We all clamber into Sabra’s car, Sabra and I in the front and Layden in the back. I lift my passenger’s side visor mirror to look at him, adjusting it so I only see his face. “I’m so proud of you,” I tell him, and he smiles wide.
He reaches a hand up and squeezes my shoulder from the back seat behind me. I feel the touch all the way to my toes.
“So,” Sabra asks as we pull out of the parking lot and onto the road. “What will you do now? The world’s your oyster. You can go anywhere you want. Do anything.”
I frown, and Layden’s gaze connects with mine again in the mirror.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not in any hurry.”
I look down and readjust in my seat, pulling my shoulder away from his touch. He withdraws his hand.
You trapped us all. Sabra’s words echo in my head. Is that what I do?
And always Vlad’s voice.Are you a selfish little girl?
I see myself like a spider in that other dark, frigid realm. Waiting and spinning, patient for so long, selfishly drawing human after human into my web and feeding on their life force.
Oh, I got myself into the human realm eventually, all right, as they fed on others, an unending hunger. But only so I could keep trapping victims in my net and using them for my own gain. By then, it was all I knew.
I look back at Layden, smiling in his new freedom.
Once, Sabra and I were best friends. More than that, we were like sisters. And now she hates me.
Would Layden start to hate me eventually, too, if I asked him to stay?
TEN
PHOENIX
I slamthe door on the car and glare at Lucian, my driver. “I don’t want anyone hearing awordof what happened tonight.”
He just stares back at me with his sunken eyes beneath his too-broad, pale forehead. Always the same with my uncles. “I report faithfully to my Master,” he says in heavily Slavic-accented English.
I try to hold my shit together. “Obviously, I know you’re going to cry to Daddy. I mean, I don’t want word getting to anyone else in the compound. This is not going to become the latest gossip while you all get together in the basement and fuck your blood bags or whatever it is you do down there.”
“Ugly language for such a pretty little girl.” He reaches forward, and I jerk back before he can touch my hair with his too-long, yellowed nails. He and my other uncles have been trying to touch my hair since I arrived here as a little girl. Fucking creepy. I cut it all off when I was fourteen to make a statement: Leave me the fuck alone.
I glare at him. “I’m a little girl about as much as you’re a man. We’re both monsters. Don’t make me make you crawl on your knees again to prove it.”
He hisses at me, exposing his fangs.
I stand still, cross my arms over my chest, and wave a hand pretentiously at a large yawn. Seen it all a thousand times before, buddy.
But then I stand tall again. “I’m serious. If I hear one word of this around the compound, you’ll wish all I was making you do was crawl.”
“What?” he demands. “What can you do?”
I smile at him. “You’ll just have to wait. And wonder.” I make apowmotion and walk away from him. Better to be thought of as a scary monster than a pretty little girl.
Most times, I didn’t think I was either, but on nights like tonight…
Then, of course, Layden isonme from the second I get near the door of my room. He’s waiting for me outside my door and follows me as soon as I push inside. We’re always in and out of each other’s rooms since there’s nothing else to do down here, so it’s not strange—just not at all what I need right now.
“Hey!” he says, full of all his bubbly good guy energy. “What have you been doing? Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”
I look at the clock on the stove as I drop my keys on the counter, then glare at him in exasperation. “It’s only been like four hours.”
He steps back a little, looking puzzled. “Yes, but you’re are usually around in the afternoons.”
