Flutter (19 page)

“I understand that, but you will not do it in my
house,” he said.

“I know.” She nodded once, and then turned and walked
back to her room.

For a moment after she left, I stood and tried to
catch my breath. I had never seen the two of them fight about
anything before, let alone something as intense as this.

I knew that Ezra was right, that turning a child into
a vampire was an impossible idea, but I knew how desperate Mae was
to do anything to protect her family.

Finally, Ezra started to move, picking up the pieces
of broken glass of the floor, and I went over to join him.

“You were too cold with her,” I said, picking up a
large chunk of glass.

My hair was still dripping cold water down my back,
and I tucked it behind my ears. Part of me felt nervous at the
thought of contradicting Ezra about something like this, but he had
no reason to be that cruel.

“She wouldn’t have listened to anything else. She’s
been pleading me with since she found out about the child being
ill, and I decided that being forthright was the best avenue to
take.” Ezra was incredibly tired, and I wasn’t sure if he was over
what the lycan had done to him yet.

“Why is she pleading with you?” I asked. “I mean, if
this is what she wants, then why doesn’t she just do it herself?
Why does she need your permission?”

“She’s never turned anyone before, and she’s afraid
to, especially with a child so young. She thinks she’ll do it wrong
somehow, even though there is no real wrong way.”

He picked up most of the large pieces of glass,
everything that we could get without a broom, so he stood up and
tossed the broken bits into the fireplace. Since he had done it, I
followed suit and threw what I had picked up into the
fireplace.

“So is she going to do it if you don’t?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t know.” His normal booming voice
sounded defeated. “She wasn’t really asking my permission, either.
She knows my stand on it. If she turns the child, I will not be
with her. I won’t go through that heartache. Neither of them would
survive it, not for long. Child vampires never do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The youngest vampire I had met had been Violet, and
she was fourteen. I couldn’t imagine what one would be like younger
than that. Would they look older too, the way that Milo and Violet
both looked about nineteen?

“They go insane, or they’re killed,” Ezra said
simply. “They learn but can’t mature. They get old but can’t grow.
They get impulses they can’t control. They’re volatile and strong
and never really understand the consequences of their actions.
Other vampires don’t like having them around, and they don’t like
being alive.

“It never ends well.” He ran a hand through this
blond hair and breathed in deeply. “And if Mae were to change her,
to get even more attached to the child than she already was, she
would either die trying to protect her, or kill herself after the
child died. And I have no interest in being a part of that.”

“And Mae doesn’t see that?” I asked, even though I
knew the answer. She was too blinded by her love for her family to
see any rational thought. Her only concern was keeping the girl
around for another day, at any cost.

“No.” He gave me a sad smile. “She mistakenly
believes that I can do anything. But I can’t this time.” His
expression was far away. “I cannot save the child. There is only
one type of death versus another. The child will suffer and then
die, either way. But Mae cannot accept that.”

“Are you going to go talk to her? Maybe you can help
her accept this. I mean, she’s just going through the seven stages
of grief, and it sounds like she’s at bargaining,” I said.

“Maybe, but unfortunately, she actually has something
to bargain with. Most people have no other recourse, but Mae does.
Would anyone really move past bargaining if God would actually talk
to them and listen to their pleas?”

“Did you just compare yourself to God?” I raised an
eyebrow at him.

“Accidentally,” he admitted, looking disgusted at his
own choice of words. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. But I don’t think I
have anything to say that can help Mae through this.” He sighed
heavily. “But… my clothes are in the room, and I should get
dressed.”

“Are you two going to split up?” I was surprised how
nervous I sounded, but really, they were the only stable couple I
had ever met. And if they split up, what hope did the rest of us
have?

“I will stay with her as long as she’ll have me, and
as long as she doesn’t turn the child,” he said, but that was the
kind of answer people gave when they weren’t ready to tell the kids
they were breaking up.

