16. Winnie
WINNIE
A few days after Conrad and I were almost caught in a precarious position in the kitchen, I’d decided to text Amethyst. I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. My sister would’ve liked you.
The words had followed me around for days. They lingered while I watered the garden and helped with math homework. They echoed in my head when I helped Billie glue googly eyes onto a paper plate turtle that represented “the spirit of recycling.”
The problem was that I wasn’t wondering whether Jade would’ve liked me. I was wondering whether she would’ve approved of me.
I took out my phone and pulled up her number. Our text thread consisted of the link for the sunglasses, and her replying with thanks. Would she be okay with me reaching out? We’d only met once.
But I didn’t really have anything to lose, so I decided to throw caution to the wind.
Me: Hey, Amethyst. It’s Winnie. Hope I’m not bothering you.
Amethyst: Hey, girl. What’s up? Are the kids okay?
God. Of course, she thought something was wrong. Why else would I be texting her?
Me: Yes. Sorry, I should’ve led with that. I just wondered if you meant what you said the other day… about your sister liking me.
The three dots flashed over and over, each time sending me deeper into a state of panic. I shouldn’t have texted Conrad’s sister-in-law. It was careless of me.
Amethyst: Yes. She would’ve adored you.
Me: Why?
Amethyst: Well, first of all, the kids adore you. They think you hung the moon. Anyone who treats my sister’s kids like their own immediately earns points. Not to mention, you’re a genuinely good person.
I blinked at my phone.
Me: How could you know that?
Amethyst: Oh, honey. I can read people. You give off a very positive aura. Trust me, I can tell when a person’s an asshole, and you are not an asshole. Far from it.
I could’ve just thanked her for the compliments and moved on with my life, but I needed to know.
Me: Would she have approved of me?
Amethyst: Do you mean in the romantic sense? I’m assuming you’re referring to whatever you and Conrad had going on before the kids and I busted it up?
Jeez. The woman was direct.
Me: Well, maybe. I’m not sure. I like Conrad… a lot.
Amethyst: You want to fuck him.
Holy shit. I mean, yes, I did, but I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone. Especially not Conrad’s sister-in-law.
Me: I don’t know about that.
Amethyst: Have you considered seducing him?
Me: I am not seducing my employer!
Amethyst: You already have. I saw the way he looks at you.
The ball is in your court. And, yes, Jade would approve of this match.
She wasn’t one of those wives who expected their husbands to be single the rest of their lives if something happened to them.
She’s not going to come back and haunt you for hooking up with her husband. In other words, I approve, too.
I grinned.
Me: Thank you. That means a lot.
I spent the next hour trying to wind down so I could sleep.
Normally, before sleeping, I read or listened to an audiobook. If that failed to lull me, I planned meals for the week or researched local events for the children.
But ever since Conrad kissed me, my thoughts had become utterly impossible to manage. Every time I tried to sleep, I felt his hands again. His mouth. His warmth. The way he looked at me, like he wanted all of me with no exception and no questions asked.
The thought of his lips against mine had followed me all the way into sleep. And then sleep became something else entirely.
In the dream, I was running.
Nowhere real, exactly. Dreams never recreated places properly. They stitched things together badly. A hallway from one century attached to a road from another. Trees where there should’ve been buildings. Candlelight inside rooms that didn’t exist anymore.
Rain soaked through my skirts as I ran down a muddy path between dead trees, breathing hard despite the fact that dreams didn’t require breathing. I knew something was behind me, but I couldn’t see it.
There were terrors in the world that became easier to manage once given a face and a name. This was not one of them, yet somehow I knew whatever was after me was ancient and patient.
My feet slipped on wet earth as panic climbed higher and higher into my throat. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Somewhere in the distance, church bells rang through thick fog while cold air burned the back of my throat.
The cold air elicited a memory. I knew this feeling. I knew it too well. It was the sensation of being hunted.
My heart hammered violently as I forced myself forward through the dark. Branches snagged at my sleeves. Mud splashed my stockings. Somewhere behind me, something dragged slowly across the ground. It knew I couldn’t escape.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no…”
I tried to remind my dream-state of the truth.
There was nothing left to fear anymore. My sire had been taken care of.
