Every other day(13)

For a few seconds, I considered letting go of her arm, turning around, and walking off. If she was retaining enough of her memories to be this much of a bitch, she clearly wasn’t in that much danger.

But I couldn’t make myself do it. Couldn’t drop her arm. Couldn’t turn around. All I could do was drop the act.

“Do you have a tattoo?”

“Excuse me?” Bethany did the ice-queen motif to perfection, but at the moment, I had bigger things to worry about than painting a giant social target on my forehead.

“It’s a simple question. Yes or no—do you have a tattoo?”

Something in my voice, or maybe my eyes—which had a tendency to go nearly black when I was on a hunt—must have convinced her that I was serious, because she actually answered me.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I don’t have a tattoo.”

The desire to say well, then, if you want to live, come with me was overwhelming, but I didn’t see the point in being cryptic or vague.

“You have an ouroboros on your back.” I said the words softly. I didn’t want to be saying them at all.

Bethany blinked several times, and I plowed on.

“It’s a symbol,” I told her, “of a snake eating its own tail. It has a lot of different mythological meanings, but only one scientific one.”

“You think I’ve been bitten,” Bethany said, and something about her tone of voice reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who’d grown up with a father in academia.

“I think you’ve been bitten. I think it burrowed inside of you. I think it’s drinking your blood and absorbing your memories—”

“I know what chupacabras do.” Bethany probably didn’t spend her nights hunting the preternatural, but I was beginning to suspect that she knew more than I’d given her credit for and that her sole exposure to the concept of chupacabra possession wasn’t some Lifetime Original Movie called Three Days to Live. “I know exactly what these things do, Kali.”

She was scared enough that she’d dropped the pretense of not knowing my name. Good. Maybe that meant she’d be scared enough to listen to me, too.

“I think I can get it out of you,” I said.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked me, her voice equal parts vulnerability and venom. “My dad studies these things. It’s all he ever even talks about. If there’s an ouroboros on the subject’s skin, there’s nothing anyone can do. But at least, thanks to you, I know I’m doomed. Really appreciate that.”

Each second I put off taking action, my resolve faltered. What if I didn’t last seventeen hours? What if Bethany told her father what I’d done, and he told my father, and the entire university faculty figured out that I wasn’t Homo sapiens 24/7? What if I couldn’t get the parasite to jump ship, anyway? I was human. My blood was human. There was no real reason to think that it might work.

But what if it did?

Do it. Do it now.

“Knife,” I whispered, but of course, nothing happened. I wasn’t a weapon whisperer. I wasn’t invincible. I was just a seventeen-year-old girl who was about to do something very, very stupid.

“Close your eyes.”

Bethany arched one eyebrow, opening her eyes wider. Even with mortality staring her in the face, she was still one of those girls.

“I might be able to help you,” I said. “Close your eyes. Worst-case scenario, you lose fifteen seconds. Best-case scenario, you’re not a corpse in the morning.”

She closed her eyes.

I bent over and reached inside my boot. Heritage High wasn’t the kind of school that invested money that could be spent on pep rallies on something as trivial as metal detectors, and I’d learned the hard way never to go anywhere unarmed.

My fingers closed over the hilt of the knife, and I stood back up, blade in hand. The weapon felt heavier than it had the night before. The balance of the blade should have comforted me, it should have been familiar, but instead, it was a reminder that I had no idea what I was doing. I was weak. I was stupid. I was alone.

Do it.

I gritted my teeth together and sliced into my own arm. For a moment, all I felt was the coolness of the knife’s tip, but then the white-hot fire spread up my entire forearm, bringing tears to my eyes.

Biting down on my lip hard enough to draw blood there, too, I sheathed the knife and ran my right hand over the wound, until my fingertips were smeared with red. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and spread my blood across Bethany’s back.

Nine hours earlier, no preternatural creature would have been able to resist the lure, but right now, I was human.