“What’s happening?” he asked, terror in his eyes.
I couldn’t speak. I still tasted Nicholas on my tongue. He couldn't be dead. This couldn’t be real.
I gasped and looked at Luke. But the assault wasn’t over. A hum of energy reverberated over our bodies, standing up the hairs on our arms. My limbs became weightless as a strange wind blew from the hole and swirled the dust in a whirlwind up and outside. My hair whipped around my face, sticking to my cheeks. I held tight onto Luke, expecting to be pulled out of the cave as well, maybe pulled to heaven, maybe to Nicholas. Instead, a sonic pulse, as if from a bomb blast, ricocheted out from the dais and disintegrated everything in its path. Just as the wall billowed and threatened to slam into us, I screamed and everything went dark.
August 25
Today is Julia’s sixteenth birthday. She was having a great time at dinner with her friends until another close call, this time in the public restroom. Of course I couldn’t stake the vamp without making a scene, so I yelled “Police” and pulled the bloodsucker outside. Luckily the restaurant is dark because everyone saw me, including Julia. But I worked fast and kept my head down. And actually, it made the evening exciting for her. She’s still giggling over it with Sam on the phone right now.
But it’s becoming a bigger problem than I imagined and I don’t know how I can stay out of her life completely. ‘Cause the older she gets, the more enticing her scent becomes and the attacks have been happening more frequently to where I can’t leave her unguarded after dark for even a minute. Maybe I will put up those beacons like Harry suggested.
But it just hit me. That that’s all I’m going to be for her—a nameless stalker. I hang out in this stupid redwood tree night after night and watch everything she does. I know her hurts, fears, secret desires… and though I could make her happy, there’s nothing I can do about it. Because I could never be him—the guy that wraps her up in his arms and makes her feel safe, the one who loves her unconditionally, the one she spends the rest of her life with. Not with my heritage.
And the idea of her eventually getting married and growing old sickens me. What am I going to do on her wedding day? Am I going to stalk her on her honeymoon of all places? Or what about when she does eventually die? I would have protected her her entire life and she’d never know it, or me. The pain will kill me, like it does daily for not saving her mother. Julia’s beautiful smile will be gone forever. Her light she brings to so many, gone. And then what? I protect her children? I protect someone else just to repeat the process?
I’d rather find Cain and slaughter him for all the pain he’s caused everyone for his sin. If only I knew where he was exactly. I’d just do it. I’d stake him without any regrets. Then I could die happy knowing Julia will live out her life in freedom. Then I’ll be free too.
“Julia,” a familiar woman’s voice said. “I’m serious. It’s time to get up or you’ll be late.”
I pried my eyes open and sucked in a deep breath, amazed nothing ached. The peeling glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my bedroom ceiling looked down upon me. Was heaven supposed to resemble earth?
The woman snatched my dirty laundry off the floor and turned to me with big hazel eyes and soft blonde hair. She looked like my mother, only older, wearing jeans and a pink tee-shirt. I sought to feel her out and came up empty. I blinked again. She couldn’t be real. A figment of my imagination.
“Up,” she said a little more firmly and tugged on my comforter, touching my skin.
I jerked my foot back. I’d been using my gift long enough to know figments don’t touch people. I had to be dreaming.
“Mom?” My voice crackled out of my throat.
Her brow wrinkled as she met my gaze. She sat down on the side of my bed and brushed aside my hair with her hand. I felt tears well up automatically. I’d wanted to dream her into reality so many times I couldn’t believe it was finally happening.
“What’s wrong?” She put her hand on my cheek, warm and soft.
I sat up and hugged her as hard as I could.
“What’s this all about? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I sniffled. “I just… miss you.”
Mom petted my hair like I’d always imagined she’d do. “I was only gone for the weekend. Did something happen? Did you and Dad have a fight?”
“No,” I said and drank her in, her smell, her smile, her beauty. “I had a really bad dream.”
She patted my knee. “It was only just a dream. Now get up. I’m tired of getting those tardy warnings from your PE teacher.”
