Darkness (7 page)

“Can I talk to him?” Her tone had gone from frantic to pissy to soft and sweet.

Crap! “Um…Let me see if he’s awake.” I covered the phone, waited a few seconds and then got back on the line. “He’s asleep. I’ll tell him to call you when he’s feeling up to it.”

“Oh, okay,” she answered quietly.

She didn’t say anything else so I took that opportunity to get off the phone so as to avoid any more lying or getting caught in my lies.

I rested my head back against the wall. The voices had quieted and I couldn’t help but wonder what all the commotion had been. I figured it was the gothic princess’s inability to be nice. Suddenly Lola’s tail began to wag, thumping heavily against the mattress, then only seconds later Oliver entered the room. He locked the door behind him as he closed it.

“I think it would be best for us to keep to ourselves in here tonight.” He smiled at me and sat on the edge of the bed. Not a lot of room left with a massive dog sprawled across it.

I was drinking the last of the cereal milk (thankful we’d thought to buy paper bowls and plastic utensils) when I remembered something.

There was a light knock on the bedroom door and he answered it. I expected Hayden, but to my surprise, there stood Julz. A fake smile plastered across her face. “I expect to see everyone at the dinner table tonight. Except the sick one, he can stay away.” I had an eyebrow raised at her. It wasn’t intentional but it wasn’t controllable either.

“We will see you then.” And he closed the door in her face.

It was obviously killing her to smile at me. She probably didn’t mind that he closed the door on her. I imagine her smile was gone before the door even latched. I also noticed that she didn’t even attempt to step into the room.

Her voice startled me as I heard her from outside the door. ”Hayden! Out, now!” Oliver immediately swung open our door again. Hayden’s door was open, and from where I sat, it revealed hot pink walls and the side of a tall silver cabinet. Hayden and Felix stepped into view from inside her room. Felix gave Julz a menacing glare that scared me and I couldn’t fight the urge to cringe back a little.
Maybe going to Lilly’s wasn’t such a bad idea.

“Everything okay?” Oliver asked.

Julz spun around on him and pointed a finger at his chest. “You keep your pedophile partner away from my daughter!”

I watched as his body tensed and he leveled his face with hers and growled, “My partner, who has kept your daughter safe her entire life, is de-briefing her about your trip like I asked him to do.”

Her eyes bugged at him as he rose to his full height. She slammed her arms down against her sides and stomped off. Oliver closed the door without another word.

She was a bitch. There was just no other way to put it.

Once he was sitting beside me on the bed I admitted that I didn’t feel completely safe with Miss Unpredictable–wow, look at all the names I have for her–around.

“She won’t come in here.”

“Why not?” What the hell was stopping her from busting through the door?

“Because I told her not to,” he stated simply. Then, without even a glance at me, he got up and left the room. Odd…I imagined she was the type to do things
because
you told her not to do them.

Chapter 7 - Fists Full of Amethyst

No one but Isaac had made it to dinner that previous night and that sent Julz into another fit of crazies. Oliver told me that he explained to her, like you would a child, that if she doesn’t behave herself she won’t get what she wants. So until then, no one would be joining her for dinner. That hadn’t gone over very well, and it was clear that she was still in a rage the next morning because when I was awakened with a start I realized she was on one of her freakout fits of hysteria again. Can you say drama queen? Spoiled brat, maybe? Deranged lunatic seemed rather fitting.

I lay there for a few minutes, letting my pulse slow, then I heard the sound that had actually startled me awake. Something so ear-splitting and terrifying that my heart began to race once more because it wasn’t a female scream this time.
Was it Carter? Had things turned for the worse?
Just then the door was nosed open and Lola padded in and hopped into bed with me. She nuzzled my neck and then settled with her back against me and her head on Oliver’s pillow. I turned onto my side and wrapped an arm around her as I listened. With the door open, it was easier to make out what was going on. There were heated voices, arguing, but nothing that seemed to warrant such a scream. Then, all at once, everything erupted; Hayden shot past our open bedroom door and into her room across the hall, slamming the door behind her. I could hear and almost feel the rage in Oliver’s voice as he shouted at Julz. She seemed to be trying to match his level with her own. They were two of the most frightening sounds I’d ever heard, almost inhuman. Goosebumps covered my skin and I was tensed up with my arm tight around Lola. My body began to tremble with fear as I tried to decipher why they were fighting. I was unable to make out most of what they were screaming and shouting at one another, albeit because most of Oliver’s was in a foreign language I didn’t understand. But I heard loud and clear when she shrieked, “I hate you!” And he returned it with a venomous, “Not as much as I hate you.” She screeched again and the arguing continued.

I felt a chill work its way up my spine and Lola whimpered. Hayden’s door opened a crack. “Psst, come here.” She waved us over to her room. I slid out from under the blankets, wrapped my fleece around me, then Lola and I scooted quickly across the hall and into Hayden’s room where she closed the door behind us.

More screams and arguing ensued as I sat on Hayden’s scrolly silver bed. With the door closed they were muted, but not by much.

“Do they do this often?” I asked while I took in her room with its hot pink walls. It didn’t seem like the typical teenage room, especially a young teenager’s room. Where were the posters of the heartthrob of the moment? The pictures with friends? The clothes thrown everywhere? It was all missing.

