby,’ Christian said. ‘I have to admit that I feel more like a prick than usual. I tell you to go back and then…’

  ‘What did Ali tell you?’ I asked.

  It wasn’t like she could divulge what was actually going on. Christian was involved in a lot of shit, but he didn’t belong to the Blood World. If she told him the truth, then she would be breaking the Code that she was hired to protect.

  ‘Something about those old neighbours of your parents coming back in town and wanting to catch up again,’ Christian said. It was the closest he could come to saying on the call that the people who had murdered my parents were after me. It was monitored and recorded, after all.

  ‘I don’t have time to ask you how they found you, or what’s going on but just tell me you’re going to be okay, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m going to be okay,’ I lied.

  ‘Try it again, with a little bit more conviction, and I might believe you.’

  I laughed, a tear escaping from my eye. I’d allow myself to cry this one time, I told myself. Just this once for a final goodbye.

  ‘Look after yourself, Christian,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I’m supposed to be telling you, sweetheart.’

  I nodded, though he couldn’t see me.

  ‘Tell that boy of yours to look after you,’ Christian warned. ‘If he doesn’t, I don’t mind adding another couple decades on my sentence.’

  ‘Don’t even joke about that,’ I said.

  ‘Life wouldn’t be worth returning to if you’re not on the other side,’ Christian told me, the most serious he’d been all call.

  ‘I thought I wasn’t an option for when you get out?’

  ‘Wrong way around, sweetheart. I’m not an option for you. But you’re everything-’ he cut himself off.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said – the only world I could get out that wouldn’t end on a lie.

  ‘Bye, sweetheart.’

  The call disconnected just as Maybelle called me down to say Emerson had arrived to pick me up for the Winter Showcase. Tonight was the night, in more ways than one.

  If I’d had any more than a few lines I would have completely screwed it up for how bad my nerves were. All week I’d been on edge. The AA Team had it down to being anxious over performing. Since Gi’s rise back to popularity, Gi Will Rock You didn’t even cross my mind as something to worry about. Even if Emma – the sole person who would even attempt to heckle Gi – had tried it, I doubted she would have been able to hear the taunt over the thunderous applause Gi was no doubt going to get.

  The cast were flawless in their performance. The songs hit all the right notes, and the leads having a glamour that encouraged the audience to love everything they did couldn’t hurt the reviews that would spin off after the show.

  By the time the final line was said, and the curtain was drawn, I felt oddly nostalgic for every moment we’d spent together, rehearsing lines, and eating lunch in the auditorium. This theatre had seen the moments in my life that had been the closest to “normal” and “happy” as I had ever experienced as an orphaned best friend to Death. The most normal I would likely ever feel in my whole life.

  I shook off that feeling, grabbing my coat from behind stage, ready to head off and find Charlotte who would be waiting for me. Emerson was making his own way, separate to us, staying with Grayson right until we boarded the plane. Charlotte had a hold of mine and Emerson’s passports. They were Blood World issued, created the same way vampire passports were to not arouse any suspicion at the Check-In points. The fake ID Ali had created for me wouldn’t cut it this time.

  I’d just made it out of the theatre, dodging Maybelle and Ken, who were talking to some parents they recognised from church, when I heard someone call me from behind.

  ‘Liv, I need to talk to you,’ Gi said.

  I tried not to look stressed as I turned around to face her, simultaneously piling on all the layers I’d been carrying awkwardly in my hand. It was cold enough to
snow.

  I brushed her off. ‘The after-show meet and greet is going to start in ten. Don’t you need to head up there considering you’re the star and all?’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ Gi asked.

  ‘Too crowded in there for me. You should head up and find Emerson. We can talk later.’

  ‘How are you getting home if Maybelle’s in there and Emerson’s not driving you?’ Gi asked.

  ‘I’ll walk. It’s a nice night. Some alone time really helps with the cooling off from an intense performance. Those few lines, phew, really took it out of me.’ I tried to back off.

