I chewed the inside of my lip. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Mill just helped get you out of a sticky spot when you murdered his friend.”
“Does it count as murder when the person is already dead?”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“No, seriously,” I said. “I’ve been asking myself this for the last three days.”
“I … don’t know. But I bet the vampire underlords or whatever would hold you accountable for your actions.”
That pit in my stomach was back. “I just hope they never find out.”
“So we still have the question of why Mill really helped you,” Xandra said.
“I seriously have no idea,” I said. “He barely said anything to me. He just seemed …”
“Different,” Xandra finished. “Because you are such an expert when it comes to vamps now.”
Despite my intention to build as many bridges as I could instead of continuing to burn the damn things down, I was tempted to bite off something scathing. But I couldn’t. My house was a few dozen yards away now, no more, which brought its own sense of panic to focus on.
Slightly more pressing, though, was the issue of the person stood on the stoop of the neighbor’s house.
Gregory.
“Oh, please, no …” I murmured. I did not want to deal with him right now. I had too much else going on, and I didn’t feel like having to explain all of that to Xandra as well.
“What?” she asked, and she followed the direction my gaze had taken. “Is that Gregory Holt?”
“You know him? I asked. “Come on, if we walk fast enough, maybe he won’t notice us. “
“Why, what’s the matter with him?” Xandra asked. “He’s just a nerd who sits behind you in Spanish. What’s the big deal?”
I didn’t say anything—and Xandra took the silence in the worst possible way. “Oh, I get it!” she said, a bright grin blooming. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
“That is the absolute last thing on my—”
“Hey, Cassie!” I heard, and then the sound of footsteps hurrying across the grass met my ears.
Damn it.
“Oh, hey Xandra,” Gregory said, his tone light and pleasant as he fell in beside us.
“Hey, Gregory,” she said, overly bright.
Between looking at him and looking at Xandra, I was in a bit of a Catch-22. He was annoying if only for being somewhat good-looking, even in those dweeb glasses, his sandy hair tangled with sunlight like spun gold. Xandra, on the other hand, bore a big grin, looking between us like this was some kind of Ross and Rachel thing.
She was worse by far.
“Oh, well if it isn’t the creeper,” I said in a sickly, sweet tone to Gregory. “Taken to sitting outside waiting for me now?”
“What?” Xandra asked, peering back and forth from me to him.
“It’s nothing,” Gregory said, adjusting his glasses and looking at me pointedly.
“He’s been staring at me from his windows for the last few days,” I said sourly. Maybe making his actions known to others would make him stop. “I caught him red-handed and came over to his house yesterday to confront him.”
I swelled with satisfaction as his cheeks burned.
“Wait, what?” Xandra said. “Ew, Gregory!”
Gregory turned to her, his hands held up defensively. “It’s not like that,” he said. “There’s been some weird stuff happening at her house, and I just wanted to know what it was.”
Xandra looked back at me, the question obvious on her face. Does he know?
I shook my head. Of course he didn’t know. But he definitely seemed to know too much or had at least seen too much.
“Apparently, it’s too hard for you to keep your big nose out of my business,” I retorted, and started down the sidewalk toward my house.
Xandra followed, and to my great annoyance, Gregory fell into step right beside me. He hitched his backpack over his shoulder.
“Is everything okay?” he pressed me.
I kept my face forward so I didn’t have to look at him. “Yep.”
“It’s just … were you not home last night?”
There was a chill to his words that set my stomach churning.
“No, I stayed over at Xandra’s house. Not like it should matter at all to you. Why are you so nosy?”
“Um … it’s just …”
I looked back at him.
His face was pale—frightened.
A chill ran up my spine. Gooseflesh broke out on my arms.
“What is it?” I asked.
“That guy … the scary one? He came back last night.”
And my heart sunk right down to the sidewalk.
Chapter 33
I was running before I even realized I had made the decision. I only had one thought in my mind, and that was to get back before it was too late.
If it wasn’t already. Gregory and Xandra hollered at me, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter.
They didn’t understand what was at stake.
The front of the house appeared peaceful. The sunlight glinted off of the windows, and the mourning doves sitting in the tree in the front yard were singing happily. The pink hibiscus flowers were in full bloom and subtly sweet-smelling, turned up toward the sun. I could smell the sulfur in the water from the sprinklers, and the grass was still wet. They must have just turned off. A dog down the road barked excitedly, most likely at the mail truck making its rounds.
The bucket and sponges Dad had used to wash his car the day before were still outside of the garage door beside the hose. The door was locked. I grappled with it, my hands trembling. The damned key wouldn’t get in the hole …!
Just as I was about to scream a shrill curse word, it found purchase. I twisted it, clicked it open—pushed through—
Dad’s car was in the garage, pristine and waxed. Mom’s car was there too, also freshly washed. It smelled like leather seats, and the dust that was suspended in the streaks of light filtering through the cobwebbed windows.
Xandra and Gregory had caught up to me, cautiously stepping into the garage behind me. The sound of their quick, heavy breathing filled the otherwise silent air.
