Every other day(21)

Skylar elbowed Bethany in the stomach, and the older girl amended her words.

“—that’s not the most helpful thing in the world to point out, so I won’t.”

“I do have a plan,” I said softly. “Sort of. It’s just that my plan requires making it to sunrise, and right now …”

I couldn’t swear that I’d make it.

Once I gave in to the siren call in my subconscious, I wasn’t sure I’d want to.

“You’ll make it.” Skylar smiled and nodded, like the very act of doing so could make her words true.

“What are you going to do at sunrise?”

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that Bethany was still asking questions, just like it probably didn’t surprise her when all she got from me was silence in response. Luckily, Skylar didn’t leave the two of us in a standoff for long.

“In the old myths, chupacabras were a variant of the whole vampire thing, and vampires turn to ash in the sun, right? I mean, myths almost never get things entirely right, but even Darwin used them to write The Demon’s Descent.” Skylar was in full-on babble mode, and Bethany and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. “So if Kali says she has a way to get rid of a chupacabra at sunrise, I believe her.”

“Then why, pray tell, didn’t you just leave that thing in me?” The words burst angrily out of Bethany’s mouth, a scowl slashing its way across her face with the brutality of a disfiguring scar. “If you could have just gotten rid of it at sunrise, why couldn’t I have been the one who risked not living that long? When you said you could help me, I didn’t know you meant like this, and by the time I did … I couldn’t stop you. I tried, but you wouldn’t let me.” She advanced on me, Hell on Ice Skates, like a cobra descending on its prey.

What was I supposed to say? Unless I wanted to admit that my “plan” for sunrise involved letting my own monstrous nature take its course, I couldn’t answer her questions. So I said nothing, and Bethany closed the space between us, looking like she was going to burst into tears or rip out my esophagus in a fit of fury—I wasn’t sure which.

“Did it talk to you?” I asked her, stalling for time.

“Did what talk to me?”

My arms encircled my torso, and one of my sleeves drooped down over my chilled skin. “What do you think?”

I hadn’t realized that talking about this would feel like peeling back a layer of clothing, a layer of skin.

“Chupacabras don’t talk, Kali. They’re like psychic, preternatural ticks. They don’t even have brains.”

I averted my eyes, and Bethany exchanged looks with Skylar.

“Does the chupacabra talk to you?” Skylar asked, managing to keep her voice pleasantly neutral.

Yes, it does. He says his name is Zev.

Needless to say, I didn’t allow those words to exit my mouth. Now I knew for sure. The things I was feeling, the voice I’d heard—none of this was normal.

“Of course the chupacabra doesn’t talk to me,” I said, trying to work up a good scoff. “I was just messing with Bethany.”

“Hey!”

Thankful that she’d taken the bait, I asked another pointed question, one that wouldn’t make the two of them think I was a total head case. “Bethany, what do you know that I don’t?”

I wasn’t convinced that Skylar was psychic—even just a little—but anyone who could survive being the target of the high school hit squad for six months had to have a few cards up her sleeve. In the car, she’d said that Bethany knew something about our situation that I didn’t, and as long as I was opting for distraction, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“So, what?” Bethany retorted, confirming my suspicions. “You can have your secrets, but I can’t have mine?”

Feel it—coming—you.

The words rolled over me, and I could feel my pupils dilating, my back arching as the desire to hear entire sentences instead of broken, scattered words surged anew.

Bethany kept her eyes fixed on mine, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at me, wondered if my face was a tell to everything hiding just underneath.

“Believe it or not, I’m not trying to be difficult,” Bethany said, tracing the tip of one skate delicately across the ice. “I just … did you hear what the nurse said to that trio back at the school? She had orders to call them if anyone like me showed signs of being bitten, and that means that either those people knew that the cheerleading squad was at risk and did nothing to stop it, or they planned it and infected us themselves.”

The second possibility hadn’t even occurred to me, and I wondered why Bethany’s mind had hopped straight from “chupacabra” to “conspiracy.”