Afterlife

Vic shook his head. He just stood there in his T-shirt and jeans, awkward and miserable, staring down at Lucas. “He won’t . . . he can’t . . .”

“He won’t attack you,” Balthazar said. “For the time being, Lucas can’t move. And we won’t unstake him until we can get him fed.”

Vic crammed his hands in his pockets, and although he had to know Balthazar was telling the truth, he couldn’t bring himself to walk any closer.

I realized that, no matter how upsetting this was for me, it had to be a hundred times worse for Vic. He was the only human in the room, and despite growing up in a haunted house and attending Evernight Academy, Vic’s experience of the supernatural was fairly benign—or it had been, before tonight, when one of his best friends had tried to kill him.

Balthazar took a pen and a scrap of paper from his pocket and began jotting something down. “Vic, if you can stay awake a while longer, you should head to this address,” he said. “It’s a butcher’s in town. They open within the hour. These guys have a side business in blood. You show up with cash, and they don’t ask any questions about why you need it.”

“Don’t think I could sleep right now,” Vic said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure I’m ever sleeping again.” Though he was trying to joke, his voice broke on the last words.

I went to him in the doorway and embraced him tightly. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You’ve done so much for us, and we’ve done nothing for you.”

“Don’t say that.” Vic’s hands patted my back. “You’re my friends. Nothing else to it.”

How could we begin to repay Vic everything we owed him? Not just money—though we owed him that, too—but his loyalty and his courage? I didn’t know if I had it in me. The rest of us had powers, but Vic might have been the strongest one.

When we pulled apart, Vic gave me an uneven smile. “All my best friends are dead people. Someday I’ve got to figure out how that happened.” Despite everything, I laughed a little.

“Come, Vic,” Ranulf said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I, too, would like to purchase a few pints. And perhaps we can repair some of the damage to the grasses in front of your home later today.”

Vic shook his head as they started out the door. “Doubtful. Unless you spent all your time in ye olden Viking days doing landscaping.”

The door shut behind them, leaving me and Balthazar basically alone. It was hard to know what to say; the silence between us was terrible. “The blood—that’s going to snap Lucas out of it,” I said. “Right?”

“That’s not how being a vampire works. You should know that.”

“Can you please stop lecturing me?”

“You’re one to talk.”

This situation was only going to get worse. Balthazar and I definitely needed some space between us for a while. I unfastened my bracelet and again released my tie to the physical world. “Watch Lucas,” I said as I began to fade out.

“He’s not going anywhere.” Balthazar sat down and took a deep swallow of his wine.

The cellar became dimmer in my vision, until it faded into a blue-gray fog. As the mists closed around me, I concentrated on my memories of Maxie’s face and the first place we’d talked after my death, the attic of Vic’s home. As I imagined it—the old Persian carpet, the dressmaker’s dummy, the bric-a-brac lying around—the place took shape around me. So did Maxie. She stood there in the long, billowy nightgown she’d died in back during the 1920s, just as I wore the white camisole and cloud-printed pajama pants I’d had on at the end.

“Sorry about your boyfriend,” she said, and for pretty much the first time since we’d begun speaking, she truly did sound sorry. Maxie’s usual hard demeanor was softer now. “It’s lousy that you had to lose him like that.”

“I haven’t lost him. We’ll find a way.”

Maxie cocked an eyebrow, her saucy sense of humor already returning. “I already told you. Vampires and wraiths? Not a good mix. A really, really bad mix. We’re poison to them, and they’re no friends to us.”

“I love Lucas. Our deaths don’t change that.”

“Death changes everything. Haven’t you learned that much by now?”

“It didn’t change you haranguing me nonstop,” I snapped.

Maxie ducked her head, her dark blond hair tumbling around her face. If she’d had blood flow, I thought, she might have blushed. “Sorry. You’ve had a rough couple of days. I don’t mean to— I’m just trying to tell you how things are.”

A rough couple of days. I’d died, found out I was a ghost, seen Lucas get cut down and turned into a vampire, and fought off a Black Cross attack. Yeah, that counted as a rough couple of days.

“You used to play with Vic in this room, when he was a little kid.” I glanced at the place he’d shown me, where he used to sit and read his storybooks to her. “You didn’t separate yourself from the world after you died.”

