LUCAS FLUFFED THE PILLOWS BEHIND MY HEAD and drew the covers over me. “You sure you’re okay?” he said for about the eightieth time in the past two hours.
“I need to rest. That’s all.” I wanted him to stop worrying; he’d been half crazy with concern the whole way home, cradling me in his arms and stroking my hair as we took the bumpy bus ride back through the rain. Now the storm raged outside, rattling the wine bottles with thunder. “That vampire—he knows Charity. He’s going to tell her about us.”
“That’s why we’re never going on patrol in this city again.” He half turned as a lightning bolt crashed down nearby, and I could imagine him counting silently: one Mississippi. The storm was close.
I put one hand to my forehead; either it was warm or my hand was cold. My hair was still damp, which probably wouldn’t help.
“Did you not eat enough today?” He started rubbing my hands between his, trying to warm them up. It was like he couldn’t rest, couldn’t even think straight, until he’d fixed whatever was wrong. “Or—oh, my God.”
Lucas’s face went as pale as a sheet. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was so incredibly obvious that I had to laugh despite everything. “I’m not having a baby.”
“Are you positive?” When I nodded, he sighed in relief.
“Well, that’s something, anyway.”
I didn’t have the strength to admit to myself that this might be something serious, much less to admit it to Lucas. “I’ll be fine after I get some sleep. Wait and see.”
“Do you need blood?” He squeezed my hands, sort of happy, like he was talking about surprising me with a box of chocolates. We’d come a long way from the time when my being a vampire used to freak him out.
“I ate earlier.” I couldn’t even think about blood right now. The idea of eating anything, especially blood, was sickening.
Lucas paused, and I knew he remained worried. He wanted to ask me more questions, and I didn’t want him to ask. I wanted to pretend that none of it had ever happened. I needed to pretend that, for just a little while.
I was relieved when he said only, “Okay,” and leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. Closing my eyes, I made believe that I was well, that this wine cellar was a real house, and that we could stay here happily forever and ever.
Lucas didn’t keep worrying about my fainting spell the next day, but he insisted that I wait before filling out any more job applications. “You’re exhausted,” he said. Something in his voice suggested that he’d made up his mind what was going on, and I thought I’d try to believe in it, too. “After the fire at Evernight and Black Cross—you’ve hardly had a chance to catch your breath.”
“You haven’t either,” I pointed out, “and you work hard at the garage.”
“Your life changed more than mine, and we both know it.” Lucas shrugged. “Seriously, you need a break. Take a break. I’ll take care of us for a couple weeks.”
The money he brought in from the garage wasn’t that great; Lucas worked hard, and for lots of hours on the days they called him in, but it was under the table, which meant they could pay him less than minimum wage. So far it was enough to buy our food and pay our bus fares, with a teeny bit extra, but we’d barely begun scraping together the money to repay Balthazar and Vic. I’d started looking in the newspapers for places we might rent after Vic’s family returned from Tuscany, but I couldn’t believe how expensive even the smallest apartments seemed to be. Even if Vic let us have the stuff from the attic, we’d need to buy extra furniture and more clothes and maybe a car someday. I didn’t know how we would ever manage.
But I saw the determination on Lucas’s face. He was so committed to making this work, to looking after us, that I loved him even more.
“Just a week,” I said. That would be enough time to get well, surely.
“Make it a week and a half. You wouldn’t want to start work next Monday, would you?”
That would be my eighteenth birthday. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten, but Lucas had remembered for us both.
So, for the next week, I was a lady of leisure. I mean, there was work to handle: dishes to clean, dirty clothes to bundle up, so we could haul them to the Laundromat on the weekend. But most of the days, while Lucas was at the garage, I was basically alone without anything much to do. This was the first time it had felt like summer vacation. I took it easy, just as Lucas and I had agreed. Although I sometimes went for a walk or something like that, I watched a bunch of the DVDs, read the eclectic group of books Vic had chosen for us, and took a lot of naps. By the time I’d gone four days without a dizzy spell, I felt like there was no more reason to worry.
But one day, during an afternoon catnap, a dream intruded.
“Do these dreams mean something?” I asked.
The wraith smiled. “You’re finally figuring that out, huh?”
We stood on the roof of Evernight Academy. It was an early morning, foggy and cool, and somehow I knew we weren’t alone, although she was the only one I could see. The sky above looked milky and gray, like the fog below; the only substantial thing in the world seemed to be the school’s stones jutting up dark and real. The gargoyles’ silhouettes snarled around us.