There was a large silver framed mirror over her tidy desk beside her bed, and a long dresser under her bedroom window. The window was covered by sheer aqua curtains with glittery flecks through them and they pooled on the floor on either side of the dresser. The curtains hung from a silver curtain rod with scrolled ends that matched her bed. She also had a tall hutch beside her closet. All the furniture matched: silver metal with scrolls over the doors and just behind the scrolls was the same fabric that was on her bedspread. It had a hot pink and aqua flowered pattern with a bit of orange and a hint of lime green. The only thing that seemed out of sorts was her bedspread that was bundled up at the foot of her bed.

She took a pink glitter covered box from her very organized hutch and sat on the bed beside me and opened it. I expected something exciting or an answer to what was happening outside her bedroom but as she opened the lid it only revealed several different shades of nail polish. She began pulling colors out then said, “Felix had to leave for the day. She’s less respectful when he’s not around.” She began comparing her colors, narrowing her choices and putting back the rejects. She continued explaining as she did so, “She’s pissed because Oliver told her she had to share some memories with you.” She glanced up at me for a brief moment.

“What…? That’s what he wants me to talk to her about?”

“Yep.”

She’d settled on a color, a delicate light pink shade, and began applying it to her toenails. Nothing like dropping a bomb and then going about your business.

I stared at her, I’m sure with my mouth hanging open, as she painted her toes and surprisingly I thought about how dim the lighting was in her room.
Really? I just found out I have to get all up close and personal with a psycho vamp and my concern is poor lighting?
Maybe that vampire bite had left me a little dense…

The bickering ended. There was only silence coming from the other side of the door and then it flew open, hitting the closet door behind it with a loud thud. We both screamed and Lola jumped to her feet and snarled. Oliver was in the doorway. “You scared me!” he said as he entered the room and pulled me off the bed and into his arms.

I was shaken by his behavior in more ways than one. I mustered up a response, “I’ve never heard you like this,” I said against his chest and then I very quietly added, “It scared me.”

He held me tighter and whispered, “I’m so sorry Laney. She brings out the worst in me.” He relaxed his grip on me and held me out to look into my eyes. “I’ll take you to your aunt’s if you’d feel better there.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I wanted to be there with him and I felt happy there with him, minus the Julz factor of course, but I didn’t get to answer because just then, from the hot pink area rug centered in Hayden’s room, Lola sprang to her feet again, hair raised, ears back and lip up in a snarl. She was facing the open door and growling ferociously. There, in the doorway, stood Julz, all wild and crazy looking.

“What do you think you’re doing in here? This is my daughter’s room! You two get back in your room where you belong.” She gestured to Oliver’s room with an overly dramatic movement.

Oliver stepped away from me, placing himself protectively in front of both me and Hayden. Lola was snarling by his side. But none of this seemed to faze Julz. “Get your little
human
back where she belongs,” she hissed.

“You watch yourself,” he growled back in a low, chilling voice.

“Oh, yes sir.” And that wicked little smile of hers appeared. “Anything you say,
master
.”

He lowered his voice even more and very steadily said, “Stop, Julz.”

“Of course,
master
,” she said in a somehow very sugary sweet but wicked voice. “One has to obey their
maker
.”

In that moment, everything slowed down as what she said sank in. Her evil smile stayed in place and any happiness I had left deflated right out of me in that instant. A look of sheer pleasure spread across her face as I turned my focus to Oliver. His back was to me and I watched his head drop and a sigh escape him as he picked up on my realization.

“You’re her maker?” I whispered.

With his back still to me he nodded. My heart felt like it hit my stomach and then wanted to come up through my throat. My stomach turned. My head was full of instant pressure and I could feel the sting of tears threatening to surface.

“I see,” I breathed. I should’ve seen this. I should’ve put it together. My mind clouded over with an overwhelming realization that she was whom he’d drunk from before me. That her blood flowed through him before mine had and he didn’t tell me. That he had kept
this
from me. From within my spaced-out-ness I saw his head turn to look at me from the corner of his eye. I shifted then from shocked and hurt to seriously pissed off. With my fists balled as tight as possible I pushed past him to face the gothic bitch (see, another good nickname for her) my almost-life-mate had turned. “Move,” I said with as much venom as I could muster. My eyes narrowed on hers and she smiled even wider, her fangs sliding down as she did so.

“My pleasure. I imagine my
maker
would want me to be polite to his
human
.” And with that snide comment I had two fists full of her obnoxious amethyst hair in my hands and we were falling to the floor.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. The next thing I knew, Julz was laughing demonically on the hallway floor, Hayden was closing her bedroom door with a look of pure sadness and Oliver was shoving me into his room with Lola protectively snarling beside me.

He shut and locked the door once we were inside and Lola lay down against it with her head on her paws, letting out an occasional low growl. Oliver pushed me to the bed and I flopped down on my butt still shocked and confused about what had just happened.

He dropped to his knees in front of me and stared up into my eyes. I met his gaze for a brief moment and then looked down at my hands. There were several purple strands of hair intertwined in my fingers. Oliver looked down at my hands and quickly pulled the hairs free, then tilted my face so he could study my eyes again.

I glared at him and just as I did so we heard Julz’s witchy voice belt out, “I am his!” And it was followed by an evil cackle. The dog growled and I was pretty sure I couldn’t glare any harder.