“But I did. For the better part of a century, I just . . . I was stuck between here and there, and I didn’t quite know what was going on. Sometimes I’d stab into people’s dreams and turn them to nightmares, just to do it. Just to prove that I could affect the world around me.”

I’d heard of wraiths doing worse things, maybe for similar reasons.

Maxie sat on the windowsill, her long white nightgown seeming to glow as the moonlight filtered through the billowing sleeves. “As you can probably imagine, people usually didn’t stay in this house long. It was like a game for me, seeing how fast I could scare them out. But then the Woodsons took the place, and Vic was so tiny, just a couple of years old. When I showed myself to him, he wasn’t scared. That was the first time in so long that I remembered what it was like to—to be accepted. To care about someone.”

“So you understand,” I said. “You see why I can’t give up on the world.”

“Vic’s human. He’s alive. He anchors me to life and lets me experience it through him, just a bit. I don’t think Lucas can do that for you, not anymore.”

“He does. He can. I know it.” But I didn’t know any such thing. There was so much about being a wraith that I didn’t understand yet.

“You need to talk to Christopher,” she said encouragingly. “He’ll make you understand.”

I remembered Christopher. He had appeared to me, a mysterious and foreboding figure, at Evernight; he had attacked me there with intent to kill, so that my transformation into a wraith would be guaranteed. Yet when he had appeared to me and Lucas this summer, he had rescued us from Charity.

Was he benevolent or evil? Did the actions of wraiths even fit into any kind of morality I understood? The only thing I knew for sure was that Christopher had power and influence among the wraiths. Now that I had become one, our paths were certain to cross again.

Thinking about this made me nervous. I managed to ask, “He’s sort of the . . . wraith in charge, right?”

“Nobody’s ‘in charge.’ But plenty of us listen to Christopher. He has a lot of power, a lot of wisdom.”

“How did he get so powerful? Is it because he’s especially old?” That was how it worked for vampires. “Or is he, well, like me?” I’d already figured out that my status—as a child born of two vampires, and therefore able to die a natural death and yet become a ghost—gave me abilities most ghosts could never claim.

“Neither,” Maxie said. “He wasn’t born to be a wraith, like you were. Christopher learned everything on his own. He has this amazing inner strength. You’re going to like him, Bianca. Why don’t you come with me now?”

I couldn’t do it. Christopher might have amazing strength he’d used to save me—but he had also attacked me. The world of the wraiths remained foreign and frightening; I had no idea how my powers related to the cold, revenge-driven creatures I’d encountered at Evernight Academy. Maybe it was crazy to still be frightened of ghosts after I’d become one myself, but the thought of joining them forever scared me deeply. More than that: going into that world felt like giving up on life.

“I can’t,” I whispered. Maxie’s face fell, but she didn’t argue.

I pulled away from the room, away from her, and vanished again into the bluish fog that was my mind’s way of making sense of pure nothingness. Lucas filled my thoughts, and I willed myself back to his side.

When I reappeared in the wine cellar, I immediately got the sense that more time had passed for Balthazar than it had for me; he’d finished his glass of wine and was across the room, lying on our bed.

Lucas lay exactly as he had fallen. The sight of him as a corpse hit me anew, and it took my whole strength not to fade out again so I wouldn’t have to bear the loss for a while. He deserved better than that. No matter how difficult it was to endure, I would remain by his side.

Balthazar realized I was there with a start, but he said nothing.

I didn’t want to argue with him anymore; I was too sad for that, too tired. Instead I asked, “Isn’t there anything we can do for him?”

“No.” Balthazar sat up. His curly hair was mussed, and I realized he’d been asleep. No doubt he was exhausted; it hadn’t exactly been an awesome couple of days for him, either. “The urge to kill—it’s powerful, Bianca. It can be overwhelming. The vampires you’ve known have nearly all been the ones who mastered that urge, but they’re a minority.”

“You mean, most of them end up like—like Charity.”

He closed his eyes briefly at the mention of his younger sister’s name. “No. Charity and her kind are special cases. Individuals with the strength to keep going, but who have lost touch with what it meant to be human. They’re the most dangerous. And, fortunately, the most rare.”

“Then what happens to the others?”