As she disappeared from the room, my feet made contact with the carpet. The arrangement of my furniture appeared the same, but the bathroom door was missing. I poked my head into the hall to find I’d been moved into Dad’s old room.
That’s weird.
I turned back around and opened the closet. Three times the amount of clothes burgeoned out of the small enclosure and most of the items were a variety of colors other than black.
I shrugged on a pair of jeans and a cute blue top. If I was dreaming, I wanted to at least look good. I finished getting ready and trudged downstairs towards the noises in the kitchen, wondering why I couldn’t sense anyone, and rounded the corner.
I froze midstride. A girl, roughly eight-years-old, hair color like mine in a pigtail, slurped milk from a spoon. The memories flooded me the instant I saw her. Rachel, my little sister.
“What are you looking at?” She stuck out her tongue.
I gaped, then recovered.
Too real to be a dream.
“Nothing.” I took a seat opposite her. She slid over the Shredded Wheat and Cheerios boxes to make a partition between us.
I had a sister?
The décor, the draperies, the paint, and even the furniture had changed, all screaming a woman’s touch. Family pictures adorned the fridge—summers at the beach, camping at Lake Tahoe, Disneyland. As I soaked them in, each event came back to me. Mysteriously my brain contained memories of a life I hadn’t lived.
Was that what Nicholas felt like when he read the journal?
Nicholas.
My heart lurched, misfiring a beat. I’d watched him die. I’d watched everyone die. Everyone.
“’Morning, pumpkin,” Dad said and breezed past me with a brush against my shoulder.
I jumped up as if he were a ghost, knocking my chair to the floor.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He pulled the chair upright.
I gaped at him.
“You okay?” he studied me quizzically.
I wrapped my arms around his torso so fast, and inhaled his fresh, soapy scent like it was my life force. His thicker middle surprised me.
He hummed and hugged back just as hard. “That’s not a greeting you get everyday.”
The vision of his lifeless body on the ground tensed my arms and I gripped him harder. I never wanted to wake up. I couldn’t. He couldn’t die. I had to stay here forever.
After he began to twitch in impatience, I let go and allowed him to pour himself a cup of coffee. Mom walked in and sidled up next to him, vying for the pot. Somewhere in the middle of the playful tussle, they kissed. Rachel made an “eww” noise and excused herself from the table.
Admiration flowed through me at the sight of the love they felt for one another, something I’d imagined so many times and never thought I’d experience. But my heart ached to see Luke. My last memory of us clinging to one another right before the blast ripped our bodies apart competed with the day he left for college at San Diego State.
Tears welled in my eyes and I darted toward the hall. This was too real to be a dream. And if I woke up, cold and alone on the marble floor of the vampire lair, I couldn’t live after experiencing this. I touched the frame of a family photo of us in a field filled with wildflowers and gasped. It looked just like the one Mom had been buried in.
I shook my head back and forth super fast. Maybe I was in a coma. I couldn’t possibly have dreamt the last sixteen years to wake up here. Or was this a glimpse of my life if Mom had never been murdered by a vampire? I continued down the row, each photo revealed a new memory in my head. We’d come to Scotts Valley because of Dad’s new job at Alcon, a tech company. Mom, a writer, worked from home. Luke, of course, was at college.
Grandma.
Grandma moved here with her sister. They both were living together in a house by the beach.
I stopped at the next picture and froze in shock at of the sight of Aunt Jo and another man, not John. No. She married Rick, cool, fun Rick. And they had three kids, my cousins: Sophia, Piper, and Travis.
“Holy crap,” I said within earshot of my parents.
“Well, excuse us,” Dad said and moved past me, headed toward the garage.
Mom came around the corner, too, her hand fastened to her hip.
“You’re going to be late.” She handed me a homemade lunch. I almost fell over right then and there. “Don’t forget your keys.”
She placed the set in my hand and shooed me out the door. I squished across the lawn in a daze and turned the corner, expecting the Acura. I stopped in my tracks. The Quantum, alive and well, sat on the side of the road, waiting for me to start her up. I brushed my hand along her hood, as if welcoming an old friend.
