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Fuck. Am I…dead?
Okay, don’t panic. Don’t panic.
I’m tempted to try again and create another door and step back into the normal room, the one with air and sound and color.
But then the real door leading to the ballroom opens.
And what comes in are shapes, white shimmery illusions of people. I make out Absolon’s striking figure, plus the old vampire and the woman, and Wolf too. They’re like ghosts, moving slow as if through quicksand.
But the door is open.
And every cell inside me is telling me to go.
I slip past the ghosts as they stop in the middle of the room, probably wondering where the hell I went. I might not have much time before someone finds me here, wherever the fuck I am.
So I move through Dark Eyes, fast, past the ghostly shapes of the guests, right through the back door, which doesn’t hold me back.
The house doesn’t hold me back.
I stumble out into the black and white night.
I’m free.
I look around, staring up at the Westerfeld house in awe. I stumble across the road to get a better view, shaking my head.
I’m free.
I start running up the rest of the hill, then start heading across Alamo Square.
The world is weird.
It looks like San Francisco, but only things with permanence are clear and solid and real, like buildings and trees. All the cars and people, the moving things, are pale ghosts, most too thin and transparent to really see properly.
And out of the corner of my eyes, there are sickly shadows moving along the side of a building.
I keep running, moving past the ghosts of people, through them sometimes, hit with a wave of nausea each time.
I hit Hayes Street, turn right down Laguna, and then I’m outside my apartment.
Ten blocks.
Ten fucking blocks away this whole time.
It’s not far enough either.
I just have to be quick.
I stare up at my parents’ apartment, but I don’t want to ambush them yet. I put my hand on my door, knowing it should be locked, but it turns with ease. Something tells me all the doors in this world are unlocked.
A slithering sound behind me makes me whirl around.
Shadows move along the sidewalk across the street. They’re human-sized shadows, black and grey, more solid than they should be. They sound like snakes and spider legs skittering.
I quickly jump into my apartment, shutting the door, locking it and then I close my eyes, trying to concentrate on bringing up that door again, dipping into the inner well.
When I open my eyes, the flames have formed, flickering with red and yellow, showcasing my dark apartment on the other side.
I quickly step through the door, back into the world of air and color and sound, and then the flames die out and the door to the otherworld fades.
What the hell was that?
I look down at my body, expecting it to be different, maybe for my tattoos to be back, maybe for my skin to be falling off or something scary. But I look exactly the same as I did at the party. I press my fingers against the necklace, the earrings, look down at my pointy, spiky shoes. I don’t have my tattoos back.
Fuck.
Still a fucking vampire.
I look around me.
Absolon was right. My place does stink like weed. I guess I had to be away from it long enough to notice.
I laugh, a small pathetic laugh, looking around at everything, marveling at having this place back.
You don’t have it back. You can’t stay here.
But my heart doesn’t know that yet.
I collapse into the chair at the kitchen table, head buried in my arms, bursting into tears.
I have it all back, but I have nothing at all.
Parents who aren’t my parents.
Friends that don’t know my truth.
A future that doesn’t seem so promising anymore when there’s someone like Absolon out there who I know will hunt me down. It won’t even take him long before he’s dragging me back to the house.
They’re coming, a voice says inside my head. You can smell them.
I lift my head, breathing in deeply.
The rosemary, fennel, and palo santo of my mother, my father’s sandalwood cologne.
I turn in my seat to see them through the glass, standing outside the door, peering inside.
“She’s in there!” my mother cries out softly, my keen ears picking it up.
“Careful, Elaine. We don’t know what state she’s in,” my father warns.
Careful? Of me? Do they think…I’m going to attack them?
Suddenly I get a huge push of negative energy off of them, coming right through the door, putting images of a blade in my head, six inches long, curved and sparkling with blue electricity.
Fuck, is that the knife they kill vampires with? What did Solon call it, blade of the mordernes?
I get to my feet with such force, the chair scatters across the kitchen floor, hitting the stove.
The front door opens and they step inside.