Balthazar rubbed his temple. If vampires could get headaches, I’d think he had one. “They self-destruct,” he said quietly. “They get taken out by Black Cross, or by humans who’ve seen just enough horror movies to get the idea. Or they end themselves. Set a fire and walk into it. They’d rather burn than endure the killing rage any longer.”

I wanted to say that there was no way Lucas would ever do that, but I couldn’t. No, Black Cross wouldn’t be able to take him down easily. But hating his vampire nature as he did, already burdened with the fact that he’d tried to kill both his mother and one of his best friends—it was entirely possible that Lucas could end his existence. He’d see it as the right thing to do, the only way to keep people safe.

“The hunger is stronger for some of us than it is for others,” Balthazar continued. “As badly as I crave blood sometimes . . . it’s nothing compared to what some other vampires endure. The ones who self-destruct are always the ones with the greatest hunger. It makes them crazy, turns their minds inside out.”

Our eyes met, as if he was asking me whether he had to go on. But I knew I needed him to say what came next.

Balthazar, understanding, said, “It looks like Lucas is one of the hungry ones.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do for him?” I said. “Any way to make this easier?”

Slowly Balthazar rose from the bed and walked toward me, his expression uncertain. “I don’t think we can make it easier, exactly, but there’s a place where we can keep him away from most humans, and from Black Cross, too. Where Lucas might be able to learn how to handle what he’s become.”

I brightened until I realized what Balthazar meant. Or did I? Surely he couldn’t be thinking about that. “Where?”

Balthazar confirmed my worst suspicions by saying, “We have to take Lucas back to Evernight.”

Chapter Four

“TAKE LUCAS TO EVERNIGHT?” I REPEATED. “HAVE you gone insane? Balthazar, think about it! Lucas was Black Cross. He spied on Evernight for them. Mrs. Bethany hates him—everybody there hates him. They’ll kill him on sight.”

“They won’t. They can’t,” Balthazar insisted. “Any vampire can come to Evernight at any time and ask for sanctuary. No matter who it is or what they’ve done, Mrs. Bethany has to take them in.”

“But that’s Mrs. Bethany’s rule, isn’t it? She can break it any time she wants.”

Balthazar’s mouth twisted, the closest he could come to a smile on a day as dark as this one. “Mrs. Bethany doesn’t break rules. You should know that. Remember, she let Charity in.”

True, and Mrs. Bethany and Charity hated each other fervently. I wasn’t convinced, though. Lucas had been a vampire hunter; surely that was worse than being any kind of vampire, no matter how dangerous.

Some of my reluctance was more selfish. Going back to Evernight Academy would mean returning to my parents. On one hand, I wanted to see them again so badly it hurt; on the other, I knew that they’d always feared and rejected wraiths. If they rejected me—as Kate had Lucas—I didn’t think I could bear it.

I heard footsteps on the concrete steps outside and went to the door to let in Vic and Ranulf, who had a large sack full of what I suspected were pints of cow’s blood. Vic did come in this time, but he didn’t move more than a couple steps past the door. When he caught me looking, Vic handed over the bag, then fished out a single bottle of Mountain Dew. “I figure I should probably hang in the backyard for a while,” he said, his eyes focused nervously on the floor where Lucas lay. “Until you guys chill Lucas out.”

“Good idea.” I took the shopping bag to the folding table. “Thanks again, Vic.”

“Just give me another day or so before we get attacked again. That’s thanks enough.”

Balthazar and Ranulf each took a pint from the sack, each one in a little plastic container like the kind they use to serve soup to go at a deli. They both opened them up and started drinking, while Lucas still lay on the floor. At first I thought they were being selfish, but I soon realized what they were doing: regaining their strength. If Lucas awoke as savage as he’d been when Balthazar staked him, they’d need it.

I took a couple of pints and put them in the microwave. Blood always tasted better at human body temperature. When they were ready, I glanced over at my friends. Ranulf was finishing, tipping up his cup to get the last drops; Balthazar’s lips were tinted dark red. Drinking blood had been so delicious. I realized that I missed it, maybe more than anything else about being alive.

The guys were prepared. I knelt at Lucas’s side, putting the pints within reach. Slowly I wrapped my hand around the protruding handle of the stake. Splinters jabbed into my palm, and I imagined the pain Lucas must have felt in the seconds before he passed out.

