23. Emily
23
EMILY
“ W here is she?” The voice drifted into my dreams, and for a moment, I was sure it had come from him .
Alex. Alex had come to fetch me. To find me and protect me from whatever was going on.
But that wasn’t possible because he was the one who’d put me in this position in the first place.
“Let me past, Michael!”
My eyelids fluttered open, and it took me a second to gather my thoughts. Where am I? The ceiling was different, and my gaze wandered through the unfamiliar living room, past the bookcase, toward the kitchen and the open doorway.
Michael stood there, one hand on the jamb, facing off against Morgan.
“—feeling ill, and I need her to be safe, so she’s staying here.”
“That is really weird,” Morgan said. “And incredibly creepy. Let me past, now, before I call the cops.”
Mike gave an exaggerated sigh and stepped back so Morgan could enter the apartment. She locked eyes with me and rushed over, then dropped to her knees beside the sofa. She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead.
“Okay, what the hell is going on here?” she asked. “Why are you in Mike’s apartment? Do you need help? Do you need me to call the cops?”
“No,” I said, glancing past her at him. “I don’t need you to do that, Morgan. I’m fine with Mike. He’s helping me.”
“It doesn’t seem like he’s helping you at all,” she said. “It seems like you need a friggin’ doctor, and he’s keeping you locked up. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Everything’s fine, I promise,” I said. “I can’t explain everything to you right now, but I need you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” Morgan asked. “I don’t have a problem trusting you, Em. It’s Michael that I have a problem with.”
“Look, what did I ever do to you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Morgan said. “Except pretend that you were friends with us because you wanted to get to Emily. You’re a weirdo and a creep, and I am not about that.”
“You have no idea what’s even going on,” Mike said.
“Exactly.” She slapped the back of her hand into her palm. “So how about one of you actually tells me what’s going on before I start throwing hands.”
I struggled upright, but my arms gave out underneath me, and I flopped back onto the sofa, the leather squeaking beneath me. My hand wandered, seeking out my phone, and I found it tucked under the cushion beneath my head. I needed to get hold of Alex and make sense of this.
A part of me wanted to cling onto what we had, even now, because for the first time in … ever, I’d felt like I deserved love.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Emily?”
“Morgan,” I said. “I’m fine, all right? I promise I’m fine. I want to be here with Mike. He’s … helping me with something important.”
Her frown deepened. “With something important. ”
“Yeah,” I said. “And the truth is, the more time you spend around me, the more dangerous it becomes for you.”
“Why?”
“Because things aren’t what they seem,” Mike said. “And Emily is right. You should spend as little time around her as possible.”
“Does this have something to do with Alex?” Morgan asked, glancing from Mike and back to me again.
I swallowed. I didn’t want to answer that question. I didn’t even want to think about him at this point because it was making me beyond anxious.
“I’m not leaving.” Morgan said, folding her arms. “I’m not leaving until I know what’s going on.”
Mike threw his hands up in the air.
“I’m serious, Michael.”
I was too tired to fight her on this right now.
“Fine, then take a seat.” Mike gestured to the armchair. “I’ll fix you a cup of hot chocolate.”
I lifted my phone to my face and unlocked it, blinking at the screen and the hazy time. It was past midnight. Morgan had to have come back from work to find the apartment empty and had come looking for me.
Mike and Morgan bickered while I opened my messages.
Nothing.
I didn’t have a single message from Alex, and the betrayal burned. It stung so bad that tears gathered in my eyes. It was even worse than this sickly illness that had come over me and the certainty that it wouldn’t be long before I was dead.
What did that mean? That I was so in love with this … vampire that I was willing to die for him?
And why had the book cursed me? Why had he wanted the book in the first place?
I cast my mind back, trying to piece together what I’d read and translated, but it didn’t come. It was like I’d forgotten everything that I’d written down? —
“The notebook,” I said suddenly. “Mike, I translated a lot into my notebook.”
“It’s gone, Em,” he said, looking up from where he’d been on his phone in the kitchen. “I already checked.”
I swore under my breath.
“What notebook?” Morgan asked. “What’s going on?”
We both ignored her, and she made a low grunt in her throat. “Y’all are starting to piss me off.”
I stared at my last messages from Alex then typed one out.
“I don’t know if you’ll see this or if you’ve already gotten rid of this phone number, but I have to say something. I know what you are. And I know that you took the book. I know you’ve betrayed me.” As I shakily typed the words out, anger came with them, like I was finally admitting what he’d done. “And I want you to know that I never want to see you again after this. I never want to see you again because of what you’ve done. Michael is going to help me lift the curse. So I don’t need you or the book. You’re a liar.” I hit send and stared at the text messages.
Two gray ticks appeared. They didn’t turn blue.
“—somebody tell me what the hell is going on here,” Morgan was saying.
