Odette leans out, gulping a lungful of air. She looks down: The trellis is lower than she thought, a gap between her window and where the trellis begins that means she’ll have to jump, and hope she can catch on.
What other choice do I have?
Odette places her hands on the covered window frame and feels the glass beneath begin to pierce the quilt, the soft flesh of her hands. Without giving herself the chance to fear it, she launches forward and begins to fall.
THEY MOVE WHEN the water’s at Betty’s ankles.
The vampires begin to drop down into the near-empty pool, hissing as what little is left of the laced water touches them. But it’s not enough to stop them, not even enough to slow them.
Betty backs into the others, frantic. “Now would be a good time for—”
Cheryl fires before Betty can finish, and the nearest vampire drops in a heap.
But there’s way too many for them to defeat. Betty knows it, she can feel the cold grip of their fate around her heart, but she draws her knife anyway and looks to Archie, then to Dilton. “Ready?”
She raises her knife in front of her, her only protection, and braces herself for the fight.
But then the vampires stop. As before, as one, they just cease moving, and it sends a shiver through Betty.
“What are they doing?” Archie asks.
“I think—” Dilton sounds afraid, as afraid as Betty is. “I think the strigoi is doing this.”
And then the moroi move as one again, the slightest but creepiest shift. Just their eyes, all turning to focus on one person.
On Cheryl.
Cheryl reloads her crossbow and fires again, cracking one through the shoulder, the spray of blood warm on Betty’s shocked face. “Come on,” Cheryl says, teeth gritted. “Is that all you got?”
She’s about to fire again when the vampires converge on her, a rush so fast that Betty can’t even try to stop them. “Cheryl!”
Archie’s arms circle Betty’s waist, pulling her back. “Stop! You’re gonna get yourself killed!”
The vampires part, revealing two of them holding Cheryl in an iron grip.
“What—” Betty yanks herself free of Archie’s grip. “What are they doing? Where are they taking her?”
Betty watches as the vampires pull Cheryl up and out of the pool, Cheryl fighting them the whole way, and begin carrying her back toward the ballroom.
ODETTE FALLS FOR what seems like forever, until her hands find the trellis and she grabs on, bringing her body slamming into the side of the house so hard it knocks what little breath she has left out of her.
No time to cling on; she begins her climb down, wooden splinters digging themselves into her fingertips. When she reaches the bottom she stares up, amazed. I made it. I’m alive, she thinks.
Odette runs to the front of the house and what she sees, she knows, will remain scarred in her brain and her heart for as long as she lives.
Their home is ablaze. It’s not just the wing where her bedroom is; it’s the entire structure, their entire house; it’s burning bright and wild, and the heat of it is unbearable even at this distance.
“Mother!” Odette calls into the blaze even as she knows nobody could survive the intensity of that burn. “Theo!” The only way any of them will still be alive is if they did as she has done, found some way out.
But if they did, then they would have come for me, she thinks. Theo, at least, would have found a way to me, and I wouldn’t have woken up to the flames licking at my door.
“Theo!” She screams his name now, her burned and bloodied palms throbbing. Why is nobody here? Why is she all alone as her world burns down around her?
Odette stumbles forward, bare feet stinging on the scorched grass, but she has to hold a hand up as there’s a loud boom and a cloud of fire explodes from what used to be the drawing room, rippling up and into the night air.
And then, a movement behind her.
Odette whips around, long black hair trailing with the motion. “Hello?” she calls, her throat gritty and painful. “Is somebody there? Theo? Anyone, please, help!”
She scans the trees in front of her, the woods their estate is nestled within. She could have sworn there was somebody there, but now the night is still again, only the fire behind her—
There. It’s just a flash, something lit up under the cover of the trees for a second, but Odette is certain this time. Somebody’s out there.
She’s about to call again when she sees the figure side-on. Slipping away from her, running under the cover of dark along the road that leads up to the Finch estate.
