Balthazar (24 page)

Her punches grew weaker, then ceased. Her body became heavy in his arms. Her pulse went as soft and uneven as the beating wings of a butterfly, until finally it stopped.

Balthazar dropped her body onto the stable floor. At first he felt nothing save the desire for even more blood—but no, he was sated. Only then did it hit him that this was his little sister, dead by his hand. She looked like a broken porcelain doll. Balthazar pulled back from her, recoiling from what he'd done, but there was no leaving this behind.

“Isn't that better?” Redgrave said. “Don't be too glum. She'll be with us again at the next sunrise. A bit peeved with you, I'd expect, but still. Awake and immortal.”

Slowly, Balthazar lifted his head to look at Jane. The revulsion on her face seemed to hold up a mirror to his soul.

She can go on from here
, he told himself.
She'll be scared, and she'll hate me until she dies—but Jane can bear this
. “Let her go,” he said. “You made me choose. I chose. We're done here.”

Constantia helped Jane to her feet and brushed off her gown. Jane shook so that she could barely stand, but her expression was resolute.

Then Redgrave said, “I made you choose which one to turn into a vampire. I never said what would happen to the other one.” He grabbed Jane by the neck and twisted it the way someone would wring a chicken. Bones snapped. The light in her eyes went out. Constantia stepped back as Jane fell to the floor, dead.

Balthazar stared at her. He should have been outraged or nauseated, or at least overcome with grief, but it was as if he could feel nothing else—like any capacity for normal emotion had finally been drained from him. For the last time, he gazed at the girl he had loved. Jane's hair was dark against the hay.

“Waste of a good meal, if you ask me,” Constantia said.

“Go ahead,” Redgrave replied. “It's still fresh.”

Balthazar came to with a start. More shocking than finding himself back in the here and now was the realization that he lay in Skye's bed—with her in his arms.

She still dozed, and unlike him she was fully clothed—thank God he hadn't totally lost control—but he could make out the small puncture wounds on her throat. The marks were healing fast, the way vampire bites always did, but the mere sight sickened him.

Then he heard a woman's voice in the hallway: “Skye, honey, are you awake?”

Skye stirred, smiled drowsily at him, and called back, “Sort of. What's up, Mom?”

Balthazar started to scuttle from the bed, but Skye kept him in place.

She whispered, “She only talks through the door. If she hears somebody in here, though—all bets are off.”

The better part of valor was obviously staying in bed with Skye. Though in every other way it felt dangerously unwise.

“Can you order in some groceries for us, be around for the delivery tomorrow? We're running out of oatmeal again. You know what to get.”

“Sure thing,” Skye replied. Apparently this was the only sort of conversation daughter and parents ever had anymore. Her pale blue eyes looked up at Balthazar with nothing but trust, and for a moment—lying naked next to her, feeling her warmth, seeing the dark fall of her hair against the pillow—he saw everything he could have with her. Everything he wanted.

But the bite on her neck, and the memories he'd just relived, made it clear that none of it could ever be.

“We brought back some of that fudge you like,” Mrs. Tierney called from the hallway, over the hiss of a hairspray can. “You'll find it on the kitchen counter.”

“Thank you!” Skye sighed, then whispered, “Sometimes there are presents. It makes them feel better about not being here.”

Balthazar couldn't reply. He remained far too aware of—many things he didn't need to be aware of at all at this moment. Like how long it had been since he'd been in bed with a girl.

“Have a good day, honey!” called a man, who must have been Mr. Tierney.

“You too!” Skye said. As footsteps pounded down the stairs, she rolled to face Balthazar, so that they were only a few inches apart. Just after the front door slammed, she murmured, “Feeling better?”

“Yes.” He started to throw off the covers, remembered again that he was nude, and looked around the room. “Ah, you should probably bring me my clothes.”

Skye shrugged. The smile playing on her lips was exactly the kind that could drive him wild if he let it, which he wouldn't. “I've already seen everything. So don't be bashful on my account.”

Fine. Balthazar got out of bed, grabbed his pants, and started getting dressed. He could see that Skye looked hurt—she'd been happy only moments before, and Balthazar knew he was being unforgivably cold to someone who had just saved him. “Thanks for yesterday,” he said, hating the clipped, tight words. “We have to get to school.”

“I know, but—Balthazar—I thought we—”

“Let's get one thing clear. Nothing happened between us last night, and nothing's going to happen.” Balthazar found his shirt hanging on a doorknob; the fabric was still damp. “I know I've let things get—confused, between us, but that's my mistake.”

Skye sat upright, bracing her hands behind her. “Excuse me?
Confused?
”

He had to be even more brutal. He had to do more than slam the door; he had to nail it shut. “I don't love you. You should be glad I don't. The only woman I ever truly loved died because of it.”

That made her go pale, but she didn't drop it. “When you drank this time—what did you see? What's done this to you?”

“I remembered the last moments of my life, and the first hour of being a vampire.” Balthazar's damp coat felt like ice, but he shrugged it on anyway. “I remembered murdering my little sister. I killed her myself. Drank her dry.” There. Now Skye would know what a monster he really was.

Skye's jaw dropped, but after a moment, she said, “So, you hate yourself so much that you're punishing
me
for it.”

“Don't pretend like you understand me.”

“I understand enough.” She rose from the bed, then winced—the onslaught of heightened senses that followed a vampire bite were no doubt hitting her now. “You used to be a vampire like Redgrave and the others. You did some terrible things. Then you started leading a good life but still treated yourself like a bad person.”

