Chapter 19
Six Weeks Ago
I made it back to school, giddy with the secret of my unauthorized field trip, just in time to meet Madame Dupuy for the walk home.
She asked me how school was, and I told her I’d learned a lot of fascinating stuff about Notre-Dame.
Officially not a lie. I also said how much better I felt since Dad had let me come back to class.
Just getting out of the apartment made me feel hopeful.
It made me feel like I wasn’t being punished for what had happened.
“You do know that is not your fault, yes, Mademoiselle Tosh?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps not my fault, but who needs a chaperone everywhere she goes, and who’s walking around free?
” She muttered something about the cops, and I felt enough like normal Tosh that I let myself believe for a few minutes that they’d find Le Bec.
I hadn’t felt this hopeful since before the attack.
Smoking changed the game for me. It calmed my clamoring senses, soothed my sparking brain, and quieted my craving for blood without ruining my sense of smell forever.
It let me relax my vigilance against v mode a little and be more like my old self.
When we stopped at the butcher shop on the way home, I didn’t stare longingly at the slabs of raw meat on display.
I didn’t imagine how satisfying it would be to tear into one of those lumps of flesh.
I didn’t spiral into a feeding frenzy from the smell of blood hanging in the air.
I just waited, looking at my phone, while the butcher sectioned a rabbit for her.
I felt a tickle of hope. I can do this, I thought.
I can control v mode and keep my life. It’s going to be okay.
It could be a chronic condition, treatable with the right combination of nicotine and vigilance.
As long as I took regular smoke breaks, I’d be safe around people.
I could live the life I was meant to. Five hours later, over dinner, Dad blew everything up.
“I asked work to transfer me back to my old position,” he said, putting his knife and fork down.
“What?” I thought I hadn’t heard right.
“You’re not safe here, so we’re moving back to Oregon.”
I stared at him, horrified. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it.
“I told the company what happened to you and how it’s affected you. They were very accommodating. I’m pushing for us to leave as soon as possible—a week, two at most.”
I was shaking my head. “I don’t want to leave. I love Paris.”
“Tosh, you almost died. You’ve been moping around the apartment; you picked at your dinner; you’re not taking an interest in anything. You need a safe space. You need counseling.”
“I ate all my dinner.” I was outraged. It had tasted like nuclear waste, but I’d choked down every bite, because keeping my stomach full felt like a way to keep some of the v mode cravings at bay.
How dare he not notice that? “And they have counseling here, although I wouldn’t need it if you hadn’t locked me up in this apartment and kept my friends away. ”
He gave an I’m trying to be patient with you sigh.
“Your friends aren’t safe. They aren’t good for you.
And we’re living in a city with a predator on the loose.
Did you know he attacked someone else last week?
I worried every day this week that something would happen to you while you were at school. I just can’t live this way.”
“You could have worried about that last year, too.” I wanted to shout it at him, but my voice was still recovering, so I kept it soft and even. Plus, if he had to work a little to hear me, he’d really pay attention. Cole had taught me that trick.
His eyes went wide in surprise. “I—Last year?”
“Yeah.” My voice didn’t waver. Soft and steady. “I wasn’t safe in Portland, either.”
“What do you mean? You never said anything. What happened?”
“I fell asleep on the bus after a tournament. I woke up because Cole was…He was grabbing me.”
“Cole?”
I nodded.
“That’s definitely not okay, and I’m sure it felt terrible. But you’re in actual physical danger here. We need to take action.”
My pulse pounded in my temples. My senses went into overdrive.
Shapes got sharper; smells got brighter.
“He touched me without my permission, Dad. He did it on purpose when I was asleep so I couldn’t say no.
I woke up, and he told me nothing happened.
It really messed with my head, because every time I was with him—every prep session, every tournament, every bus trip—I didn’t feel safe.
But then I felt like I was being unfair to him. Do you know how messed up that is?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it took a while to realize I hadn’t dreamed it.
And then it would have sounded stupid to say, ‘This happened, but it took me till now to realize it was real.’ Who’d believe that?
Anyway, what could you have done? Cole doesn’t act like a predator.
He’s funny and smart. No one would have believed that he could do anything bad.
And then you told me we were moving to France.
It was just easier to leave it behind and start over here. ”
He got up, came around to my chair, and put his arm around me. “I’m so sorry that happened. But think of going back as a reset. A chance to change things that didn’t work before. We can find you a different school if you’d rather not run into Cole.”
Dad’s arm felt heavy, and I shifted uncomfortably. “If I’m going to reset, I want to do it here. I love it here.”
“You’re in danger here.”
“Okay, say I go back to Portland. Where do I run away to the next time a guy does something to me?”
“There won’t be a next time.”
I just shook my head. “Statistics say otherwise, so you should probably pick your backup safe cities now.”
“You’re being stubborn.” His voice had an edge of impatience. “I’m doing this for you.”
“No, you’re doing this to me. You haven’t asked what I want, what would make me feel safe.”
He sighed. “You’re overreacting. You don’t see how bad Paris is for you. I’m only thinking of you, of your happiness.”
“Why can’t you see how good Paris has been for me? I mean, I’m getting really good in French. And there’s Madame Dupuy. Leaving her would be so hard.”
He softened for a minute. He liked Madame Dupuy, too.
“I know it’s hard. I know it’s unfair, but we live in a dangerous world. I have to make the best decisions I can when it comes to your well-being.”
“You know it’s unfair? How? You were walking home from the Métro by yourself the night I got attacked, but you’re not under house arrest for walking without a chaperone.”
He waved my anger away. “That’s not the point.”
“No; that’s the whole point. You’re making this my fault.
You’re restricting my freedom, and you don’t even see how hypocritical it is.
You want to take me away from a place I love and back to a place that has bad memories for me because staying here causes you too much anxiety.
None of this is about what’s best for me. ”
He narrowed his eyes, frowning, and I knew he was about to lose his temper. “This conversation is over. We’re moving back to Portland.”
Inside my head, the arguments roared. Why did he get to ignore my reasons for staying?
Why did his fear outweigh my autonomy? I saw him through a red haze, and I wanted to hurt him, to punish him for keeping me from my friends, for tearing me away from here, for trying to protect me by imprisoning me.
I could protect myself. I didn’t need him.
I glanced at his neck and heard the artery throbbing there, under his skin, filled with delicious blood.
I stood up from the table so fast my chair fell over backward, banging on the floor and startling me.
Dad had jumped up, too. “Go to your room,” he shouted as I ran down the hall.
I locked myself in, then scrabbled in my backpack for Martine’s cigarettes, my hands shaking.
I finally found them, fumbled one out, and got it lit.
I drew in a lungful of smoke and felt myself begin to uncoil.
“I will not be a vampire,” I told myself. “Le Bec doesn’t win.”
I leaned out the window, blowing pale gray plumes into the evening air, lighting a second cigarette off the end of the first one, desperate to kill the rage and hunger that filled me.
When I was calm enough to think rationally, I realized that even with all my safeguards in place, I couldn’t guarantee my reaction if I got really angry.
I’d barely avoided attacking Dad just now.
He’d always be a little in danger around me.
And I was in danger, too, if Madame Dupuy figured out that I was a vampire.
I didn’t see a choice. I had to disappear.
I had to go someplace neither of them would look for me.
I stuffed some things into my pack: money, passport, a change of clothes, and a jacket.
I changed into my hiking pants and shoes and distributed my phone, cigarettes and matches, and lockpicks among their pockets.