It’s a silhouette she knows too well, and it comes crashing at her then, the truth of it all.
This fire is no accident; somebody set it on purpose. Somebody wanted them all to die.
Odette falls to her knees and works to stand again, takes another few steps forward as if chasing after the culprit, but her legs and lungs give out before she can even really try. “Jeremiah” is all she can say, a strangled call after the figure leaving her there.
Jeremiah Blossom.
I thought we had a deal, she thinks, even as she lies there with the heat singeing the back of her. I thought we were on the same side. And yet you tried to kill me.
She calls for her brother, her parents, one more time, but it’s too late, she knows. They are gone, and maybe it would be better if she were gone, too. She should have stayed in that room and let herself be swallowed up by the flames, because what does she have now? Her family gone, her home and all possessions lost. Betrayed by her supposed business partner. Leave me here to die, she thinks, and closes her eyes to the orange heat.
And then she feels it, or is she dreaming, or is she already dead? A hallucination, it must be, the feeling of somebody’s cool hands on her hot ones.
The sensation of being dragged, the heat slowly diminishing.
Odette opens her eyes and the sky above is starry.
She closes them and opens, and now she is under the canopy of the woods and she wants to see her savior.
She wants to know who finally came for her, but then she feels burning again, except it’s inside her this time, and it radiates through every part of her—
She screams into the night, a broken pained cry, and then the blackness comes and the burn tears her to pieces.
“I WOKE UP in the woods,” Odette says, walking dizzying circles around Veronica. “I woke up all alone, and I was changed. I imagine you can understand how that feels.”
“Blossom?” Veronica repeats the name Odette uttered only moments ago. “Jeremiah Blossom torched your house? Why would he do that?”
“Why do the Blossoms do anything they do?” Odette says. “Why does your family? Why did mine?” She bends, bringing her face close to Veronica’s. “Money, power, greed, you name it.” She straightens. “See, I had made a deal with the Blossoms. I worked with my father, and I always hoped that he would choose me to be his successor. I knew it would be unusual, but there were other women in positions of power; it was a possibility. And I worked hard for him—I was a good second-in-command, not that he would ever admit to me fulfilling that position. No, that always went to my dear sweet brother, who cared more about drinking and women than the business. Which was fine with me—Theo wasn’t a bad person, just not cut out for the world my father and I inhabited. Again—” Odette glances at Veronica. “You understand what I mean.”
Of course she does; of course Veronica knows what it is to be the dutiful daughter clawing her way up the ladder. She had wondered before, looking at that smiling photo of the Finch family, what Odette was like. Had she known that all she really had to do was look at herself for the answer …?
What? What would that have changed about anything?
“So you made a deal with Jeremiah Blossom,” Veronica says. “For what?”
“There was a piece of land just outside town,” Odette says, and she drags a chair over to sit in front of Veronica, her legs crossed in her deep bl
ue dress. “A very plain, very boring piece of land. On the surface, at least. But if you were curious enough to actually consider what was beneath there, and pay attention to the geological surveys like I did, and keep watch on the price of oil like I did, then you would know that the land was actually extremely valuable. So I took it to my father, with the idea being that we could purchase the land at dirt cheap prices and then collect the spoils; and once the land was tapped, we could develop it into housing or commerce, whatever. We would have the profit from the oil and it would, at the very least, double our net worth.”
Odette leans in, her red eyes gleaming. “Of course, I predicted that for my diligence and hard work, I would be justly rewarded. I would head up the project and officially become a leading associate in my father’s company. But can you guess what happened?”
Veronica gives her a small smile. “Daddies don’t like it when their little girls get too bold,” she says.
“Exactly,” Odette says. “You’re exactly right, Veronica. And my daddy didn’t like it at all. Oh, he liked the land and he liked the oil and he liked the money he knew he would make, but he didn’t want me to be in charge. He gave it to Theo. Theo! Who spent most of his time in the casino or traveling or spending time with the women he met while traveling. Theo who could tell an excellent joke, always had his friends’ backs in a bar fight, but couldn’t command a business to save his damn life.”
