Chapter XXII. 2007
CHAPTER XXII
Camilla’s mouth tasted of syrup. Like pink lemonade left too long in the sun. It coated her tongue, and she had the urge to spit. To scrape it with something sharp.
She was not yet awake. Not quite. But her awareness was there, lying quietly in wait for her to return to it.
But she was frightened. There was something waiting for her. She could feel its presence in the room. The slick sensation of its teeth working against her skin, its breath hot against her thigh.
If she held herself still, curled as she was in the depths of sleep, the monster wouldn’t find her.
It was her father’s voice that cut through that safety. “Camilla? Honey?”
She groaned and shifted, the animal smell of her body rising thick as she opened her eyes in thin slits. Everything ached. Her head. Her muscles. The vestigial reminders of a night spent drinking a too-sweet wine.
“There she is. Back from the dead.” He rubbed her knee over the duvet, and she blinked, her bedroom swimming into focus. Someone had drawn the curtains over the windows, and the room was wonderfully dark.
She looked down at the t-shirt she wore. Oversized and clearly her father’s.
She tried to think. To sort through the absence that was the night before, her memory thin and transparent.
There was the ceremony, and the dance with Grant, his hand on her waist, but the rest of the night faded after that.
She pushed the thoughts away because even trying to recall them made her head feel like it would explode.
“Wanted to check in on you. You were a mess last night, bless your heart. Tried to get you in the shower, but you weren’t having it. Fought me like a wildcat. Took everything in me just to get you changed and into bed.”
Under the t-shirt, she was wearing only her underwear.
She went cold, her teeth clamping down as she fought the urge to vomit. He had undressed her. Her father.
She drew the duvet up to her neck. “Why would you—”
“Oh, it ain’t nothing I’ve never seen before. I changed your diapers, remember?”
She looked back at him. His amusement at her exposure so clear. The grin on his face. His teeth. An image from the night before floated to the surface. His mouth streaked with blood. Smiling. Grant between her legs. That sharp sting that was now a dull throb.
She ran a hand over her thighs, expecting to find a cut, but instead found the smooth surface of a bandage about the size of her palm. She drew in a breath she hoped would keep her voice calm.
“Did I cut myself?”
“Sure did. Got tangled up in some greenbrier. Tore your dress, too. Might want to hit it with some Neosporin. Looked pretty nasty last night.”
She remembered then. Noah had come to check on her, and she’d shooed him away so Grant wouldn’t see him. So he wouldn’t tell her father. Grant had brought her punch, and she’d been so tired. She’d been afraid.
And the sound. The sound of a tongue on meat.
“I had the weirdest dream.” She watched him carefully.
It’s what he would tell her. That what she’d seen—Grant and his bloodied mouth—was a dream.
But she knew it wasn’t no matter how hazy her memory felt.
“I heard someone crying, but I couldn’t see who it was.
Couldn’t move. Grant was down at my legs, and you were beside him. There was blood. Like he’d bitten me.”
His face twitched. A quick unstitching as the muscles in his jaw worked to hold it in, but she saw it. The briefest flash of rage, and then his face slipped back into a mask of calm amusement.
“You’re right. That is a weird dream. Makes sense though.
Given that someone spiked the punch last night.
Rum isn’t quite the same as a couple glasses of champagne.
Honestly, I’m surprised you aren’t worse off.
Happens about every other year. Apparently, Pastor Jordan had a time last night with Caitlin puking her guts out.
Poor thing. Best thing is rest and lots of water. I’ll bring you a glass.”
She stiffened as he pressed a kiss to her forehead and wrinkled his nose. “And a hot shower. You smell like three-day-old roadkill.”
She watched him go, her skin still crawling.
There’d been plenty of nights she’d had too much—her head pounding as she swore up and down she’d never drink that much again.
But whatever was in the punch … she didn’t think it was something as simple as rum.
She’d woken with the taste of it still in her mouth.
Sweet enough to cover any other taste. Sweet enough to make her believe her father’s lie.
There’d been something in the punch, but it hadn’t been alcohol.
And he wanted her to believe it had all been a dream because the truth was so much larger than any nightmare her mind could conjure.
