23. Winnie #2
“I’m alive.”
My face crumpled before I could stop it. Conrad dragged me toward him with far more determination than his current physical state should have allowed, and I folded into him carefully, desperately, trying not to press against bruises while also unable to stop touching him.
When his arms wrapped around me, I broke. All at once, violently and without dignity, I started crying into his shoulder. Centuries of terror left through my eyes in a hot, humiliating mess.
Conrad held me anyway. “You did it,” he whispered against my hair.
“I almost didn’t.”
“But you did.”
I pulled back just enough to see his face. Bruised throat. Split lip. Eyes still unfocused. Beautiful. Human. Mine, if I was brave enough to say such a thing.
Then I kissed him. I meant it to be gentle.
And it was—mostly. Soft and trembling and full of relief so intense it nearly hurt worse than fear had.
His mouth moved against mine carefully, and even through his pain, his hand slid to the back of my neck as if he needed to make sure I was really there.
Billie screamed. CJ made a noise that sounded halfway between a sob and a battle cry.
Bianca said, “Oh, thank God,” in a tone so intensely adult it made me laugh directly into Conrad’s mouth.
I pulled away, crying and laughing, turning just in time as all three children to launch themselves at me. I barely had time to open my arms before they hit.
Billie first, naturally.
Then CJ.
Then Bianca, who tried for one dignified second to remain composed before abandoning it completely and wrapping herself around me with startling force.
I sank to my knees and held them as tightly as I could without hurting them.
“You’re alive,” Billie sobbed into my shoulder.
“So are you.”
“You killed the bad vampire,” Billie said.
“I did.”
“With a stake,” CJ said, breathless and tearful and somehow already narrating. “Through the back. Classic reversal. Perfectly setup.”
I laughed shakily and kissed the top of his head. “You knew,” I whispered.
He pulled back, eyes puffy and red. “You said it on the phone. A twist is only as good as its setup.”
“You caught that?”
He smiled proudly. “Obviously.”
“You are brilliant,” I told him fiercely. “So brilliant.”
His face crumpled a little before he leaned back into me.
Bianca sniffed hard and wiped her face with her sleeve. “I knew the counting compulsion might not work. I wasn’t certain about the rice versus sand combination, but the multiple grain sizes created enough delay.”
“Very academic. I’m so proud of you,” I said through my tears.
Billie pulled back to look at me, her lower lip trembling. “I threw holy water balloons.”
“I saw.”
“Did I help?”
I cupped her messy little face. “You absolutely helped. You were so brave, and I’m extremely proud of you, little girl. I’m so proud of all of you.”
Conrad made a pained sound as he tried to stand.
“Don’t move,” I snapped.
He froze. “Still bossy, I see.”
“A five-hundred-year-old vampire nearly murdered you seven minutes ago.”
“Fair.”
The children shuffled aside enough for me to help him sit more comfortably against the wall. He was battered and exhausted, and his eyes were still slightly unfocused, but he watched me with something that made my undead heart stumble painfully.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked.
Despite everything, despite the dust on the floor that had once been my sire, despite the blood drying beneath my nose, despite the children crying into my sleeves, I laughed. Then I wiped my face with the back of my hand and said, “I have quite a lot to tell you about my past.”
Conrad looked at me for a long moment. Then his mouth curved faintly, even though it clearly hurt. “You can skip the part where you tell me you’re a vampire. I figured that one out.”
“We told him,” Billie said proudly.
“We were afraid for you,” Bianca added.
“He did the grown-up thing where he refused obvious evidence because reality was inconvenient,” CJ said.
Conrad looked wounded. “Excuse me, discovering vampires are real is not a normal Tuesday.”
“It is now,” Billie said.
I looked between them all, overwhelmed by their desire to protect me. “You believed them?”
Conrad met my eyes. “They told me. I didn’t want to believe it, but…” His gaze drifted to the ash scattered across the dining room floor. “The evidence was compelling.”
I rubbed my bottom lip where my fangs had left two bloody puncture holes. “I was going to tell you. I swear.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to tell you before.”
“I know.”
My throat tightened again. “He made me quit and say all those things. I never wanted to leave you.”
Every line of tension in Conrad’s face vanished. Something raw moved through him, visible even through the pain. “I thought I’d lost you.” His words were quiet, barely more than breath.
