“She was really worried about you.” I glanced past her shoulder at the Junktique. “How’s your dad?”
“He let Nicky drive me home from the hospital. I could hardly believe it, but I guess they talked a lot while I was gone.” She bit her bottom lip before she said, “Cat, about that boy who came in after the old man made me hit you.”
“His name is Jesse, and … .” I trailed off as I stared at her. “Sunny, you remember that?”
She nodded. “I know your brother tried to make me forget everything like the other girls, but it didn’t stick. I think I know why. One time, when the old man was biting me, I kind of bit him back. I got his blood in my mouth, and I spit it out, but I felt different after that.” She gave me a desperate look. “Will I grow fangs now?”
“I think if you were going to,” I said honestly, “you’d already have them.”
“That’s what I thought.” She sighed. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but … well, I can’t stop thinking about Jesse. His eyes, I mean. They were all black.” She hesitated. “The old man’s turned that way whenever he shifted.”
“They’re not the same,” I said carefully. “Julian was insane. Jesse is … almost as normal as we are.”
Sunny took in a quick breath. “So he is a vampire?”
“No. Not all the way.” I could see her mom looking in the window at us. “He’s very fast and strong, and he doesn’t age, but he doesn’t drink human blood, and he would never hurt anyone.” I saw her mother peering in. “I think your mom is getting anxious, and my brother will be here to pick me up any minute.”
“She doesn’t even want me to go to bathroom by myself,” Sunny complained, and then her expression grew serious. “I thought we were gonna die down there. Thank you for giving me my life back.”
I hugged her, and then sent her off with her mom before I went back to dusting the shelves. When I finished that final task, I looked around the shop one last time. If books could talk, I’d be in very hot water, but Mrs. Frost would never know I’d done anything here but the job she’d hired me to do. Assuming my brother let her remember that.
Instead of going out the front door and waiting for Trick, I let myself out through the back. From there I walked slowly down the street to the public docks. I didn’t look at the boathouse when I stepped over the chain with the CLOSED sign; instead I went to the very end of the pier.
Lost Lake had gotten lost again. A fine white mist hovered, concealing the dark water and stretching out from the banks and growing denser around the distant blur of Raven Island.
I couldn’t see the mansion, but lights from its windows glittered along the farthest edge of the mist. I decided the brightest was coming from his room, and focused on it.
No matter what happens here today, some part of me will always love you, I thought.
“You shouldn’t be down here by yourself, young lady.”
I turned my head as Jim Yamah came to stand beside me. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, Sheriff. I just wanted to say good-bye.”
He braced his arms against the railing. “I don’t think even Jesse can hear you from here.”
“He’s not the one I’m saying good-bye to.” The sound of Trick’s Harley made me glance back at the street, where he was parking it. The panic I didn’t want to feel set its teeth in me. “If I punched you, sir, really hard, would you arrest me and put me in jail and not let me have any visitors?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I’d probably have you pick up trash for a month. Two if you broke anything.” He eyed me. “Keeping secrets is what started this whole mess, Miss Youngblood. Maybe it’s time you and your brothers got better acquainted with the truth.”
Jim Yamah gave my shoulder an awkward pat before he left me there. All I heard him say as he passed my brother on the pier was “Evening, Patrick.”
“Jim.” Trick kept walking steadily toward me.
I wanted to jump in the water. I wasn’t a great swimmer, but I could probably make it to one of the boats at the marina. And steal it, and go out to the island, and try to speak to Jesse again … or maybe I’d get hypothermia in the freezing cold water, lose consciousness and drown. And then all my problems would be solved. I wondered if my brother could hear me thinking that. I hoped so.
By then Trick was standing just behind me. “Cat, what are you doing here? You were supposed to wait at the shop for me.”
“I know.” My legs felt weak, and I dropped down to perch on the pier’s edge, folding my legs under me so my shoes wouldn’t get wet. “I can’t seem to do anything right.”
Trick gripped the railing as he sat down beside me. “Me, either.”
“Are you going to take my memories here, or wait until we get home?”