  Gi grabbed my arm so I couldn’t walk away. I could see her charisma trying to persuade me to stay, the same way that Emerson’s vamp-glamour made him beautiful to me. She’d never used it on me before – not that I could see – but it seemed like the past month using her power meant she wasn’t able to switch it off, or maybe didn’t want to. Perhaps it was simply that now she knew what she was, she had more control over it and could use it to hr advantage.

  Just like vamp-glamour, being aware of it meant that although my body had one reaction, I could force my mind to overcome it. Perhaps it should have been more obvious that I was immune in some way. Whatever spell that had been passed down from Susanna hadn’t completely removed my immunity.

  ‘Gi, seriously, Ms Phillips will have a fit if you’re not there. We’ll talk later,’ I said again. ‘At the after party. I’ll call you when I’m home.’

  ‘No. Now. We’ve not had a chance to really talk since before Thanksgiving-’

  ‘You’ve been busy with your old friends. I won’t hold it against you; I’m not exactly a stellar BFF in comparison. And when we could talk, we had to rehearse. Things happen, life happens.’

  I tried to get away again, knowing the time was ticking. Charlotte and I were getting a cab and our flight was very last minute so that there was no waiting around that might lead to us being caught. Apparently, it took a long time for the plane to get off the runway and Emerson was stressed enough about that.

  ‘This isn’t about that. It’s about you and Emerson-’

  ‘Do you need me to admit that we’re dating? Will that make you think I’m not going to break his heart? Because I’m not. I won’t hurt him,’ I lied. ‘We’re totally boyfriend and girlfriend.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I’m tired of all the secrets. I know, Liv. After Thanksgiving when I met my mom’s family, I know about it all and I figured it out. You and Emerson…

  ‘And it’s all so much. How can you stand it? How can you lie about all this every day? And what do I do? Like, Liv, what the hell am I?’ Gi asked.

  If she had asked me this any other time, I would have been able to sit down and talk about the impossibility of all this crazy ass stuff we were thrown into without our consent. I would have been able to sympathise, more than she knew, about being unsure about what you were after thinking of yourself as something else for so long. But I didn’t have any freaking time.

  ‘You’re a witch,’ I said, exasperated. ‘And Emerson’s a vampire and I’m a – I don’t know what the hell I am. But sometimes there are more important things that how we choose to define ourselves.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t talk more or explain or be a good friend to you. But you’ll figure all this shit out. And if it’s all too much – just choose not to let this change you at all. There are a lot of things that you don’t get control over, but surprisingly the Blood World’s most sacred principle is choice. So, the world’s your oyster, kid. Both worlds. I’m sorry I can’t help you figure it out.’

  I ducked under her arm and ran past the football fields, away from the first friend I made here. The only friend whose heart I broke without Death’s helping hand. Nope, I did that one all on my own.

  One good thing about Charlotte was that when she wasn’t around humans, she didn’t try to be somebody else. She was fine to sit in silence and wallow in whatever thoughts saturated her mind. By the time we met up with Emerson in the airport, I was feeling pretty wallow-like myself. I didn’t even realise I’d hugged Emerson as a greeting until I felt his arms wrap around me. I’d just needed to.

  ‘I screwed up with Gi,’ I admitted, my words blurring together.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She chose after the play to come clean about being lamia and ask me about the Blood World,’ I said. ‘Like who chooses that moment? I just… I royally screwed up. I didn’t have the time.’

  Emerson looked pained for a second. Gi had been the whole reason he’d come here to Seattle. He was her best friend, she’d said so herself, since Emma, and he was abandoning her now without a goodbye.

  ‘Any other time, any other situation, we would have done right by her,’ Emerson said. ‘We’ve just got to trust that she’s resilient and she’ll be okay. She’s got her family. She’s got the AA Team. Grayson’s still here for her. She’ll be fine.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Love,’ Emerson said. ‘We’re on the run. As perspectives go, she’s doing better than us by miles already.’

  Oddly, that comforted me slightly.

  ‘Have you ever been on a plane before?’ Emerson asked, no doubt trying to fill the mindless time as we waited for our gate to open and change the subject onto something that wasn’t everything we were leaving behind.

  ‘A few times,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember it. We always flew to visit my grandma. The last time I went on a plane was when I, urgh, moved to Washington to live with her.’