“So you’re really speaking to me,” I said, “through my dreams.”
She shook her head. “We’ll meet again soon. I don’t know anything about it yet, though.”
“How is that possible?”
“I’m not telling you our future,” the wraith replied. “You’re the one who sees it. Not me.”
I could tell the future? That didn’t seem very likely, given how many times I’d received nasty surprises. “I think these are only dreams. I don’t have to pay any attention to them.”
She floated upward, and at first I thought it was because she was trying to leave me behind. Then I realized that I was floating up with her. The roof was no longer beneath my feet, but it didn’t matter.
The wraith looked down at me, her face almost inexpressibly sad. “You’ll have to face the truth soon enough, Bianca. The lies can’t protect you much longer.”
She rose faster than I could, though I reached upward in a vain effort to speed my ascent. “Wait!” I cried. “Wait!”
I awoke on the sofa. For the first time, after one of the dreams of the wraith, I wasn’t frightened. If anything, I felt calmer than before.
Seeing the future—well, I clearly wasn’t psychic or anything like that. But some of the dreams I’d had before had sort of come to pass: the black flowers that later turned up on the brooch Lucas bought for me, or Charity helping to set Evernight Academy on fire. I’d have to think about that in-depth later, really ask myself what my dreams might be telling me about days to come.
But what I thought of most was the last thing the wraith had said to me: The lies can’t protect you much longer.
“I feel stupid wearing this blindfold,” I said. “Is everyone on the bus looking at us like we’re crazy people?”
As I tried to pull the scarf away from my eyes, Lucas playfully caught my hands to prevent me. “Mostly they’re laughing, because they can tell I’m trying to surprise you.”
“I don’t need a surprise!” I protested only to make him insist. Really, I loved the fact that Lucas had thought up something special for my birthday.
“We’re almost there,” he insisted. “Hang tight.”
Finally, we reached our stop, and Lucas guided me off the bus and down the steps. Bright sunlight made the scarf slightly translucent, a soft turquoise shade that I thought I would always love because it would remind me of this day.
“Ready?” Lucas began untying the knot at the back of my head. I bounced on my heels in excitement as the scarf dropped. We were standing in front of a museum but not just any museum.
“The Franklin Institute,” I said. “The planetarium.”
He gave me a lopsided smile. “Thought you’d like that.”
“I love it!”
I’d lost my telescope when the school burned. Shuttling from city to city since then, I hadn’t had a chance to go stargazing in months, and I missed it desperately. This would be the next best thing. I loved that Lucas had thought of it; this really was the best present imaginable.
We went in and goofed around for a while before the next show, climbing through an enormous model of a human heart that thump-thumped so loudly it made us laugh. But the best part was when we finally got to enter the planetarium itself.
I loved planetariums. They were big and cool and quiet, with high-domed ceilings; they reminded me of the presence of something really infinite, really beautiful. I always wondered if maybe that was what a cathedral felt like, for people who could enter churches.
Lucas and I took our seats. I was about to point out a funny T-shirt someone else in the crowd was wearing when Lucas said, “Better do this before it gets dark in here.”
“Do what?”
From his pocket he pulled out a beautiful bracelet of red coral. As I stared at it, he said, “You like it, right? I didn’t know what kind of thing you might want, so I figured this was kind of like the brooch.”
“It’s—amazing.” The carving on this bracelet was even more delicate than on the jet brooch. Chinese dragons rippled across the silver links that held together the ovals of coral. Although I desperately wanted to slip my hand into it, I had to say, “Lucas, I love it, so much, but—”
“I don’t want to hear anything about the money,” Lucas said. His face was set. “I’ll pay the guys back every cent, and I don’t care how long it takes me. But you’re my girl. You’re going to have a birthday present. Something you deserve.”
That was his pride at work again, but not only that. I couldn’t argue with him any longer. Instead I hugged him tightly.
He slid the bracelet around my wrist. “There you go,” he said, his voice rough. “Happy birthday.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The lights dimmed around us, and the “sky” above blazed into a thousand glittering stars. Lucas and I settled back in our seats, his hand clasping mine, as the narrator began telling us about supernovas. The coral and silver of the bracelet laced around my wrist, cool and heavy. Already, it didn’t feel like some other possession I owned; it felt like a part of me. A talisman. A link between me and Lucas, just like the brooch.
