The Heart's Ashes (32 page)

David nodded,
continuing the conversation, taking my verbal response as if it
were fact—almost as if he ignored the truth I just offered him
privately. A part of me wondered if that’s what he wanted to
believe, if maybe he ignored those thoughts so he didn’t have to
face them.

I looked away
from my dad, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me. He may not be able
to read minds, but he isn’t fooled by my self-sacrificing façade.
He knows I’m hurt about Mike and Emily.

Nothing in my
life is truly okay, and David can pretend all he likes, but nothing
has changed; he’s still leaving, Mike still loves Emily, not me,
and I’m still going to be alone when he’s gone.

Truth is,
though, I am fine with Emily and Mike being together, right now—as
long as David’s here. When he leaves, it’ll all fall apart
again.

Emily and Mike
are great, but only while David and I are, too.

I let my body
drift with the flow of the notes, my fingers scaling easily over
the keys, filling the room with melancholy. As the song came to an
end, I smiled to myself, shifting over slightly to make room for my
vampire.

“
No student today?”

“
No,” I said softly, rubbing the tops of my thighs. “I
cancelled them. I need time to think.”

“
Time to think? About what?”

“
You should know—you’re always in my head.”

“
No, Ara. I’m not.” He closed the cover on the piano and took
my hands. “Sweetheart, I haven’t been hearing you
lately.”

“
What? What’d you mean?”

“
I mean, I—” He nodded, looking down for a second. “I keep
missing things. Thoughts you direct at me are clear, but—at first I
thought you just had a quiet mind. But this is different.
It’s...empty.”

“
My head is empty?”

“
No. I mean, yes. It’s...I don’t know. All I know is that,
when I woke this morning, I thought you were dead for a second.
There was nothing.”

“
Not even dreams?”

“
Nothing. I never really pay much attention to peoples’
thoughts. I hear them so often they become like wind or distant
traffic, but the absence of them is like suddenly becoming deaf.
And I just thought maybe I’d not been paying enough attention, but
when I stopped to listen to you thinking, there was nothing. I got
worried.”

“
Worried?” I said, unconvinced. “Worried people don’t
smile.”

“
Well, I’m not worried anymore.”

“
Why?”

“
Because it’s not me, it’s you.”

“
Okay, that makes me feel better.” Not.

He laughed.
“You’ve mastered it, don’t you see? Ever since we met, Ara, you’ve
been trying to shield or control your thoughts. You’ve just finally
found a way.”

“
I have?”

“
Yes.” He kissed my nose. “It’s not perfect, I still hear you
if I try really hard or if you’re reading a book or have song stuck
in your head, but most of the time, there’s just—” he tapped his
temple, “—nothing.”

“
Hm.” I thought for a second. “I’m not sure what to think
about that.”

“
And I’d have no idea, even if you did.”

“
So, can you hear me now?” I thought about the colour
blue.

“
No.”

“
Now?”

“
Not a word.” Keeping his eyes on our hands, he said, “What is
it you do—when you block me out, what are you doing
then?”

“
I—” I thought about it. “It’s a blanket—a dark blue one, like
shaking the rug out by the lake. I imagine it covering my
thoughts.”

“
And that’s it? That’s all you’ve been doing?”

I nodded.
“Even when I met Eric, I was practicing then. I always felt like he
could read my mind—like he was in my head.”

“
You could feel him in there?”

“
I don’t know. I used to think I could feel you in there.
Around Eric, in fact, even not around him, I sometimes had that
same feeling.”

“
So, you’ve been practicing all this time? Even with me here
to protect you from him?”

“
Especially
with you
here.”

“
Why especially?”

“
Because.” I stood up. “I have thoughts I don’t want you to
hear.”

David stayed
seated, smiling at the piano. “Like the thoughts you have about
Mike.”

I hesitated.
“Yes.”

