Chapter Nineteen
I show up at Edward’s at six-thirty in the morning.
Actually, I wake up there in the driver’s seat of my truck, my forehead on the steering wheel. I can’t even remember driving here. Can’t remember getting in the truck to begin with. If I don’t actually walk, can it be called sleepwalking? Is there such a thing as sleep driving?
If there is, I think I just did it.
I blink against the sunlight, the bright bite of unfiltered morning. It’s so early, the birds aren’t even out yet, but the time isn’t important. Vampires don’t sleep, right? My head is still reeling, my heart is still pounding, and my blood still isn’t pushing through me just right. I still can’t believe last night. The car. The leaves. The changing of him, or me, or maybe both of us. The reaching for me and then the pulling away.
Next time he reaches, I’m not flinching.
“Took you long enough.” Edward grins as he opens the creaky truck door, like he was expecting me or something. My smile comes on so fast I can feel it burning up my face.
“It’s like the crack of fucking dawn,” I say.
I don’t ask; I just head for the house. He’s still standing by the truck, watching me, when I make it up the wide front steps to the door. I look at him once, with my hand on the knob, before I give it a solid twist, giving him more than enough time to stop me. But he doesn’t. So I twist and push and step into a house that smells like a hundred years of discontent and thousand times more dust.
I flop down on a sofa covered with a sheet, white once but now age-stained and grey, squatting in the middle of a moth-eaten living room. I wring my hands and chew on my cheeks, staring at a spot on the tattered carpet. I have ten million questions to ask him, but I can’t get a single one of them into words and out of my mouth.
“You seem… frustrated,” he offers. I’m starting to understand he has more access to my emotions than maybe even I do. I bet my heart is skipping along too quick, and my blood is pumping too fast, and my brain is full of anxiety.
“I am frustrated.”
“About me?” he asks.
“Sometimes,” I huff. “But mostly, it’s Alice. I’m like a dog chasing its tail, just circles that get me nowhere.”
“Maybe you should… stop.” He hesitates before the last word.
“I can’t. I can’t stop. If I stop, I’ll have nothing else.”
Edward makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds like a sigh of pain and rubs a fist into his palm, staring at his feet for a long time before he looks up at me. “I have someone you should meet.”
I wait for this someone to enter the room, expecting a relative, an aunt or a cousin, a grandparent or even another vampire, one who is just as ageless and perfect and pale. But the house is silent and still. No echoing footsteps. No quiet shuffles. Instead, Edward stands and holds a hand out in my direction.
I think I’m supposed to take it, but I just stare.
“Come with me,” he says, and I stand but keep my hands to myself. Something about his voice is telling me what is about to happen isn’t exactly good. Something about his face, the clamp of his jaw, the hard in his eyes, is telling me what is about to happen is probably really fucking bad.
When we step outside, the fog feels like a kiss: heavy and wet and thick enough to leave a mark. If I squint hard enough, I could be anywhere. If I pretend fiercely enough, I could be anything. Edward steps down off the porch, and I follow. He walks slowly toward the woods, his shoes leaving a trail in the dewdrop grass, and his shoulders slicing through the fog. I stay close behind him because my stomach has gone wobbly, and my heart is racing, and I’m scared with no real reason to be, which means I probably have a lot of reasons to be.
“There,” he says, and I look around his arm, searching until I spot something. Someone. Just a few yards away, a silhouette against the grey. Short. Small. With a turned up nose and short choppy hair and…
“No,” I sob, clutching Edward’s arm to stay upright.
She’s standing at the edge of the trees, barefoot with her hair in knots, stooped over just a little like there’s something really interesting at her feet. She is wearing a white nightgown that certainly isn’t hers, but she probably loves it anyway, ribbons and lace around the neck and arms. She looks skinny, like she hasn’t eaten in days, the bones in her wrists standing too tall and the hollows in her cheeks falling too deep. The bags under her eyes are purplish-bruised, and her skin is as pale as Edward’s. Something on the breeze catches her attention, her nose lifting higher and her nostrils flaring, as her head turns and our eyes lock.
Her eyes are as red as our blood-drenched kitchen.
“Alice,” Edward says, low and menacing. There’s a sharp edge to his voice, like he’s warning her. Her eyes dart to him, just for a moment, before they’re locked back on me. Her lips drop open, and her jaw unhinges so far that a wicked black hole appears where her tiny, babbling mouth used to be.
“No, no, no,” I wheeze, my throat so tight I can barely breathe.
Alice takes a step towards us, but she sure doesn’t look like she wants hugging or kissing or some other sisterly reunion. Instead, she looks like a cat that just spotted a mouse. A lion that just spotted a weak, wounded antelope, separated from the herd. Her shoulders hunch, and her red eyes go bottomless, and if she had fur, it would be standing upright. She even does that wiggle, her back end moving as her front end catches up, and before I can even comprehend what that means, Edward shoves me.
Hard.
When I hit the grass, I hit it on hands and knees. There’s screaming and growling and grunting coming from behind me, and when I look back over my shoulder, Edward and Alice are in a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Their arms are swinging, and their legs are kicking, and he’s got her around the neck. I’m about to tell him to let her go, not to hurt her, when I notice that her eyes are locked on me, and her hands are reaching for my hair. Her mouth isn’t full of her crooked square white teeth, but instead, she’s sprouted these giant fucking fangs. At the very moment I realize it, when I really comprehend just what the fuck is going on, Alice breaks free and lunges for me.
I duck and throw my hands over my head.
Like that will help.
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