All I wanted was to go home, go to bed, and wake up cured in the morning.
As a matter of reflex, my eyes were drawn to a clock on the wall. It was a quarter past eight.
Ten hours and forty-five minutes.
“How’s my patient?” A new voice—deep and baritone, so gentle that I instinctively wanted to trust its owner—snapped me from my reverie.
“She’s awake,” Elliot said needlessly. “I should go. Come on, Skye.”
The second I heard Skylar’s name, my eyes sought her out. She was standing next to a man easily three times her size, but within seconds, it was clear who was calling the shots around here, and it wasn’t Elliot or the man with the soothing voice.
“Don’t be ridiculous, El. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
Elliot narrowed his eyes at his sister, but she just stared back and grinned. “I’m not telling you what to do,” she volunteered helpfully, “I’m just telling you what you’re going to do. There’s a difference.”
“Skylar,” Elliot said with the thinning patience of an older sibling much abused. “You are not psychic.”
Skylar sighed. “Elliot,” she informed me, “is a skeptic.” From her tone of voice, you would have thought it was a dirty word.
“Elliot,” the boy in question repeated, his tone mimicking hers exactly, “has common sense. If you run around sticking your nose into things that are none of your business, you’re going to get yourself hurt. You’re not psychic, you’re not superwoman, and if Mom and Dad had any idea you skipped school and almost got yourself eaten—”
Skylar finished his sentence for him. “They’d tell me, very sternly, not to do it again.”
“You want to help me out here?” Elliot asked, exasperated. At first, I thought he was talking to me, but then the man standing beside Skylar answered.
“We both know Skylar’s spoiled rotten and doesn’t follow directions worth a damn,” he said, his tone mild, though he did raise one eyebrow at Skylar in a way that actually made her fidget. “Right now, I’m more concerned about her friend.”
“Kali,” Skylar supplied.
The man—who I could only assume was another one of Skylar’s many brothers—smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hello, Kali,” he said, his voice gentle as he came to sit on the side of the bed. “I’m Vaughn, unfortunate older brother to Tweedledee and Tweedledum here. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I replied, but Vaughn gave me the same raised-eyebrow look he’d given Skylar, and I found myself looking down and away.
Vaughn lifted a hand to the side of my face, and I flinched, but his hold was gentle as he angled my eyes back toward his. “You’re not fine, Kali. There’s an ouroboros on your stomach, and your body’s working overtime, trying to replace the blood you’ve already lost.”
I knew without Vaughn having to tell me so that trying was the operative word. I felt better than I had since I’d been bitten, but that didn’t change anything. The creature inside me was still sucking me dry. At this rate, I might not make it to sunrise.
Some plan, I thought.
I waited for the voice in my head to gloat.
Nothing.
“I can’t feel it,” I said out loud, thankful that I’d managed not to refer to my would-be killer as a him. “Before, there was a … presence.”
I couldn’t describe it any better than that, not without making all three Haydens think I’d really gone off my metaphorical rocker.
“Based on your height and weight, it should take approximately four days for your condition to run its course.” Vaughn’s tone never changed, but there was no gentling news like that. “Are you sure you were bitten this afternoon?”
“I’m sure.” It wasn’t like smearing my blood on Bethany’s back and luring her death sentence to jump ship was the kind of thing I’d forget.
Bethany. Chupacabra.
An expletive exited my mouth.
“Got something you’d like to share with the class?” Skylar asked, unperturbed.
I opened my mouth and then shut it again, unsure how much Skylar had told Elliot, let alone Vaughn.
“Everything,” Skylar said, and for the first time, I realized that she had a habit of doing that—responding to things I hadn’t said out loud.
“Skye?” Vaughn’s voice was even and calm, and it occurred to me that her whole family was probably used to this—or as used to Skylar as any person could get.
“Kali?” Skylar deftly passed Vaughn’s question on to me, and this time, I answered, despite the instinct screaming at me, from somewhere in my memory, that people like me kept secrets for a reason.
“I can’t believe you three let Bethany walk out of here,” I said. “Skylar told you about the woman at the school, didn’t she? And her suit-wearing henchmen?”
Elliot rolled his eyes heavenward. “Skylar,” he said crisply, “exaggerates.”
“Does Bethany exaggerate, too?” I shot back.
“Bethany can take care of herself,” Elliot said. “And her dad isn’t exactly the kind of guy you say no to.”
The expression on my face must have betrayed what I thought about that, because Elliot’s voice took on a defensive tone.
“If there were some shady characters at the high school, and if they were looking for a cheerleader who’d been bitten—trust me, they won’t get within a mile of Beth’s house. Her dad does some of his work at home, and the place is under surveillance, twenty-four seven.”
“Shady characters?” Skylar repeated incredulously. “What are you, eighty?”
“Skylar,” Vaughn said softly, and to my surprise, Skylar shut her mouth. A moment later, I could understand why she’d done it, because Vaughn turned his gaze back to me, and I realized that he was the type of person who never had to raise his voice, never had to so much as narrow his eyes.
“You need to call your parents,” he said, and I got the feeling that it wasn’t a suggestion. “For whatever reason, you seem to be having an unusual reaction to your condition. We don’t know how fast it’s going to progress, and I’m out of my league when it comes to treatment.”
I met Vaughn’s eyes. We both knew that the problem wasn’t that he was out of his league. The problem was that there was no treatment. No cure. There was nothing that Vaughn—or any medical professional—could do. If I’d been fully human, I would have been a dead girl walking, and as far as Skylar’s brother knew, that’s exactly what I was.
You think I’m dying. I didn’t say the words out loud, but I didn’t have to. I could tell just by looking at Vaughn that he knew—and that he wasn’t going to back off until I called home.
“I’ll call my dad,” I said, “but I’m not going to tell him, not yet. Not over the phone.”
I hoped Vaughn wouldn’t press the issue, and he didn’t. Instead, he just handed me the phone. After a pregnant pause, I dialed our home number, banking on the fact that my father rarely left work before nine. I got the answering machine and hung up.
“He’s still at work,” I said, handing the phone to Vaughn, who turned around and pressed it right back into my palm.
“Try his cell.”
I narrowed my eyes, and Skylar snorted. “Try having five of them,” she told me. “I can’t tie my shoes without someone telling me I’m doing it wrong.”
Sensing that I wasn’t going to win this one, I dialed my father’s cell number. I wasn’t at all surprised when it went to voice mail, too.
“Hi,” I said, feeling nine kinds of awkward leaving a message, when the two of us spoke so rarely face-to-face. “It’s Kali. I’m calling because I got a little sick today, and my friend’s older brother thought I should call you. I guess he’s a doctor or something.”
I paused, wondering why I was doing this. My dad probably wouldn’t even listen to his messages.
“Anyway, I’ll be home soon.”