Eliana pushed little bits of orange rubber into her ears, and all the screaming dulled to a low thrum of voices.
Not a circus anymore. Now it felt like a packed theater right before the movie started. Dim and mostly quiet with a smattering of hushed conversation.
Cora slid herself off the headboard so she could relax back against the pillows.
“Do none of you remember your turn?” Eliana asked, glaring at Saiden and his cousins who stood with their heads drooped. “Do you not remember how heightened everything was at first, and how the Essence is still coursing through her, shifting and changing her mind and body? The transformation will interfere with any other Gift for hours yet. I swear, I thought you were all smarter than this.”
A mom, Cora realized. Not a vampire. Not an angel. Just a mom scolding her misbehaving children. She’d seen it happen in movies but never in real life. She never got to have a mom. Never got scolded.
She’d missed out on so much growing up. Would miss out on somuch more when her illness took her.
Her illness.
“Am I dying?” she asked no one in particular. The doctors tried to prepare her, but they’d also said symptoms could be highly unpredictable. Was this what they meant? Was her body failing her already?
She thought she had more time.
“No, Cora,” Saiden assured her in a hushed tone as he sat on the bed. “You’re not dying, I promise.”
His eyes were larger than normal. As if hope and love filled them up like a balloon close to bursting.
“Saiden, what’s going on?” she asked, focusing on those vibrant irises. She remembered indulgent brown eyes with a fleck or two of gold, but now she found herself tumbling into wide pools of dark chocolate strewn with lacy ribbons of caramel and bursting with golden stardust. They were still his, just even more exquisite.
“I need you to listen very carefully, and try to remain calm,” he replied.
Those words were about as effective as tossing water on a grease fire, Cora decided when the thudding bass in the room cranked up a notch, and she realized it was the sound of her own heart.
Her heart shouldn’t be that loud, though.
“Something happened,” Saiden began in a low, steady voice. The kind of voice you only use when things have gone so far south that you might as well buy a piña colada and enjoy the beach.
“We were attacked last night,” he continued.
She knew that, but it didn’t have anything to do with her. She remembered something was wrong at the compound, but she was fine. She stayed in the car. She…
She didn’t lock the doors.
Fear detonated inside her like fireworks. Everything was high pitchwhistles, burning cinders, and shattering explosions. Saiden was still talking, but she couldn’t hear him. Didn’t want to hear him because what he was saying wasn’t possible.
Too loud.
Too bright.
Her mouth hurt.
She shook her head. Not possible. She was still dreaming. Maybe if she could find her way back to the circus, she could force herself to wake up. Maybe…
Too many maybes. None of them actualities.
She forced herself to look at Saiden. To look deeper into his eyes than she would have ever thought possible.
“Please tell me I’m not…” The words caught in her throat, and tears crept into the corners of her eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t…” No amount of pushing or pulling would dislodge the question. Once she asked, once she knew, it became real.
But it couldn’t be real. What she was considering was simply impossible. And she wasn’t scared of impossible things. She ate impossible things for breakfast. Or was that fear she ate? Both, she decided. Clearly, she had a very big breakfast.
So just ask, she commanded herself. Get assurance that the impossible is still impossible, then deal with whatever is actually happening.
“Am I a vampire?” Cora asked, the question holding more weight than the words deserved to be burdened with.
