Chapter 62 #2
‘I knew it,’ she babbles. ‘I knew that wasn’t you texting me back.
I had such a bad feeling. Was it one of those weirdo online man-groups?
I thought there was something not right with Jonathan when he didn’t want to meet your friends .
. . and then that guy coming in to my work to look for you.
Thank god you sent me that video.’ I remember the video I sent her outside.
Me, spinning around. I bring it into my mind’s eye.
The street signs would have been visible if she paused it.
‘Are they still here?’ she whispers as she looks around behind me. ‘We need to get out of here.’
Her gaze catches on Riley first.
Then it snaps to Jonathan. Olivia.
Her eyes widen, her breath stops. She’s frowning. In shock. Trying to make sense of the blood. The bodies. The stake.
Me.
Her pulse is fast, like a rabbit, and her eyes are filled with terror. A terror I never wanted to see in anyone’s eyes, let alone hers. She lets out a little yelp, thoughts flickering behind her gaze. But she stands dead still and her breathing gets really slow, like she’s frozen from fear.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. But then her gaze catches on my fangs.
She lets out another yelp and her hand moves to her mouth.
‘It’s okay,’ I repeat in a gentle voice. ‘I promise.’
‘What’s going on?’ she squeaks. ‘What . . . are you?’
But I can tell from the look in her eyes that she already knows. She’s just struggling to wrap her mind around everything.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I say, feeling my fangs finally retract. ‘I’d never hurt you.’
She nods. Tears are streaming down her face, but she tries to smile.
‘Are you a vampire?’ she asks.
‘Yes, but I’m not bad. You’ve seen Twilight . . . The Vampire Diaries? I’m a good one,’ I say, even though I know all evidence is to the contrary right now.
‘Wait . . .’ she says, thoughts moving quickly behind her eyes. ‘Is this why you’re my friend?’ She starts to sob even harder. ‘It is . . . oh my god, I thought I was going crazy when those bags of blood kept disappearing, thought I couldn’t count. Does that mean you don’t really love me?’
‘Of course I love you, Es,’ I say, looking into her eyes. And I realise I’m not a total monster. I’ve stopped my hunger mid-frenzy. I’m not biting her. I didn’t even need to think of roadkill—I would never hurt her.
‘I love you too,’ she says, sniffing back tears, her pupils huge with terror.
There is part of me that is so relieved. Now I have a friend who knows me. Knows all of me. I could keep her until she dies. Not have to be alone, no matter how many men come or go.
‘I can’t tell if I’m really, really high or having a psychotic break,’ she says to me in a very rational, very stable voice. ‘Please would you take me to the hospital?’
My lower lip quivers, and I can smell rust, but I hold back the tears. I know what I have to do. This is too much. She can’t live with this, the weight of it will crush her. I can’t do that to her.
I reach forward, hold onto her warm shoulders and, as much as I don’t want to, in a honeyed tone I say: ‘Es, you were never here tonight.’ Her eyes get vacant.
A sadness rolls through me, but this is the right thing.
‘We went to a bad party in Hackney and then we both went home early. You just went to bed and lost a few hours to social media and then you went to sleep,’ I finish, doing just as Oscar taught me. ‘Now go straight home.’
She nods, smiles, wipes her tears away. And then she turns around, unlocks the front door and walks out. It closes with a quiet click behind her.
And it’s just me now.
I sit down on the floor and pull my knees into my chest. I’m back to square one, where nobody knows me. I have no Jonathan. No soulmate. No maker worth speaking of. Es and Daphne are back to being shelf-life friends. And Sally never existed in the first place.
I drop my head to my knees, and I let myself weep.
I weep because I’m all alone again. I weep because there are four bodies in this house, and how am I going to cover this up?
I weep because I’m confused and scared and there is blood all over my pink jumper. Some of it mine. Some of it theirs. How am I going to get out of this?
I weep for it all.
And then, beyond my own sobs and the wind outside, I hear the door open.
‘Well, what the fuck happened here?’
I look up.
And there, standing in the doorway, is Oscar.
* * *
I stare at him and he stares back at me.
He’s wearing the same white dinner shirt he was wearing when I left tonight, the same shirt he put on again right before he walked out of my bedroom.
And that tug in my chest is back. It aches.
It pulls me towards him, but I will not be the one to move.
Not this time. He closes the door, turns off the lights and comes over to me.
As he squats down beside me, all I can do is sob.
‘Aubrey,’ he says, holding my face in his hands. ‘We have to get out of here.’
I nod, but the tears keep rolling. I’m all out of fight. He reaches forward and wipes away my tears with his thumbs.
‘Wait here,’ he says under his breath, and then he starts zooming around.
Thirty seconds later he’s stepping over Riley’s body, looking down at his Vampires are real!
Join the fight! hoodie and frowning. Then he’s next to me, helping me into my coat to cover the blood on my jumper.
He hands me my bag, tucks the business plan, that picture frame camera and the laptop from the coffee table under his arm and reaches for my suitcase.
‘Come,’ he says, then we head out the back door and through the side gate to the street.
‘What are we going to do if people find the cage? Or something that leads them to me, to us?’ I ask as we move along a side street. My teeth are chattering from fear.
But then he looks at me and says, ‘Nobody’s going to find anything.’ He says it with such certainty that I believe him. We move through shadows. Past darkened windows and well-tended lawns and people stumbling home from their night out.
And then we’re at his car and the taillights flash red. He opens the door and helps me in, then he puts my suitcase and everything else in the boot and gets in beside me.
I put on my seatbelt and gaze out the tinted windows, numbness settling over me.
He turns the key in the ignition, puts his foot on the accelerator and pulls away, and as he does, I hear a little ‘meow’.
I turn to look behind us. And there, sitting in the back seat, is Cat.