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I looked down at my own wrists, at the delicate bracelet Lucas had given me. A present for my birthday—a happy symbol of a day that seemed to have taken place a lifetime ago, not only a few hours in the past.
“Charity’s not going to stop looking for you,” he said. “She’s obsessed now. She’s decided you’re the barrier between her and Balthazar.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.
“Bianca, we can’t stay in Philadelphia. We’ll have to go farther away. Where, I don’t know—”
“It doesn’t matter tonight,” I repeated.
Lucas turned to argue with me, but then our eyes met and he fell silent. I lay one hand on his chest, so that I could feel the rise and fall of his breath and the beating of his heart.
We’re alive, I thought. This is what it means to be alive.
“Bianca—”
“Shhh.”
I traced his lips, the strong column of his neck, the swell of his Adam’s apple. I could feel his breath against my fingers, coming faster as I touched him. Still he was too far away. My hands shook as I pulled his T-shirt over his head. Then I could wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head against his chest. I could hear his pulse rushing against my ear, the way the sea does in a shell. It wasn’t enough.
“Closer,” I whispered, pulling him down for a kiss. Lucas’s mouth captured mine, and his hands began tearing at my dress the way I’d torn at his clothes. I helped him push away the straps of my sundress, without ever breaking the kiss, because I didn’t want to stop touching him.
My clothes crumpled to the floor. His skin was against my skin, the cedary scent of him the only air I could breathe. All I wore now was the red coral bracelet, and it shone against his bare skin as he pulled me toward our bed.
In the morning, I felt terrible. Probably that was because I’d been chased by vampires and pounded by sleet, not to mention chilled to the bone, but Lucas freaked out about it.
“You said you’ve been really sick.” He pressed his palm to my forehead, which was silly, because his body temperature was almost always warmer than mine. “Any more dizzy spells?”
“You haven’t even let me get out of bed yet. How would I know if I’m dizzy?” I gestured at the quilt that covered me and the pillows beneath my head. “Usually you have to stand up to tell.”
“I’m just concerned.”
“Well, that makes two of us. But I don’t want you to have to worry.”
Lucas sat heavily on the corner of the bed and rested his forehead in his hand. “I love you, Bianca. That means I have to worry. Something’s wrong with you that neither one of us understands. We need to talk to some vampires—and not the kind we dealt with last night.”
I confessed, “I’ve thought about talking to Mom and Dad. Not because I wanted to—though I do, so much—”
He took my hand, to show that he understood.
“—but I don’t think they’d hear us out.” As much as I hated this knowledge, I felt that it was true. My parents would respond to my call in only one way: They’d come get me. They would do whatever it took to separate me from Lucas, and they’d probably try to force me to become a vampire like them.
Lucas considered that for a second. He seemed to have some trouble getting the next words out. “Well, what about Balthazar?”
It had cost him a lot to admit that Balthazar might be the one to help me, I knew. But that, too, was a dead end. “I already asked him, at school last year. He doesn’t know what happens to born vampires if they don’t complete the transition.”
“Damn.” Rising from the bed, Lucas paced. I watched him from my tangle of covers. Forget about it, I wanted to say. Maybe it’s nothing. We got away from Charity; we should be celebrating!
That was me trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. I’d told Lucas the truth in part so that I couldn’t pretend any longer. It was time to face this.
Lucas stopped in his tracks. “We’re assuming that this has something to do with your vampire side. But what if it isn’t? I mean, you could just be sick. With walking pneumonia or something like that.”
“It’s possible. I’ve thought about it.” Full vampires never caught viruses or got appendicitis or anything like that, but growing up, I’d had the sniffles and stomachaches like any other child. In the past few years, I’d been very healthy, and my parents had said that was my vampire strength buoying my immune system. But maybe it was still possible for me to get sick like anybody else.
“Dana had walking pneumonia a couple of years ago. It messed with her appetite, her strength, that kind of stuff. That might be all this is.”
“Maybe so.” I liked the idea a lot. Too much, really—nobody should want to have walking pneumonia—but it beat the alternative.
Lucas sat back down on the bed, more cheerful than he’d been since the planetarium. “So, we’ll get you to the doctor. He can check you out, figure out what’s wrong.”
