I have to cover my mouth to keep from screaming.
Whatever scrap of hope I had that last night was a momentary glitchin my brain is smashed, and it takes me a few seconds to register what I’m seeing.
Thevampireis framed in my window.
He’s still wearing the same outdated dress suit—full-skirted knee-length coat, embroidered vest, and knee breeches. He looks like he stepped right off the pages of one of the books on Minaro’s syllabus.
My body grows leaden, and a chill runs down my spine as I realize I must be under his control again.
He raises his hand and waves me closer. I wait for my feet to start moving against my will, but nothing happens. My gaze isn’t locked onto his, and I don’t hear his voice in my head.
“I cannot compel you anymore.”
His words are muffled by the glass, but his voice still sounds as it did in my mind. Velvety, low, inviting. The kind of voice that can sell you anything.
I duck my head to avoid looking at him, in case he’s lying.
“I drank your blood but did not drain you,” he goes on. “That makes you my Familiar.”
I’ve heard the word in dozens of vampire stories, but I don’t know what it means to him. As if sensing my continued confusion, he says, “We are bonded.”
My belly does a small flip when he saysbonded,and I instinctively look up. “W-what do you want?” I ask, my voice too low to carry.
“I want you to come outside,” he says, hearing me.
“We—we can speak through the glass.”
“Or,” he says, his gaze searing into mine, “I could come in there. Would you like to be alone with me in your room?”
I take a step back.
Then another.
The lines of his face grow sharper, like blades unsheathing. “Once you run out of blood, I could lie in wait for your friends.”
I stop moving.
“Do you need more details, or have I made my intentions clear?”
When I was thirteen, Sal and I visited Buenos Aires with my parents. We fell so in love with the city that I asked Ma why my grandparents ever left. She said there were a number of reasons, but the one that stuck with her was when thieves broke into their family friends’ home and stole everything ofvalue—only before leaving, they beat up the father and forced his wife and children to watch.
Stealing was common enough, but it was the violence that scared them. That’s what told them it was time to go.
Apparently, I didn’t inherit that same survival instinct.
I knew there was a murderer in the basement, and I didn’t tell Ma or Minaro or the cops. I went to bed, then I went to class.
I gave the monster a second chance to kill me, and now he’s come to collect.
“I will give you to the count of three,” he says. “Then I will come through that window. If you scream, I will kill every single person who comes through that door to aid you.One…”
My heart jabs at my rib cage, like a prisoner fighting for a way out of her cell. The vampire may not be compelling me, but my body still feels like it’s beyond my control.
I can’t move.
“Two…”
I feel sweat beading across my forehead and in my armpits. I can’t imagine moving closer to him, and yet I’m dead if I don’t. The only hope I have left is to draw him away from Salma and beg for my life.
