Chapter 13

The hallway was more imposing without Leo. It seemed darker and narrower somehow. I was trailing my fingers along the wall, trying to keep my distance from the doors. I could hear all the people on the opposite sides; they were so happy and carefree and I was a little jealous. Was it fair that they could be so happy while being oblivious to the vampires all around them?

I got stuck at the bottom of the stairs where the noise and lights were just bearable. If I took another step, out of the meager protection that a thin wall gave, it would overwhelm me and I couldn’t go back to talk to Leo or Warren.

“You look stuck,” came a voice behind me. I hadn’t heard her approach over the music.

I spun to face the curly-haired girl who thought I was going to kill her when I first woke in that weird attic. “What are you doing here?”

“My mom sent me to find you. I’m here with a birthday party for a girl I don’t like,” she answered, sounding bored.

“Are you here to kill me then?”

She sighed, “No, you’re my cousin. You’re in the book and they want to talk to you.”

“Who are they and why do they want to talk to me?” I pressed.

“How am I supposed to know what they want?” she snapped. “They don’t tell me anything.”

I looked over my shoulder at the club lights then back to her and over her shoulder, half expecting Leo to be right behind her. How did I know that he didn’t send her?

“Well, it’s not exactly a good time,” I began nervously, “and I don’t know who you are so you’ll just have to send my regrets or whatever.”

I decided to get away from her and turned to head into the blaring music and lights but hesitated just for an instant. Just long enough for her to touch my arm.

For a split second, in the silence before I actually saw what was going on, I thought I had been moved back to Warren’s private room where the music couldn’t be heard. After a blink, the light flooded into vision; not blinding light but the soft glow of overhead fluorescent light. Another blink and shapes came into view, joined by the cry of a tea kettle on a stove. The black of the club had given way to off-white with pale pink accents and linoleum under my feet. The shadowy shapes became three women, one of them the curly-haired girl who had been standing in front of me at the club. She wasn’t standing anymore, though. She and her mother were sitting at a pastel blue table with an older woman who was bringing the kettle to the table to pour steaming water into teacups.

“Mariella, she’s going to be scared and lost. I doubt her mother told her anything about us or magic,” the older woman spoke.

“Remember how terrified she was at our house before she ran?” the mother added.

“The most important thing now is getting her to the border house so that we can explain everything before the magic causes problems,” the older emphasized.

Then as quick as it came, the vision was gone and the club was back, but the curly-haired girl was gone. Instead, Leo was coming toward me and there was a cellphone in my hand.

“I should have known that you’d get stuck,” he snickered.

“I tried but it made me sick. I was just about to come get you,” I lied.

He wound an arm around my waist. “I’ve got you. Let’s head home and relax so you’re ready for training tomorrow.”

I gave a short nod, hiding the cell phone from him and walking past my invisible threshold under his guidance. I tried hard to hold back how sick I felt but I knew that Leo could tell.

“You look like you’re going to puke. Was it really that bad?” he asked when we were safely closed in his car.

“It made me really dizzy, like I couldn’t see straight,” I said quietly.

He drove carefully in silence to his house instead of the mansion. I wanted to tell him that I prefered to have some space but I also didn’t know what I would do without him when I didn’t recognize someone or something. Even if I didn’t want to trust him, he was the only lifeline I had.

He didn’t notice the cellphone in my hand until we got to his front door. I think the silence between us had forced him to focus on the road.

“Whose phone is that?”

I looked down at the phone in my hand for the first time. It definitely wasn’t mine because the case around it was pink with glitter that had rubbed off onto my palm where I held it. On the screen was a picture of the curly-haired Mariella with her mother.

Why had she given me her phone?

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I don’t remember how I got it.”

“Looks like the girl I passed in the VIP section. Can you get into it to call someone she knows and get it back to her?”

“I’ll play with it and see if I can. It’ll be a challenge,” I replied smiling as we went into his house.

I settled onto the couch again and stared at the phone while Leo was in the kitchen. I held it closer to a lamp next to the couch to see the fingerprints on the screen and somehow instinctively knew the numbers that made up the code. 031216.

How could I possibly have known that?

I went to her text messages and found the person labeled “mom” and pulled up the conversation, hesitating on what to do next.

What should I say to this woman who I just found out is my aunt? How do you ask about their crazy plan without showing how lost you are in the first place?

*She left me her phone* I texted. It seemed like the best way to start everything.

Leo came back from the kitchen with two mugs of what smelled like coffee but there was something off. He handed me a powder blue mug and took the other with him to sit in a chair with the television remote control.

“Any luck with it?” he asked.

“I’ll let you know when I get it,” I returned, quietly setting the phone in my lap to investigate what was in the mug he gave me. “What did you put in this?”
He watched me sniff at the cup for a moment before he answered. “I don’t think you’re drinking enough.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why?”

He looked surprised. “I just know that I would be starving if I were you. Though, I also probably wouldn’t have healed as quickly after being shot with a silver nitrate bullet.”

“I guess it’s different for me,” I began as I sipped from the mug. “I don’t feel like I’m starving and tomorrow I’m not drinking any more of your blood. I’ll be okay until we find another way.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded exaggeratedly. “I said that I’ll be fine and I meant that. As long as no one shoots me again, everything will be peachy.”

He let his head fall back with a sigh. “You heard me apologize, Raven. What do I have to do for you to forgive me?”

“Just wait a few more hours and maybe by then I’ll have slept off my anger.”

He slumped in the chair, watching me for a moment before nodding and turning on the television. We watched the early morning news in silence, both of us sipping the coffee and relaxing into the furniture. When he wasn’t looking, I checked the cell phone. No one responded to my message so I wasn’t thinking about it when I went to sleep.

It did, however, go off around 8 am, before Leo had gotten up. It woke me out of a dead sleep and I nearly fell off the couch but steadied myself to keep from waking him.

*Meet at our safehouse on the border*, it said. An address followed.

*I can’t leave*, I returned then fell back to sleep for a while longer.

I woke up later, after a strange dream that disappeared as soon as I was awake. Leo was still sound asleep so I checked the time and realized that he would probably want to get up soon. If I got up now, I would have time to myself in the shower and to decide what to wear without him watching me awkwardly. Stretching, I got up and padded through the bedroom awkwardly to get clothes and shower. If he had woken up, I didn’t know what I would have said to him.

The shower felt amazing even though I was nervous about waking Leo. All my new bulging muscles got their turn to relax under the warm water and I had the chance to look myself over. The faint white scars were easier to see when the water turned everything else pink. There were so many of them that it scared me to think that they were where someone bit me. Not even private places were safe from the crescent slivers.

There was a name that went with them and a chill that ran the length of my naked body. I had a feeling that I remembered it but somehow couldn’t produce it. It was stuck on my lips like sweet syrup but I couldn’t form the shape to produce the right noise.