Supernaturally (15 page)

Guilty is as Guilty Does

L
end
didn’t take his arm from around my shoulders, hugging me as much as holding me up. Even though I buzzed with nervous, guilty energy, I felt hollowed out, like I could collapse at any moment. Raquel paced back and forth in front of us, her pumps snapping twigs. After David called her she’d wanted to take us to the Center to talk, but Lend refused.

Jack appeared, out of breath. “Told everyone the cops were coming; the cemetery’s cleared.” Luckily Carlee didn’t remember anything from being under the vampire’s compulsion; she just felt a little dizzy and suspected someone of spiking her drink. If only. Jack had taken her back to the group, none the wiser.

He looked at Lend and glowered. “I was just about to save her. You didn’t need to come.”

I glared at him. He hadn’t saved me. Lend had. He thought he’d saved me from being drained, but really he’d saved me from draining the vampire. I wondered what he’d think if he knew he’d attacked the wrong monster.

No. I wasn’t a monster. Uber-vamp deserved it. And Lend saved me from myself. It was fine.

“Look,” I said, “it doesn’t make sense. There’s no other explanation besides the faeries!”

“But why would a faerie take the vampire from the Center?”

I forced my eyes not to roll. “Umm, to kill me? Because they hate me? They sent Vivian after me before. This is probably just the Dark Queen’s new tactic. There’ve been too many faerie coincidences and weird attacks lately.”

“But only the transport faeries even knew about the vampire being in the Center.”

“It only takes one, now, doesn’t it?” Lend said.

Raquel sighed; I was too tired and edgy to even try and interpret. “I checked our logs, and both transport faeries that handled him were on assignment and accounted for the entire night.”

“Then how do you explain his ankle tracker being deactivated?” I asked.

She rubbed her eyes. “I can’t. It could have been a data entry error. We couldn’t tell if the tracker’s locator had ever been properly activated, which shouldn’t have been a problem, since he was never supposed to be released from Containment.”

“I’m so comforted.”

“We’ve got him in our high-security section now, and I promise there’s no way even a faerie can get him out.”

I folded my arms. I knew I was being petulant, but it was late, I was tired, and my sugar high had crashed in the worst possible way. I hated tonight. I hated what I’d done. I hated that I didn’t hate it, and part of me felt like it was totally justified. There were enough unanswered questions in my life; I didn’t like having to wonder whether or not I was a good person.

“Fine. I’m going home. And if I’m tardy for school because I sleep in, I expect you to call and excuse it.”

Patting me on the hand, Raquel checked my neck again, then Lend took me home. He came upstairs with me and held me when I burst into tears as soon as we got to my room.

“I’m so sorry, I never should have let you go alone. If I hadn’t come back . . . I can’t even think about it. Evie, I’m so, so sorry.”

I shook my head, burying my face in his chest. He had no idea. “It’s not your fault. Thanks for . . . saving me.”

He stayed with me until two or three. I wasn’t crying anymore, and after checking my neck wound again and making me swear to call him if I needed anything else at all, he headed back to school for his early morning lab.

I lay in bed, fully dressed in my stupid costume, exhausted but unable to stop my mind from spinning in angry circles. Of course it had been a faerie who set Uber-vamp loose on me. Apparently now that I was dangerous, they were sending other paranormals to do their dirty work. Typical faeries—devious
and
lazy. It was their fault I’d lost control and nearly drained the vampire all the way. Their fault, not mine.

I didn’t know I’d fallen asleep until I realized Vivian was sitting next to me on a grassy hill.

“What’s wrong this time?”

I startled, looking at her and biting my lip. I hadn’t talked with her since the sylph. She was the person most likely to understand what I was going through, how bad I felt about what I’d done, but how justified it was, too.

She was also the last person on the planet I could talk to. Because if I did, then I admitted I was as weak as she was. No. I wasn’t like her. I was defending myself!

But then again, it wasn’t really her fault, was it? “It’s all the faeries’ fault. Everything. You shouldn’t be here, like this.”

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, then looked down at the grass she was sitting on, pulling some out between her fingers. “I made my choices, Evie. They were the wrong ones.”

“But the faeries forced you! They tricked you!” It was their fault everything was wrong, their fault Lish was dead, their fault I couldn’t be happy.