I started to think that maybe it was only a matter of
time before things ended between them, and that was terrifying. I
loved them both, and I couldn’t imagine a life where they weren’t
both in it.

Ezra went down to his room. For someone who was
completely obsessed with the idea of family, I couldn’t believe how
rigid he was being with Mae. He was right about not turning her
granddaughter, I’m sure, but he was inflexible when talking to her.
He had been willing to die to save Peter, but he wouldn’t allow the
same irrational passion in her.

Maybe it was because this was his way of protecting
the family. If she did this, it would certainly devastate
everything around her, himself included. I don’t know what would
happen to our family unit. If we would split up between them, like
children of divorce, or… I don’t know.

It was strange, because even though I knew I was
going to live a very long time, I somehow had expected that
everything would stay the same forever. Ezra had once told me that
everyone I know would die, and that I would outlast everything. But
I had never believed that I would outlast this family.

- 19 –

When Milo and Jack finally came
back from their blood run, I told them about the fight. Milo went
to talk some sense into Mae, and we let him. Jack still invited
Peter to watch a movie with us, but after all the drama, we decided
to watch something lighter than an epic British mini-series. So we
went with the opposite and put in
Futurama
.

As the night wore on, I decided to go to bed, and I
wanted to invite Jack to stay with me. The fight between Mae and
Ezra had left me feeling shaken up, and I wanted to hang onto
something that I knew would be around forever. But Peter was
lingering around us, giving me a weird look, and I didn’t feel
right about asking him.

The next morning, he tried waking me bright and early
to take Matilda to the dog park, but I wanted to sleep in. The joke
was on me, though. After he left, I couldn’t fall back to sleep,
but I blamed that on how hungry I was.

It had been a dull ache growing in the pit of my
stomach since yesterday. When we had been watching TV with Bobby, I
found myself more fascinated by watching the pulse pounding in his
jugular than in the images on the screen.

Today was even worse. I had a dryness in my veins and
my throat. My limbs felt crackly when I moved them. I had no
energy, but I felt strangely frenetic. I knew I had to eat soon,
but for now, I decided to just avoid Bobby.

Milo and Bobby were going to have to go to the club
again soon to check on Jane, but I didn’t feel up to being around
humans. In fact, I could hardly stand being this close to Bobby.
Heartbeats echoed in my ears, and the faint scent of Bobby
permeated through my walls. I was going to have to distract myself
before I went insane.

I went about getting ready, but I couldn’t find the
energy to shower. I just brushed my teeth, got dressed, and pulled
my hair back in a messy bun. I tried to call Jane again, but she
still wouldn’t answer.

I probably should’ve considered eating, but I really,
really had to control myself. Because I really, really wanted to be
alone with Jack, and this was the only way I could trust myself. I
knocked on Peter’s bedroom door and chewed my lip. I stood a better
chance of not biting him than I did Bobby, and even if I did bite
Peter, he stood a better chance of living.

“What?” Peter opened his bedroom door, looking
irritated. “Is the house on fire?”

“No. Can I come in?” I tucked a stray stand of hair
behind my ears. His green eyes were bewildered, but he relented and
took a step back from the door so I could go in.

When I brushed past him, I inhaled deeply. He smelled
so good, and I had almost forgotten that. His blood used to be my
favorite scent in the world, before I really knew that’s what it
was. When I had been human, the tangy scent he left behind always
intoxicated me, and I hadn’t realized that it was his blood I was
lusting after. Now I did, and the smell was even stronger and more
delicious.

“You look hungry.” Peter shut the bedroom door behind
me when I came in, and that might have bothered me if I had a
clearer head.

“Yeah, well,” I tried to play it off like nothing.
For him to notice meant it had to be getting bad. My skin was
ashen, and my heart beat too fast.

His room looked as messy as he would allow, which was
much cleaner than mine and Jack’s room. His large four-post bed was
unmade. The French doors that led onto the balcony off his room
were slightly ajar, letting in a chill breeze that ruffled his
curtains.

