“Ava, I left it in the kitchen,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Why was it in the kitchen?”

“I went right to the kitchen when I returned from school to check on what had to be done and left my jacket hanging on the pantry doorknob. It’s still there. I’d better get it. Mrs. Fennel would have a fit.”

“Yes, she would,” she agreed. She stepped back for me to go out. “When you return, come to my room to see how beautiful I’ve made Marla. She looks ten years older.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

I hurried off. This was like living in Orwell’s 1984, I thought. Or Nazi Germany. Every word, every move I made, was under scrutiny. My sisters would rat on me in a heartbeat. There was only one person to trust: myself.

After giving it sufficient time, I went to Ava’s room. Marla was sitting at her vanity table. When she turned to look at me, I nearly lost my breath. She did look years older and somehow even more sophisticated and cunning than me.

“Well?” Ava asked.

“I’m stunned. You performed a miracle,” I said, hoping to please her.

“It wasn’t my miracle. It was hers,” she said, nodd

ing at Marla. “Everything is already there inside her. I’m just bringing it out the way I recently brought it out of you.”

“Maybe I should go with you and Lorelei on the next hunt,” Marla said.

Ava laughed. “Ambitious, isn’t she? I’m afraid not, little sister. You don’t go out there until Daddy says.”

“Maybe he’ll say I should,” she insisted.

Ava laughed again. “If you only had her edge, Lorelei, this wouldn’t all be such a struggle for you. Stop that damn thinking and worrying all the time.”

“I’ll be ready when Daddy calls me,” Marla said, turning back to look at herself in the mirror. She did have Ava’s vanity and ego.

“I’m going to read and go to sleep early,” I said. “I’m tired tonight.”

“You’re just terrified,” Marla said, talking to me through the mirror.

I looked at Ava, who widened her smile. “She’s so precious,” she said.

She wasn’t so precious to me, but I had to admit she was right: I was terrified. Was I on the verge of losing Daddy’s love completely? Why was I toying with it, endangering myself so much? It was clearly something neither of my sisters would do. And hearing the story about what Mrs. Fennel had done years ago didn’t comfort me. In the end, she had destroyed the one she loved and then didn’t blame it on who and what she was but on love itself. Was that what awaited me?

I was tormented with indecision and conflicting emotions all night. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t watch television. There was nothing that would shut off the turmoil inside me. I slept in spurts, waking and finding myself trembling as if I were freezing. I closed the window and put another cover over me, but I couldn’t shake off the chill. Something dark and very cold was in my room with me. I was drawn to the image of Daddy enveloping Mark Daniels just outside my window. I could hear Mark’s scream. If a renegade could be swallowed up so quickly and violently, what would happen to Buddy?

I must not call him tomorrow, I told myself. I must fight off the urge. That is the solution; that is the only solution. It gave me some comfort to think so, but when I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, I saw his face. I heard his voice, and I felt his lips on my lips. I conjured him up so vividly it was as if he really were in my bed beside me, and as I envisioned him, felt myself surrender to his embrace, I felt that strange hardness move through my body, that hardness I had felt when I was really with him.

It made me sit up in a panic. I was breathing hard and fast, and there was the taste of blood in my mouth. Had I bitten my own lip? I rose and turned on the light at my vanity table. When I looked at myself, I thought the color of my eyes had changed from bluish green to Daddy’s ebony. My shoulders looked bigger.

And I hadn’t bitten my lip.

The taste of blood came from somewhere else, somewhere deep inside me.

I didn’t understand why it should make me feel as if I had stepped into a fire pit and was going up in smoke, but it did.

I quickly turned off the light, and as Daddy had promised I would, I welcomed the embrace of darkness.

16

Embrace of Darkness

I had convinced Ava that she had to take Marla to school in the morning, emphasizing that I couldn’t do it, because a suspended student was not permitted to go on the property. I heard them get up and go to breakfast. When Ava looked in on me, I was still in bed. I sat up as soon as she stepped into my room.

Tags: V.C. Andrews Kindred Vampires
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