“Trying to prove to him that he’s allowed happiness, even if he doesn’t believe he deserves any.”
Chapter 53
To call the ten days that ensued blissful would be a pretty stretch. There was much to love about them, but there was also much to hate.
Liam was growing increasingly frustrated because we had yet to pin down Camilla, and Nate was becoming progressively annoyed because he had yet to convince the pack that Bea could live freely among us.
“You really can’t stomach food anymore?” I asked her, during one of my visits.
“I really can’t.”
“Only blood?”
“Only blood.”
“Do you have a preference for itssource?”
“You don’t want to hear my answer.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “But does it ever get out of hand where you think you might attack someone?”
“Not as long as my daily ration is met.” She toyed with the green silk scarf she’d braided into her heavy mahogany hair. “Three square meals.”
I wrinkled my nose, because her version of square meals were blood bags. “And you still can’t shift?”
“Not even a little.” She held out her arm to demonstrate. Her skin remained smooth and hairless.
Although she was no longer in a cage, she was under house arrest with an anklet to monitor her whereabouts and an alarm system that would blare if she tried to leave the compound. Not that she’d ever tried. Between her scarlet irises and still-erratic manner of moving, she’d risk more than lockup if she were caught out and about. Once she gained control over her altered body, she could purchase colored contacts and wander the streets of Beaver Creek.
She dropped her hands back to the book cover of her newest paranormal read, something to do with vampires from the looks of the male biting the female on the cover. Bea had always loved fantasy novels, but the teetering pile of paperbacks gracing my brother’s bookshelves revealed an increased appetite for them.
“Doing research?”
She glanced down at the cover as though she’d forgotten what she’d been reading. “Ha. No. Just restless from being cooped up. But there are some details in these books that are alarmingly accurate. I’m thinking that series over there”—she pointed to a trilogy about werewolves—“must’ve been written by someone who knows a pack, or who is pack.” She distractedly flipped through the pages of her vampire novel, making the tissue-thin paper snap and pulse air against the potted stems of lavender. “How’s Miles?”
Last week, for the first time since our trip out to Bea’s cabin, I’d crossed paths with him in the cereal aisle of the supermarket. He’d spent half of our run-in apologizing for having abandoned me, and the other half, firing questions about his sister’s trip. “He misses you.”
“I don’t think he believes I’m backpacking through Asia to nurse my broken heart or to research our heritage.” That was the story Bea had fed him through text messages, and which I’d supplemented with photoshopped pictures of his sister in various settings.
“Why’d you say that?”
“Because he keeps insisting on flying out to meet me, and I keep having to tell him that I need to make this trip on my own, and he doesn’t understand why.” She stopped toying with her book. “If only I could tell him the truth. Just him.”
“What truth, though? That you’re some sort of new and improved vampire?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Improved?”
“You can walk in the sun. Neither garlic nor holy water affects you.”
She grinned. “That was quite funny.”
“It was. Nate’s face was priceless.”
We’d sat around this very table. Bea had pinched a raw garlic clove and taken a small bite. Besides her eyes watering and expelling reddened tears, and my brother wincing, she didn’t combust, or whatever it was vampires supposedly did at the contact with garlic. That same day, Niall had bottled up some holy water at the local church and sprinkled it on her hand. Great beads of sweat had rolled down Nate’s temples, and he’d squeezed his eyes shut until Bea had patted his hand to reassure him that she wasn’t burnt to a crisp.
I slid the magnetic lid of my travel mug open and shut, open and shut. “Do you regret it?”
She gazed out the window at the glossy surface of the pond slicked over with ice. “I regret four innocent people died because of me.”
