Authors: Ginger Voight
“
What do the books say?” he asked.
Adele grew furious.
“The books are fiction! I need you to tell me what you know!”
“
There’s a little truth in all fiction,” he suggested. “Read them. And I’ll tell you everything.”
That was the final straw.
“This cat-and-mouse thing you’re doing is very dangerous, Vincent. I can only buy into it so far before I start to question if you’re the one behind all of this. How else could you know what happens before it happens?”
He took a sip of tea, not worried in the least.
“Don't you?”
“
And if you are the murderer,” she continued, trying to cover how his astute comment hit its mark, “Then this is all a game so you can keep me from figuring out who you are.”
He shrugged.
“Anything is possible if we play the ‘what if’ game, Adele. But I think you know deep in your heart what’s true. You just need to trust yourself.” He paused. “And others.”
She let out an exasperated sigh and without warning he grabbed her injured hand. Something charged between
them. “You can trust me, Addie,” he said softly, using Michael’s pet name for her.
It brought a sadness to her eyes. She knew she wanted to, but just like the events from the night before, she had no real evidence to support there was anyone left she could truly trust. She pulled her hand free and stalked toward the door.
He halted her with his words. “About your little girl…”
She
stopped walking and waited, never turning back to face him. She was breathless as she heard him tell her flatly but firmly, “Get a priest.”
She gripped her injured hand into a fist and marched on.
Vincent’s words haunted her as she entered Dani’s hospital room. The child lay sleeping peacefully, as if nothing had ever happened to her. It scrambled Adele’s brain even further. As she drew closer to the bed, she debated on if she loved this child enough to trust Michael again. If it was even possible.
He had shattered her by what he had done. It was a clear violation of every rule of friendship, of love itself. How could he be her friend, how could she trust his love, if he
couldn’t even keep her darkest secret, especially when he had kept his knowing her secret completely to himself?
If she had stopped for two seconds to be truly honest with herself, she’d have realized
that was what truly bothered her. Michael had always been the one who never treated her like she was different, damaged or sick. He treated her as though she had been born normal, but all along he knew how truly corrupted she had been upon birth. He knew the truth, he knew she was a freak, but never let on. Never once did he give her the chance to know his affection was no doubt born out of pity.
She had always trusted that he loved her, even when she wasn’t consciously aware she was doing so. Now she had to question if he ever really did. Maybe the reason he had never offered himself truly was because he knew
she had been created out of evil, and as such unworthy of anyone normal and good. All this time she thought he pined for her with an unrequited love born of a pure heart and the best of intentions. She thought he had backed away from pursuing her to respect her wishes to stay unencumbered. She had always believed, perhaps arrogantly so, that had she given him the option he would have come running. She had never considered that he might have set these boundaries for himself, or that he had been grateful she had never tried to take their relationship to another level because he himself knew she wasn’t good enough to be loved. By not telling her what he knew about her past, he had fed into the self-serving illusion that it was her decision and not his.
This realization, this ultimate rejection,
had been what cut her to the core.
H
ow could she bring herself to ask for his help now? She collapsed into the nearby chair and sank her head into her hands. She loved Dani. She hadn’t wanted to, but she did. She understood that love required things that had never come easily for her, like faith or trust. And it always, always demanded sacrifice. Why did love always require such personal risk? Most importantly, why was it so impossible to avoid, even when she set her life up to do just that?
Adele sighed
as she leaned back against the chair. She saw something out of the corner of her eye, something under the bedside table. Quietly she bent to retrieve it, shocked to discover it was an ornate bottle half-filled with what she knew instantly to be holy water.
Her brow creased. Michael had brought it there, there was no question. Had he known what to do? Had he deliberat
ely withheld that from her too?
Adele rose and approached Dani. The child did not stir as Adele gently peeled back th
e clean bandages from her neck.
The two holes were gone. The bruises were gone. It was as if
she’d never been injured at all.
Whatever Michael had done had healed her. Why
hadn’t he told her? What more was he withholding? Adele thrust the bottle in her jacket and rushed back to her apartment.
She spent the night immersed in
the pile of books Vincent had given her. The clock ticked away the still, quiet minutes of early morning as Adele pored over volumes of ancient lore. She turned through pages of graphic illustrations until she landed on one that looked exactly like the creature she encountered in the alley.
As she
tried to wrap her mind around the sheer coincidence of it all, her window clattered open as if on cue. She jumped and then chided herself for being so skittish. It was only the wind. But as she started to close the window again she could hear a wolf bray in the distance. The same unnatural mist hung over the darkened forest, and the wolf's cry was strangled by the grip of death. Adele knew another wolf carcass would be found the next day, and she had the unenviable experience of listening to it die.
She closed the window and locked it.
Despite what she had discovered with Dani, Adele could not bring herself to talk to Michael. She walked by the church but there was no way she could will her way up the steps. He had hidden too much from her to fully trust again, even though in her heart of hearts she really, truly wanted to.
Life did not seem complete without her dearest friend, even if it had only been an illusion.
Instead she went to see her mother. Brenda was much easier to forgive. She had told something in confidence and truly expected Michael to keep it secret. Brenda, like Adele, had simply misplaced her trust. Sure, she had broken a sacred bond with her daughter. But who was Adele to judge Brenda’s path to peace after such a horrific crime Adele couldn’t even fathom? To compound that, she had sentenced herself to nurture and take care of the byproduct of that crime for every day that had followed, without ever making her daughter feel like it was her fault.