Had Grant bitten her? Was that what she’d seen when she fought through whatever they used to drug her?
Some sort of fucked-up vampire role-play?
She touched the bandage on her thigh, tried to peel it away, but it tugged at her raw skin, and she hissed in a breath.
She didn’t want to shower, didn’t want to move, but it would make taking the bandage off easier.
She needed to see. Needed to know if the horror of her memory was true or nothing more than a nightmare.
She undressed carefully, her joints and muscles a series of knots and aches she knew wouldn’t come undone with anything as simple as hot water. She wanted to slip out of her skin. To wash herself clean and forget. Grant. Her father. The blood and teeth. The press of fingers against her inert body.
The water could not be hot enough. Hard enough. It could scorch her through, pull her muscle from bone, and she would not be able to forget.
She let the water wash over her, her fingers at the edge of the bandage as she thought of what she would find beneath it.
But when she peeled the bandage away, there were no bite marks.
If she didn’t know any better, she would have assumed she cut herself shaving, but the wound on her leg was more than a simple cut.
She winced as she poked the skin around it.
Circling the cut was the beginning of a bruise. The perfect shape of a mouth.
She shook her head, the pain getting worse by the minute. She did not want to know this. Did not want to face that her father and his church cronies drugged the girls at the Purity Ball and led them into the woods to do what? Drink their blood as if it were some sort of sickening Communion?
She turned and retched, her nausea and disgust so much the same as her stomach cramped again and again.
Her mother had not wanted her to participate in the Ball.
Had feared it without ever knowing why. All those Sundays ago, she told Vera about her fear.
Her memory of that night. The scars. The heaviness of her body.
That her father had told her she fainted.
And the sound. The same sound Camilla heard as well. The sound of someone eating.
Her mother.
She cut the water, quickly toweled off, and threw on jeans and a t-shirt that was not her father’s. She could push through the headache. Could push through the pain from the cut. She needed to get to the tree.
The phone was still under her bathroom sink, and she sent up a silent thank-you as she typed out a message to Brianna and Noah.
Going to the tree NOW. If you don’t hear from me in two hours, something went wrong.
She slipped the phone in her back pocket, let the bathroom door ease closed, and stepped into her bedroom. Her father had left a sweating glass of water on her nightstand. Frowning, she put it to her lips as a test and let the water fill her mouth.
She immediately spit it back into the glass.
A strange grit clung to her teeth, so she went back into the bathroom and spit into the sink.
Rinsed her mouth with the tap until she could no longer feel it.
She lifted the glass to her nose and sniffed.
There was no discernible smell, but she could make out the clouded granules resting at the bottom of the glass.
“Should have stirred better. Or brought me more punch,” she said, and spit again.
She had to get to the tree. But doing so meant getting out of her room and downstairs without her dad noticing. If the water was supposed to … do whatever it was supposed to do, he would assume she was passed out in her bedroom, not sneaking out of the house to go find the Dark Sisters.
No sound leaked through her door, so she pulled it open bit by bit until she could see into the hallway.
All quiet. She took one step out, letting the door close behind her, and then paused.
Going downstairs meant passing directly by her father’s office, which is where he likely was. If she made any noise, he would hear.
She imagined herself light and transparent as air even as her heartbeat weighed heavy in her chest. Pictured herself as a ghost drifting through the quiet house. At the stairs, she paused again, her hand brushing over the guardrail.
She had taken the first step down when she heard voices, and she froze.
“She shouldn’t have woken up. They cry sometimes, but they aren’t supposed to wake up. Two full glasses. That’s the dose. Not three miniature ones.”
Another voice murmured something that sounded like an apology, but it was too low, too quiet, to make out.
“She’s upstairs. Hopefully asleep. She already thinks it was a dream, but I figured why not hedge our bets, so I gave her another dose. Make it all seem like a dream.”
Again, she tasted the grit in her teeth. The water that should have left her sleeping emptied down the sink instead of down her throat.
She took her foot off the stair and backed into the hallway, her muscles wanting to cramp from the strain of moving so slowly.
Unless her father and whoever he was talking to decided to leave, she had no way of getting out without being seen.
She pulled the phone from her pocket and checked the clock. Fifteen minutes gone.