"But the faeries forced you! They tricked you!" It was their fault everything was wrong, their fault Lish was dead, their fault I couldn't be happy.
She sighed. "Listen. I did what I did. And I can't make it right. No faerie made me kill those paranormals. I liked what I was doing. " I opened my mouth to argue with her, but she put her hand over mine. "No. I know you're trying to forgive me, but don't rationalize it. You owe your friends more than that. I didn't kill them because faeries made me-I killed them because I was desperate and alone and I wanted to. I thought I was doing them a favor, but, more than that, I liked the way it made me feel. And that's the worst part. It was always, always about me. And if you hadn't stopped me, I'd probably still be doing it. "
Her words hung heavy between us. An ugly darkness, cold and empty, seeped through my own sad little soul. I wanted her to blame the faeries. Why did she have to bring all this stuff up when I wanted to forget it? And why the bleep did her confessions make me feel guilty?
"But the faeries," I said, a whine creeping into my voice. "They ruined your life. They won't stop making mine a mess. Without them, we could have-everything would be different. Easier. "
Vivian laughed, her voice hard. "Screw the fey-they can't touch me now. And I can't touch them, more's the pity. I'd kill every single one of them if I could for what they did to us. But I'm pretty sure that without them neither of us would exist. It's probably better I'm stuck here in dreamland so I don't have any more souls on my hands. Literally. "
She grinned wickedly and elbowed me. I let out a pained laugh, but really I wanted normal sleep tonight, sleep free from conversations that hurt my head and made me ache.
I closed my eyes and opened them to my dark room. For a minute I thought I was still asleep, that Viv and I had switched locations, until I realized the person sitting on the edge of my bed staring at me wasn't my crazy sister.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Matters of Life and Undeath
I sat up in bed, my heart racing, and swallowed the scream just in time as I recognized the spiky hair. I flicked on the lamp by my bedside. "Arianna? You scared the crap out of me. What's wrong?"
She wasn't staring at me but rather right past my head, at a blank spot on the wall. Her glamour eyes looked as dead as her real ones. "I don't understand it. Any of it. "
"I'm sorry?"
Her eyes focused on me, and she shook her head slowly. "Lend told me what happened. About the vampire. Evie, I don't want to be one. This isn't me, this thing, this living, endless nightmare I've become. I shouldn't exist. I wish I didn't. " Her voice was low, even. It was scarier than if she were upset or crying. "Did you know my name isn't Arianna? It was Ann. I hated that name. Plain and boring, like me, and my life, and my family. I hated my family, too. They were WASPs, as middle-class and conventional as possible. My mom did crafts and worked on the school board, and my dad was an accountant. They wanted me to be blond, and happy, and on teams. They were always pushing teams-swim, cheer, track, it didn't matter. They wanted me to fit somewhere. That was the last thing I wanted.
"My mom and I used to fight over what color my hair was, my newest piercing, my music. When I dropped out and left for fashion school, I didn't say good-bye, or thank you, or I love you. I was glad to leave them. They told me I was being stupid, moving to a big city where I didn't know anyone and barely had enough money to live. I didn't care. I was finally going to figure out who I was, find somewhere I could be different.
"Then I met Felix, and he was dark and delicious and everything my family wasn't. He told me I belonged with him, that our love would last forever, that he saw who I really was, who I could be. He promised to show me the world. I never noticed that his world was always night.
"And then he bit me, and the first time I liked it. But then he did it again, and drank my blood, and I passed out. When I woke up, he told me what he was. I didn't believe him, thought he was crazy. I'd let him in too fast, and he knew where I went to school, where I worked, where I lived. I didn't feel safe anywhere. So I went home. I got there at night, pulled up in front of the house. I could see my parents through the bay window, reading in the living room, and it was light, and warm, and safe. I started up the walk, and then Felix stood from where he was sitting on my porch, waiting for me.
"My parents found me there the next morning, dead. "
I fought back tears. I'd never heard her talk about how this happened to her. Vampires had always made the least sense to me-how could a human become an immortal paranormal, and why did they have glamours? Werewolves were weird, sure, but they didn't have immortality or glamours. Raquel had never been able to explain where vampires came from. All she knew was that in order to become one, you have to be bitten more than once over the space of a month or so, and the vamp has to leave you alive just enough for the change to take place before your heart stops. It's not easy, and for the most part vampires have no interest in swelling their ranks. Good thing, too, because if all it took was one bite, the world would have been overrun by bloodsuckers centuries ago.
Arianna always seemed so tough, so jaded, sometimes I even wondered if she had sought out a vampire and been changed on purpose. In spite of her emotionless tone, my heart broke knowing the truth-she was just a girl trying to find a place to fit in. It sounded familiar.
She continued. "Of course, I don't remember them finding me. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a morgue. Felix was there, waiting for me, with this look on his face. He was so excited. He thought he'd done something wonderful. "
"Where is he now?" I whispered.
"I went with him, because I had nowhere else to go and no idea how to live as a vampire. Then he picked out a lonely, artistic girl, we stalked her, and he lured her into an alley for us. "
My stomach clenched. I didn't think Arianna had ever killed a person. Did David know about her past?
She closed her eyes. "And when Felix lulled her into bending her head to the side and offering us her neck, I killed him. "
"Wait-you killed him?"
She looked at me for the first time since she started her story. "I was already this thing, this mockery of life. He took away everything that I was, everything I could have been. I wasn't going to let him do that to anyone else. "
I sat, dumbly, with no idea what to say. She and David were total pacifists when it came to dealing with other paranormals, but she'd killed another vamp to protect an innocent girl. Did that make what I did okay, then? Because Uber-vamp would have hurt other people. Carlee, the other kids. I know he would have. I shook my head, focusing. "Arianna, I'm so sorry. "
She smiled sadly. "Doesn't matter. Eventually I found David, and here I am. And here I'll stay, because eternal life is no life at all, and I have no idea what to do about it. Ann's dead, and I'm stuck here, dead and alive and neither. "
I put my hand on her shoulder. "You're alive! You're still a person. "
She looked at me, her eyes sharp once again. "Don't lie to me, Evie. You can see exactly what I am. "