“
It’s no different to when we were in high school, Ara.” He
turned to me then. “I’ve always had to share your heart with him,
even before you knew you loved me, and nothing changed after
that.”

“
Except that now I admit how I feel to myself.”

“
Yes, then there’s that.” He tapped his foot, chewing the
inside of his lip. “I’d rather to read your thoughts, even if I
don’t like them. This—” He motioned between the two of us. “This
disconnection, this inability to be a part of your every path to
conclusions, it makes me feel uneasy.”

I laughed
internally. I bet it does. He looked up and grinned. “What?” I
said.

“
I heard that.”

“
Oh.”

He moved
closer, sliding his hands along my waist. “See? Not perfect
yet.”

“
Yet.”

“
Do you have any idea how infuriating that is?” he
said.

“
What?”

“
That—” He pointed to my face. “You have this look in your
eye, and I know you’re thinking cheeky thoughts—thoughts you’re not
sharing with me.”

“
You’ll just have to get used to it.” I hugged him, resting my
face to his chest. “Am I the only human to ever block you
out?”

“
No. All humans are capable, just, without the need, they
don’t know they have the strength—like a lot of things. And you’re
not really blocking me out, by the way.” Something in his tone said
he didn’t like the idea of not holding the reigns. “I can get in if
I want to.”

“
Go on then,” I challenged. “Try to read what I’m thinking
now.”

He leaned back a little. “
Are
you thinking now?”

“
I’m always thinking.”

“
Okay, strengthen your blanket and think of a
colour.”

The cover on
my thoughts became black, instead of dark blue, and I imagined it
thickening, from paper to cardboard—hiding blue, no red, wait,
blue.

David laughed.
“Pick a colour, Ara.”

“
I did.”

“
You can’t choose two.”

Fine.
Blue.

He opened one
eye and smiled at me.

“
You know which colour it was, don’t you?”

“
Grey.”

“
Liar. You’re just saying that so I’ll drop my guard around
you.”

“
If I want you to drop your guard, Ara, my dear girl, I don’t
need to lie to you.” He grabbed my hand and drew me into him, his
lips to my brow, his gentle breath on my face with the promise of a
kiss. But he hesitated, softly tracing my skin with his lips. “If I
want you to drop your guard, I can just do this.” He finally kissed
me. “And I can see all the colours I want to see.”

I let out a
shaky breath. “Blue. It was blue.”

He kissed me
again and said, “I know.”

“
David!” We both looked up as the front door slammed, Mike’s
voice, hoarse with distress, searched every corner of the room.
“David!”

David, about
to groan, suddenly looked up, then evaporated. That’s when I felt a
quiver of worry. I rushed to the front entrance and stood frozen,
unable to draw a breath, unable to cover my own gaping mouth.

“
Give her to me.” David grabbed the limp body of my best
friend from Mike’s arms, stopping as we met face to
face.

“
What happened to her?”

“
I’ll give you one guess,” David said, his voice near to
breaking. He pushed past, at human pace, cradling Emily so close
one might’ve thought she was precious to him. Her arm hung loosely
out from the hold, stained with rivers of blood, dried to her
fingertips. Mike walked past me, caught in some voiceless, airless
vortex; his eyes forward, his hand smoothing slowly down his
chin.

“
Mike, what happened?”

But he said
nothing, as if I didn’t even exist. I pinched myself to make sure I
did.

In her room,
David leaned over Emily’s bed, studying her, tilting her head side
to side, shaking his own. “Silly girl,” he said softly.

“
Is it bad?” Mike stood in the middle of the room.

David took a
step back, rolling Emily’s face away so we could see the sticky
mess of hair and blood along the gaping surrounds of a wound across
her shoulder. It looked like someone unsealed her with a can-opener
then peeled back the flesh. My hand flew to my mouth, tight, to
hold in the rising scream.

“
That’s no bite,” David said, and I half expected his voice to
be steady. “Her throat’s been all but ripped out. She went after
Jason, didn’t she?”

