Without his consent? A picture of a vampire jumping on him from the shadows and forcing him to become a vampire comes to me. I shiver. All the vampires I met seemed so proud to be vampires, even if I didn’t entirely understand their pride at living forever by drinking blood. But to be a human and then forced into being Turned? That seemed… awful. My heart ached for Bryan just thinking about it.
“Why haven’t the vampire authorities handled that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle. It was my understanding they had their own little police force. So if Bryan had been forced to Turn all those many years ago, I’d have thought the vampires would have severely punished this Quillan by now.
“They don’t believe me.” His face was heartbroken for one painful moment before it changed to panicked. “He needs to die. Heneedsto, before he Turns someone else against their will.”
No,” I told him, then tried to soften the word. “I can look into him, but–”
“That’s not good enough!” His hands curled into fists, and his fangs flashed, elongating with his anger. “He’s still hurting people. If I’d known…” He shook his head. “I would have taken care of him a long time ago.” His last words were a growl. A threat.
Maybe Bryan wasn’t as harmless as I’d thought.
“We can look into him, but please don’t do anything stupid,” I said, practically begging.
He took a step back from me, such a flash of hurt across his face that I felt like I’d done something wrong. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to come back and have Carol see me as, I don’t know, but something good. But if you won’t handle Quillan, I will. And he’ll get exactly what is coming to him.”
“Bryan.”
He turned, walking away from me again.
“Whether he deserves it or not, if you kill him in cold blood, without… without a jury or a trial, you’ll be, in some ways, as guilty as he is.”
But instead of responding, he disappeared into the woods.
He was upset. That was all it was, right? He wouldn’t actually hurt this vampire named Quillan. Would he? I wished I knew for sure, but I hated that I didn’t.
TWO
Emma
Drivingdown the road to the house I shared with Henry, and my son Travis when he was in town, I smiled. In the last few months, I'd been making some small changes to the house and some bigger ones. One of the bigger ones was getting the whole outside fixed up. We'd had someone repair a few loose spots on the roof, fix the shudders and the porch, and even repaint the whole thing. I'd momentarily considered keeping it the exact same colors that my parents had painted it when we were younger but then decided that the house was memory enough. It was Henry's and my place now, so we went with colors we both liked. White with pops of a lovely blue color. Now, instead of having a bit of a rundown, unused feel, it felt like a brand new place. I was proud of it. Leaving my old life behind had been hard enough, I was grateful to have a place to put my homey touch on, a place that I can never imagine losing or leaving again.
As I stopped in the driveway, my phone began to ring. Seeing Travis’s name, I answered, “How’s my big European explorer?”
He laughed. “Well, we’re mostly studying, but I have gotten to see some incredible things.”
“And how is Jacqueline?” It had taken some adjustments to see my son as a young man rather than a boy but learning that he was dating a witch somehow had been easier to accept than that he was growing up. Like our family was meant for magic.
“She’s loving it here. She said she might not ever want to leave.”
I tried to keep a smile in my voice, even though the idea of my boy never coming back home hurt. “I can imagine.”
He must have sensed how I was really feeling because he said, “Mom, we aren’treallygoing to stay. Actually, Jacqueline has been talking about how, after we’re done traveling, she could see herself settling down in Mystic Hollow.”
“Really?” Whoa, girl. Play it cool.
“Yeah, but we’ll see.”
I heard some commotion in the background. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just have to go. Sorry, Mom. We’ll have a real conversation soon.”
“No worries,” I told him. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” he said, and then ended the call.
I smiled down at my phone, then stuffed it back in my purse. Turning off the engine, I climbed out and headed up the driveway, the steps, and onto the front porch. Before I could put my keys into the lock, I heard the telltale signs of a video game being played loudly. I only needed to wonder if it was my brother, Henry, playing alone, or with his girlfriend Alice.
Going inside, I grinned. It wasn't Henry alone or Henry with Alice. It wasDanieland Henry. They'd been hanging out together more and more these past few months. And while Henry didn't usually like people in his space or "messing" with his things, Daniel was sensitive to my brother's autism and worked hard to figure out his triggers and avoid them.