He wants to take care of me, I thought. He wants to protect me, no matter what it costs.
The lies can’t protect you any longer.
It was wrong of me to keep looking for protection—to keep relying on Lucas to face so much of our hardships alone, or to depend on him to get my blood supply. And it was wrong for me to hide behind lies. Lucas deserved an equal partner in our fight to be together. That meant he deserved the truth.
Above us, the image zoomed closer to one star, a sluggish giant near the end of its life. It glowed red, darker than blood, and its gaseous surface rippled feverishly like the sea during a storm.
“Lucas,” I whispered, carefully pitching my voice so low that I wouldn’t disturb anyone nearby. “I have to tell you something.”
He half turned toward me. The dying star above silhouetted his face in crimson. “What?”
“When I fainted—on the hunt—it wasn’t the first time.”
The star went supernova, crashing outward into a spectacular blaze of white light. For a moment it was as bright as day, and I could see the confusion and worry on Lucas’s face as the crowd oohed and aahed around us. “Bianca, what are you telling me?”
“It started weeks ago. I’ve been having dizzy spells since shortly after I joined your Black Cross cell. They’re happening more frequently, and they’re getting worse, and I don’t really want to eat anymore. Or, well, drink. I know I should’ve told you before. I just—I didn’t want you to worry.”
Lucas opened his mouth to speak, but then he shut it again. I could see that he was balancing between being frightened and being angry. I didn’t blame him for either feeling, but that didn’t make it much easier to see.
Finally, he said only, “We’ll get through it.”
I nodded and leaned my head on his shoulder and looked up at the newborn nebula, which was opening above us like a pale blue flower. Although I knew I hadn’t solved the problem by sharing it, at least I didn’t have to carry the secret around any longer. Now I could celebrate my birthday the way Lucas had meant for me to, looking up at my stars.
When the show ended, and the lights came on, I led Lucas out of the planetarium as we both blinked. “That was really gorgeous,” I said. “Thanks for bringing me here.”
“Yeah.” Lucas looked distracted.
“You can’t really think about that right now, can you?” When he shook his head no, I sighed. “Come on. Let’s talk.”
We headed out into the early evening. Instead of going straight to the bus stop, we walked along the street. The neighborhood was a nice one, with lots of museums and big houses, and tall old trees with broad branches that swayed slowly in the breeze. Our path took us by the side of a park, where a few others strolled or walked their dogs.
The first thing Lucas said was, “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
“Positive.” He gave me a worried look, and I shook my head.
“Honestly, Lucas, I already told you that.”
“You cannot tell a guy you’re not pregnant too many times.”
“I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.”
“Thanks.” Lucas put his arm around my shoulders. “So, what do you think it is? Do you know?”
“I don’t know anything for sure, but—” I hesitated. It was hard to put this into words. “I keep remembering something my mother said to me once. The night after I bit you for the first time, actually.”
“What did she say?”
I glanced around to make sure nobody was standing too close to us. There were a few people walking a couple of steps behind, slightly wild in garish clothes and heavy makeup, but they were talking loudly among themselves and wouldn’t overhear. “She said that, once I’d first tasted human blood, I’d turned over the hourglass. That I couldn’t keep going forever as what I was—part human and part vampire. She said the vampire in me would grow stronger and that eventually, I’d have to—” I wasn’t going to say kill out loud in public. “I’d have to complete the transition.”
Lucas said, “And they never told you what would happen if you didn’t?”
I shook my head. “I asked them tons of times, but they just acted like that wasn’t an option. They didn’t say how long I had, either. Now I’m starting to wonder.”
“You think how you’re feeling is your body trying to tell you to kill somebody?”
“Shhhhh.” There was another group of people, maybe a little older but with equally wild appearance, coming near us from a side street. Our paths would intersect soon. “Do you have to say that so loudly?”
Lucas’s steps slowed. “How do you feel right now?”
“This second? I’m fine, I guess, but—”
“Good. Get ready to run.”
“What are you talking about?” But then I saw what Lucas had seen: a third group of people, all dressed in similar rags, were approaching from across the street. This wasn’t random. We were surrounded.
Then I recognized a man in the third group, a guy with an aquiline profile, skin as pale as mine, and long, reddish-brown dreadlocks. Shepherd.
“That guy,” I said. “He hunts for Charity.”