Veronica’s putting the pieces together. Odette is a girl after her own heart, it seems. “So you took the proposition elsewhere,” she says.
Odette nods. “Our families—yours and mine and the Blossoms—we existed in a delicate balance. The town thrived as long as we each played our part, and if any one of us got too far into the others’ realm, things quickly started to go sideways. So we stuck to our own, mostly. But I was sick of being dismissed by my father and the way he chose my brother over me, time and time again, even though he had not even a fraction of my skill and work ethic.” She stands again. “I took it to the Blossoms so they could undercut my father. Buy the land first, and of course, as a thank-you for alerting them to the deal in the first place, they’d place me in charge of running it. But—”
“The Blossoms are the Blossoms,” Veronica says, cutting Odette off. “That was your biggest mistake. Trusting them.”
“Well now, who’s the girl who’s been running around with Cheryl Blossom lately?” Odette bares her teeth at Veronica. “Not exactly one to lecture me on trust, are you?”
“That’s different—”
“Is it?” Odette flies in front of her again, so close Veronica can see her reflection in Odette’s black pupils. “She’s a Blossom, through and through, just like you’re a Lodge. We all run with the traits of our families, for better and worse. Jeremiah Blossom was only a few years older than me. We had known each other almost all our lives, and there wasn’t a time I could remember without him in it. So I went to him as an ally, as a friend. And what did he do? He stabbed me in the back. Cut me out of the deal, and then—because that just wasn’t enough—he came to destroy my entire family.” Odette’s breathing heavily, the sweet-sour scent of blood on her breath. “I saw him that night. I saw him running from the fire he set. My family was dead, and I was nearly dead, but I was alive, still. Until …”
“Until somebody found you, and turned you,” Veronica says, and then, almost to herself, “Yeah. I’ve been there.”
Then Veronica looks up at her. There’s a big part Odette has left out of her little tale. “But your family wasn’t dead,” she says. “Not all of them.”
“My dear brother.” Odette smiles grimly. “You’re quite right. He wasn’t dead, was he?”
She circles Veronica again, her voice taking on a distant quality, as if she’s right back there in the wreckage of the fire. “Of course I thought he was dead, because if he were alive, he would have come for me when the fire started. He was my big brother, and we had a bond, you know? He understood how our father hurt me; I understood that he didn’t want the responsibility Daddy gave him.”
“But he didn’t come for you.”
“No,” Odette says, and flicks her dark hair over her shoulder. “When I woke up changed, I didn’t know what to do. The house was still on fire. I walked back to it. I had nowhere else to go, and I didn’t really want to leave it. I just wanted to stay until the end, or something. But—” She laughs now. “There he was! In front of the fountain, lying there. There was my brother! And at first I thought he was dead, that perhaps he’d crawled out this far before the fire completely took him, so I ran to him. To what I thought was my brother’s body. But when I got there, and I knelt by his side, and I called his name—well, he woke up.”
Veronica swallows, remembering the moment when she’d seen her parents’ bodies on the study floor. Imagining what it would have been like if they had opened their eyes as she knelt over them.
“He wasn’t dead,” Odette continues. “All these thoughts rushed through my head. How stupid I was to have believed he cared enough about me, his sister, to rescue me; how angry I was that he was there, seemingly fine, while I was changed; how hurt I was that he would be known as the only remaining member of the Finch family. All of that, over and over, but it was all eclipsed by the biggest, most urgent feeling of all.”
Odette pauses, the moment crackling with tension, and Veronica knows exactly what she means. “The hunger,” she breathes.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Odette says, and she sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself than Veronica. “It just took over, and I had to feed. I didn’t mean to drink until he was dead, except—when I saw he was dead, I felt good. It felt like he got everything he deserved, after the way he’d left me for dead.” She rolls her eyes. “Of course, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I tried to feed again, after he was gone. How was I supposed to know that the second bite would bring him back?”
