“Wow.” I slid forward on the chair. “How did he get a scar?”
“He told me once it was in childhood—before he turned. A horse shoe, if my memory serves me.”
I sat back then and tried to think if I’d ever seen a moon-shaped scar on anyone’s chest. “My dad never swam without a shirt. In fact—” My eyes narrowed with thought. “I never actually saw him swim.”
Arthur frowned, closing his book to rub his eyes. “Well, that’s not much help then, is it?”
“I wish I’d paid more attention to the people in my life. But I’m sure I’d remember a scar like that.”
“I’m sure you would.” He stood up, offering me the journal. “Perhaps you’d like to see if there’s anything else in here that will give you a clue.”
“Thanks.” I took the book and held it to my chest.
Arthur’s eyes moved straight to my new mood ring. “Does that serve as a warning to any in the radius of your emotional blasts?”
I smiled down at it. “In all honesty,” I said, thinking something up as I spoke. “My finger felt bare without my wedding band.”
His familiar hand patted my shoulder softly, his blue, David-like eyes crinkling in the corners. “I’m sure it will turn up sooner or later.”
He walked away then before the words could slip from my lips that David had forbidden me to wear it—that it was missing now, after I left it on the windowsill, but that even if I had found it again after the regret sunk in, I wouldn’t dare put it on.
I sat in silence for a moment, just looking at Arthur’s journal, thinking about my dad, while the ticking of the old grandfather clock and the howling shriek of wind through rain seemed to make space in my mind for thoughts to travel freely—bouncing around and finding the spurs of conclusion easily.
And an idea formed, my phone coming out of my pocket, a number dialled before I’d thought it through.
“Ara? How are you? I was just thinking about you,” Vicki practically squealed.
“I’m great. Really great actually. I was ringing to ask you a really weird question.”
“Okay,” she said, but she didn’t sound worried. “Shoot.”
“Did dad ever have any scars?”
“Scars?” she asked. “Only that one. But it faded so much over time that I never really noticed it in the end.”
“What scar?” I asked, my heart dancing around with my baby in my belly.
“On his chest,” she said. “I think it was his right, no left, no right side.”
“What … I mean … was it moon-shaped?”
“Um, no.” She went quiet. “I mean, maybe. I guess it was. But it was kind of upside-down.”
“But it was a moon shape?” I confirmed, my lungs moving suddenly up into my throat.
Petey sat up, cocking his head at me.
“Ara?” she said. “Are you okay? Why are you asking this, anyway, what’s—”
“No reason.” I quickly composed myself. “I was just … I just remembered someone having a scar like that when I was little. I just wanted to know if it was my dad.”
“Oh, well, yes, it was, I guess. And … how are you coping?”
“I’m okay. I mean, I’m not. I miss him like crazy,” I said, opening the door then to a very long conversation about the town’s memorial and the assembly the school held to farewell him. And all the while, my hands shook and my mind found it hard to focus. When she hung up, I’d worked myself into such a frenzy that my steps toward dinner in the Great Hall ended on the two-seater again, Arthur’s journal the only thing I had to hug as I sobbed myself to sleep, so confused I just didn’t know what to do other than to shut down.
***
“Ara.”
Soft, firm fingertips combed through my hair, leaving a gentle tickle behind, waking me slightly but sending me further into sleep at the same time.
“Ara?”
“Mm?” I opened one eye.
“Wake up, sweetheart. You’re having a bad dream.”
I took one look at those gentle green eyes and covered my mouth, a helpless whimper bursting into my hand.
“Oh, Ara.” David scooped my head and shoulders up and sat down under them, resting me back down on his lap. “What’s happened? Everyone said you weren’t at dinner tonight.”
“My dad, David. He had a scar—” I made a moon shape under my rib. “He was a vampire.”
“You had a dream?” he asked.
I nodded, wiping each streaming line of tears as they collected on my cheeks with the others.
“Aw, Ara, if I had one wish for you, it’d be that your dad really had been a vampire.”
“But Vampirie had a scar,” I muttered. “The same one.”
“Shh,” David said softly. “You’re not making any sense, my love. Just go to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes, but under David’s silken touch, one fingertip slowly tracing the contours of my cheek, my nose and making my teeth tingle as he passed over the dimple under my lip, I was given no choice. I drifted softly away, my ear against his cool denim jeans, listening to the sound of his blood moving rigidly though his veins. He was bonier than usual, his body giving him away for the starvation he’d clearly inflicted on himself lately. I wondered why he wasn’t eating—what madness had led him to betray his own needs so severely the evidence was blatant. He smelled nice, though. Not of that lovely orange-chocolate smell, but of a rich, kind of vibrant and spicy cologne. One I wasn’t familiar with.
“David?” I muttered, slipping my hand between my ear and his leg to block out the sound of his flowing blood a little.
“What?”
“You make me hungry.”
“Shh.”
I drew one last long breath of him and let myself drift back off again, David making himself comfortable too, sinking down a little lower in the chair. But just as I slipped past the veil of consciousness, David lifted my hand from beside his leg and ran a finger over my mood-ring, waking me a little. If he moved it enough to see what was under it, questions would follow. And answers would be required. And I couldn’t tell him anything about what was in my heart just yet. I just wasn’t ready.
“Hey,” Jase said softly.
David dropped my hand. “Hey.”
“She okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, readjusting slightly where my cheekbone dug into him. I took the break in the moment to hide my ring hand under my ribs. “She was crying in her sleep.”
Jason’s palm fell like a warm, soothing hug against my arm, rubbing gently up and down. “Want me to take her up to bed?”
