Blood To Blood (15 page)

“Mom, Dad,” Cici said, “I
think we should leave these two alone for a while.” My face burned with
embarrassment. What had gotten into my family? Sawyer must have thought they
were insane.

Why did I even care what he
thought?

“We'll see you later, dear,”
Mom said with a disapproving look. I sighed as they walked out the door.

“You’re in pain.” Sawyer said
turning to me. “This is all my fault.”

“How’s that? How could you
know there were gun-crazed squatters in there?”

He stepped closer to the bed,
hesitated, and then sat down in the nearby chair. He peered up at me from under
his ridiculously long eyelashes. His eyes watched my teeth as they bit down on
my lip in an effort to hold back the rush of words his presence evoked. I felt
compelled to spill every secret, share every sensation, every new thing that
had happened to me in the journey from fetus to adult, mortal to immortal.
There was something about him that made me comfortable enough to be myself.
With all the other mortals in my life I'd erected a friendly guard, but with
him being guarded was difficult, as if he extracted the truth of me simply by
being around.

“If I...hadn't asked you to
come looking at houses,” he said, “you wouldn't be here in the hospital.”

“Well, maybe we should all
just stay home and hide from all the messed-up random crap that can happen to
us every day.”

He looked at me like I was
insane. And then he laughed. I nearly dropped my jaw. Who knew he was capable
of laughing? Were his teeth always that straight? The corners of his eyes
crinkled up and a dimple that wasn't there before popped up in his chin. I
didn't realize how hard I was staring until he stopped. His smile faded and was
replaced by the familiar frown.

“That's kind of what I do.”
His eyes locked with mine. “The studio’s the safest place I know.”

My temperature rose.

Angel, be cool. Literally.
We don't want you to burn up your mortal boyfriend.

He's not my boyfriend!
Burn him up…?

Yes, you can do it if
you're not careful. You're still nowhere near being able to control yourself.

“It's kind of warm in here.
Don't you think?” I said. “Would you crack the window?”

“Angel, it's freezing out
there, and you're recuperating from what most would say’s a shocking
experience. Besides, a little heat doesn't bother me. I am from the South.”

His eyes caressed me. My
stomach flipped.

“But the question is,” he
continued in a serious tone, “will you be able to do the Garden gig like this?”

Now it was my turn to laugh.
The idea of a bullet stopping me from doing anything, much less the gig of my
life, was hysterical. “I'll tell you a little secret,” I said when I was
finally able to stop laughing. “Not even a bullet can stop me from getting on
that stage. I'd have to drop dead before missing that gig, okay?”

And that really was the
truth.

I
tossed and turned all night in the
hospital bed, but it wasn’t due to pain. I just couldn’t stop thinking about
Sawyer Creed. I tried thinking about something, anything, else. That worked for
a few seconds, until I was thinking about him again. Then I’d try again to
think of something else, and the cycle continued around and around like a
carousel. Eventually, I gave up trying to
not
think of him, and touched
down in the bed after unknowingly hovering over it.

There were a number of
reasons why Sawyer kept popping into my brain.

First: Mom gave me some
information after she scanned him. Years ago, I’d asked her to not give me
readings of my friends unless I asked for it. It was too creepy to know so much
about a person while pretending you didn’t. But with Sawyer, she gave her input
whether I wanted it or not. I saw it coming as soon as she turned to me with
the this-is-for-your-own-good glint in her eye.

“Honey, you should know I
don't approve of your relationship with the producer. Both your father and I
recommend sticking with our own kind for moral reasons.” She looked at her
fingernails while searching for the right words. “However. With some mortals
the playing field is a little leveled. In these cases, the mortal is not an
average mortal. There are many reasons for this, but usually it is genetic.”

I had no idea what she meant.
But it led me to the second reason I had Sawyer on my mind: I’d instinctively
known there was something different about him, had felt it the first time I saw
him and every subsequent time we were together. It was more than a North vs.
South, Yankee vs. non-Yankee thing.  There was something constantly
working in his head. At first I’d written it off as the tendency music people
have of always thinking of melody lines or being preoccupied with lyrics and
arrangements. But it was more than that. There was something extra underneath
that frown of concentration, and I wanted to know what that extra was.

Third reason: his vast
musical knowledge exceeded my expectations. His passion for music matched mine,
and when we worked together, it felt like we were the only people in the world.
And the fourth reason I kept thinking about Sawyer was that I found him
undeniably, immensely attractive. Watching him do anything—play the
keyboard, talk, think, whatever—was fascinating. He’d mesmerized me
before The Change, and now the fascination was even more intense.

These reasons, combined with
his ability to bring the truth out of me, made our relationship dangerous. Not
only because I wanted to tell him all my secrets, but also because the intense
attraction might cause me to lose control and take his life.

Cici agreed with my
conclusions the next day as we drove to The Nest. I listened to her insights
anxiously while clutching Sawyer’s flowers and another vase Jules and LaLa
brought on their way from the choreography rehearsal I’d missed.

“Really, Angel,” she said,
“there's no way you can reveal who, and what, you are to him without putting
him in danger.” She politely waved another driver on and hung back as the other
car merged into the traffic in front of us. “You can't have a real relationship
without truth. The only mortals who know what we are are donors, and they’re
compelled.” She came to a complete stop at the yellow light. I became impatient
with the responsible speed at which we were traveling. I was starving. I zoned
out on Cici and focused on not jumping out of the car to run the rest of the
way. By the time we got there, Justin was already waiting.

