Chapter 120
My sister pointed my parents to the guest room, and my dad reminded her that he used to live here, so she shook her head and kept walking. I wasn’t sure if she thought that was as odd as I did or not.
Her bedroom was equally nice, decorated in blues and silvers. “This place is super nice, Cadence,” I said as she disappeared into a walk-in closet. “Did you pick all this stuff out yourself?” It was a far cry from the bubble gum pink bedroom she’d lived in for the first nineteen years of her life.
“Thanks,” she called. “No, Aaron had it remodeled and redecorated for me before I got here.” She came out with two dress choices, one in dark purple and one in a red color. “What do you think?” she asked, holding them both up in front of her.
“Definitely the purple,” I replied. “Under the circumstances, I think red would be… not cool.”
She raised an eyebrow at me and then shook her head. “Right,” she said, her shake turning into a nod. “Sorry. I guess… Vampires are second nature to me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I dug my dress out of my bag and checked to make sure it wasn’t too wrinkly. It seemed to have survived the plane ride, so I turned my back to my sister and started getting dressed, trying not to think about the fact that she looked like some sports model now, and I was a toothpick little high school girl.
She had a mirror across the room, so I grabbed my cosmetics bag and approached it, checking to see what needed fixed. “You can use my bathroom, if you want to,” she said. “All of my makeups all over the place in there.”
“Okay,” I replied, heading out the door. Cadence followed behind me and directed me around the corner to a rather large bathroom. “Kinda funny you finally don’t have an en suite,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I know. But it functions the same way, though. There’s never anyone else here but me.”
I could tell by the sink that she was telling the truth. “When did you get back here?” I asked. It seemed like she must’ve put in some considerable effort to make this sort of mess.
“Last week,” she replied as she began to work on her own makeup. “I was only here for a couple of days before we went to California. But I keep a separate bag packed with all of my travel stuff.”
“But you didn’t live here for, like, six months,” I reminded her, reapplying my mascara. “Did you leave it like this?”
“No, this is just a couple of days’ worth of mess,” she explained with a shrug.
“Dude,” I said, moving on to my blush. “I don’t know Aaron well, but something tells me he would have pretty low tolerance for this kinda thing.”
She giggled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… the man seems pretty meticulous. I bet his apartment is spotless, isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said, checking to see if her curling iron was hot enough yet.
I just shook my head at her. “Some things never change.”
“Hey, now,” Cadence said, playfully shoving me in the arm. And I’m sure she was careful, too, because I did not go shooting across the room. “I can be tidy when I want to. I was in a hurry that morning when I left here.” Her voice suddenly got very sad, and I realized the last time she’d been here, Elliott was alive, getting ready to go with her. I hoped those two coats of mascara I’d seen her apply were waterproof, like mine.
I decided I looked good enough for a funeral, and before I went back to get my dress shoes, I turned to face her. “Cadence, can you please tell me what happened?”
She glanced at me and then picked up her curling iron and started making little ringlets around her face. She cleared her throat, and with her eyes glued on the mirror, she said, “I told you. We were ambushed. He saved Meagan.”
I nodded. “Okay, if it’s too painful for you to talk about right now, what about Drew. Can you tell me what happened to her?”
Cadence still looked solemn, but not as much as she had when she was thinking about Elliott. Perhaps time had helped a bit with the passing of Drew.
“We went to a party that night, the night before Thanksgiving.” She continued to curl. “Drew had found a note about this get-together in Villisca. It was called an Eidolon Festival. I found out later, much later, it’s actually a sanctioned party Vampires are allowed to have from time to time. They still can’t claim victims who fight them, but anyone who chooses to go with them is fair game.”
“Seriously?” I asked, my eyes wide. “That’s… shocking.”
“I know. Aaron doesn’t like it either, but he can’t really change it. Not now anyway.” She sprayed her hair with some finishing spray and unplugged the curler. She looked gorgeous, as always. “So… there wasn’t much Aaron or anyone could do when Drew decided to go off with one of the Vampires. She thought he was just a hot guy, and you know how Drew was, right? Always looking for a good time?”
I nodded, though I probably didn’t realize that was the case, at least not to the extent she seemed to be getting at. “So she went off alone with him?”
“Yes, but I just knew something was wrong. I had this burning in my stomach. And, well, I’d had a dream a few nights before that. I’d seen all of this unfolding. Sort of. Have you ever had a dream like that? Where you feel like it’s real, and then something happens later to let you know the dream was sort-of right?”
Once again, my head bobbed up and down, but I doubted I’d ever had a dream quite as real as the one she was describing.
“I chased after her, but I lost her. By the time I got to her….” Cadence’s voice just sort of petered out. She didn’t even have tears in her eyes, but I could tell it was hard for her to talk about.
“She was already dead?” I finished for her, and my sister nodded. “What about the Vampire? Could Aaron step in then?”
“No, not yet. But I didn’t need his help.” She turned and leaned against the counter, her arms folded in front of her. “The second I saw what was happening, it was like some other part of me took over. It was all completely instinctual. I ran at that monster with all the strength I could muster, and I ripped his head right off.” She turned and looked at me for a moment, and I’m sure my mouth was hanging open. She shook her head like she couldn’t even believe she’d done it. “Then… Aaron showed up and told me the rest of us needed to get out of there, that the rest of the Vampires were slightly unhappy about my choices, and the next thing I know, I’m speeding off on the back of a motorcycle, and nothing in my life has been the same ever since.”
I continued to stare at her for a really long time before she finally pushed off of the counter and stood up. She’d skipped a lot, and I had a million questions, but at least I knew what had happened to Drew now, a question that had been burning in my mind for over half a year.
“Aaron and I are going to go ahead and head over to the chapel,” she said as I followed her back into her room to get my shoes. “Dad knows how to get there, so you guys can walk over in a little while.”
“Okay,” I replied, watching her slide on her shoes and then rush over to the dresser faster than she would’ve if I didn’t know what she was and stick in some earrings. She grabbed a gold necklace off of the dresser and slipped that on, too.
“If you need anything… I’m not sure what’s in the fridge.”
“I don’t think I could eat if I wanted to,” I replied, following her out into the living room where my parents were sitting on the sofa enjoying what appeared to be ham and cheese on rye. I guess we all have our own responses to grief.
