Chapter 7. Lorena
lorena
I sit bolt upright.
One hour has passed. It’s the dead of night, and a silver veil frosts the room. I must have fallen asleep waiting.
I scan the bed by the window for Tiffany’s bright pink bonnet to make sure she’s asleep—but I don’t see it. In fact, there’s no sign of a body on her mattress at all.
“Salma?” I whisper. I get to my feet and look up. The sheets of the top bunk are tussled, but the bed is empty.
And the truth hits me like a punch to the gut:
They played me.
While I was waiting for them to pass out, they were waiting for me. Salma went to that basement with the others behind my back.
I don’t have the luxury of getting angry because they might already be dead. Panic snakes through my insides as I pull on my pants and slide into my sneakers. They must have made the plan to go in secret after I left dinner early.
As I zip up my hoodie, a shadow falls over the room, like a cloud drifting across the moon. When the darkness doesn’t lift, I look out the window.
I have to cover my mouth to keep from screaming.
Whatever scrap of hope I had that last night was a momentary glitch in my brain is smashed, and it takes me a few seconds to register what I’m seeing.
The vampire is framed in my window.
He’s still wearing the same outdated dress suit—full-skirted knee-length coat, embroidered vest, and knee breeches. He looks like he stepped right off the pages of one of the books on Minaro’s syllabus.
My body grows leaden, and a chill runs down my spine as I realize I must be under his control again.
He raises his hand and waves me closer. I wait for my feet to start moving against my will, but nothing happens. My gaze isn’t locked onto his, and I don’t hear his voice in my head.
“I cannot compel you anymore.”
His words are muffled by the glass, but his voice still sounds as it did in my mind. Velvety, low, inviting. The kind of voice that can sell you anything.
I duck my head to avoid looking at him, in case he’s lying.
“I drank your blood but did not drain you,” he goes on. “That makes you my Familiar.”
I’ve heard the word in dozens of vampire stories, but I don’t know what it means to him. As if sensing my continued confusion, he says, “We are bonded.”
My belly does a small flip when he says bonded, and I instinctively look up. “W-what do you want?” I ask, my voice too low to carry.
“I want you to come outside,” he says, hearing me.
“We—we can speak through the glass.”
“Or,” he says, his gaze searing into mine, “I could come in there. Would you like to be alone with me in your room?”
I take a step back.
Then another.
The lines of his face grow sharper, like blades unsheathing. “Once you run out of blood, I could lie in wait for your friends.”
I stop moving.
“Do you need more details, or have I made my intentions clear?”
When I was thirteen, Sal and I visited Buenos Aires with my parents.
We fell so in love with the city that I asked Ma why my grandparents ever left.
She said there were a number of reasons, but the one that stuck with her was when thieves broke into their family friends’ home and stole everything of value—only before leaving, they beat up the father and forced his wife and children to watch.
Stealing was common enough, but it was the violence that scared them. That’s what told them it was time to go.
Apparently, I didn’t inherit that same survival instinct.
I knew there was a murderer in the basement, and I didn’t tell Ma or Minaro or the cops. I went to bed, then I went to class.
I gave the monster a second chance to kill me, and now he’s come to collect.
“I will give you to the count of three,” he says. “Then I will come through that window. If you scream, I will kill every single person who comes through that door to aid you. One…”
My heart jabs at my rib cage, like a prisoner fighting for a way out of her cell. The vampire may not be compelling me, but my body still feels like it’s beyond my control.
I can’t move.
“Two…”
I feel sweat beading across my forehead and in my armpits. I can’t imagine moving closer to him, and yet I’m dead if I don’t. The only hope I have left is to draw him away from Salma and beg for my life.
“Three—”
“Just … wait,” I manage to say, and I set one foot forward.
As if it were under someone else’s command again, my body robotically performs. Only this time, it’s me tugging my own strings, a small part of me deep beneath the shock and denial that’s determined to save my roommates from him.
I pull on my coat, and I stuff my room keys in the pocket in the hopes that I will need them again.
Walking toward the window feels like wading through water, and I exhale an unsteady breath.
“Open it,” he commands.
“W-why don’t I just go downstairs and use the front door?” I ask, desperately hoping I can make it to a phone to dial 911. “I can meet you by the—”
“No. You will come out through the window.”
I look down at the thin ledge he’s standing on. “Seriously?”
“Now.”
I tentatively reach for the latch, hoping it doesn’t yield. I wouldn’t be surprised if for security reasons the school keeps these locked—but to my dismay, the glass swings inward.
Cool air rushes inside, and I breathe sharply when I see how high we are off the ground. The ledge is only slightly bigger than it looked from the inside, about a foot and a half wide. I rest one foot on it, testing its sturdiness.
“If it holds me, it will hold you.” His voice makes me feel as if it’s coming from both within me and without. Like it’s silky enough to slide through my pores, yet substantial enough to wrap itself around me.
I swing my other leg onto the ledge and take an unsteady step forward.
I never see him move—I just blink, and he’s right here, too close to me, eyes trained on my neck.
Despite my horror, I’m still struck by his perfectly chiseled face. As if it had been sculpted by one of those Italian masters whose works fill the world’s most prominent museums.
“What do you want?” I ask, my heart punctuating every syllable.
His mouth widens, revealing those sharp fangs, and I gasp.
“You.”