She sighed. “Listen. I did what I did. And I can’t make it right. No faerie made me kill those paranormals. I
liked
what I was doing.” I opened my mouth to argue with her, but she put her hand over mine. “No. I know you’re trying to forgive me, but don’t rationalize it. You owe your friends more than that. I didn’t kill them because faeries made me—I killed them because I was desperate and alone and I wanted to. I thought I was doing them a favor, but, more than that, I liked the way it made me feel. And that’s the worst part. It was always, always about me. And if you hadn’t stopped me, I’d probably still be doing it.”

Her words hung heavy between us. An ugly darkness, cold and empty, seeped through my own sad little soul. I wanted her to blame the faeries. Why did she have to bring all this stuff up when I wanted to forget it? And why the bleep did
her
confessions make
me
feel guilty?

“But the faeries,” I said, a whine creeping into my voice. “They ruined your life. They won’t stop making mine a mess. Without them, we could have—everything would be different. Easier.”

Vivian laughed, her voice hard. “Screw the fey—they can’t touch me now. And I can’t touch them, more’s the pity. I’d kill every single one of them if I could for what they did to us. But I’m pretty sure that without them neither of us would exist. It’s probably better I’m stuck here in dreamland so I don’t have any more souls on my hands. Literally.”

She grinned wickedly and elbowed me. I let out a pained laugh, but really I wanted normal sleep tonight, sleep free from conversations that hurt my head and made me ache.

I closed my eyes and opened them to my dark room. For a minute I thought I was still asleep, that Viv and I had switched locations, until I realized the person sitting on the edge of my bed staring at me wasn’t my crazy sister.

Matters of Life and Undeath

I
sat
up in bed, my heart racing, and swallowed the scream just in time as I recognized the spiky hair. I flicked on the lamp by my bedside. “Arianna? You scared the crap out of me. What’s wrong?”

She wasn’t staring at me but rather right past my head, at a blank spot on the wall. Her glamour eyes looked as dead as her real ones. “I don’t understand it. Any of it.”

“I’m sorry?”

Her eyes focused on me, and she shook her head slowly. “Lend told me what happened. About the vampire. Evie, I don’t want to be one. This isn’t me, this thing, this living, endless nightmare I’ve become. I shouldn’t exist. I wish I didn’t.” Her voice was low, even. It was scarier than if she were upset or crying. “Did you know my name isn’t Arianna? It was Ann. I hated that name. Plain and boring, like me, and my life, and my family. I hated my family, too. They were WASPs, as middle-class and conventional as possible. My mom did crafts and worked on the school board, and my dad was an accountant. They wanted me to be blond, and happy, and on teams. They were always pushing teams—swim, cheer, track, it didn’t matter. They wanted me to fit somewhere. That was the last thing I wanted.

“My mom and I used to fight over what color my hair was, my newest piercing, my music. When I dropped out and left for fashion school, I didn’t say good-bye, or thank you, or I love you. I was glad to leave them. They told me I was being stupid, moving to a big city where I didn’t know anyone and barely had enough money to live. I didn’t care. I was finally going to figure out who I was, find somewhere I could be different.

“Then I met Felix, and he was dark and delicious and everything my family wasn’t. He told me I belonged with him, that our love would last forever, that he saw who I really was, who I could be. He promised to show me the world. I never noticed that his world was always night.

“And then he bit me, and the first time I liked it. But then he did it again, and drank my blood, and I passed out. When I woke up, he told me what he was. I didn’t believe him, thought he was crazy. I’d let him in too fast, and he knew where I went to school, where I worked, where I lived. I didn’t feel safe anywhere. So I went home. I got there at night, pulled up in front of the house. I could see my parents through the bay window, reading in the living room, and it was light, and warm, and safe. I started up the walk, and then Felix stood from where he was sitting on my porch, waiting for me.

“My parents found me there the next morning, dead.”

I fought back tears. I’d never heard her talk about how this happened to her. Vampires had always made the least sense to me—how could a human become an immortal paranormal, and why did they have glamours? Werewolves were weird, sure, but they didn’t have immortality or glamours. Raquel had never been able to explain where vampires came from. All she knew was that in order to become one, you have to be bitten more than once over the space of a month or so, and the vamp has to leave you alive just enough for the change to take place before your heart stops. It’s not easy, and for the most part vampires have no interest in swelling their ranks. Good thing, too, because if all it took was one bite, the world would have been overrun by bloodsuckers centuries ago.