Brenda couldn
’t stop the tears when she saw her daughter. It was the second time in Adele’s young life her origin had caused her such distress, and it broke Brenda’s heart to see it. Adele clearly hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, and if Brenda knew her daughter, hadn’t been faithfully taking her meds either. She was a mess.
She
couldn’t even bring herself to shed another tear as her mother held her in a long embrace. After the events of the last few days, Adele was empty. She sat at the dining room table while Brenda made her some tea.
Adele stared at the long line of wooden blocks her mother would magically transform into religious statues
, crosses, crucifixes and saints, all to sell to the tourists like she had done since she had been pregnant with Adele. It had been a trade she’d found when she was living in a convent, protected by the nuns and the priest, while she was pregnant with the offspring of a monster. Adele reached for a block, awed once again that her mother could take something so plain, so ordinary, and turn it into something beautiful.
She had tried desperately to do that with her child, as well. But Adele knew better than anyone that was a lost cause.
She returned the block as her mother approached. As Adele took the cup from her, Brenda noticed her injury with a gasp. “Adele! Your hand!”
“
It’s nothing, Ma,” Adele dismissed. “A minor cut.”
“
You know there is no such thing for you,” Brenda admonished. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“
I don’t need a doctor,” Adele replied. Before she could stop herself, she muttered, “I need a priest.”
Brenda sat back in her chair. She never thought Adele would say something like that. She saw Michael as a friend, not a pastor.
“You have a priest,” she finally said.
Adele shook her head.
“I cannot trust Michael. And neither can you.”
“
Adele…”
“
No!” Adele cut her off. “What he did was unforgivable.”
Brenda sighed, looking again to
Adele’s hand. She noticed the ornate crest stitched on the handkerchief. “Who gave that to you?” she questioned softly.
“
Nicholas,” replied Adele, and subtly squared her shoulders with unconscious possession. The gesture did not go unnoticed by her mother. “Nicholas Sterling.”
Brenda stiffened.
“I had no idea you’d become close.”
Adele sighed
. How could she explain it to her mother when she didn’t understand it herself? “It’s complicated,” she finally said.
“
You’re falling in love with him,” Brenda decided.
Adele’s
shocked eyes met her mother’s. “Don’t be silly. What could make you think that?”
“
A mother’s intuition. Am I wrong?”
Adele stood and started to pace.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t even know who to trust, including myself.”
“
I never told Michael,” Brenda interrupted. Adele just shook her head. That was impossible. That would mean that Isabel really was psychic. No one could have guessed that. This was no vague generalization.
And if psychics were real, that meant all this other supernatural stuff could be real, too. The thought was terrifying.
“I gotta go,” Adele mumbled, sidestepping her mother and running from the room.
She ended up running all the way to
Isabel’s parlor. She stood on the porch out of breath as she pounded on the door.
Isabel
answered, staring at Adele suspiciously through the screen.
“
Tell me more,” Adele pleaded.
“
You doubt still,” Isabel concluded.
“
My doubts have doubts now,” Adele insisted weakly. “Please help me learn.”
Isabel turned from the door and Adele followed her back to the room with the red velvet walls and the crystal ball.
“You saw something that frightened you,” Isabel concluded. “But not because it could hurt you, but because it proves to you there are things you cannot explain away with logic and reason.”
“
What was it I saw?”
“
You know what you saw.”
Adele shook her head.
“It couldn’t have been what I thought it was. Those things aren’t real!”
“
What is real?” asked Isabel. “Is what we see real? Is what we think real?”
“
Stop talking in riddles!” Adele exclaimed. “I want to know the truth!”
“
You are not ready to know,” was the cold answer from Isabel. “Knowledge comes when we are ready, and not a moment before.”
Adele ran her hand through her hair in exasperation.
Isabel’s eyes lit up when she saw the bloody handkerchief. Isabel snatched Adele’s hand, holding it in both of her own. Her head leaned back and she made a low guttural noise in her throat, her eyes closed.
As her head tilted forward, her eyes popped open
the irises gone from stark black to milky white. “Dhampir!” she hissed.
It startled Adele so much that she yanked her hand away, pulling the handkerchief free, as
Isabel’s head thumped onto the table.
Again the voices descended upon her. “Natasha…” they urged, stronger and louder now. The crystal ball before her filled with dark clouds and she could almost see his burning yellow eyes watching her
from its depths. A laugh crackled in the electric air that caused her hair to stand on end as she drew closer to the ball. Her hands trembled as she gripped the cold crystal. She saw herself as she had in her dreams, in a long gown, arms outstretched as she floated through the thick forest. A wolf crossed her path and bared its fangs to warn the strange woman not to get any closer. The Adele in the ball turned to face her. With a hiss, fangs sprouted from her mouth and her eyes turned from violet to yellow. She pounced on the wolf and tore it apart in one ferocious bite and blood coated the inside of the ball until all images faded away.
Not even stopping to see
if Isabel was okay, Adele bolted from the room. She was terrified what other revelations awaited her there in that red velvet room. It was much more than her fragile mind could bear.