“Why did you stop?” Xandra asked, just above a whisper.
I didn’t answer. I was staring at the door into the house. It was open, and I could see a portion of the hallway into the kitchen through the opening. A key, my dad’s key, was still in the lock, hanging there, as still as death—
As if something had prevented him from coming back out to get it.
Maybe he had run inside to get his briefcase. Or his phone charger. Or his coffee. There were a million reasons why it could have been there, apparently forgotten, and not one of them gave me any peace.
There was a low throbbing in my ears as I stepped toward it and pulled the key from the lock. I slid it in my pocket, trying not to think about the fact that it may have been the last thing that my dad touched at the house.
Please be home, Mom and Dad. Please be here, waiting inside, pacing around the kitchen, on the phone with the police, ready and willing to scream at me until you are blue in the face. Please be here, ready to ground me and lock me in a closet so that I can’t ever escape again. Please still be in the dark about the truth of what is going on in my life.
But they weren’t.
They weren’t there.
The kitchen lights were on over the island. The smell of Mom’s favorite magnolia lavender candle hung in the air, but it was strangely stale this morning. Her purse was on the edge of the counter, her favorite lotion sitting right beside it, as if she had just used it, or was getting ready to pack it for work. Dad’s coffee cup was right next to the coffee pot, with his two packets of stevia right beside it, ready to go.
There was a throw blanket, one of mine, tossed across the back of the couch.
Had Mom slept there, waiting for me to come home?
Everything was still, eerily quiet. It frighte
ned me more than if the house had been torn to pieces. Farther in—I caught a whiff of cologne. It wasn’t my Dad’s.
Byron’s shadowed face flashed across my memory.
There was a pot in the sink that was only partially full of water. Mom was such a completionist that she never would have let only half of it soak away the grime and caked-on food. One of the blinds behind Dad’s armchair was not pulled closed. Dad hated anyone being able to see into the house once it got dark out. One of Mom’s favorite trinkets, a parrot that she had gotten on our vacation to Cozumel, had been turned to face the east, where it had always been facing the west.
“No one’s here …” Xandra said, looking all around. “It’s totally quiet in here.”
I walked over to the shelf where the little bird sat and expected to see the ring of dust where the statuette had once sat, now having been obviously moved. But the shelf was totally clean, utterly free of dust.
I turned and looked back around the room, paying attention to every detail.
The books that normally sat on the coffee table were perfectly aligned, stacked by size, biggest to smallest. Mom usually organized them by subject, with her favorites on top. The title of the one on top was Fresh Fun Food.
Was that some kind of sick joke?
“Everything is wrong,” I said to no one in particular. “Everything is normal, but it’s not.” I pointed over at my Dad’s chair. “See that book? He was reading it last week. He just finished it two nights ago.”
I wheeled around and pointed at the stairs going up. “Those stacks of clothes were not put away. My mother never leaves laundry unfinished, no matter how late it gets.”
And then I pointed back at the door. “And my dad’s keys,” I pulled them out of my pocket, “were here in the door. Something is wrong.”
And that last truth …
I hesitated, before breathing, “They aren’t here.”
“Your parents?” Xandra asked.
I nodded shakily.
Gregory watched me closely. “How do you know?” he asked, a quiver of fear in his voice—because, the truth about vampires totally removed from the situation, he still knew of strange comings and goings—and it wasn’t difficult to draw grisly conclusions from them. “How do you know they haven’t just gone to work, or—”
“I just know,” I said. “Everything is untouched, like they were …”
I couldn’t finish the thought—but it screamed inside my brain.
Abducted. Killed.
Turned.
“My Mom would never leave her purse,” I said, “not in a million years. And my dad had work today. Both cars are in the garage.” I looked back over my shoulder at the parrot.
“Look at this,” I said. “This bird always looks out toward the bay, toward the west. But now it is pointing east—toward the door outside.”
Gregory licked his lips.
“You do know that you sound a little crazy, right?”
Xandra shook her head. “No, I believe her,” she said. She looked back over at me. “This is all Byron, isn’t it? He’s trying to leave you a message or something.”
I nodded. “I smelled his cologne when we walked in.”
Gregory looked between the two of us. “Is Byron the creepy guy I saw coming over here last night?”
Xandra nodded. “So the vamp strikes again.”
Gregory said, “… Whut?” at the same time that I said, “Xandra!”
We all just stared at each other, Gregory’s mouth open, his brow furrowed.
“I …” she started. “Yeah.”
I swallowed. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag.” There was no point in hiding it. Gregory had already seen too much. He looked at me through wide eyes, as if from a great distance.
“So … that’s what you didn’t want to tell me yesterday … this guy is a … vampire?” The disbelief hung pretty thick as he spoke.
I knew what would follow: an accusation that I, that we, were both nutjobs who needed locking up—and he’d burst out of here, run to the nearest phone he could find, and call for a crazy van to come pick us both up, carting us off never to be seen again.
“I don’t really care if you believe it or not,” I said. “I have to find my parents.”