“On the count of three,” I said. “One . . . two—”

I tugged the stake out. It made a wet, disgusting sound. Lucas writhed on the floor, and his eyes opened wide. He inhaled, deliberately sniffing the air. I knew he’d caught the scent of blood.

“Drink,” I whispered. “Drink.”

Lucas’s hand shot out to clutch one of the containers. In an instant he was gulping down the blood, thick swallows that made his Adam’s apple bob in his extended throat. Within seconds, he emptied the first container, dropped it on the floor, and lunged for the second one. That one he drained even faster. I watched him, fascinated.

When that one was done, Lucas looked around wildly, and Ranulf threw him another container from the bag. Though I hadn’t warmed that one, he drank it just as quickly. As it fell to clatter on the floor, he didn’t go after one more—but he ran his tongue around his mouth, catching stray drops, then lifted his bloodstained fingers to his mouth to suck every last bit of it.

“Is that better?” I asked.

“Bianca.” Lucas turned to me, body remaining tense, but his expression no longer looked like that of an animal—it was his own. “That wasn’t some hallucination. You’re really here.”

“Really here. How do you feel?”

Instead of answering, Lucas pulled me roughly into his arms. The embrace was too hard, but it was human emotion, and for that I was grateful. His hands combed through my hair, which must have felt more or less real to him. I was very present in that moment.

I repeated, “How do you feel?”

“Better.” His words came haltingly. “Before, all I could think about was—no, I couldn’t think. I was just this hungry . . . thing.”

“You’re okay now.”

“As long as you’re with me.” His voice was tight, and I realized that he remained troubled. The blood hunger wasn’t his only problem. He shifted away from me, hanging on tightly to my hand, to look up at Balthazar and Ranulf. “I didn’t dream you two either.”

“Welcome to death,” Ranulf said cheerily. “It is not so bad once you get what is called the ‘hang of it.’ ”

“Thanks, buddy.” Lucas simply nodded at Balthazar; apparently he remembered the conversation they’d had. But then he froze, and his face twisted like he was about to be sick. I wondered if he’d drunk the blood too fast until he whispered, “Mom. Vic. I went after— I wanted—”

“Everybody’s fine. You didn’t hurt anyone.” I closed my fingers around his.

“I could have. I wanted to.” There was something in Lucas’s eyes that made me wonder if, instead of saying wanted, he’d nearly said want. “Mom’s never going to speak to me again.”

Balthazar folded his arms. “Do you really want to talk to her again, after the way she turned on you?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. As bitterly as my parents and I had parted, I wanted to see them again every single day. When my eyes met Lucas’s, I could see he felt the same way. He understood Kate’s revulsion and distrust of his new nature; he shared them.

Ranulf stepped forward, helpful as ever. “Vic bears you no ill will. He is outside drinking the Dew of the Mountain and will be glad to see you yourself again.”

Lucas shook his head. “He can’t want to hang out with me after I went for his throat.”

“I believe that he is somewhat . . . overwhelmed by the day’s events, but he will not abandon you,” Ranulf said.

“None of us will.” I wanted to embrace him again, but Lucas remained distant, focused inward. When I glanced at Balthazar, he shook his head slightly, a warning for me not to push. The control Lucas had gained was temporary, and we all knew it.

“Can you guys give us a few minutes?” Lucas said, running one hand through his dark gold hair, which was even more mussed than Balthazar’s. “I’m glad to see you and everything, but Bianca and I have to talk.”

“Sure.” Balthazar nudged Ranulf. “Come on, we’ll help Vic with the home repair.”

After the door closed behind them, Lucas and I looked at each other, and the sadness of it struck me so hard it almost hurt. I found myself remembering a time a few years ago, when I’d first learned he was Black Cross. Once he’d escaped from Ever-night, we had faced one another through a pane of stained glass, unable to believe there was any way we could ever be together again. I could picture it so perfectly, each shade of the glass, as though it still hung between us.

“What was it like for you?” I asked. “Being dead?”

