“I will not keep you,” he says, his jewellike eyes acting like magnets, drawing all my attention. “I only hope that since I am not going anywhere, we can start over.”
My eyes feel like they’re taking up my whole face. “You’ve been trying to kill me for the past three nights!” I nearly shout at him.
“Hence the starting over part.”
I shake my head. “I’m not erasing that video, so you can forget it.”
“I did not expect you would.” Dark strands of hair fall into his eyes, but he doesn’t brush them away. “Yet as I will be staying here a while longer, and you have forbidden me from attacking others, I must ask you a question.”
“What… is it?” My heart is racing like I’ve just run for miles.
“Lorena.”
The way he says my name is so soothing that it makes me want to agree before he’s even asked. “Yes—”
“Will you be my Familiar?”
CHAPTER 13william
For a moment, William thinks heryesis in response to the question he has yet to even pose—then he realizes she was just encouraging him to continue.
Lorena stays quiet for so long that he actually begins to feel awkward. He despises that he has placed himself in the position of currying favor with this human, yet until he learns how to get rid of that recording, he will have to earn her trust.
“If you do not want to be my Familiar, I understand,” he says, feigning a chivalry he does not feel. “I will find someone else.”
Lorena’s expression is heavy with consternation. As if her personal desire to be free of him is battling something else. Perhaps her innate (and inane) instinct to protect others.
If only she knew how pointless it is—no one can save anyone.
We are, each of us, alone.
“What would… I do?” she asks, her voice so soft that it strikes him how vulnerable she is in this moment, like a just-hatched bird being visited by a hungry crow.
“Keep my secrets. Help me fit into this modern world.Feed me.” He watches her intently when he says the last point, expecting her to wince or shrink back.
Yet she does not even blink as she asks, “How do I know you won’t use what I teach you to hurt people?”
Even after the past few nights, she remains so righteous and naive. She reminds him of someone he would rather forget.
His human self.
“I am only interested in finding my family,” he says, neither confirming nor denying her concern.
She goes quiet again, and as he examines her features, he can see exhaustion in the heaviness of her eyelids and the red lines spiderwebbing across the whites of her eyes. He has been keeping her from sleep for too many nights. She will be more of a problem for him if she falls apart.
“I thought vampires slept during the day and only came out at night,” she says, surprising him.
“Who do you think started that rumor?” he asks as he stands up to leave. “You can answer me tomorrow.”
He makes a point of walking away from her first. He needs to make it clear that he does not need her. He cannot let the girl delude herself into thinking she has any power over him, because she doesnot—
“Yes.”
He has already left the dining hall when he hears her answer. She sounds almost resigned, as if there was never a choice to make.
“I’ll be your Familiar.”
LAST NIGHT,after Lorena left the library with her recording in triumph, William knew he had to accept defeat and abandon Huntington.
