The Night House (18 page)

I stare at the floor then, because, my reason sounds stupid.
Because I want her to. Because I like her.

“She hates it there. She just doesn’t think she’s strong enough without it. Maybe I can show her the strength she already has.”

But first, I have to find my own.

Bianca

I wake up, terrified that I’ve slept past noon, and I jump out of bed to check my alarm clock. Ten fifteen. My legs scream with pain, and I fall to the floor.

Idiot
.

My vision spins, and I hold my head. When I’m back on this plane, I slowly sit up and lean against my dresser. After a few minutes, I rise to my knees, then to my feet. My whole body feels cold. I go into the kitchen and stuff my face, but I still feel like I shed fifty pounds last night.

This morning I sit in the tub because it hurts too much to stand. I run the water cold at first, to wake myself up and to bring down the swelling in my legs. I see my thighs for the first time since last night. They’re not as awful as they would have been without Finn’s help, but they still look like I’ve been attacked by a wild animal.

I guess I was.

My closet presents a challenge as I try to dress modestly for the day. I manage to find a black skirt that covers the bandages around my thighs, a tiny cardigan and my scarf.

Then it’s eleven thirty, and I have to go. I try not to make noise. If Finn found me sneaking out, he would probably break my legs just to stop me from leaving.

It feels like I’m getting punched in the stomach with every step, so wherever we go better not be far.

Ideas float around in my head when I see James sitting on the bench. He’s definitely more awkward than normal, but I can’t place what’s off. Something about the way he’s sitting.

“Hey,” he says and slides over. “
Please
sit down.”

“Oh…” I sit with my head hanging low. “You’re in pain.”

“A little,” he lies. I stare at him, and he says, “Okay, yeah, I’m in pain.”

Before I can yell at him for being an idiot, he speaks again.

“I know vampires don’t like sunlight, but what exactly happens to them?”

“It’s like when we’re in darkness. It’s more scary than it is harmful, because they know that they’re vulnerable. They can’t see as well.”

He nods, but it doesn’t seem to ease the jumpiness in his gaze. “So they wouldn’t go out unless they absolutely had to?”

“Yeah. James, what’s wrong?”

He pulls at the edge of his sleeve “Nothing, really. Maybe I’m just worried about your boss not liking what I’m doing.”

My mouth goes dry. “He sent someone, didn’t he?”

“It’s nothing, Bianca. Really.”

“No, it’s something. Tell me what happened.”

He shifts around, still debating whether he should tell me. “Last night, this guy came up to me. Okay, not a guy, a vampire.”

“You’re sure?” I ask. “It’s hard to tell the difference.”

“Well, I’ve never met a human with fangs,” he says, and I hear anxiety slip into his voice. “He didn’t do anything. Just scared the hell out of Ally and me.”

“He didn’t hurt you?”

“No. Just made an impression.”

I keep my hand on his arm. “I’m really sorry. The only thing that will make him go away is if we stop—”

“I know.” He takes my hand off his arm. “What happened to you last night? There weren’t any drugs.”

I cover my face. I really don’t want to have to explain everything about my job, but I guess he has a right to know, now that he’s working it too.

“Sometimes, the clients are there for the biting, not the blood.”

He shivers. “So that kind of thing has happened before?”

I nod.

We go silent. The awkwardness of the bite site doesn’t need to be mentioned. He feels it too. But it weighs on my mind.

“James…” My voice is heavy. “We can’t—”

He puts his hand on mine and squeezes it tightly. I freeze.

“Please, Bianca, let’s at least try to enjoy ourselves a little.”

We both stare straight ahead, and I try to ignore his hand. He’s holding my hand. I’m not in high school. This is stupid. He was only trying to get my attention.

Then why is my pulse getting faster?

He feels everything I do.

“Okay,” I say and pull my hand away.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“Not really.”

He starts to say something, but it catches in his throat.

“What?” I ask.

“Well, you could always come back to my house. I think you’d like it.”