“It doesn’t work that way. The memories are still there; I just plant new ones that cover them up.” He looked down at the mist swirling around the pylons. “That’s why I’m responsible for what happened to Julian Hargraves.”
I stared at him. “You’re blaming yourself for what that crazy old man did? What about me? What about Jesse? I was the girl he wanted to kidnap. He used Jesse’s blood to change into … whatever he was. You were never a part of this.” And because I wanted to hurt him, I added, “I made sure of it.”
“I could have stopped it before anything happened,” my brother said slowly. “But I didn’t know that Julian had witnessed the attack on you and Jesse on Halloween night. Jim told me the old man was a recluse who never left his mansion, so I didn’t bother to check on him or give him new memories.”
“And the next day everyone thought he was dead.”
Trick nodded. “If I’d been more careful, more thorough, none of this would have happened.”
If he was looking for sympathy, he’d come to the wrong pier. “Look on the bright side. You’ll be the only one who remembers that you screwed up.”
“He’s not going to tamper with your memories again, Catlyn,” Jesse’s voice said, as clearly as if he were sitting next to me.
Trick stood and pulled me to my feet at the same time. A loop of rope lassoed the top of one mooring post, and out of the mist a small dark boat floated up beside the pier. After he tied off another line, Jesse stepped up and faced my brother.
Trick looked as if he’d been kicked in the gut. “We made an agreement.”
“Another agreement?” I looked from Jesse to Trick. “Patrick, what did you do?”
“He offered me his blood to give my parents,” Jesse said. “Not all of it, of course; just enough to make them resistant to sunlight, as I am now. He asked only one thing in return: that I never try to see you again.”
Of course Trick knew how much Jesse loved his mother and father, and what it would mean for the Ravens to be more human. He’d used that desperation against them, and I’d probably never forgive him for it.
I kept my game face on as I watched Jesse. “Then why are you here?”
“They don’t need it anymore, do they?” Trick asked, and when Jesse shook his head, he turned to look out at Raven Island. “I didn’t think you’d figure it out.”
“When Julian attacked me, he took from me enough blood to enable him to finish making the change.” Jesse tugged his collar back to reveal the slash on his neck. “When you sent him above ground, the sunlight should have set him on fire. But taking my blood made him more human.”
I reached up and touched the scar on my shoulder. “Because you took mine that night, and it changed yours.”
“He’s still not human,” Trick said abruptly.
Jesse nodded. “But neither am I vampire.”
“I told your parents the truth,” my brother said, a note of warning in his voice. “Our blood is not a cure. You can never change back completely.”
“But you neglected to mention that my blood would help them just as much as yours.” Jesse studied his face. “You used our ignorance to extract my promise never to see Catlyn again.”
My brother didn’t look the least bit ashamed. “If you had a fifteen-year-old sister, you’d do the same.”
“So we’re right back where we started.” I faced my brother. “I’d call you a horse’s ass, but that would be an insult to horses.” I turned to my dark boy. “You are just as bad as him.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “I am sorry.”
My brother folded his arms. “I’m not.”
“Both of you say you love me, and then you do all these terrible things to me.” I turned to my brother. “I’ll be sixteen in a few weeks. That’s old enough to go court and ask to be emancipated. I’ll have to drop out of school and work full-time while I rent a room somewhere. Then, once I’ve saved enough of my earnings, I’ll leave Lost Lake for good.”
Trick moved his shoulders. “If you remember to do all that.”
“I don’t have to.” I took out the letter in my pocket and handed it to him. “I wrote everything that’s happened to me in this letter, and I gave a copy of it to someone you don’t know. Every week I will check in with that person. If I don’t, the letter goes public.”
He read the address on the envelope, which was for an Orlando newspaper. “I can give new memories to nosy newspaper reporters as well as reckless sisters.”
“Oh, my letter won’t be mailed to a newspaper,” I told him. “My check-in person will post it on the Internet.”
He crumpled the envelope in his fist. “You’re bluffing.”
I smiled. “Brainwash me and find out.”
“Am I mentioned in this letter?” Jesse asked.
I nodded. “You, your parents, Julian Hargraves, everyone and everything.”