“We’re not going to tell you anything,” I said, as sternly as I could manage. “We’re not going to tell you anything because it will endanger you.”
“Emily.”
“No,” I said. “That’s enough.” It wasn’t fun to be left in the dark, but this was Morgan’s life we were talking about, and I wasn’t about to endanger her. Knowing that I could protect her this way made what Michael had done make more sense.
“Enough?”
“Yeah. I think it’s time for you to leave,” I said. “As much as I’d like to have you here, Morgan, it’s not helping. I’m safe, and you’ll be safer if you just pretend none of this is happening. Things will get back to normal soon.”
“You heard her,” Mike said, opening the door. “Time to go.”
Morgan gave me an incredulous look then shook her head and pushed out of the armchair. “Fine,” she said. “Fine. But I— This is not cool, Emily. Don’t expect me to get over the way you just treated me any time soon.”
My insides twisted with guilt. The Emily from last week would have done anything to please her and everyone else, but that had only wound up getting me in trouble. It had ended with me here, on this sofa, dying, instead of happy and doing what I cared about.
Morgan took one last look at me before stepping into the hall.
A dark figure in a cloak appeared behind her and looped an arm across her throat, drawing her back a step.
Morgan kicked and screamed, her eyes wide, and pulled at the stranger’s arm, but they didn’t release her.
“Mike!” I shrieked, too weak to rise off the sofa.
Michael had already dropped his phone and brought out a small gun from his pocket. He aimed it at the stranger, his gaze narrowing. “Let her go.”
The figure tightened his grip on Morgan, and she made a choking noise, her fingers scrabbling at the fabric of the man’s sleeve.
He lowered his hood and smiled, showing sharp fangs between crimson lips, a hooked nose, blazing blue eyes. Not a man.
A vampire.
“Why would I do that, Hunter scum?” he asked. “She’s lovely.”
Morgan gasped for air.
“He’s killing her,” I cried, trying to sit up.
“Killing her?” the vampire asked. “I’m taking great pleasure in choking her before I feed on her delicious sweet blood. And I will do more than that. Much more. I will?—”
Michael fired without hesitation, and the vampire jerked back, his arm flying free of Morgan’s throat.
She keeled over forward, landing on all fours, and Mike bent and grabbed her, dragging her toward the door.
But the vampire was quicker. It grabbed her by the ankle and clung onto her. A small hole appeared in the center of its forehead where Michael’s bullet had struck true.
“Silver bullets?” the vampire asked, baring its fangs in a malicious smile. “Did you really think that would work?”
“Dipped in werewolf venom,” Michael replied coolly. He still hadn’t released Morgan’s arm, and she gasped and kicked, trying to get closer to him.
The vampire’s eyes widened. “Werewolf—” He clapped a hand over his forehead, scratching and releasing a high-pitched scream that made my head ache.
Mike dragged Morgan over the threshold then kicked the door shut. She trembled all over, kicking back until she hit the kitchen counter. She pressed herself against it, staring at the closed door.
Mike latched it then peered through the peephole. “Still out there. That werewolf venom won’t last long. It will make him itch and burn for a while, but it won’t kill him.”
“What just— What the— Just what the fuck just happened?” Morgan spat.
“Easy.” Mike grabbed the mug of hot chocolate he’d made her earlier and thrust it into her palms. “There’s no use screaming. Drink this, and I’ll explain everything afterward.”
“Was that?—?”
“Drink.”
She did as he’d said, but with a lot of trepidation and constant looks toward the closed door.
“They can’t get in here,” Mike said. “We’re protected. But it also means that we can’t leave. They’re here for Emily, and if we let them in, we’re all screwed. Guess you’re going to be a part of this now, whether you like it or not. We warned you to leave.”
“Don’t be so hard on her, Mike. She didn’t know.”
But Mike grumbled under his breath and walked to his bedroom. Reginald Tailwag came trotting down the hallway.
“Where have you been?” I asked, holding out a hand. The dog licked my fingers and whined, giving me a quick wag of his tail in greeting.
“I had him in his room. He’s got everything he needs in there,” Mike said. “I wanted him safe, in case something went down. He’s not good with vamps. Makes him go crazy and straight for the throat.”
As if on cue, Reginald walked to the door and barked, growling, his hackles rising.
“They can’t hurt him, can they?” I asked, and the question sounded dumb, even to my ears.
“They could if they wanted to, but they tend to avoid dogs unless provoked. It’s the reason I keep him locked away when there’s many of them around. To keep him safe.”
“Oh.”
“Vampires,” Morgan said, a burst of hysterical laughter coming from her. “Vampires. Is this some kind of a sick joke? I?—”
“You saw what we saw,” Mike said. “You felt what we felt.”
“Is this a prank?”
Mike grunted under his breath and started explaining, and I tuned him out. I brought the phone out from under the cushion and checked my message thread with Alex. The gray ticks were blue now.
But there was no reply.