Two #2
Cella got comfortable on her stomach. Mason took her other side and copied her position, crossing his arms under his chin.
Cella’s twin bed had not been built to accommodate a petite girl and two taller-than-average teenage boys.
This near to him, the itchy feeling I’d been learning to ignore was nearly unbearable.
It didn’t help that Mason lay closer to Cella than the bed necessitated, resting his shoulder against hers.
The entire first act came and went before I could focus enough to learn anything.
***
The Gibson house was tall and skinny; walking through it felt like climbing one of those long, winding staircases in historical movies, and standing still felt like waiting for something to crash out of place.
The narrow rooms seemed cluttered even when tidy, books threatening to spill off shelves and throw blankets overlapping on the couch.
It was the kind of home that could feel crowded even when nobody was there.
Her neighborhood gave the same feeling, houses with thin lawns and one-car garages squeezed tight together.
The place where I lived, if you could call it a house, was the opposite.
It stood tall and wide with so many projections it was hard to identify a single front—the result of generations of additions to accommodate the growing clan—and that was just the aboveground portion.
The architecture was gothic, but the colors were warm.
Nestled in the Whispering Woods, it was the only building for a mile in any direction.
The forest’s creepy name wasn’t a coincidence—as the story went, the founders of the clan had spent decades slinking around at night to feed rumors that it was haunted to keep outsiders away.
It was the kind of home that could feel empty even when everyone was there.
The entrance hall was dark when I walked in, but it was always dark.
The room had no windows, the double staircase and dark marble lit orange by lanterns.
They did little in the way of providing light, but it wasn’t like we needed help seeing in the dark.
In sharp contrast, the living room with its big windows was normally bright.
Today, though, the midnight-blue blackout drapes were drawn.
Closed curtains meant excitement. Closed curtains meant that a large number of Lunars, those of us who hadn’t made the Trade, were out of the basement at the same time. That only happened when something worth snooping on went down. Vampires tended to be nosy creatures.
At first glance, the living room seemed empty, but a pair of black cats was grooming each other on the couch.
In the dim, they might have blended in with the navy velvet of the cushions if not for their pink tongues and glowing green eyes.
Above them, four fat rats perched on the curtain rods.
And above them, a dozen bats hung from the ceiling—the DeLuca family, the largest in the clan.
The tiniest bat seemed to have fallen asleep for real; I chuckled at the thought of little Casper following his family upstairs, wanting to see what the excitement was about and promptly dozing off.
It seemed that all the interest revolved around my dad and brother.
Their voices came from the dining room, Dad’s at its normal register, Cedric’s raised nearly to a shout.
The only Lunar in the family, Cedric usually slept through the day; I took the fact that he was awake as a bad-weather forecast promising a storm.
With a sigh, I approached through the dim hallway to mediate.
The larger of the cats, my uncle Dante, looked at me and winked one feline eye.
“You’d seriously have us scuttle around in the brush like prey,” Cedric accused Dad. “You’d have us hide.”
“Who said anything about hiding?” asked my dad, sounding more weary than angry.
“Who can you protect if you’re afraid of one little wolf?”
I stopped short just outside of the dining room. My legs just stopped moving, like a cog in my hip had slipped out of place and jammed my whole living machine.
“We have to make a move,” said Cedric. “Quickly. Strike first, before they can. Who knows how long they’ve been lurking around the corner.”
“What is this ‘they’ you keep inventing?”
I could imagine my dad pinching the bridge of his nose.
“They’re pack animals!”
“There are plenty of lone wolves. Until evidence suggests otherwise, we must abide by what we’ve seen. And I saw one wolf.”
“One is enough, in case you’ve forgotten.”
The dread that had been building in my stomach, collecting like condensation, nearly choked me.
I had been hoping, delusively, that they meant a wolf-wolf, the animal kind.
Maybe a pest causing trouble for one of Dad’s clients, picking off their sheep.
But this “wolf” sounded like were-wolf—like the terrifying beast that killed my mother.
Dad’s voice was ice-brittle. “Forgotten?” he said. “Forgotten? I bear the scars, son. Every morning, I wake up with the vile taste of that animal’s blood in my mouth.”