Lucas grabbed my hand and squeezed. “The bus stop. Go.”
We started to run. As soon as we’d taken two steps, the vampires around us gave up any pretense of just hanging out. They swirled around as fast as a flock of birds, right on our heels. And they weren’t laughing any longer.
Lucas sped up, calling on his enhanced speed to propel us forward. I clasped his hand as tightly as I could, once again cursing my stupid sandals, but I couldn’t quite move as fast as Lucas. Before, I usually outran him. Not anymore.
The footsteps behind us pounded closer and louder. I could hear their belts and bracelets jangling. Lucas kept trying to tow me after him. By now we both knew we weren’t going to get back to the bus stop in time, not with me running so slowly. So I wrenched my hand from Lucas’s and took off running to the right. “Bianca!” he shouted, but I didn’t turn back.
I had thought the vampires would split up, half chasing Lucas and half chasing me. Lucas would be able to escape from his pursuers, and as for me—well, maybe I had a chance if I only had to fight half. Instead, from the sound of it, they’d all followed me.
Lucas, please get away, please get out of here! I didn’t dare look back to see if that was what he was doing. They were too close, so close, getting closer—
A hand grabbed my arm and pulled me around. I stumbled and nearly fell, but Shepherd caught me.
“Smile for the people,” he whispered. “They want to think we’re just kids playing around. So you smile and make them think that. Or else we’ll make you scream.”
There were ten of them and one of me. I smiled. Nearby, in the park, I saw a young couple with a stroller shrug and keep going, satisfied that nothing was really wrong.
“Let her go!”
Lucas pushed his way through the vampires, like they were any other crowd of punks. Nobody fought him, but the vampire didn’t let go. Shepherd said, “We’re taking her for a ride, or we’re taking her out, here and now. You know we can do it. It won’t be any trouble to take you out, too.”
We didn’t have stakes or holy water or any other weapons. We’d come out for my birthday, not for a fight. Lucas’s eyes met mine, and I could see him recognizing the hard odds we faced.
Shepherd continued, “So you have two choices, hunter. You can come for a ride with us, or you can turn around and go home like a good boy.”
“Lucas, please,” I pleaded. “They’re only after me.”
But he shook his head. “Where you go, I go.”
They walked us around the corner to a slightly less busy street and pushed us into the back of a truck. I thought for a moment of our escape from Black Cross, but that hope died instantly. We didn’t have Dana to help us this time, and the cab of the truck was completely separate from the metal box we had to stay in. When they slammed the doors shut behind us, blackness fell, save for a few lines of light around the corners of the doors.
Once I’d had nearly perfect night vision. That was starting to fade.
“Hang on, Bianca.” Lucas put his arms around me as the truck rumbled into motion. “We’re gonna have to think fast when they open those doors back up.”
“They’ll still outnumber us,” I said. “And they’re taking us to a place where they’ll be more in control than they were here.”
“I know. But we had zero chance out there. We have to hope the next situation is going to work more to our advantage.”
I didn’t see how that was even possible, but I tried to follow Lucas’s example and think like a fighter.
It seemed to take an incredibly long time before we reached our destination—a large, one-story building that had evidently been abandoned for a long time but had been either a health club or a gymnasium. Several of the windows were broken, and graffiti striped the walls. This building was waiting to be torn down, and apparently some vampires had decided to take advantage of the delay. They tugged us out of the back of the truck—four vampires flanking each of us.
“Let’s head to the pool,” Shepherd said. Lucas and I shared a look; I knew he was telling me to look out for anything we might be able to use for weapons or an escape. I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to take out that many vampires at once, but we had to remain focused.
The pool area looked even more torn up than the rest. As we walked inside, I could see that was where the vampires had chosen to stay. Beer bottles littered the floor and windowsills, and every corner had become a trash heap. It smelled like cigarettes. In the center of the room was the swimming pool itself, long emptied of water; the abandoned high-dive board stood above, lonely, with a cobweb dangling from the end.
At first I thought nobody else was inside. But then a solitary figure in the corner moved. Somebody in rags had been sleeping in a huddle on the floor, and I’d taken her for another trash heap.
She pushed frowsy pale hair back from her face and looked at us steadily. Even from across the room, I recognized her immediately. Ever since our capture, we’d known who we would be taken to—but that didn’t make her any easier to face.
Lucas whispered, “Charity.”