Chapter 41
“I wonder if it’s possible….” Emma stopped talking as she started typing.
“What?” Lucy asked, her voice screechy. “You wonder if what is possible?”
Emma continued to be silent for a few moments. She shook her head. “Not finding anything.” She raised her eyes off of the screen and looked at Lucy before she said, “What if the reason there aren’t millions of vampires killing all of us mere humans is because they’re held in check by something, a force, or a group of people who keep them at bay?”
“You mean like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” I asked, finally getting back into the conversation.
“Or President Lincoln?” Lucy laughed, remembering how silly that movie was.
Emma’s face was straight. “Why not?” she asked. “I mean, if we’re going to go off the deep end and decide that it’s possible that there’s a such thing as vampires, then why not go all the way there and say there are also vampire slayers?”
The three of us stared at each other in silence for several seconds before my phone rang causing all of us to jump. “It’s my sister,” I said, scooping it up off of the arm rest. “Hello?”
“Hey, Cass. Sorry I missed your call.” She sounded tired and not very chipper at all.
I looked at both of my friends, and they were still watching my every move. I’m sure they wanted to know what Cadence had to say. “That’s okay. I just wanted to see how you were doing. How is everything?”
“Ugh, not good,” she replied. “I, uh, I’m in Lincoln. Jack’s sick.”
I felt my stomach rise up into my throat and then go slamming right back into my gut. It took me a moment to formulate a sentence. “He’s sick? What’s wrong with him?”
“Who’s sick?” I heard Lucy say, as she grabbed my arm, but I sloughed her off.
“It’s some sort of an infection,” Cadence explained. “They’re not sure how he contracted it. They think it might’ve been through a foreign exchange student. He’s stable right now, and they think he’ll be okay in a few days. But I came out here to be with him. I think the rest of our friends are headed this way. I got in yesterday.”
I wondered why my parents hadn’t mentioned this to me. “Have you talked to mom?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell her it was this serious.” I could hear the exhaustion in her voice. She seemed exasperated.
“I’m sorry, Cadence,” I said quietly. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Pray.” I knew she meant that, too. “No, not really. I mean, if he continues to stabilize, they say they’re going to take him off of some of the equipment in the next few days. But… I have a work thing I have to go to, so I won’t even be able to stay here.”
It wasn’t like my sister to let work interfere with her friends. “What kind of work thing?” I asked.
“Well, I’m going to Paris,” she said, her voice uneven, like she wasn’t sure she should tell me. “I’ll be gone a few days. I’ll come back here as soon as I can.”
I remembered Elliott mentioning he didn’t think that my sister would be with them too long before she went back to school and everything returned to normal. I thought, if they were sending her to Paris, maybe something else was going on. “Paris. That sounds cool. What for?”
“Oh, just some… a client.”
That was a very vague, non-answer. Before I could question her further, she said, “Listen, Cass, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you much about what’s going on, but everything’s fine, I promise. I’ll be able to tell you more when you get a little older and you can understand all of this a little better.”
Elliott had said something similar, that I wasn’t old enough. I wondered what that even meant. If my sister really worked for a security company, it shouldn’t matter how old I am; security secrets were security secrets regardless of my age. But all I managed to say was, “Okay.”
“I’ll tell Jack you said hi,” she offered. “I love you, Sis.”
“Thanks,” I replied, meaning for the message to Jack. “I love you, too.” I hung up and realized there were tears in my eyes. I turned back to look at my friends.
Lucy reached over and patted my arm while Emma stood, walked over to a tissue box, plucked out two, and handed them to me without a word. I took them and dabbed at my eyes. “Thanks. I don’t even know why I’m crying.”
Wrapping her arms around me, Lucy pulled me over to her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said quietly.
It took me a few moments to get the tears to stop. I really didn’t know what it was about my sister’s words that had gotten this reaction out of me. “She said Jack has some sort of infection but he’s getting better.”
“That’s good,” Lucy commented, “I mean, that he’s getting better.”
“And she’s going to Paris?” Emma asked. “I assume you mean France, not Texas.”
That had me giggling. “Yeah, I think she meant France. She didn’t say.”
“Well, let’s take some notes, and then, there’s not much else we can do for now. I hope Jack is okay.” Lucy let go of me and picked up her laptop.
“Do you think….” Emma stopped, not able to say the rest, what all of us were thinking.
“I hope not,” I replied. I knew what she was going to say. Is it possible Jack was sick because he was becoming a vampire?