Together, we bolted down the street and the gas gauge read full—not broken like before. I laughed, hard and long. And then it hit me; without the nuisance of empathy, today was going to be a cool day.
Before arriving at school, though illegal, I took out my phone and dialed Luke.
“Yeah,” he answered, groggy and half-awake.
“Luke, I—” My breath came out too fast, drying out the inside of my mouth. I choked.
“Jules? What’s wrong?” He instantly sounded more alert.
“No … I’m sorry to wake you. I just wanted to say hi.”
Luke paused. Then something on the other end rustled around. “Hi? You woke me up to say hi?”
“Well …” My cheeks burned. “How’s school going?”
A deep exhale, then another pause followed. “Good.”
“And your classes?”
“They’re all great.”
Luke’s voice, rich and clear, though totally annoyed, had no hint of unhappiness or pain. The reality that in this life we weren’t as close, tugged at my heart. Mom’s death had bonded us together like nothing else and without it, we’d carried on like typical siblings. But all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around him and squeeze tight. If only he could have known what had happened, what we used to share.
“Well, you sound busy, so … I’ll let you go,” I said.
“O-Okay,” he said with a yawn. “Call later next time.”
“Yeah, sorry. Bye.”
I hung up quickly and squeezed into a parking space in the lot and darted inside. Unable to help it, I knocked into people while I moved through the hall. Sam stood by her locker, beautiful, happy, and alive. I ran and ambushed her with the biggest hug, definitely bruising some ribs.
“What’s that about?” she asked as she pried me off her body. “Are you okay? You’re crying.”
I discreetly wiped away a tear. “I had a dream you died.”
“You what? Really? ” She shivered. “How did I die?”
“I can’t even tell you it’s so horrib—” I couldn’t finish. Katie had turned the corner sporting her sassy black hair and attitude up the wazoo.
The hug fest repeated itself and Katie had to physically remove me from her body.
“What is with you?”
I shrugged. “Super bad dream.”
“You need a psych ward.”
I encircled my friends’ arms and moved onto PE. The halls seemed the same, a few new faces here and there.
Justin turned the corner and I had to restrain myself. Our last interaction in vampire world involved a stake piercing through his heart. But there he stood, alive and well, a little less geeked out than before. He’d been the very first vamp I’d staked, defending myself in the warehouse.
“Hey,” I said with a smile.
His eyes grew and he mumbled a “hey” back before he rushed off to his class.
At lunch we all sat around our regular spot and everything felt right with the world.
“Where’s Phil?” I slyly asked Sam, my leg twitching to an unheard beat.
“Who?”
I nudged her in the side. “You know. Sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, amazing basketball player: Phil.”
“Is he a transfer?”
“Um, well…”
He was supposed to be.
My heart sank. Were we never going to meet? Did something happen in this alter-universe and the D’Elia’s didn’t move here after all?
“He sounds pretty cute—” Sam lifted the corner of her lip. “But only if you guys aren’t hooking up or something…”
“Oh, no. Aren’t you and Todd—?”
Sam let out a huff. “Didn’t I tell you? I dumped him. He’s such a selfish jerk.”
“Oh.”
I took another bite of the yummy tuna sandwich Mom made to keep from saying anything else totally stupid. The “I love you” Mom had written on my napkin peeked out of my bag. Though any other student at SVH would have been embarrassed, I refolded it neatly and put it in my binder. Who knew how long this alter
-
existence would last and I planned to treasure every moment of it.
“So, what kind of secret super power would you like, Jules?” Katie asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I sat up straight as the déjà vu punched across my brain. Hadn’t we had this conversation before? I blinked at her, when everything clicked. I’d gone back in time, to September, when I didn’t know vampires existed—the day I’d met Nicholas.
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered, catching my breath.
Maybe he was here, in this time continuum. He had to be. We’d see each other again. I wanted to jump out of my seat and race in my car over to the cliff so I could wait for him right now.
“What’s wrong with you today?” Katie watched me suspiciously while arching her pierced brow. “It’s just a question.”