Page 35 of The Unraveling

My breaths come as gasps with my racing heart, and Victor’s trembling hand lifts my chin. He simply smiles—a better actor than me—and says, “Why don’t we go to the parlor? I’ll play music for us.”

I’m too choked to respond as he helps me to my feet. We grip one another for stability, each step across the study like walking through muddy water. Julian’s sobs echo at the end of the hall, and I look past Victor.

Julian’s head hangs partway inside the toilet bowl—a vessel of blood—as his sobs echo against the porcelain. Thick blood hangs from his soaked lips like glistening strings, his teary eyes bloodshot, his face red like he’s been straining against his body emptying itself. Dr. Smith is crouched at his side, phone in one hand with his other on Julian’s shoulder.

Victor tugs me along, though I tilt my head back to spy movement above us.

A pale-faced young woman with white-blond hair watches us from behind the banister upstairs. She doesn’t blink as tears run down her face, her eyes following until we’re out of sight in the parlor.

Victor has always said the house isn’t haunted, though after all this, it’s bound to be. He thought my attempts to prove him wrong were charming, giggled and humored me when I came home from a toy store with a Ouija board. Said if I wanted to have a real chance at proving ghosts are real, he’d take me to England, where plenty of old buildings still stand which he and his childhood friends swore were haunted.

I can’t remember if we took that trip, though the image of the decaying building where he and Dr. Smith used to practice medicine is so clear in my mind, it must be a memory.

After crossing the pale beige carpet with gold embroidered accents, Victor helps me sit at his side on the bench before the old upright piano. The keys are worn from years of playing.

As Julian’s noisy gasps and shrill cries carry down the hall, Victor’s hands dash to the keys. A deep hum vibrates around us.

“You still have to teach me to play the piano,” I whisper. I let my eyes slide closed and rest my head on his shoulder.

I have so many things to do—there’s a never-ending list in the leather notebook on my nightstand.

There are still old movies left for Victor to show me. So many books to read. Endless new things to learn. Patients to heal. New friends to make.

It feels like I’m swaying with the deep tune, the song low and long and vibrating against my skipping heart.

Dr. Todd says his favorites are the lighter, cheery ragtag tunes, but confesses he noticed the melancholic ones lured me to the room.

It’s true. I love sprawling out on the sofa while he plays the perfect songs to match my suffering. He worries sometimes that it might make me too sad, but if the cancer is going to eat me while I wait to be turned, it’s much better to close my eyes and imagine I’m a noble wasting away on a velvet bed in some castle.

I jolt at the sound of strained, weak groaning down the hall and Dr. Smith’s comforting voice.

“Dr. Smith,” a young man chokes out. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Is it time to turn me into a vampire yet?”

“What? Oh—Julian, just . . . hang on a little longer, I’m still making calls⁠—”

A thud against the bathroom wall echoes down the hall. I reflexively straighten my aching back and grimace with the twinge in my muscles. Dr. Todd’s hands freeze above the keys, the dark chords resonating—slowly fading—through the buzzing silence of the house.

“Dr. Smith is here with a patient?” I whisper.

As if on cue, he dashes from the hall and into the study, a cabinet slamming before he flashes past with an automated external defibrillator in hand. I can’t make out the words of the machine’s audible instructions, or Dr. Smith’s precise pleas to his patient through the rushing blood in my ears.

Dr. Todd brings his trembling hands to his lap and stares at the wall behind the piano, and I swivel my head to watch the doorway for Dr. Smith.

It’s not until the air is hollow again that Dr. Smith’s steps echo down the hall. Dr. Todd shifts on the bench beside me as Dr. Smith appears just before the doorway near the bottom of the stairs.

“Julian is . . .” His head sways in disbelief. “Dead.”

A familiar voice makes me flinch against the impact of being tossed back up against reality.

“Maybe he’s unconscious,” Daisy says from the landing upstairs. “I think Dr. Todd and Isla were unconscious for hours. It was so . . . silent, and nobody left.”

Dr. Smith’s head tilts back to look up at her with glistening eyes. “His heart was erratic and failed. I couldn’t detect anything resembling a pulse.” The words tremble on their way out of him, and he takes a shuddering breath.

Victor’s sigh tickles the side of my face, and he says, “Bring him to the study. Let’s observe samples of his blood while we wait to see what happens.”

Chapter 13

Victor tangles his fingers in his hair, his elbows on his knees as he sits on the sofa beside me. “I’m so goddamn thirsty,” he grits out.