“I don’t remember anything about it.” Lucas leaned his head back against the leg of our folding table, giving in to the exhaustion that followed rising from the grave. We remained on the floor, unable to summon the will to move. “Just now, when Balthazar staked me—that sounds so weird to say—whatever. Well, after that, I dreamed. Thought I saw Charity chasing after us.” He half laughed, a bitter sound, and looked up at the ceiling. “The last thing I needed was her in my nightmares.”

I shivered. Charity looked innocent, with her youthful face and bedraggled, waiflike appearance; she was anything but. I figured I would have nightmares about her forever, too, if I could still dream. I wasn’t sure about that yet.

“What was it like for you?” he asked, focusing on me again. “Did you become a ghost right away, or was there some time between? It’d be nice to think you got a sneak preview of heaven.”

“No sneak previews.” I folded my arms atop my knees and rested my chin there. “I think I turned into a ghost pretty much instantly, but it took me awhile to realize what had happened. At first I just drifted in and out.”

“Do you think there’s an afterlife for vampires? Do they— do we all go to hell, if there’s a hell?”

“Don’t say that!”

“Holy water burns me. I’ll never be able to set foot on consecrated ground again,” Lucas said. “God’s made it pretty clear where he stands, don’t you think?”

I cupped his face with my hands. “I know you hate this, but there are ways to go on, to enjoy the years to come. Think about it: We’re immortal now. We lost each other once, but at least we never have to again.”

Lucas pulled away, breaking contact between us. Slowly he pushed himself to his feet. He walked a few steps farther into our makeshift apartment in the wine cellar, studying it as though he were seeing it for the first time: the hot plate, the air mattress on a bed frame, the cardboard drawers that held our things. There were times in the past few weeks when I’d thought this was the most perfect, romantic place on earth. Now it seemed shabby and small, its beauty our last shared illusion.

He said, “Bianca, I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You can.”

“You’re saying that because you want to believe it. Not because you do.”

“You’re giving up without even trying.”

Lucas turned to me, his eyes anguished. “I’m going to try. Jesus, Bianca, do you think I wouldn’t try for you? As much as I hate this—this hunger inside me, this cold, disgusting, dead feeling—if it means being with you, I’ll try.”

“You’ll make it. You’ll learn how to handle the hunger. I promise.”

“How is that supposed to happen?” He gestured at the empty blood containers on the floor. “That’s, what, three pints of blood? It’s as much as I can do right this second not to tackle that bag and drink the rest immediately. Already when I think about Vic outside—it’s not about Vic anymore, it’s about the fact that he’s alive and he’s got blood I could drink. In another few minutes—”

“We have more blood. Drink as much as you need. We can get more.” But that was a purely temporary solution, and we both knew it.

He needed hope, and only one suggestion gave us any hope. I laid aside my own objections and fears about my parents; Balthazar’s plan was the best we had.

“Classes start in two weeks,” I said. “At Evernight. You’re going to go back there.”

Lucas stared at me for a second, then thumped his head against one of the wine racks so that the bottles rattled. “Great. I’m already hearing things. Halfway to crazy.”

“You’re not hearing things. You’re enrolling in Evernight Academy again as a student, a vampire student this time, and they’ll take care of you.”

“Take care of me? Bianca, the last time I visited, I rode with the guys who burned the place down.”

I remembered what Balthazar had said and clung to it. “You’re a vampire now. If you ask for sanctuary, Mrs. Bethany has to give it to you. They might not be friendly, exactly, but they’ll give you a place to stay, and plenty of blood to drink, and advice about how to deal with the hunger. For weeks or months, however long you need.”

“Or years,” Lucas said. “Balthazar’s kept coming back for years.”

Balthazar had attended Evernight Academy for different reasons, ones more focused on the school’s true mission: helping young-looking vampires pass for human by keeping them up-to-date with the modern world. I wasn’t about to point that out to Lucas, though. The last thing he needed to hear was how well all the other vampires could manage.

Lucas added, “Besides, it doesn’t matter how much they hate me. We’re not going to Evernight Academy because it’s dangerous for you.”

“For me?” I had hardly had a moment to consider this, but Lucas was right. We knew from the events at school last year that Mrs. Bethany was no longer merely the headmistress at Evernight; she was also using the school as a means of finding— and perhaps capturing—ghosts like me. Why she was doing this remained a mystery, but there was no doubt that she loathed the wraiths. Whatever she was up to couldn’t be good for us.