My first thought is that walking into a house full of people who can feel my pain is the opposite of a good idea, but then I remember he was adopted.

“Does your family know about me?” I ask.

“I told my sister and my best friend Shiloh, but my parents don’t know. They don’t even know about my ability.”

“But your sister?”

“Isn’t home,” he says. “None of them are. My parents took her to a concert in New Jersey.”

“Call a cab, because I’m
not
walking.”

“Thank God,” he breathes.

James

A cab picks us up at the corner of the park. With her back to me, she stares out the window. I find myself mentally tracing the lines of her: the angles of her bent legs, the circles of her scarf, the ridges of her spine. Then I turn my head away because it feels like I need her permission before I can admire her like that.

She’s feeling a lot, but the last thing I expected her to be was nervous. Her gaze travels up the front of my house, a little surprised at how big it is. I’ve never felt embarrassed by my family’s status before. When I open the door, she slips past me and walks into the foyer, turning in a slow circle.

“So, how long have you lived here?” she asks.

I put my hands in my pockets. “Almost six years.”

“How many places have you lived?”

“It’s been a while since I moved, but…maybe ten? More? I’m not really sure. I was a hard kid to place.”

She smiles just a little. “You got me beat, then.” She stands in front of one of the paintings. It’s just huge gashes of color in the white canvas. Bianca holds her hands behind her back and tilts her head to the side.

“My mom did that,” I say. “She calls them stress paintings. Whenever she needs to get an emotion off her chest, she just sort of throws it at the canvas.”

She nods, and I feel her understanding. Leaving her to admire my parents’ work, I head into the kitchen so that I’ll stop looking at her. Soon after, she sits on a barstool at the island behind me.

“I was going to have some aspirin and water,” I say. “Should I make that two?”

A smile plays at her mouth, but she denies it. “Aspirin is a blood thinner. Do you have Tylenol?”

“We got everything,” I say and open up the cabinet full of vitamins, tea, and medicine.

“Are you guys health conscious or what?”

I hand her a bottle of Tylenol. “They’re vegan, actually. It’s kind of the same thing.”

I sit across from her and slide her glass of water over. She takes it and swallows three pills.

“So Ally is your parents’ biological daughter?”

“No, she was in foster care too. The Fieldses adopted her, and she kind of convinced them to adopt me when I was twelve. She was that girl who always wanted a sibling.”

Bianca stares into the glass before drinking the last of it and sets it softly on the table. Her gaze is fixed on her hands. The self-loathing is hard to take, the way it comes off her in waves, crashing into me. She wishes she hated me.

“I like you,” I say, my voice far too quiet.

“You
pity
me.” Fear tangles in her eyes. I don’t know what she’s afraid of, but she feels every inch of space between us. Or maybe that’s just me.

“Bianca, you’re not a charity case I want to get off the streets. I’m not here because I feel bad for you.” I reach for her hand, and her terror slams into my chest. Fear of me. Of what I’m saying. It’s not the kind of fear she wants to hide from, but the kind she wants to chase. I know because I feel it too. We’re getting to know each other. I take her hand again, and she doesn’t flinch.

“I’m here because
I feel you
. Your pain, your sadness, your hatred.” Her hand trembles gently in mine. “You want to hate me, and I understand, but I like you. I see the part of you that wants to be saved. I feel her too.” I close my other hand on top of hers, and she takes a ragged breath. “Don’t let go.”

She tries to inhale, but she chokes on it and a tear rolls down her pale cheek. “James,” she breathes. “You have no idea what’s going on.”

“Then tell me. That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do this whole time. Just talk to me.”

She takes another deep breath, trying to hold back the tears, but it hurts her to keep it all inside.

“Let me help you.”

She raises her face toward me, and tears flow freely from her eyes. “I don’t deserve it.” Then she covers her face. “It’s not fair. I never asked for your help, and now you’ve turned everything around on me. All I can think about is how I’m hurting you.”

I sit down on the barstool next to her and run my hand along her spine. I feel her tears roll over my skin.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” she asks.

“No. I can’t.”

