Darkness (23 page)

“Who knows? The dude’s a vampire, I imagine he has ways to know where and what his almost mate is up to.”

I eyed him with a knitted brow. “What’s that supposed to mean? And how the hell do
you
know about that?”

“It doesn’t mean anything and I know because I’ve read enough of those vamp books Hayden leaves around to know how this crap works.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I just needed out of that house and I wanted to make it feel like she was with me and I thought coming here would bring her back, but not back to life, like back in my heart…Like maybe I could feel her if I was here.” My voice cracked halfway through my rant and at the end I added, with tears in my eyes, “I think I just needed to get away from him.” I covered my face with my hands as the tears started to fall and I felt Carter put his arms around me and hold me against his chest. He was warmer than Oliver and boney too. I made myself turn off the waterworks and I stepped away.

“No prob Lane. How bout this, let’s just pretend we’re in high school again and Lilly’s gone to the store and left us here. What would we do?” He smiled crookedly at me.

Chapter 30 - A Gift

I walked slowly down the long hallway towards Lilly’s bedroom door with Carter right beside me. The wood floors creaked under our feet as we made our way. My hand hesitated on the handle. I took a deep breath and released it. I knew I was going to have to endure some sort of pain. Something was going to upset me and I didn’t want to break down in front of Carter again. I braced myself mentally, then turned the handle and swung the door open. Nothing had been touched, not a thing out of place. The smell of musky vanilla and dried flowers hit me.
Lilly.
My knees gave out as I took in the familiar scent of her. Carter caught me before I could fully hit the floor. He eased me the rest of the way down and crouched in front of me. Searching my face, he brushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear and I looked up into his blue eyes.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

“It’s now or never.” I was doing my best to hold it together, and my best wasn’t all that great at that moment.

His smiled a little lopsided smile at me and his scar crinkled near the corner of his eye. He stood, wearing a pair of Isaac’s faded jeans and a worn tee, and reached down for me. I put my hands in his and as I was lifted off the floor I noticed that the shoes he had on were his own. A pair of very worn lace-up Vans. They were filthy, and I wondered if more than just dirt was covering them. He wobbled a little after pulling me off the floor and braced himself against the wall and smiled crookedly. “I got light-headed for a moment.”

The door to the secret room–it wasn’t really a secret, it had just always been off limits to me–was on the same wall as the bedroom door. That door led into what should’ve been the third bedroom of the house. The original entrance from the hall had been sealed up long before I could even remember. “Lilly always told me this room was just full of old antiques from the original owners and that she’d thrown a few of her old things in there once we’d moved into the house. She told me I wasn’t allowed in here because there were probably lots of spiders, and things were stacked precariously.”

“Are you afraid there are spiders in there Laney?”

I had my hand on the handle as I looked up at my wolf-bitten, vampire descendent friend. “A little. Do you think you could maybe
not
freak out if we see any?” He started to fidget at the thought of it. “I swear I’ll squish anything that scares you. Okay?”

He glanced at the door and nodded. That’s right, my friend standing there beside me, who’d survived a werewolf attack and recently found out he had vampire lineage, was terrified of spiders. And I’m talking major freak out.

“You’ll be okay,” I encouraged, maybe a little sarcastically. “I’ll keep the big scary spiders away from you.”

“Don’t tease.” He tried to play like he was cool but clearly he wasn’t. If he was a kid, I’d have asked him if he needed to pee first before we went inside the room, he was so jittery at the thought of the eight legged creatures.

I actually giggled a little as I turned the knob. But my giggles faded quickly when the handle didn’t budge. “Duh. Like it was going to be unlocked,” I mumbled.

“Where do you think she’d stash the key?” Cater said.

We both turned around and scanned the room. I had no idea where it could be. I definitely didn’t think it would be anywhere obvious. I honestly didn’t think it would even be in her room. She was too smart for that. I sighed in defeat.

“It’s your house now, right?”

“I guess.” I shrugged. I was curious where he was going with this. And then there was the pang I felt at the thought that
this
was all mine. But was it? My father had bought the house for us to live in; I guess that technically made it his…

“Do you mind if I…?” He gestured at the door and I shrugged again.