  Changing the subject only worked so well. All that did was bring up other questions that had been circling around my mind since Circe, Charlotte and Emerson had pieced my screwed-up history together. Which one of my parents had been immune to pass it down to me? How many near-Death experiences had been coincidence over the years, or the Mors attempting to remove me?

  Thankfully, our gate was called over the PA system and we became preoccupied with boarding enough that those questions flitted to the back of my mind.

  ‘First time I’m going out of the country and I’m fleeing for my life,’ I said, looking out the small window of the aeroplane. ‘I can’t say that a part of me didn’t think this might be the way that it would go.’

  Emerson shook his head at me, his hand resting on my leg. He wanted to hold my hand. He kept grazing the skin of my palm, or the top of my hand. But I was wearing my silver rings so he couldn’t. Even though I knew they weren’t really any protection against the Mors Exercitus, they still gave me a semblance of security, like a safety blanket as Charlotte had once said.

  I continued to ramble on. Charlotte had put in earphones so she could block out the world. Emerson let me go on since he knew it was my way of getting the nervous energy out.

  ‘You know, with my track record, I’m probably going to cause the plane to crash or some shit like that.’

  ‘Try not to say “plane crash” on a plane,’ Emerson said, hiding a smirk. ‘It’s not very good flight etiquette.’ I hit him on the knee. ‘And that won’t happen.’

  ‘No? You can save me from plane’s falling into the ocean now as well as motorbike accidents?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Emerson said. ‘But I’ll try.’

  My gut clenched as I remembered Charlotte’s words to me. Emerson squeezed my knee, thinking I’d gone silent because the plane had started to take off.

  ‘I don’t need someone to take care of me,’ I said, refusing to look at him.

  ‘Not take care of you. But look out for you.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘That’s a full-time job and not worth the hassle.’

  ‘It’s worth it to me.’

  The plane began to level off, the pressure in my ears lessening now they’d already popped with the ascent, but my stomach was doing flips. It felt like the sensation of falling – only I didn’t think it had anything to do with flying at all.

  It was snowing by the time we left the airport. With no baggage to claim we made it through in record time. The sk
y was one thick white cloud, promising more snow for hours. It came down in flurries, but the heavily salted ground meant the snow couldn’t stick.

  ‘It’s going to be a white Christmas!’ the sound of an overexcited English accent shouted.

  I’d thought it was just another traveller, until Emerson broke out into a smile. ‘Hey, Blaise.’

  ‘Em-sun!’ she grinned, she ran up to him, wrapping her arms around him in a big hug. ‘You remembered!’

  ‘You have grown up,’ he laughed, ‘but it’s hard to forget that smile.’

  Honestly, I thought it was hard to forget that accent; Blaise’s was almost exactly like Emerson’s. Or, that face in general.

  If this was the obscura witch, I’d been completely miss-sold. There was nothing “obscure” or forgettable about Blaise. She was a few years older than us, with tresses of dyed thick mahogany hair that fell to the small of her back in soft waves. Her eyes were a dark brown, brows thick and arched like the wings of an eagle, hinting at her natural hair colour: a pitch black. Blaise’s brown skin was lightly dusted with highlighter on her cheeks and she wore a nude matt lipstick. She was dressed entirely in creams and whites, besides her thigh high boots which were brown leather, leaving her hair to be the sole spot of colour.

  As Gi, Circe and Blaise were the only witches I’d ever met, if I had to simply go on what I knew, apparently all lamia were insanely beautiful. No wonder they’d all been mistaken as gods throughout history.

  ‘And you’ve not changed a bit,’ she said, looking at the Adonis model that was Emerson Lark. Or Peter Emerson as she had known him.

  ‘Yes. That tends to happen with vampires,’ Charlotte said. Okay, so she wasn’t a fan of Blaise. Good to know.

  ‘So, this is the obscura witch?’ I asked Emerson.

  ‘This is the hunter?’ Blaise asked Emerson in return.

  ‘Not a hunter,’ Emerson and I said at the same time.

  A hint of a smile graced Charlotte’s expression, but it soon disappeared like it was never there.