“When you're dead, you don't get to leave your past behind.”

“Guess what? Nobody does!”

He bit back the impulse to continue the argument. “I'm going. I'll watch you on the way to school.”

“Watch,” she retorted. “That's all you'll ever do.”

Balthazar stormed out, slamming her bedroom door behind him. She didn't follow.

If she understood
, he thought,
if she knew how … unclean I am, how poisonous to everything I love—

Which was the first moment he knew beyond any doubt that he loved her—the same moment he walked out of her house, intending never to return.

SKYE MANAGED TO GET READY FOR SCHOOL AS though it were any other day. Her body went through the motions, while her heart kept breaking on the inside.

She'd been rejected. Well, that happened. She'd liked Jason Mulroney in middle school, and he'd never looked twice at her. So she would cope.

Liking a boy in middle school is nothing like finding a guy you can share everything with, someone who knows where you hurt and what you've lost and still cares about you—

So, like losing Craig. She'd survived that.

Craig went to bed with you once, and after that he just walked away without a backward glance
.

Maybe you're just an easy girl to leave
.

And she had never wanted Craig as badly as she'd wanted Balthazar this morning. That was something she'd never understood until now—how she had sex with Craig more because she longed for closeness and comfort after Dakota's death. She'd learned about real desire only when she woke up in the arms of a guy she couldn't have.

Skye grabbed some tissue to dab at her eyes. Then she kept on getting ready as if it were any other day—except she used the waterproof mascara. The tears were probably going to keep coming.

Being at school made the situation even worse. Every noise seemed deafening to her, and even the pale sun that crept through the constantly falling snow was too bright, as were the fluorescent lights in Darby Glen High. And was it her imagination, or was her hearing better than before? Tennis shoes squeaking on linoleum, the metallic slam of locker doors, Florence and The Machine in someone's earbuds: All of it flooded through her, leaving her overwhelmed.

“Hey,” Madison said, falling into step with her as they walked into homeroom. “Whoa. What happened? You look like crap today. No offense.”

“None taken. I feel like crap.” Skye let her books drop onto her desk, then winced at the sound of it.

“Oh, my God, are you hungover? You're totally acting like you're hungover.”

“I just slept badly.” Skye cast about for any additional way to explain this, then came up with something. “Plus my horse threw me yesterday afternoon. I wasn't injured or anything, but it shook me up, and I'm bruised everywhere.”

“Poor you.” Madison leaned across her desk, mock confidential. “What if I told you something guaranteed to make you feel better?”

“School's canceled forever?” Skye was too tired to think of a better joke. Craig and Britnee walked in, hand in hand, and she had to close her eyes.

“Like I'd be here if it were. Listen, you know the Valentine's Dance is coming up. And you're gonna have a date. Guess who's asking you? Keith!”

Skye had to work to remember exactly who Keith was—one of Madison's friends, of course. He was actually pretty cute, though in a blond, catalog-model way that had never much appealed to her. “Oh.”

“Oh? That news only gets an
oh
? Keith's about the hottest guy in this school.” Madison paused before adding, “Except, of course, for a certain homeroom teacher.”

Balthazar had just walked in. Skye glanced up at him to see him looking at her; his expression appeared as desolate as she felt inside. They broke the connection at the same moment, and after that she could only stare at her desk and be glad about the waterproof mascara.

Madison whispered, “He's acting as weird as you.”

Skye shrugged. She didn't trust herself to speak.

Somehow she made it through homeroom and history class; for the first day ever, it was dull. Balthazar was obviously phoning it in, and it was a very small consolation to know that he felt rotten, too.

It could have been so different, if he'd just turned to her this morning.

When the bell rang, louder than ever before, Skye hurried out as quickly as she could. Mr. Bollinger's room felt like the only safe haven at school, even if he did make her polish the triangles again. But as she walked past Ms. Loos's room, she felt it:

Pain shooting up the arm, circling the chest. Knowing the doctor said to be careful but not really believing death was possible, not until now—

“Oh, no,” she whispered. Never before had she been able to sense the death if there was some kind of barrier between her and the place where that person had died. But her senses were heightened today—
all
of them.

She started running away from the room, hurtling down the hall much faster than was allowed or safe. Some people swore as they ducked away from her, and she could hear cranky Coach Haladki yelling for her to slow down, but she didn't. All that mattered was getting farther away from that death—

Then she slammed into someone so hard that she stumbled and her victim fell.

“I'm sorry!” Skye gasped as she bent to grab her books, and only then did she see who it was she'd knocked over. Britnee Fong stared up at her, a little angry but more shocked.

“Are you, like, in trouble?” Britnee didn't say it like she thought Skye could possibly be in any real trouble. “Because you were going really fast? And I'd hope you wouldn't knock anybody down on purpose?”

“I said I was sorry,” Skye said curtly. She would've apologized more to anyone else on earth, but not this girl. Not the one who stole her boyfriend.

As if he'd heard her thoughts, Craig appeared at that moment to help Britnee up. “What is your problem, Skye?”

“My problem?
My
problem?” If only she had just one problem to deal with. “Forget it, okay?”

“No,” Craig said. “We've got to talk. Britnee, tell Ms. Loos I'm—sick or out or something.”

“Um, okay?” Britnee looked as startled as Skye felt when Craig took her by the arm and steered her toward the art room, which was empty during second period.

“Don't grab me!” Skye threw his hand off.

“Don't make me say all this in the hall,” Craig retorted.