Acid rose in my throat at the thought. I didn’t know the taste of werewolf blood, but I remembered the acrid smell of it coming from my dad’s bathroom and the sound of him coughing it up all night.
Not an hour after my mother’s death, he had hunted down the lone wolf that murdered her and bled the beast dry.
He had still been scrubbing the stinking blood from his hands when I’d showed up at his bedroom door, clutching my big stuffed goose, asking if I could sleep in his bed that night.
Dad had tucked me in snugly beside him, but when he thought I was asleep, he’d crept to his bathroom.
The way I remembered it, I had listened to him vomit until daybreak.
It was evolutionary, apparently. Historically, wherever vampires and werewolves had crossed paths, they’d killed each other clashing over prey, so vampires had developed an aversion to the smell, the taste, even the sound of werewolf blood.
“Where did you see it?” I asked, stepping into the dining room. It was a useless room: a table long enough to seat thirty, centuries-old portraits and a crystal chandelier, place mats we never used set out for meals we couldn’t eat.
Giovanni Callisto, chief of our clan, was in fact pinching the bridge of his nose.
His fingers displaced his glasses. Decades of sun exposure at work had weakened his eyes, and his fight with the lone wolf had dealt permanent damage, leaving four raised scar lines from his left ear to his right eyebrow.
Aside from those scars, my dad, Cedric, and I looked strikingly alike. The differences were slight—my dad had more angular features, Cedric was taller and more muscular, and my skin was dotted with moles like my mom’s. My aunt Francesca always said we looked like the same person at different ages.
“She was at the hardware store,” Dad said. “I was there on my lunch break, replacing my rope between clients. She was buying a drill.”
“How could you tell she’s . . . you know?” I asked.
My dad struggled for a moment. “It’s a feeling you can’t miss. Unpleasant. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“Who cares how you could tell!” snapped Cedric. “What matters is that we do know, and . . .” He trailed off, studying me with too-large eyes. “What’s that face?” Suddenly he was right in front of me. “You know something. Have you seen one?”
“No.” I pushed at his shoulders with my fingertips until he stopped leaning over me. “No, just . . . in case I ever do. I’m, um. I’m gonna go to my room.”
“This concerns you as much as the rest of us,” said Cedric.
Hard as I’d tried in the decade since, I could only recall the moments leading up to the tragedy the night my mom died protecting Cedric and me.
I remembered crouching in front of a cluster of milkweeds under the light of the full moon, in awe as my mom explained their role as a host for monarch butterflies.
I remembered peering under the leaves to see if there were eggs, craning my neck because I was afraid to touch something so vital to life.
I remembered the hairs on my arm standing on end with a bad feeling, like something was just off.
Like every room after Mason Kane walked in.
The memory always stopped there.
“Ease up,” said our dad. “We’ll have more time to discuss it.”
“Time,” Cedric scoffed. “And when will it be urgent? When another of us is dead?”
“I said enough, Cedric.”
Not even Cedric was bold enough to keep arguing when our dad took that tone. With a snarl that cut through the room like a cleaver, he was gone.
Dad rubbed his left eye. Even slouching, weary and agitated, he had a poised way about him.
When she was alive, Mom had taught ballroom dance at a local studio.
Dad would bring Cedric and me along to pick her up at the end of her shift, and we would stay for an hour, dancing in the dark.
Cedric liked to show off how high he could lift me.
Sometimes others came along; sometimes half the clan was there, the most I ever saw in one place.
After she died, Dad would push the sofas out of the way and dance with me here.
His sister and her family sometimes joined.
Cedric never did. I could still see her in the way Dad carried himself.
In the smallest movements. Right now, she was in the elegant cock of his hip and his elongated legs as he leaned against the table.
She was in the graceful stretch of his fingers as he wiped a hand up his face, pushing his glasses into gray-streaked hair.
“You look pale, Kier,” he said.
“It’s because . . . Dad, I have something to tell you. Don’t panic. I’m a vampire.”
It was a weak joke, but he smiled appreciatively. “Stop in the kitchen and grab a drink on your way, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure, okay.”
I left, went into the kitchen, walked past the fridge without stopping, and took the small side staircase toward my room.