Chapter 12
I tucked several more pairs of socks into the empty spaces of my nearly full duffel bag.
I reached for the framed photo on my nightstand, the one of me and Derrick on a date.
A lifetime ago. I had my life for the next few weeks — maybe months?
Or maybe not at all, if they turned me away — all packed up in one bag.
I hadn’t slept a night without this photo since Derrick had first gifted it to me.
Something about taking it back home set me on edge, like I’d get in trouble for having it.
I pulled out a black tank top and wrapped it around the frame to protect it.
I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was more than that scared young girl who feared my mother more than anything, more than vampires even.
I tucked the safe little package between two pairs of sweatpants and hoisted the bag from my bed to the floor beside it. Not even that heavy.
A soft knock at the door pulled my attention. “Dinner’s ready,” Lily said, though her eyes were round and distant, aimed at my bag. “Are you scared?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, and Lily relaxed, though she still wasn’t able to look at me.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever want to go back there.”
Had I not stepped closer, I wouldn’t have heard her. “That’s okay.” Jerica wouldn’t think so, nor would any other mother, and I wasn’t even sure if I thought it was okay. All I’d been taught…
“I don’t want to be a vampire hunter. I don’t want to…
” She let it hang in the air for me to fill in.
She didn’t want to be different, didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to die.
It was reasonable and sane, and it had always been an option for Hunters, not to be Blessed, not to hunt.
But living a normal life had never been the alternative.
We as Hunters had all those discussions of free will, but not all choices were equal.
I wasn’t cut out for this role, though, the one passing on the wisdom, the one who knew anything at all about how to live.
So I stuck with the role I’d taken on since Lily had arrived at my doorstep. Her sister.
“That’s okay.”
Lily hugged me, tight but quick, and then she hurried down the stairs again.
I gave her a few seconds’ head start before I followed.
The kitchen was fragrant with the savory and slightly sweet smells of Subin’s cooking.
She’d gone all out, even more than usual, making her favorite family recipes from back home.
Nico had been put to work, too, spooning out little bowls of purplish rice, grinning at his wife.
Amanda was at the dining table, pointing to the sides of pickled vegetables and kimchi, describing them all in Lily’s ear.
I met Gabriel’s gaze, and we shared a smile.
This was our little family. He had a lot to be proud of.
He tapped the place at the table next to him, and I sat.
“Do you want to invite Petey in for dinner, Fallon?” he asked low enough only for me to hear.
My response was full-volume, verging on the edge of panic. “No!” Everyone’s eyes landed on me, so I addressed them all. “Don’t invite Peter inside. Don’t invite any vampires in, no matter who they are. I know I asked him to watch over you, but…”
Soup bubbled in the pot on the stove, and the lid to the rice cooker shut. Nico passed out the rice, then helped Subin pour bowls of glistening red soup.
“It’s sundubu jjigae,” she told Lily with a warm smile.
“Mmm, tofu soup? Fallon likes it spicy, like a real Korean. Japchae, it’s not spicy.
” She pointed at the bowl of glassy noodles mixed with a colorful array of vegetables.
With dinner ready, everyone sat around the table, and comfortable conversation picked up, as if my outburst hadn’t happened.
“Thanks for making my favorites, Subin,” I said, savoring the mouthfuls of hot, spicy broth and silky tofu. She and Nico had to drive a couple hours to the nearest Korean grocery store to get ingredients that couldn’t be found anywhere in Cibola, so I was extra appreciative.
It was Lily’s turn to get a lesson in using chopsticks. Since Subin entered our lives, we’d all gone through it, some better than others. Amanda and Subin showed Lily how to grip the thin metal chopsticks, and my sister had a pleased smile as she practiced picking up noodles.
“I’m still no good at it,” Gabriel chuckled.
“True,” Subin smiled. “Amanda is good, though. Better than me!” Amanda ducked her head at the compliment but continued offering patient guidance to Lily until she got the hang of it.