I wrapped my arms around him as gently as possible. He held me tight anyway, ignoring all his hurts.
“You will never lose me,” I whispered.
He went still.
The children had gathered close again, still sniffling, still shaking, but mercifully still alive.
Rice and sand covered half the staircase.
Silver jewelry lay everywhere. Garlic mist lingered in the air.
The dining table was a disaster. A five-hundred-year-old monster had been reduced to dust next to backpacks and rainboots.
Our first real family battle, apparently.
Conrad pulled back enough to look at me. The bruising on his throat was darkening now, and I could see the exhaustion settling deeper now that adrenaline was fading. Still, when he gave me a dazed smile, he was impossibly handsome.
“So,” he said.
Somehow, I managed to raise an eyebrow. “So?”
“Would you like to go out to dinner sometime?”
I stared at him. The children went silent.
Conrad swallowed, then winced and tried again. “A late dinner, obviously. We have a lot to talk about.”
After everything, I could only look at him. This ridiculous, wonderful human man, who had nearly died because of me. Surrounded by vampire dust and panicked children. Asking me on a date.
A laugh burst out of me before turning immediately into another tearful sound. “I would love nothing more.”
Billie screamed again.
CJ collapsed against the wall in relief.
Bianca muttered, “Finally,” with the weary satisfaction of someone who had been managing adults far too long.
Conrad reached for my hand.
I took it.
The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was that nobody had died overnight. Considering how the previous evening had gone, that felt like a victory.
Morning sunlight spilled through the living room windows, stretching across sleeping bags, blankets, and the collection of limbs that made up the Lawrence family. Billie had somehow migrated halfway onto Bianca’s sleeping bag. CJ was sprawled flat on his back with his mouth hanging open.
Conrad was still asleep in the recliner. He looked painfully fragile in the bright morning light, his breathing shallow and his brow slightly furrowed even in unconsciousness. It was the physical toll of the brutal hours we had spent in the local emergency room finally catching up to him.
Getting him into the car last night had been a masterclass in human stubbornness, but the diagnostic scans hadn’t lied.
Conrad had severe chest wall contusions, a mild concussion, and an agonized intercostal muscle strain that the doctor promised would mimic the pain of broken ribs for at least a week.
All of this was in addition to severe bruising and a deep gash on his leg that needed several stitches.
We still hadn’t figured out where the gash came from, but it made sense that his entire body looked like he’d been dragged behind a truck on the interstate.
The real trouble, however, hadn’t been the skeletal damage.
It had been the stark, purple discoloration blooming around his windpipe.
The attending physician, a sharp-eyed woman who looked like she tolerated zero nonsense, had stared hard at the bruising, lowered her clipboard, and asked point-blank if we needed to call the police.
For a terrifying second, I’d braced myself to use a heavy thread of glamour to rewrite the woman’s memory entirely.
But Conrad, despite a brain currently rattling inside his skull, had thought remarkably fast on his feet.
He’d wheezed out a story about an unexpected altercation with a distant, estranged cousin—a volatile man who had already hopped into his truck and driven back across state lines.
The doctor’s expression had practically screamed skepticism, her gaze darting between Conrad’s fractured state and my own severe, black-clad posture, but with a cooperative patient refusing to press charges, she’d let it drop.
She had discharged him with a strict laundry list of directives: physical rest, ice packs every twenty minutes, and a total cognitive rest—which meant no laptops, no spreadsheets, and no corporate crises for at least a week.
I watched the slow, careful rise and fall of his chest. The hospital had relied on standard ice packs and a prescription for pain management, but they didn’t know the full extent of the care Conrad was about to receive.
Between the specialized healing salves on my apothecary shelves and a fierce protectiveness I was entirely tired of trying to fight, I fully intended to nurse him back to health myself.
I sat up carefully on the couch. Every muscle in my body ached.
The fight with Bogdan had left me battered, though I was healing.
Slowly, but faster than I would have had I been human.
My ribs no longer felt like they were trying to separate themselves from the rest of me, which I considered progress.
For a while, I simply watched them. The room looked ridiculous.
Blankets everywhere. Pillows on the floor.
One abandoned stuffed giraffe near the television.
A half-finished bowl of popcorn sitting on the coffee table.
The aftermath of what had essentially become the world’s strangest slumber party.