I was having another thought about my dad and where he was and what kind of life he had and why he hadn’t wanted me to have a relationship with my grandparents, when Carter shouldered the door. I jumped at the thud it made. After his third attempt the door broke free of the jamb and slowly swung open.

The wood of the doorframe splintered only a little right around where the handle had rested. After examining the minimal damage and swallowing the guilt that had crept up, I lifted my eyes and scanned the room.

Sunlight streamed in through the uncovered bedroom window. Dust covered the boxes that were stacked and scattered. I took a step inside and the wood floor creaked loudly, causing my heart rate to kick up a notch. Most of the cardboard boxes were stashed towards the front of the room, where the original door would’ve been. There was a wooden rocking chair to the side of the window and some sort of three-shelf table under the window beside it. I took several more steps inside the mysterious room. Behind a row of boxes I found the oddest thing. A baby bassinet. It was covered in clear plastic. Well, should’ve been clear. I choked as I pulled the plastic free and dust permeated the air. Underneath I found a white bassinet decorated in blue bedding. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, all spindly and elegant. It looked very old, antique even. I couldn’t imagine that the previous owners would just leave such an item behind. The rustling of boxes distracted me.

Carter had moved on; the threat of spiders must have slipped his mind but when he pulled a trunk away from the wall something scuttled off and he screamed like only a little girl should. I stuck to my promise and took care of the vicious man-eating spider (that sucker was no bigger than an eraser top) and rescued my brave friend.

He glared at me as I tried not to laugh at him and then he popped open the trunk, causing us both to stare. Inside were nicely folded pink baby clothes, a few baby toys and some photo albums. I reached in and picked up the top album. As the cover cracked open tears filled my eyes and shock filled my brain. The first photo was of my parents with me when I was an infant. I flipped the page. More of me and my parents in my first year of life. I stopped five pages in and closed it. “I’ve never seen these before,” I whispered. “Why would she keep them from me?”

Carter crouched beside me and rubbed my back. “Maybe they were hard for her to look at too.”

“That doesn’t make sense. She has their wedding pictures up. She gave me those. Why not these?” I set the album back in the cedar lined trunk. I brushed my fingers over a pink sweater that was beside it and had a thought. “Maybe my mom packed this trunk…maybe this is some of that stuff Lilly just put in here and she didn’t know what was inside.”

“I would’ve gone through this trunk to see what was in it.” I was getting really upset. I couldn’t bear any of the memories. The ones I could remember and, especially those inside that trunk that I couldn’t remember at all. Not a single one. My breath hitched as my childhood began to play through my mind.

“Let’s get out of here,” Carter said as he closed the trunk, then gently guided me out of the room I’d never been in before, in the house where I grew up.

I stood spacing off as Carter did his best to get the door to latch back into place with its splintered frame. I felt his hand brush my back just as something caught my eye on my aunt’s sewing table.

I walked around her bed to the table and found a card to me in Lilly’s writing sitting atop it and a present wrapped in shiny aqua paper with a silver fabric bow. The box was about the size of a shoebox. I picked it up–it was light–and I looked at Carter. “This will be my first birthday without her.”

I felt myself beginning to slip. I felt that eerie darkness begin to creep into my head and my heart. He took the package from me and set it where it had been and then rushed me out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Chapter 31 - Comfort in the Arms of a Friend

I went directly to the bathroom to cry my eyes out. I was in there for quite a while and when I finally left, Carter was sitting on the top step of the stairs.

There was still food left in the kitchen. We bustled around making something to eat: quesadillas with beans and rice. I was slicing overly ripe tomatoes and lettuce to go with it and I was in a real dark mood. I still hadn’t said much since I’d left the bathroom and I kept catching glances of concern from Carter. I don’t know where my mind went after that, but the next thing I knew Carter’s voice was pulling me out of wherever my mind had drifted off to.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa Laney.” Carter’s hands were gripping my wrists and I heard the knife clang against the counter top.

I blinked several times and looked down at my wrists in his hands. There was blood, lots of it, and I had a flare of panic. He plunged my hands into cold faucet water and I felt a sting in my thumb. I winced as I watched the water run across my injured thumb.
How had I not felt that?
A dark joker face popped up in the kitchen window and we both let out startled screams. It was that vampire Oliver had sent.