But what Gregory said next was—
“This makes so much sense.”
Okay. The whole world was going crazy—or crazy according to my worldview just a week ago, anyway. That someone else believed in vampires—someone right next door to me!—would’ve been kind of sad last Monday, confusing on Wednesday, incredibly unlikely on Friday, and damned appreciated this weekend. Gregory’s eyes were glued to the hardwood floor. “But why would vampires set up shop in freakin’ Florida?”
I should’ve been thanking the heavens for someone believing me. I would have yesterday. But now, with my parents gone, perhaps in danger—danger that grew every passing second I didn’t move—I didn’t care if the whole world was on my side or not. I needed to find them. Up the stairs I ran, looking for more clues, ignoring the slew of questions Gregory began to fire off at Xandra, who was now the vampire expert once again. My parents’ room was perfectly made up, but that was not anything out of the ordinary. Mom always made sure that it looked like it was right out of a magazine. Only, the window looking out over the front lawn was open behind the blinds, and they rattled in the wind. That gave me no answers, so I made sure to cross across to the window and slam it shut. No sense in leaving the air conditioning on when the windows were open.
I froze as I slid the lock home on the window. Was this how Byron smuggled my parents out of the house? Or did he use the door?
I forced myself not to think about how he had taken them. I didn’t think I could stomach the idea of them being hurt or knocked unconscious or …
I tried to force my knees to stop shaking as I made my way across the hall to my room.
My room was an awful, terrible sight. My bed was made, with my pillows fluffed and arranged nicely on top of my tucked-in comforter and sheets. My clothes had all been scooped up off of the floor and dumped into the laundry basket, and my closet was shut. My perfumes were arranged by color on a shelf, and my makeup was laid out on the silver tray on the dresser as if it were a salon display.
Gregory appeared behind me, Xandra in tow. “Wow, your room is immaculate,” he said, looking in. “I always assumed that girls’ rooms are total messes, with clothes everywhere and bras all over the place …”
Xandra elbowed him in the ribs.
“Ew, did Byron touch all of your stuff?”
I looked around and shuddered. “Yuck …”
“Hey, what’s this?” Gregory asked.
There was a bright pink sticky note stuck to the mirror above my dresser. It was so bright I was amazed that I had missed it before.
I stepped closer to read—and my heart slammed against my ribs at full force.
We will be together, it said.
Or else.
Chapter 34
The mixture of emotions swirling within me, each vying for attention, was odd. Not because of the fear of the vampires—and in particular one vampire—out for my blood. Nor was it because of the anger at this situation having spiraled so wildly out of control, and the fact that my parents, who so often infuriated me and were infuriated by me, had been taken, drawn into something they would never understand.
What was strange was the apathy clouding it all. Because after everything that had happened, and after all that was at stake now, I just wanted to leave, to just get on a bus and never look back. I had nowhere to go, but I was going to be eighteen in six months. Maybe I could get help from the state, if my parents were declared dead.
I just wanted to stop fighting. I wanted it all to just go away.
But I couldn’t leave my parents there in Byron’s hands. Their blood would be on my hands. And I was the only one who could actually help them. They would die if I didn’t find them.
I crumpled the sticky no
te up in my hands and tossed it across the room.
I pulled my phone out and combed through my texts. I tapped on Iona’s name.
He took my parents. I don’t know what to do next.
And then I waited. Xandra watched me with wide eyes, like she’d seen a ghost. Gregory, at her side, was wary, pale.
“What … what do we do now?” Xandra asked. Her voice was choked.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
Gregory nodded to the bright pink note near my trash can. “What did that mean?”
“It means that he won’t give up until he gets what he wants.”
“Which is … ?”
“Me,” I answered flatly. My phone vibrated. I snatched it up to see—an email. My heart sank. Why couldn’t she be timely when I needed her to be?
Damn it, why hadn’t I gotten contact details for Mill? Iona might be MIA, but she wasn’t the only vampire around to have been willing to stand by my side and help me.
And in the fight against Byron, I needed all the hands I could get.
And that was what I had on my hands. I’d known it was coming, I supposed, since this started, even more so when Iona first got in touch with me. Now it had come to a head … and only I could finish it.
“I’m going to have to go after them,” I said quietly.
“Do you know where they are?” Xandra asked. Her features were tight, pale.
I shook my head.
“Do you know where he is?” Gregory asked.
I shook my head again.
They looked at each other. Compassion and pity passed between them.
“I just can’t sit here and do nothing,” I said. “My parents are in this situation because of me.”
Gregory looked at his feet, and then back up at me.
“I dunno, this is sounding a little like a Rickon Stark situation to me. Spoilers, by the way. But … I don’t think this guy—assuming he is a for-real vampire—is going to give them back no matter what.” He shook his head, watching me sadly. “Look, Cassie, I’m sorry about your parents. But I just …”
I held up my hand. “I get it. I’m not expecting your help or anything.”
He opened his mouth, his brow furrowing, and then closed it again. “All right,” he said finally. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
No One Will Believe You Page 18