Chapter 332
The usual chatty Lucy wasn’t talking now. When she walked into the house a few minutes after me, her expression was solemn. There was a lot more hugging. And when our friends from school, Milo and Wes, whom I hadn’t had a chance to see since I’d come back but was hoping to speak to, came in after Lucy and wrapped their arms around her, she started bawling again. Her boyfriend Jason is sort of aloof, and he just stood off to the side. Brandon went over to speak to him since they’d met a few months ago, and I took deep breaths, wishing my way back to our house.
“She looks really said,” Emma said over my shoulder. “I wish I could make her feel better.”
“Me, too,” I replied. I’d gotten to spend a little bit of time with Emma and Lucy the day before after we’d gotten in, but not enough. I’d missed them both so much since I’d moved to Kansas City. We’d done plenty of FaceTime and texting, but I’d always imagined the next time I saw them would be a joyful occasion, not something like this.
Annie Burk is one of those go-getters who always smiles, and she was doing her best now, but she started crying again a few minutes after she arrived, and Emma’s mom, who is nothing like Emma and will cry right along with you, helped her into the guest room. Daniel wandered off, and I saw him a few minutes later sitting in the corner, staring at his phone. I was certain he wasn’t handling this well either, but he had always just been Lucy’s big brother to me, and I didn’t know what to say to him. When Jack’s mom, Alice, went over to say something to him, I was glad I wasn’t the only one who had noticed he needed comforting.
Time crawled by, but after an hour or so, there was a little bit of laughter in the background, and Lucy was starting to regain some of her normal disposition. I sat down beside her and Emma at the dining room table even though I was done eating, having had about a dozen barbecue meatballs, a ton of carrot sticks, and a couple of tiny sandwiches while I watched Elliott down an entire crockpot full of chili and said a prayer of thanksgiving that he didn’t sleep so he’d stay downstairs and let all of that come back out later, hopefully after I went to bed.
“So...” Lucy said, dropping her voice and glancing around. Jason and Brandon were talking to Milo and Wes a few feet away, but they didn’t seem to be paying too close attention to us, and the fact that her eyes kept flickering to the back of her boyfriend’s head made me think she was about to say something she didn’t want him to know about. He was not privy to our secret society and likely never would be since his family were all human.
“So what?” Emma asked, her voice projecting loudly enough to momentarily get Jason’s attention. He turned back to Milo as Lucy discreetly shushed her.
“So... here’s the deal. I’ve been talking to my mom, and she’s planning on staying in our house. Like, once the police are done with it, and she has it... cleaned up.”
I raised an eyebrow at her, surprised to hear that. I know one of the first things my sister said to Lucy’s mom, who had been aware of the Ternion since she was a little girl but had chosen not to Transform, was that she could bring her family to Kansas City, at least until we had this thing with Holland better under control. Annie had declined that offer, but I was shocked they were going to stay in that house. I don’t think I could do that. It bothered me that my grandfather had been murdered in my sister’s apartment, even though I never met him, and it had happened a long time before either one of us were born. How Aaron had moved in there was beyond me....
“What do you think about that?” Emma asked Lucy as I tried to stay focused on the people in front of me.
Lucy sighed and ran a hand through her lengthy blonde hair. “I don’t think I can do it. I mean, not only will I think of that... thing I killed every time I walk in there, but there are memories of my dad. Going to the pantry to grab a snack will be completely traumatic.”
I fought a snicker because it wasn’t appropriate, even though part of me wanted to remind her basically everything she did was traumatic—or dramatic anyway. “What are you going to do?”
Lucy’s eyes shifted to where my sister and the Guardians were standing in the other room. We could see them through the open doorway, and I thought I knew the answer to my own question. “I know I can’t Transform for a few more months. And I’ve always planned on finishing high school here. Daniel wants to stay and finish. And he is just processing all of this Vampire stuff.” Lucy had known about the secret world for a while now, though the first time she found out, Elliott wiped her memory. She had it all back now. Daniel had no idea Vampires existed until we showed up and filled him in. He had a hard time accepting my sister and Aaron were telling him the truth—and I could empathize. “So, do you think your sister might...?”
“Let you go with us to Kansas City?” I asked in a whisper, not sure I was guessing correctly until Lucy’s head bobbed up and down. “Have you talked to your mom about that?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, and it was the most enthusiastic utterance she’d made all day. “She said she’d have to talk to your mom about it because she’d expect Liz and Eli to keep an eye on me. But she wasn’t opposed to it.”
“That sounds promising,” Emma offered, adjusting her glasses.
“Yeah, but you’d have to get Aaron and Cadence to agree, and....” I glanced over my shoulder at Aaron and remembered that he’d been acting strange the last couple of weeks. “I’m not sure what they’ll say.”
“They offered to take my whole family back, remember?” Lucy said, folding her arms.
I realized she’d taken my comment as an offense and took a deep breath. I hadn’t meant it that way. “I know.” I smiled at her. “It would be great if you could, if that’s what you want. I miss you, you know that. I just... there’s a lot going on right now.” She knew most of what had gone on with Holland and my recent adventures in Australia, but she didn’t know all of it, and I couldn’t go into it right then.
“You sure you’re ready for that world?” Emma asked. She was running the ends of her brown hair through her fingers, twirling it around, something she only did when she was uncomfortable. “I don’t think I could leave Shenandoah now, not with only a little over a year of high school left. And I figured I’d finish college before I joined up.”
Emma is a genius, and college has always been very important to her. I doubted she’d be willing to trade an Ivy League education for Vampire hunting, not unless something happened that made her have to choose that path, but Lucy’s options had just been altered. Sure, she could stay here, maybe even move in with Emma if she couldn’t imagine going back to her house again, but once you’ve had an encounter with a Vampire, it changes your life. I knew that firsthand having killed a few myself now, and I got why Lucy wanted to come back to LIGHTS with us. I was all for it, even though the idea of sharing our already tiny apartment with another person seemed inconvenient. It wouldn’t be too long until we both graduated from high school, and then I was hoping my parents would let me have my own apartment. Having Lucy for a roommate would be awesome.