Mike snapped
from his voiceless trance and the hand to his brow seemed to push
his body back to the wall. He coughed out the words, “She called
him—confronted him, and he just…he attacked her.” He folded over,
pressing his palms to his forehead. “Oh God. I didn’t know what to
do. I knew hospital couldn’t help her.”

“
No.” David stepped away from the lifeless body of my best
friend and placed his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “No, you did the
right thing. There’s nothing they can do for her now.”

“
For God’s sake.” Mike fought for air, and as he looked at
her, anger bled in the veins of his eyes. “This isn’t right. She
shouldn’t look like that.”

“
Mike, you need to sit.” David grabbed his arm and helped him
to the floor against the wall.

My fingers
twitched. Slowly, warmth crawled through the veins again. “Em?” I
stroked her face, gently, weaving my fingertip over the lines of
blood across her eye, nose and lip. “She isn’t gonna make it, is
she, David?”

She looked so
twisted and awkward, her face absent of the life, the glee it
always held, even when she was sleeping. It was like someone had
not only killed her, but stolen her last breath of happiness before
they did.

“
How could he?” I looked up at David, hovering near by, his
eyes fixed on our Emily. All the things I’d started to believe
about Jason—that maybe he had some small manner of humanity inside
him, just slipped away—lost to this tragedy before me.

“
Believe it or not, this isn’t like him, Ara,” David said, his
gaze distant.

“
What do you mean? He’s a monster!”

“
I mean, this—” He turned Emily’s head to show the laceration,
the tear that took out nearly half her throat. “This looks like an
attack—something my brother was never capable of.”

“
He attacked me! How can you say he—”

“
He didn’t do
this
to you, Ara. He didn’t rip your throat out! Your
bite,” he yelled, grabbing my face gently, turning it to see the
mark. “Yours was a focused, calculated bite. Not this. Not Emily’s.
Whatever she did, whatever she said to him, he meant to kill
her—not change her.”

I rose
quickly, stepping in to him.

“
What do we do?” Mike asked, and everyone looked back at
Emily.

“
Nothing.”

I felt the
terror rise in the room then, washing us all with cold
realisation.

“
Will she change?” Mike slid up the wall.

I waited,
breathless.

“
Her heart’s weak—”

A gust of air
burst from Mike’s lips.

“
It’s not likely she has the strength to take on the
change.”

“
No,” Mike’s voice was so quiet, his eyes, teared, stayed on
his Emily. “She deserved better than this.”

“
I know.” David placed a reassuring hand to Mike’s shoulder.
“But she’s at peace now.”

The numbness
incepted from the imminent death of Emily reseeded, leaving me
reduced to tears, no longer holding back the quiver of my lip. And
my heart only hurt more for the watching, for seeing Mike’s lip
tremble too, his hands, so large, so protective, which couldn’t
save Emily, couldn’t help her, slowly fall toward her, slowly lift
her in his arms and cradle her as he sat in the pool of blood on
her bed, rocking back and forth, unable to take it all back.

“
She shouldn’t look like this, David,” Mike cried, his eyes
closed. “She doesn’t belong here.”

My legs shook
too much to stand; I dropped softly to my knees beside the bed and
took Emily’s hand, so carefully, so as not to bend her arm backward
or disturb the blood that rested there; why I felt it belonged, I
don’t know. Perhaps madness stole a breath I owned for that one
moment. But guilt took over like a disease, and I saw her
future—the life she might’ve had if I’d not come here.

“
Ara.” David touched my shoulder, squatting beside me; “You
need to get Mike out of here.”

“
No!” Mike raged, clutching Emily tighter. “I’m not leaving
her.”

“
You can’t stay here for this.” David stood. “It’s not right
to watch a person die.”

“
Please.” Mike’s tears fell past his lips, over Emily’s golden
hair. “Please, I only just got her back. She can’t die. I can’t
lose her.”