15

Bethany looked like a shadow of her former self. She was wearing a light yellow sundress, faded and out of season. Her pale skin was marred by bruises, and her left arm was in a sling.

Red hair hung in a limp ponytail to one side, and even from a distance, I could see a sluggish quality to the way she moved, the way she blinked.

Had they drugged her?

Without even meaning to, I stepped out from the shadows. I began moving toward the duo on the front porch, but before I’d fully crossed the lawn, Bethany marked my presence. She stared at me, like she was trying to see through some kind of fog.

She shook.

Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out the words until I got closer.

“You’re dead.”

I stepped up onto the porch, careful to keep my back to the surveillance.

“I saw you. I saw you die. You’re dead.”

The first time she said it, Bethany’s voice was monotone, but by the second time—and the third—she was starting to sound more like her old self.

She was starting to sound pissed.

“I saw you. You went through the windshield. You broke your neck. There was blood—so much blood, and your legs …”

“Maybe you saw wrong,” Skylar suggested.

“I know what I saw. Kali’s dead, and I’m crazy. They drugged me up, and now I’m crazy. They were afraid I’d tell someone. They knew my dad couldn’t keep me here forever, so they made me crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” I said calmly. “You must have just gotten things mixed up in the wreck. I was bleeding, but they were mostly surface cuts. When I woke up, you were gone. I was worried, so I came here.”

“I think I’d know if you weren’t dead,” Bethany snapped. “And, no offense, but I’m pretty sure I’m more qualified to tell if I’m crazy than you are.”

I couldn’t tell if Bethany was on the verge of hysterics or reading me the riot act. Skylar must have been leaning toward the “hysterical” interpretation, because she wound up and smacked her, right across the face.

Bethany blinked. “Did you just hit me?” she asked, disbelief coloring her every feature.

Skylar raised both hands, palms outward. “I come in peace!”

“You do not come in peace. You hit me.”

“I hit in peace!”

Sensing that this could devolve into an all-out brawl very quickly, I took matters into my own hands—literally. I stepped forward and put my right palm on Bethany’s shoulder.

“I told you I’d be okay, and I’m okay,” I said softly.

I could see the wheels turning in Bethany’s head, see her wanting to believe me.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

Bethany shrugged off my touch. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” Skylar piped up. “Somebody drugged you, and your dad is keeping you locked up in your own home. That’s not fine.”

“What is she even doing here?” Bethany directed the question at me, and I took that as evidence that she was at the very least less sure that I was a hallucination than she’d been a moment before.

Skylar didn’t wait for me to answer Bethany’s question—she jumped right in herself. “Someone’s watching you, Bethany. They’re after Kali. And I can’t shake the idea that this is bigger, that there’s something else, someone else….” Skylar frowned. “Bad people are doing bad things. Good people are doing bad things, too. I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to help.”

Skylar blinked, and her eyes stayed closed for a fraction of a second longer than they should have. “This is.”

She sounded … sad. Stubborn, determined, and sad.

“This is what?” I asked, wondering how many times I’d worn that same expression on my face and what exactly had put it on hers.

“It,” Skylar said simply. “This is it.”

Bethany snorted. “Because that really clears things up.”

Skylar smiled, but the expression only took on half her face. “Give it a few days,” she said, “and it will.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but for better or worse, at the moment, I had bigger fish to fry.

I’d come here as step one in a plan to track down Bethany, but it looked like I wasn’t going to need steps two through four. Instead, I needed to find out what Bethany knew, what she remembered.

Besides the fact that I should have been dead.

“Can we come in?” I asked.

Bethany planted her body firmly in front of the open door. “My dad could come home any second. You shouldn’t be here when he does.”

“Then can we go somewhere else?” I gave her a look. “We need to talk.”

“I can’t leave,” Bethany replied without hesitation. “They’ll know if I do. My dad said everything was going to be okay. He said he’d take care of it, but I have to stay here.”

There was something in her eyes when she talked about her father—not quite anger, not quite fear.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” I didn’t mean for the words to come out of my mouth with an edge to them, but they did. Bethany had left me on the side of the road. Maybe she hadn’t had a choice. Maybe they’d forced her to go, but she’d left me broken and bleeding on the ground and hadn’t lifted a hand against the people who’d put me there.

“You were already dead!”

The vehemence of Bethany’s words took me by surprise.

“You were dead, and it was my fault. I was the one driving. I was the one who got bitten. I couldn’t—I can’t do this again.”

Again?

“There was nothing I could do for you, Kali.”

“But there was something you could do for someone else.” Skylar tilted her head from one side to the other and then back again, staring intently at the lines of Bethany’s face. “Someone you love.”

Bethany’s eyes hardened, and she stepped back into the house, ready to slam the door in our faces. Unfortunately for her, I was quick.

Too quick.

Quicker than I would have been two days before.

There are some benefits to being bitten.

As Zev’s words echoed in my head, I realized how very close I was standing to Bethany. How fast her heart was pounding. How hungry the thing inside me was. I was fast and strong and more than I’d been two days before—and the chupacabra wanted blood.

Twenty-one hours and nine minutes.

“You can’t come in,” Bethany snapped, bringing me back to the present.

“Evidence would suggest otherwise,” Skylar commented, following my lead and stepping into the house.

“Get out.”

“Nope.” Skylar grinned. “I want to see Château Davis. You’ve been dating my brother for six months, and you’ve stolen my tampons twice. The least you can do is give me a tour.”

“Skylar,” Bethany said, her voice cracking. “Please, both of you, just get out.”

“Bethany?”

I half expected to run into Bethany’s father, but instead, the voice that had issued that query was clearly female.

“You guys need to go,” Bethany said again, her voice low and urgent.

“Bethany, dear,” the voice called from the other room, “have you seen Tyler?”

Bethany flinched. A moment later, her face was a blank canvas, flat and unreadable. She plastered on a smile and turned around, just as a woman wearing heels and a white silk bathrobe stepped into the room. She had long, wavy hair that straddled the line between blonde and red. Her eyes were wide, her smile inviting.

“Oh dear,” she said. “I didn’t realize Bethie had guests.”

“They were just leaving,” Bethany said.

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart. They should at least stay for breakfast. Have you seen your brother? It’s omelet day, and you know how he feels about those.”

Bethany stood up a little straighter, and her face softened. “Okay, Mom. Okay.”

I wasn’t sure what Bethany was saying “okay” to, but it seemed to satisfy her mother, who ran a smoothing hand over the white silk robe.

“I ought to get dressed,” she said absentmindedly. “Something’s not right.”

“Everything’s fine,” Bethany said. “I promise.”

Her mother nodded, and a second later she was gone, leaving the three of us in the foyer, silent, the air thick with all of the things we weren’t saying.

“She’s the one you’re helping,” Skylar said. “Your mom. What did your dad say he’d do for her if you kept your mouth shut about what happened out on the highway this morning?”

In my mind, I rephrased Skylar’s question—what did he say he’d do to your mother if you didn’t?

“It’s none of your business,” Bethany said, her voice low and full of warning. “You never saw her. She’s fine.”

I couldn’t shake the look in Mrs. Davis’s eyes, the singsong tone to her voice. I’d seen her before, at university functions. She’d seemed fine.

Normal.

Like Bethany, only older.

What’s wrong with her? I wondered, but that wasn’t the kind of question you asked out loud.

So instead, I asked something else. “Who’s Tyler?”