The world had changed. The old monsters were gone.
I had survived. He couldn’t hurt me anymore.
He couldn’t control me anymore. He couldn’t rip me from the people who mattered most to me.
Decades had passed without incident. Then more decades after that. Entire generations born and buried while I remained, unchanging and safe.
Nothing had followed me. Nothing had hunted me. Nothing?—
The sound behind me came closer. A wet, dragging scrape across stone.
My stomach dropped violently. I stumbled into another place entirely. The dream shifted around me without warning, trees melting into tall, dark hallways with wallpaper peeling from damp walls.
A house. No. Not just any house. The Lawrence house. Panic transformed instantly, my entire focus now on the children. The terror inside me changed shape so quickly it hurt.
Then an alarm screamed. A shrill electronic sound ripped violently through the dream and my eyes snapped open into darkness. For a long, disoriented moment, I couldn’t understand where I was. Velvet lining. Wood walls. Cramped familiar darkness.
My casket.
The alarm continued blaring. I blinked slowly upward, still trapped halfway between nightmare and waking while my brain struggled painfully toward consciousness.
Something was wrong.
The children.
That thought surfaced first, and everything else followed after.
Children. Alarm. Danger.
I reached clumsily toward the monitor beside me, nearly knocking it out of reach because my hands still weren’t functioning properly.
Waking during the day was already unnatural, but adding in the extra layer of such an intense nightmare and waking to a house alarm was almost more than my system could reconcile. My body viciously resisted waking.
Normally, I woke slowly. I stretched. Drank tea sometimes. Read for a while inside the car until the heaviness faded enough for movement to feel natural again. This was like being dragged from the bottom of the ocean too quickly.
The screen on the baby monitor flickered to life in my trembling hands. At first, there was only static. Then, an image came into perfect view. The front foyer camera showed the entrance hall.
And two men inside the house.
Shit. No, no, no.
For a second, my brain simply refused to process what I was seeing.
The front door hung partially open behind them.
One man carried a crowbar. The other moved through the foyer, opening drawers and tracking muddy footsteps across the floor.
Then one of them looked toward the staircase.
Toward the second floor. Toward the children’s rooms. I didn’t even stop to think about sunlight or anything else that might stand in my way.
Something primal tore through me. “No.”
I shoved up immediately, slamming hard into the side of the casket because my limbs still barely obeyed me. My muscles were heavy and numb with forced wakefulness. Every instinct in my body screamed to lie back down. To return to safety and darkness and death-rest.
Instead, I fought the casket lid open with frantic strength.
The dim daylight filtering through the vehicle’s tinted windows stabbed painfully against my eyes. Not enough to burn outright because of the storm clouds gathering overhead, but enough that my skin prickled in warning.
The alarm was still screaming.
I stared at the monitor again. The intruders were moving deeper into the house now. One laughed about something. The casualness of it horrified me most.
The children were upstairs asleep in their rooms while strangers walked through their home. Weren’t the children at home? Or were they at school? My thoughts were still fuzzy as I floated halfway in a dreamlike state.
My home.
The thought hit before I could stop it.
Mine.
These children. This family. This place. They were all mine to protect.
I swung my legs out of the casket and nearly collapsed the second my feet touched the ground.
God. Everything felt wrong. Like my entire body had been woken before it finished charging. My thoughts lagged behind reality. My vision blurred at the edges. Even standing upright required concentration.
Move.
MOVE.
I gripped the edge of the casket until the wood groaned beneath my fingers.
Upstairs were three children who trusted me. Three children who had hugged me goodbye this morning. Or was that yesterday? I rubbed my face, trying to wake up.
Either way, the Lawrence home was under attack. Panic flooded through me so violently that my body finally obeyed. I stumbled toward the vehicle door and shoved it open.
Daylight hit immediately. Agony flared across my exposed skin. My head swam so hard I nearly blacked out right there beside the car.
The storm clouds helped.
Thank God for the storm clouds.
Gray skies muted the sunlight enough that I could function if I was quick and careful, though every exposed inch of skin that I normally would have had time to re-cover was hot and raw.
I staggered toward the side entrance of the house, breathing hard from pure instinct despite not needing air.
Think.
The children’s rooms.