Overflowing bookshelves lined his walls. Peter had
apparently decided to spend the day reading, and a few books were
discarded on his bed. On the white chair by the bookcases, he had a
book splayed open, a red ribbon marking his page should it
close.

I paced his room, trying to ignore the painful
gnawing inside of me, but I stopped when I saw the red stain on his
white rug.

“Perhaps you should eat,” Peter
said, but there was an uncomfortable edge to his words. He had
caught me staring at the stain. It was blood,
my
blood, from when he had nearly
killed me.

“Why don’t you throw away the rug?” I twisted at the
hem of my shirt, feeling fidgety, and turned to face him.

“As you can tell, I’m really not in the mood to hang
out,” he completely ignored my question.

He avoided my gaze and gestured to his room, as if
the state of it would signify something to me. Underneath his
smooth tan skin, I could see his veins pulsing delicately, and it
quickened ever so slightly. I made him nervous, and I delighted in
that, even though it did nothing to ease my hunger pains.

“You shut the door behind me.” I motioned to the
closed door. “I think you’re okay with talking. You just want
everything on your terms.”

“What’s so wrong with that? Don’t you want everything
on your own terms?” He ran a hand through his chestnut hair. He
hadn’t cut it since we’d come back, and while I had never been
partial to long hair on guys, it looked really good on him.

In fairness, everything looked really good on him.
Wearing slim jeans and a white sweater that rode smoothly over his
muscles, he was still the most attractive vampire I’d ever seen,
and that really was saying a lot. I hated him for it. The way he
could just be casually spending the day in his room and look like
that. More than that, I hated that I was still attracted to him,
when I knew I had no reason to be.

“I want things the way I want them, but I don’t force
other people to live by my rules,” I said.

“Neither do I. Am I forcing you to do anything?”
Peter looked at me, letting his brilliant emerald eyes pierce
through me. They still dazzled me, if not the same way they once
did, but maybe in my hunger, they hit me even more. Everything
about him just seemed so much more enticing.

“No, but… I don’t know.” I shook my head and turned
away from him, returning to pacing his room again. He leaned
against one of the posts on his bed and crossed his arms over his
chest.

“Why don’t you just eat something instead of
pestering me?” he asked.

“No, no, I can’t,” I waved away the idea. “I’m fine
anyway.”

“Very convincing,” Peter sighed. “Is that what you’re
doing here? Trying to distract yourself from eating? You’re
probably fantasizing about ripping into your brother’s little boy
toy, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be disgusting!” I scoffed, but he was really
close to the truth, and I blushed a little.

“It’s not disgusting. It’s a fact of life.” He
narrowed his eyes at me as something occurred to him. “You haven’t
bitten anyone yet, have you? You’re still a virgin to the vampire
ways?”

“I’m virgin in every way,” I muttered under my breath
before I could catch myself.

“What was that?” Peter asked, his eyes widening.

“Oh, never mind.” I shook my head and blushed deeper.
“I haven’t been turned for very long. I need time to get everything
under control.”

“I see.” A smirk twitched on his lips, and I sighed
heavily.

“Stop! Don’t look at me like that,” I snapped, but
that only made him chuckle softly. Groaning, I looked around his
room, desperate to find something else to talk about.

On his bed, half covered by his
blanket in a poor attempt to conceal it, was a book. But not just
any book. It was a century old with worn binding and tattered
pages, and I had spent a great deal of time reading it a few months
ago. Entitled
A Brief History of
Vampyres
, Jack had been convinced that
Peter had written it himself. I had stolen it from Peter’s room
until it mysteriously disappeared.

I moved towards his bed to grab the book, but Peter
saw where I was heading and moved to intercept me. He was much
quicker, but his attempt was half-hearted since I’d already seen
it.

He grabbed my wrist just as my hand touched the
cover, and almost the instant his skin hit mine, it started to heat
up considerably. I pretended like I didn’t notice and jerked my
hand away from him before he could feel my pulse quicken in his
grip.