The tears still fall, but she attempts to control her breathing. She can’t meet my gaze, but I feel something coming on. Her chest is tight, and she is pressing her hand into her thigh.

“My parents died when I was thirteen.”

Her

It’s too painful to stand up there beside the matching coffins, so she sits instead. The memory of that night is a scar on her heart. It has settled into the screams of her parents and the wind stinging her eyes as she is carried away.

Now she watches perfect strangers admire them, pray for them, and cry for them.

“They were such good neighbors.”

“They babysat my kids for me.”

“That poor girl.”

They have no idea.

She squeezes fistfuls of lace in her hands. There isn’t enough anger in the world to fill the empty hole inside her. All these people masquerade in front of her, pretending like they knew her parents. Her parents were better than all of them.

They were strong.

If only she had been as strong as them. Maybe, just maybe, she could have fought with them. She could have saved them. At the very least, she could have died with them.

It would have been easier than this.

***

She lies awake, staring out the window. The moon still fills her with hatred and fear. The nighttime is
their
time. She isn’t safe. She’ll never be safe.

Every second that she’s alone, her mind falls back to that night, trying to breathe in that too tight dress, listening to her parents fight for their lives. And then, those strong arms carrying her to safety. She didn’t do anything. Didn’t even try to help them.

For a while, she was mad at her parents. If they had only trained her, she might have been able to help them. But that anger was too painful. She would have hated the training anyway.

It’s been a year since she’s come to the orphanage. Her parents’ relatives had all died long ago—probably killed by vampires. Now it’s just her. Emptiness twists inside her gut like a knife. It would be so much better if she could just harden herself altogether. If she could stop feeling, she could stop hurting.

Everyone knows the longer you’re here, the less likely you are to be adopted. It’s bad enough she’s stuck in a group home rather than in foster care. It wasn’t said outright, but she knows it’s because she’s too messed up. The night terrors, the trust issues, the swelling rage. More than that, they shied away from the fact that her parents were murdered, and they still had not caught the culprits.

People don’t want to adopt broken children.

She remembers meeting with a family when she first got there. They’d been so nervous, in an innocent kind of way.

“So, how are you?” the woman asked her. The woman had short brown hair that framed her round face. Young, but not too young. The man at her side had his arm around her. He pushed his glasses up with his free hand and smiled at the lonely girl in front of them. They were so happy.

She didn’t even realize she’d started crying until the woman awkwardly patted her arm. “It’s okay,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” she snarled.

Because the only thing worse than ending up alone would be finding some other perfect family to live with. She doesn’t deserve happiness.

The only thing that keeps her going now is the dream of running away to New York. There, she could have a life of her own. Far away from the pain of that night. She wants a state border between her and her old home.

And yet, there could be even more vampires in that city. With all those people packed into such a small area, it would be easy for them. The thought makes her claustrophobic.

But maybe that’s what she wants.

A place to train.

To be like her parents.

Hunters.

The word gives her strength.

***

The train station is about a mile away from the orphanage. The walk is nothing. She barely feels it with the wash of adrenaline she gets every time the wind blows. She’s finally doing something. Getting away. She’s refusing to be afraid. But there is a snag in her plans.

“How can I help you?” the woman behind the counter asks.

“I want a train ticket to New York,” she says.

The woman studies her. “Honey, this train doesn’t go to New York.”

Her mouth falls open. “Well, where does it go?”

“You can go to Philadelphia and get a transfer to New York, but it costs extra.”

“How much,” she asks, gripping her only twenty-dollar bill tightly.

“At least thirty.”

She lets out a sigh and deflates, leaning her head on the counter. New York is perfect for her. Not Philadelphia. It’s too close. Still, it’s the closest thing she’ll get.

“I guess I’m going to Philadelphia.”

***

Winter is a cruel reminder to her that she can’t do anything right. She left in the spring with no heavy clothes, and now she suffers the consequences. The cold wind has brought one good thing: numbness. She can barely feel how hungry she is, or how lonely she is.