Cici made her way over to the
bar and I plopped myself down on our couch next to him. “You got here fast,” I
said, noticing his sweaty brow. I reached into the small tableside refrigerator
and poured a glass of Gatorade for him. He quickly finished the drink,
unbuttoned his shirt, and offered his neck. The muscles in his arms bulged more
than last time and his natural scent mixed with the sweat smell. He put his
hand on the timer, and that was all I needed. I pushed him back on the couch.

Afterwards, we sat with our
arms wrapped around each other. I listened to his blood sing in my veins, and
pondered the facts learned about him during this session. “You really love
banana pudding that much?”

“I could love you more,” he
said in a low voice.

I froze in place. My head was
on his shoulder, the place it always rested until we both calmed down from the
feeding. But today he wasn’t calming down; his heart was actually beating
faster. And he was saying a word I couldn’t wrap my head around. Love? Mom’s
warning about the inequity between Shimshana and their donors rang in my head.
There was no way I could have a relationship with Justin, even though he was
attractive, strong, honest, and the only mortal I didn’t have to hide parts of
myself from. I felt safe and comfortable with him. It would seem like the
perfect match. But it could never be. He was a donor.

“Justin, I think you’re
suffering from something called Blood—”

 “Don’t patronize me,
Angel,” he interrupted. “Blood Obsession is one of the longest chapters in the
donor textbook. I know all about it, and know it can drive you to do and say
things you’d never do before the blood tie.” He placed my hand in his and
looked into my eyes. “But, I’m not suffering from it,” he asserted, “and I
always mean what I say.”

He sunk his nose into my hair
for a few seconds before leaving me to wonder if our blood tie was still a good
idea.

 “That’s a no-brainer,
sis,” Cici said later as we made our way home. “I knew a girl who fell for her
donor. She said it was like being in love with a loyal house pet. The deeper he
got into her, the more he lost himself. They married and had one kid. Mortal.
Now he and the kid are dead. Forty years later, she’s still clinically
depressed, was even hospitalized for a while after she’d driven herself crazy
with guilt.” She shook her head. “The Justin issue almost makes the Sawyer
issue look hopeful. By the way, he called the hospital earlier when you were
asleep. He wanted to know how your, ahem, injury was healing.”

I was eager to call Sawyer
back. After thinking about him all night (I'd finally fallen asleep around 4:19
a.m.), I had a ton of questions: what was his middle name? Did he have any
brothers and sisters? How did he occupy his time when he wasn't making music?
Did he miss Georgia? Did he even like Boston? Did he think about me as much as
I thought about him? As Cici took the right turn at negative five miles per
hour, I willed her to drive faster.
Safety first, Bighead.

Once I was finally in the
privacy of my room, I dialed Sawyer. As usual, he was in the studio. “Feel
better?” he asked into the phone. One of our tracks played in the background.

“Nothing a Band Aid couldn't
fix.”

“I'm building out a track right
now,” he said. “Having a hard time. Can I come over for some vocals? I'll bring
a portable recorder and you can sing into it. That is, if you're up to it.”

“I'm fine. It's fine. Come
on.” I hung up. Whoa, I'd just invited Sawyer Creed to my house before asking
permission. Anxiety caused me to float helplessly down the hallway.

“Breathe Angel, jeez,” Cici
said from the top of the stairs. I did, and came back to the floor.

“He’s coming over to work on
a track.”

“No!”

“I know! I didn't even ask
Mom and Dad.”

“No, I'm saying you need to
get ready. You look like a hot mess.”

Mom was at the office. Down
in the basement, Dad arched an eyebrow when I told him. “Angel, we always have
an open-door policy for your friends. Just make sure you keep the door open to
whatever room you two are in.” He went back to the piece of furniture he was
building.

Angel, come up quickly,
Cici transmitted.

I raced up to her room, and
was standing there before she finished the word “quickly.”

“What's wrong?”

“Put these on,” she said
urgently while pressing clothes into my arms.

“I’m not getting dressed up.
That's just lame.”

“This is not dressing up. But
to you anything that doesn't involve flannel, denim and/or fleece is formal.
I'm just saying something a little bit more feminine might be in order.”

“No,” I repeated before
jetting through the walls and back to my room to put on jeans and a designer
t-shirt.

But, I did take time to
attend to my hair. It grew thicker and faster since my change and now it surrounded
my face like a zigzagged mass. Cici appeared behind me in the mirror.

“Help,” was all I could say.

She immediately began, at an
immortal speed, creating a French braid from the crown of my head to the nape
of my neck. I sighed with the pleasure I always felt when Cici braided my hair.
In a few seconds, the braid was done. I handed her a scrunchie. “You've got to
be kidding,” she said before tossing it in the wastebasket and disappearing.

She came back with a hair
claw covered with pink crystals and intricate patterns. She affixed it onto the
braid and transmitted what she saw so I could see the back of my head in my
mind. “Pretty, right?” I nodded in agreement.

“Angel, have lunch before
your guest arrives,” Dad boomed from below.

I jetted through the floor to
the kitchen and chucked down some stored Justin, which Mom had warmed for me
before heading off to work. I went back to my room and sat on the bed to wait.
It wasn't long before I heard his footsteps outside.

“Such confident footfalls,”
Cici joked from within her room. Dad cleared his throat in the basement before
heading up to open the door.

I was confused, and unsure if
I should wait until Dad called me, then casually saunter down to greet him, or
go now and eagerly welcome him into our home.

This is what you do. Take
a few extra seconds to check your makeup. Well, in your case, since you don't
wear makeup, just make sure your face looks okay, there's nothing in your nose,
no splatters of blood on your mouth, etc.

I looked in the mirror. I
seemed a little too wild-eyed... Deep breath, and then another...