I swallow hard, not letting go of her hand. What if I just tell her everything now?No.I can’t.
“A family friend.” Penny is family. My words aren’t exactly a lie. All the same, I can’t look Aliz in the eye as I say it. “I’m sorry you overheard that.”
“Did she…” Aliz falters, and I already hear the strain in her voice. “Did she really call me a leech?”
I’ve used that word in my head. I’ve directed it silently at every vampire I’ve met here at Tynahine. Ife, Julia, Elia, Aliz. But now the word makes my skin crawl. “She’s a bigot,” I say. Aliz tilts my chin up, her expression hurt.
“Your family has worked with vampires for centuries,” she says. “So, why would you associate yourself with someone like that?”
“How do you know my family works with vampires?” I ask, trying to worm my way out of her question.
Her cheeks gain a red tinge. “Because I googled you,” she says. “You never tell me anything about yourself.”
My breathing stills. I feel warmth draining from my face, and I look at her. Aliz draws out her phone, her face still tense as she opens a website. “ ‘The Smiths have been longtime partners with the Macleod and Willow families, a partnership dating back to the eighteenth century.’ That’s on your parents’ website. I know those are vampire families.”
I try to find my voice, but there’s a lump in my throat.
“Why should a family that’s made their fortune thanks to vampires have the nerve to be bigoted towards us?”
“I’m not like them,” I squeeze out, trying to ground myself.
“Whatareyou like then, Cassie?” she says, her voice growing tight.
“I’m not like them,” I insist, and as I reach for her, she steps back, face still flushed with anger. “I may have been like them before coming to Tynahine. I won’t lie to you, but—”
“You arealwayslying!” she says sharply. Whatever expression I make forces a bitter laugh from her. “You think I can’t tell? You lie to me all the time. Right from the moment we first spoke.”
My eyes burn. All this time I’d thought I’d been careful. Aliz looks like she wants to say more—to say the words that will ruin everything betweenus.
“Tell me, do you think I’m aleech?”
Aliz doesn’t raise her voice. Yet somehow, it’s loud. It echoes in my head, the wordstell mea lasso around my mind, digging deep into the space that’s been shrivelled and burnt since I first became a vampire hunter. Pain sears across the Familiar’s mark, thorns digging into me, and I say, “No.”
My face is limp. I recognise this feeling. I thought I’d forgotten it, but it’s as real as it was before I became immune toit.
“Then why don’t you trust me?”
Her grip on my will has loosened, and I gawk at her, her black eyes without even a hint of red.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“You just compelled me,” I say. My legs crumple, but I don’t let myself fall. I look away from her. Not meeting her eyes won’t makeany difference. I can feel it, her will mingling with mine. Strings tugging at my words, my thoughts, my movements.
“What?” Aliz is still furious, but when she takes in my expression, something shifts.
It’s over.
We still had six days left, but somehow, something—I clasp my hands over my mouth and try to slow my breathing, try to stop myself from screaming.No.I didn’t go through months of torture at Callisto training to bypass compulsion just for Aliz to be able to do it without evenlookingat me. “This can’t be happening,” I say.
“I didn’t—”
“Try it,” I say, my throat tight. “Give me an order.”
She shakes her head, not looking me in the eye. But she must have felt it, too, a new power granted by the Familiar’s mark, because she looks up at me again, expression resolute. The wind blows against the window.
“Twirl,” Aliz says, and my body moves, tethered to her volition, spinning around.
I run.