“No. I’ll take her up soon.”
“Okay.” Jason stood back. I kept my eyes closed, lost half way between wake and sleep, but I could feel every move he made—my mind mapping it out like my eyes were open. “I’m gonna go blast another few shots at Pepper’s memory while she’s sleeping then. She doesn’t fight me as much if she doesn’t know I’m there.”
“Okay.” David laughed lightly. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna need it. And—-” he paused. “If I break through the barrier on this one, in a few hours I can start going further back—maybe back to before she was turned. Then…” His voice trailed off to nothing.
“Then what?”
In the silence, I pictured Jase shrugging. “Ara could make her human again.”
The muscles in David’s legs stiffened. “I never … I just never even thought of that.”
“Well, it’s an option now. But it’s up to you.”
“No,” David said. “It’s up to Pepper. It’s her life.”
“She’s sixteen, David. Put her out of her misery—send her back to school to grow up a bit. Maybe look at turning her back in a few years.”
David’s fingers moved absently down my spine, tracing little circles that kept me in the foggy realm of sleep. “Okay. Erase everything then, and we’ll turn her human when we’re sure she can’t even remember the era she was born.”
“Going that far back is dangerous, David. She could end up needing full rehabilitation—learning to walk and talk all over again.”
“Then we’ll send her to rehab,” he said coldly. “She’ll survive. But if we ever want to turn her vampire again, we gotta be sure she won’t remember she was ever one before.”
“Right,” Jason said in a knowing tone. “Good point.”
David’s hand landed softly but heavily on my hip then. “One more thing.”
“Yo.”
Tension rose like a physical force around the boys in the silence that hovered. I wanted to open an eye and see if they were talking via mind-link, but then David opened his mouth. “Have you told her about the offer?”
“The IVRS one?”
“Mm.”
“Not yet,” Jase said, but I could hear the excitement in his voice and even the smile he was wearing. “I didn’t wanna tell her over the phone.”
“It’s good news. You should tell her.”
“I will. I mean to. But…”
“But you’re not taking the job.”
“I know you want me to.” His voice came from lower down than before, the legs of a chair scraping the hard wood floors. “I just—”
“It’s not because I want you gone—that’s not why I asked,” David said.
“But your life would be easier if I did accept the position.”
“In some aspects, yes. But it’s not about me.”
“It’s about her, isn’t it? You’re afraid she’ll—”
“No. It shouldn't be her decision either. It’s your life.”
“Yes, and she’s a part of it. Like it or not.”
They went quiet again, David’s fingertips folding ever so slightly over where they touched the skin between my jeans and my top.
I felt deeply sad for David then—to have married me, planned to spend all
his
life with me, to then be told he has to accept that I matter to someone else as well—that what his own brother does affects and is affected by me. I could feel the injustice in his soul mix with the anger, and then finally dilute under acceptance.
“She’ll go with you,” he said softly.
“What?”
“She’ll go with you—if you ask her.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“No,” David said flatly.
“And you’d let her go?”
“I don’t own her.”
“Not her body or her mind, no.” Jason exhaled, thoughts clearly flooding his mind as the minutes ticked by in the silence I could hear. “No, she needs to be here,” he said decisively.
“She needs to be happy.”
“There’s only one thing that’ll make her happy, David.” I heard the chair scrape out, felt his energy from higher than before. “But you’re just too goddamn blind to see it.”
“She’s happy with you,” David called, sending my mind into a fog again as it woke a little. I tried to struggle against it to hear what they were saying, but his hold on me was too powerful.
“The only thing about me that makes her happy, David, is that I’m kind to her. I let her make her own choices and I never tell her what to do.”
“I was kind to her, too,” David said, his tone high and defensive.
Jase sighed loudly and the fog surrounding me lifted. I kept my eyes closed, though—pretending to sleep.
“I’m not saying you weren’t,” Jason said. “I’m saying you’re not—now. But you
could
be happy with her. You
could
make her happy too—”
“It’s too late for that.”
“See?” Jase laughed incredulously. “Your pride is your Kryptonite, David.”
“How so?”
“You don’t want her because she loves someone else. She’s happy with me, we’re happy together because I’d have her if she loved ten others.
Twenty
. I wouldn't care. And maybe that makes me weak, maybe that makes me unworthy of being loved, but I would sure as hell prefer even half the love of a person I loved wholly than to completely deny it and be miserable.”
“If you’re implying that I’m miserable, you’re mistaken, brother. I—”
“How are you coping with those nightmares then?” he asked smugly. “Because I haven’t seen you even
attempt
sleep in days. You look like shit. You’re beyond emaciated—”
“I’m not emaciated.”
“You know what? Whatever, David. I’m not fighting with you about this. I don’t need to. The evidence is right there.”
David’s hand slowly moved off my hip.
“You can pretend all you like, but you’re not doing yourself any favours. All you’re doing is pushing her farther and farther away. Look at her—” I felt both boys’ eyes on me. “Look at the way she’s snuggled in to you.
You
. After she swore practically in her own blood that she hated you for the way you treated her.”
I felt the cool around David’s core, felt him sink slightly.
“All she has ever wanted is you,” Jason said in a singing tone, as if he was just tired of it all. “She’s only ever wanted you to be there with her,
for
her, to love her wholly and unconditionally, no matter what mistakes she makes.”
“That’s not what she wants anymore, not now,” David said. “Not after I—”
“No,” Jason said firmly. “No matter what you think you’ve done wrong, you
know
she’ll goddamn well forgive anything of you.”