Arianna always seemed so tough, so jaded, sometimes I even wondered if she had sought out a vampire and been changed on purpose. In spite of her emotionless tone, my heart broke knowing the truth—she was just a girl trying to find a place to fit in. It sounded familiar.

She continued. “Of course, I don’t remember them finding me. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a morgue. Felix was there, waiting for me, with this look on his face. He was so excited. He thought he’d done something wonderful.”

“Where is he now?” I whispered.

“I went with him, because I had nowhere else to go and no idea how to live as a vampire. Then he picked out a lonely, artistic girl, we stalked her, and he lured her into an alley for us.”

My stomach clenched. I didn’t think Arianna had ever killed a person. Did David know about her past?

She closed her eyes. “And when Felix lulled her into bending her head to the side and offering us her neck, I killed him.”

“Wait—you killed
him
?”

She looked at me for the first time since she started her story. “I was already this thing, this mockery of life. He took away everything that I was, everything I could have been. I wasn’t going to let him do that to anyone else.”

I sat, dumbly, with no idea what to say. She and David were total pacifists when it came to dealing with other paranormals, but she’d killed another vamp to protect an innocent girl. Did that make what I did okay, then? Because Uber-vamp would have hurt other people. Carlee, the other kids. I know he would have. I shook my head, focusing. “Arianna, I’m so sorry.”

She smiled sadly. “Doesn’t matter. Eventually I found David, and here I am. And here I’ll stay, because eternal life is no life at all, and I have no idea what to do about it. Ann’s dead, and I’m stuck here, dead and alive and neither.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “You’re alive! You’re still a person.”

She looked at me, her eyes sharp once again. “Don’t lie to me, Evie. You can see exactly what I am.”

I cringed, wondering how bad a job I’d done all these months of pretending like I wasn’t horrified by the way she looked under her glamour. “That’s not you, though!”

“I know what I am. I just don’t understand why.” She stood. “I shouldn’t have woken you up. Sometimes I like to watch you sleep, though. I wish I could sleep. Sleep and never wake up.”

Before I could say anything she walked out of my room and out of the apartment. I sat, stunned, then flopped back onto my bed.

Why had I ever thought life would be easier out of the Center?

Tree Hugger

L
end
sat, touching me from our shoulders down to our feet, in the diner booth. One perk to being attacked by Uber-vamp was that Lend had been distinctly silent on the issue of IPCA’s containment methods. Seeing firsthand what some paranormals did made IPCA’s standards a lot less suspect.

Unfortunately that was about the only good thing to come out of last night. It was all I could do not to bounce up and down, my fingers tapping out a nervous pattern on the table. I felt keyed up, full to bursting with anxious energy. I didn’t want to think where it came from. I hoped it wasn’t Uber-vamp’s soul inside me. It was just . . . I don’t know, leftover nerves. That was it.

I jumped as Nona set our plates down on the table, then swished back to the kitchen.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lend asked.

“Fine. Fine. I’m fine.” I reached up to scratch my neck but stopped. It was sore but already healing. If it scarred, Uber-vamp was going to pay.

Then again, he already had. My stomach soured, the grilled cheese sandwich in front of me suddenly inedible.

“Hey, kids.” David slid in across from us, worry creasing his forehead as he looked at my neck. “How are you, Evie?”

I waved a hand dismissively, bouncing my knee up and down under the table. “Just tired. Skipped school today to sleep. I’ll be okay. Where’s Arianna?” She hadn’t been home this morning. She was
always
home. The way she talked last night, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she was tired enough of eternal life to do something about it. Poltergeist Steve flashed through my mind and I struggled not to panic. Whatever else Arianna was, she was my friend. I couldn’t lose her.

“She texted, said she couldn’t make the meeting today.”

I wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not. At least she was still in contact with David. I’d have to get her alone, talk to her, do something to make things better. If only I could figure out what.

“Raquel called this morning, too.”

I looked up, surprised. “Do you two talk a lot?”

David gave a noncommittal shrug. “She wanted to make sure I was checking up on you. She’s worried. You think the attack last night was related to the fey?”

Lend gently removed my hand from where I was unconsciously peeling at the bandage. He kept my hand in his, stroking it with his thumb. I stopped bouncing my knee and took a deep breath. Focusing on Lend’s hand helped me calm down.

“Yeah. I do. There have been too many weird things. First the sylph, then the fossegrim—”

“But wasn’t that random? Jack dropped you in the water.”

