"No! I am going home and I am going to see my dad and Marcie and Caroline."
"Not yet," he says, tugging at my wrist. I let myself be dragged in for the embrace. The material of James's T-shirt is soft against my cheek. Listening to him, it almost feels like it's going to be okay. If he just keeps talking, if I don't ever have to think about the next step, it will be okay.
But then James pushes me away and stares at my chest. Before I can ask what is wrong, he presses his hand over my left breast.
"Hey!" I slap at his hand, but he ignores it and presses harder.
"Your heart," he says in wonderment.
"Yes," I say slowly, "it's there." I don't know where he gets off acting like he's the one who has been drained and refilled today.
He meets my gaze. "It's beating."
"Yes, it is."
Grabbing my wrist again, he clamps both thumbs across the purplish ghosting of veins. "Sophie," he says louder. "It's beating."
"We've established that, James."
"Sophie-," he repeats, but is cut off when Neville's voice rings out behind us.
"Vampire hearts don't beat." He nudges James's thumbs out of the way, and then looks at me with identical wonder. No one could still be human after that exchange. I have seen people turn with half that amount. He gives a short laugh. Vlad was right.
Ripping my wrist away, I put fingers to my neck to test it. It's true. My skin bumps against the pads of my fingers in a happy, gentle rhythm. I could sing. I could dance. I could do a freaking cheer. And then I come to another realization: My skin is smooth, unblemished.
"You healed," James says, answering my question. "You heard my thoughts. I've watched your eyes follow the animals . . . But you are breathing. You are alive," he says aloud, but is followed by something that I know-I know-he would never want anyone to hear.
It's not fair.
An awkward silence falls, a silence that lasts until the sound of approaching footsteps make everyone tense.
"Where are Devon and Ashley?" I snap and instinctively crouch down, feeling a new strength coiled and waiting in my muscles.
"Beneath your feet," James says.
I glance down, stepping back when I realize that I'm standing in what looks like the remains of two giant campfires. Gross.
"We took them out first," Violet chirps and then nods toward the picnic table. "When you were sleeping on the ground.
I am saved from having to find anything intelligent to add by Caroline bursting into the clearing. Her hair is a mess, her clothing is more torn than not, and she's clutching what must be the biggest stick she could find in the woods. She drops it when she sees me. I am enveloped in another hug. Today may not have turned me into a vampire, but I am apparently now a hugger.
"I got in my car and drove halfway home before coming back," she says in my ear before raising her head. "Wait. Is everything fine?"
"It's over," I say, not liking the note of uncertainty in my voice. "Well, the Vlad part."
"I was so scared. I felt horrible," she says.
Thank god I don't have to explain things to Mom and Fred.
The thought comes out of nowhere. I blink and look at Caroline, who's still smiling at me with genuine relief. As much as I'd like to think it was my imagination, I have the sinking feeling that I am going to have to get used to the unedited version of people's thoughts for at least the near future.
"Let's go home," I say, turning to find the others. James has moved away and joined their group. They are busy discussing particulars-how to get Vlad's car back to the house when his keys "dusted" along with him, among other things. Caroline tugs at my hand, pulling me toward the trees. And after a few more seconds, I let her lead me.
Chapter Twenty
Caroline drives us home. She has questions-But why did Vlad want me? Was James like them?-and she deserves answers. After all, she is taking this vampire hostage thing like a pro; and a part of me suspects that it's because it answers all of her questions about why her relationship with Vlad failed. Too exhausted to find a starting point, I promise to tell her later, and after a few failed attempts to prod the story out of me, she gives up and focuses on the road. It is difficult to keep from staring at her neck. Not because of the wound, which has finally ceased to bleed, but because I can see the gentle glow of light winding out of her collar and traveling up her neck. I try to blink it away, hoping it will disappear like the after flash of a surprise picture, but it remains.
When we pull into the driveway, she uses the rearview mirror to arrange her hair over the bite marks and then reaches into the backseat. Tossing a blue shirt in my lap, she starts to pull off her own.
"Why do you have several changes of clothes in the back of your car?" I ask.
"You don't?" she says after she's pulled off her own switcheroo. "Maybe you should."
I cast a rueful look at what was once my favorite shirt. "You know, maybe you're right." I change into the navy polo and then study our front door and its folksy, suburban wreath. "What are we going to tell them?"
She smiles with some of the old bubble. "Please. Leave it to me."
And so I do, nodding every time there's a pause in Caroline's story about how I found her at Amanda's and there was a flat tire, and that's why I'm all grimy. I am distracted by the way I can feel the concern rolling off of my father. By the time I pick up Caroline's random They are so buying it, I'm rattled enough to beg leave to go upstairs, where I take an hour-long shower. I feel safe there, where the tile is bright white and unchanging, and where I am free of all thoughts but my own.
I check my pulse a lot in the days that follow. I check in class, I check at the dinner table, I check at stoplights. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my fingers already at my neck or on my wrist. There is always that moment of panic when I can't locate it, when I think that the fluke is finally over and that I am going to suddenly feel the points of fangs jabbing at the corners of my mouth. But then I find it. I always find it, beating fast and strong and human.
My "side effects" don't go away. Whatever balance was tipped by James's impromptu blood transfusion does not find its equilibrium. My family, teachers, and classmates now glimmer like glowworms, even under fluorescent lights, and I am still a satellite for stray thoughts. I know that this is not normal; I know that I should be looking into what it means and who (and what exactly) I am. Sometimes I watch my father as he putters around the house, wondering how much he knew or knows and finding it hard to believe that a man who owns a snowman tie could have ever been wrapped up in anything remotely supernatural. Occasionally I even try to listen in on his thoughts, before guilt makes me stop. I wonder more about my mother in this week than I have in the last five years, but I am still not ready to crack it open. I tell myself tomorrow, and then tomorrow I tell myself next week.
Mr. Amado doesn't choose me as editor in chief. While there's a moment where it makes me want to pick up and hurl something at the wall-or at least stake Vlad all over again-I know that Lindsay deserves it more than I do, if only because she played the game fair and honest the entire way through. She's already promised me that she'll include any investigative article I want to write. I am tempted to test that with vampires, but I think I'm vampired out. Or at least that's what I'm trying to convince myself of these days.
James does not come to school in the next week, nor does he appear outside my window. I try not to be disappointed, but I won't say that seeing the empty chemistry stool isn't a kick in the gut. Every night I try not to squint at his house, and every night I fail. A part of me longs to confront him, but after my shocked words during the brief time that I thought I was a vampire, thrusting my mortality in his face now seems like the ultimate insult.
But then one night I'm up late working on my French homework, trying to figure out how to tell Pierre, who is always lost, how to get to the boulangerie when I catch a small glow of light in the corner of my eye. Holding my breath, I peer out the window, the tiny flicker of hope shrinking with every second that passes. Come on, come on, I think, willing it into existence. My face is mere inches from the glass when it flares again. I am out of my chair so fast that I stumble over the legs, knocking my knees against the armrests. Lately I've been misjudging the time it takes to complete actions, to get from point A to point B. Right now, however, I don't care. I thunder down the stairs with no regard for who I might be waking.
The night air is cool, crisp; fall has sprung. Kicking up leaves, I cut across the yard and duck through the hole in the fence, expecting to find James waiting for me on the porch, but the porch is empty. Confused, I walk to the side of his house and check the window only to be met with the same infuriating lack of James. This is the proof I've been waiting for. Tomorrow I will call the asylum. "I am losing my mind," I say aloud to no one in particular.
"No, you're not," James's voice says from above me. I look up again to see his face hanging over the eaves of the highest window.