I missed everyone already. I savored the sounds of laughter, the easy jokes and stories, the warmth and love that filled the air in the Hope house, though every breath felt stolen. What was going to happen after?
“The only bad thing about Korean night,” Subin said with a cute frown and a glance around the table, “is the dishes. Too many dishes to clean.”
Nico and Gabriel jumped to action to start collecting them, and then the girls got roped into the actual cleaning. The Hope household had that rule — if you didn’t cook, you did dishes. I’d have liked to help, just to have something to do with my hands, but I was being taken care of again.
“Fallon, does your friend want soup?” Subin asked. The pot was nearly empty.
“What, ‘cause it looks like blood?” Nico joked, looking at it over my shoulder. Subin gagged and said something that sounded like a curse in her mother tongue, thoroughly offended.
“I don’t think he eats any human food anymore.” Even a single fry made him sick, he’d said. “I’ll go check on him, though. It’ll mean a lot that you offered.”
I was stretched thin and glad for the excuse to step outside.
There were worries behind me and even more ahead of me, and going to the barn to talk to Fenton felt like a break from it all.
Really, there was no reason for him to be here yet, but when he’d offered, I hadn’t been able to say no.
It had been a relief, like some of the weight was finally off my shoulders.
Fenton was waiting for me, looking over the railing of his temporary loft.
He’d had to spend the whole day in there hiding from the sun with nothing more than a fan to cool him in the summer heat, and he smiled like it was a gift.
Maybe that thing with Lazaro had made him want to get away, too.
I made my way up the steps and slipped my shoes off on the top step so I didn’t track dirt into his meager home.
He sat on his bed, which was really just a thick foam camping mat and my own comforter.
“I figured it out.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He looked up, shy like a child. “A gift before you go.”
“You don’t have to give me a gift, Fenton.”
“But I want to. One for breaking up your relationship,” he said with a smile that betrayed his lack of regret on that front, “and one for luck on your trip.”
“Two gifts? You’ll spoil me.” I sat next to his bed so we were on the same level.
“Alexander Reyes. Gustavo Narvaez. You asked about that night. Those are your names. But you have to keep up your promise. Don’t go after them until you have powers like your sister. Better than your sister.”
I repeated the names over and over in my head. It hadn’t been Lazaro who had killed Derrick. It had to be one of those two, then. I’d hunt them down and question them. I’d stake both of them either way.
“Fallon?”
“I promise,” I said, coming up from my thoughts with a delayed breath. “Thank you.”
“That’s the apology gift. For the other…”
He leaned over to pull his wallet off a plastic storage tub that was acting as a table and lifted his gaze once more before he pulled something out.
A polaroid photo of the two of us, me sitting in his lap against a dingy beige wall.
In the space below the photo was my name as he knew it then, Fallon Marlow, written in neatly messy permanent marker that had blown out around the edges over the years.
I giggled and ran my finger over the ink.
“In case you forget who I was?”
“I could never forget you,” he smiled.
I tried to place the moment in my memories. It had been a time between, after I had left the Hunter Land for the first time, before I started dating Derrick.
“I wanted you to have it. To remember me while you’re gone. But…”
It was a treasure to him. “I’ll give it back to you. I promise.”
“It’s how I see myself. As a human. There was a time when I didn’t know where I ended and you began. I think it was the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Fenton did look happy in the photo, deliriously so. He’d been drunk, though, and maybe high. Definitely high. The memory captured me like fine mesh netting that I couldn’t get out of.
* * *
Fenton had brought me to a party with his friends, or maybe his worst enemies. From the way they talked, I couldn’t tell. A girl handed over a polaroid of Fenton and me that she’d just taken, and I was staring at it while they talked about some movie I hadn’t seen.
“Still stone cold sober, baby?” Fenton asked me, wrapping his bony arms around my waist where I sat in his lap.
It was either I sat there or the floor, and I didn’t even like the bottoms of my shoes touching that surface, sticky with dried-up beer and littered with crushed cigarette butts and plastic food wrappers.