“Oh.” I frowned. I hadn’t thought about that. How would the faeries have known I would hit the water there, then? Maybe my luck just sucked. Then again, I already knew that. “But Reth’s been here a couple of times, and then there was the faerie I saw walking down the street, plus a faerie showed up at the Center when I was there and Raquel had to get rid of her. And then the vampire. No one but a faerie could have pulled that off.”

“True.” David rubbed his eyes wearily. Lend did the exact same thing when he was worried. Sometimes their similarities, the way they laughed at old jokes I would never get, the warm playful ease they had with each other made me hurt. Lend was so lucky to have a dad like David. I wished it were my dad rushing here to check up on me instead of my boyfriend’s.

I felt eyes on me and looked up to see the same froglike old woman that had ahemed at Lend and me kissing on the sidewalk what felt like an eternity ago. She was outside the diner, staring in through the window. At me. I narrowed my eyes, but then the woman looked past me at something and abruptly turned around and walked away. I whipped around to see Grnlllll, making a furious shooing motion with her small, pawlike hands.

“What was that about?” I asked, but the gnome ignored me entirely, going back behind the counter where she couldn’t be seen. Kari and Donna were sitting there on barstools, halibut plates untouched as they watched me with their huge, round eyes. They broke into identical playful smiles. Mischievous smiles . . .

“Maybe this isn’t
just
the faeries, though,” I said, suspicion rising. I stood and walked straight back toward the kitchen. Grnlllll jumped out in front of me, trying to block my way and grumbling something, but I stepped over her and burst through the door.

Nona was back there, leaning over a large, intricately carved wooden bowl.

And
talking
to it.

“. . . under our care. Continue the gathering. Things will be in place when the time is right, and—”

Nona looked up, surprised to see me. “Who are you talking to?” I demanded, rushing over. Before I could get to the bowl she swished her hand in it, and when I leaned over all I saw was rippling water. “What are you doing?”

Her beautiful lips broke into that same infuriating smile. “Nothing, child.”

“Liar!” I shouted. I heard the door behind me open again.

“What’s the problem?” David asked.

“She is!” I pointed an angry finger at the tree spirit. “She’s lying! She was talking to a bucket of water. Something is going on, but she won’t tell me what. First she was meeting with Reth, now there are all the weird new paranormals in town, and they watch me! I know they’re watching me!” I turned my glare back to her. “You’re working with the faeries, aren’t you?”

Nona’s face went serious. “No, child. I am not. The fey are no friends of my kind. And I promise you what I have always promised—you are safe here. I will never let harm befall you while you are under my care.”

“But I’m
not
under your care!”

“Evie,” David said, his voice even as he put a hand on my shoulder. Lend stood protectively on my other side. “I’ve known Nona for a long time now. And huldras can’t lie. She isn’t trying to hurt you.”

“Please excuse me,” Nona said, picking up the bowl and carrying it out the back door.

I was left fuming. “How do you know they can’t lie? Besides, what is she even doing here? Why would a tree spirit want to run a diner?”

David shrugged. “A lot of elementals and paranormals mix with humans every now and again. It’s entertaining, I guess.” Was that how he viewed Cresseda’s relationship with him? He entertained her for a bit? I didn’t understand how he lived with that kind of pain and rejection.

I shook my head. “I don’t buy it.” My head hurt. My neck hurt. My brain hurt. My whole
life
hurt today.

“If Nona wanted to harm you or turn you over to the faeries, wouldn’t she have done it already?” Lend asked. “I mean, you’ve lived here for months now. I know weird things have been happening, but I really don’t think Nona’s behind them.”

I sighed. He was probably right. “But what about the staring? They’re always staring at me!”

“You are rather nice to look at, you know.”

“Har, har.”

“Seriously, though, they’re probably just curious. Most of them don’t know what you are, but they know that you know what
they
are. It’s not normal. Simple curiosity.”

“Fine,” I mumbled. Maybe I was being paranoid.

Lend put his arms around me, resting his forehead against mine. “Believe it or not, I worry more about your safety than you do. And if you’re really worried about it, let’s get you out of here. You can move back in with my dad. Right?”

David nodded. “If it’ll make you feel better, of course.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to live with David again without Lend there. I liked him, but, awkward. And I really didn’t want to leave Arianna alone. They were right. I was probably overreacting about Nona. This was faerie mischief, not hers.

Still, I knew when I was being lied to. And I was never taking the trash out for that ratty little gnome again.