“You could have killed him again,” Veronica says. “For real.”
Odette nods. “I could have,” she agrees. “But once I understood what he was, I didn’t need to. For the first time in my life, our positions were reversed: I had all the power. To the outside, I was still just a girl, and he was still the all-powerful man; but they didn’t know the truth. They didn’t know that I could make Theo do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.”
She comes close to Veronica now, her red eyes gleaming with excitement. “There’s nothing like it, is there?” she says. “The power it brings you. How alive it makes you feel—and it’s funny, because you’re undead! But it was a different time, and there was this kind of freedom for girls like the one I remade myself into. I traveled all over, ruled every place I deigned to land with my brother at my side, and I banished Riverdale from my mind. What did it have that Paris couldn’t give me, or Hollywood, or Berlin? Nothing at all.”
“But you’re here now,” Veronica says. “You came back.”
“I came back.”
“And you hid.” Veronica looks up at her, curious. “Why? You could do whatever you wanted now. Why put Theodore out there like he was in control?”
Odette sits again, her legs wide this time. “Because I could,” she says simply. “Because I wanted to. I know you want me to tell you I had some big, complicated plan, but really—” She grins. “Why do the dirty work when I can pin it all on somebody else? Why risk my own life when I could risk Theodore’s? See, I didn’t count on you getting in my way quite so much, but I knew there was a risk of things going wrong. There’s always a risk, and I always make sure I’m the last person it might hit.”
She shakes her head. “But I’m getting off topic. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, why I came back. I mean, for the town, sure. I have everybody here that I could need to run this place, and I will. But why stop there? There’s always Pembrooke and Midvale and wherever else I choose.” She holds her hands out wide. “The Blossoms stole my future from me. I should have had this town in the palm of my hand a ce
ntury ago, so here I am now, to take it back.”
Revenge, Veronica thinks. A simple motive, but so pure.
“And now that I have all the forces I need, I can get on with the very sweetest part of my plan,” Odette says, and she smiles, her fangs gleaming. “Burning those Blossoms to the ground, just like they did to me.”
CHERYL STRUGGLES ALL the way back toward the hotel, but she truly begins to lose it when she sees exactly where the vampires are taking her.
When she sees what it is they’ve been building within the wreckage of the ballroom.
“No!” She thrashes, ineffective against the strength of the moroi. The structure in the middle of the room is unmistakable now. Cheryl saw them on their ninth-grade field trip to nearby Harperville, studying the local witch trials. The pyres where the accused were burned.
This is where I die.
Cheryl kicks out and is rewarded with a crack to her skull, hard enough to dizzy her. Her eyes roll as she feels herself hoisted high and rope is wound around her.
She is tied tight to the post, her feet resting on the remains of the chairs she’d spent so long picking out with her mother and the head designer. Now they will be the kindling for the fire that ends her.
Cheryl fights to remain conscious, and when she can focus again, it’s the pattern on the painted ceiling that catches her eye. Paint swirled like soft clouds, and she begins to cry.
This might be the last thing she ever sees.
“YOU’RE GOING to burn her?”
Veronica turns her head and retches, bringing up nothing but sour blood-tinged spit, and then she flinches when she feels Odette smoothing a hand across her forehead.
“Sweet Veronica,” Odette says, a rueful smile on her beautiful face. “I thought you’d understand.”
“She’s my friend!” Veronica stares up at her. “You thought I’d be okay with you killing my friend?”
Odette sits back on her heels. “She’s your ‘friend,’ huh? And how long have you two been friends? Would you say she’s loyal? Would you say she’d do anything for you? Do you think she’d lay down her life for you? Do you think she’d care at all if your roles were reversed right now?” Odette’s eyes narrow. “Don’t act so holier than thou, Veronica. You’re just like me.”
Interview with the Vixen Page 21