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‘You were dreaming,’ he says gently. ‘A bad one, it seems.’

I nod, the images in my head are far too vivid for me to forget any time soon. My skin’s cold now where the sweat clings to it, and my throat feels dry. As if sensing it, Theo reaches over to where a glass of water sits and passes it to me.

‘Thank you,’ I whisper, voice cracking, thick with sleep. ‘It was a fire. I think I was in it. It’s a recurring dream I have.’

Theo shifts in the bed. His face is in shadow, but I can see the tension in his shoulders. ‘Do you remember it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, and it comes out more like a question. ‘It felt real. Not like a normal dream. Like I was actually there.’

He doesn’t speak right away. It’s only when he reaches out to touch my wrist, just a brush of fingers, that I realise I’m shaking.

‘Memories,’ he says eventually. ‘That can happen. Especially when something traumatic gets buried deep. The mind protects itself, but it doesn’t forget. The accident yesterday might have stirred up your subconscious.’

‘But I was so young,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t remember anything from before.’

‘You’d be surprised what stays,’ Theo murmurs. ‘Even when we think it’s all gone.’

I look at him. He’s always calm. Like the roof could be collapsing around us right now and it would hardly register. His eyes do that eerie thing, shimmering like two black pools of water.

‘What?’ I ask, eyeing him a little suspiciously as he refuses to meet my gaze. ‘Do you think it was real?’

He doesn’t answer right away. He stands, rubbing the back of his neck.

‘Try to sleep,’ he says. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

Settling into the passenger seat, it’s hard not to remember what happened yesterday.

The crunch of the metal on metal. The dust showering us from the gravel road. The sound of the two cars colliding. I swear I can still feel the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. Shaking my head, I force myself to stop thinking about it.

An ache flares behind my eyes and I lean my head against the window.

‘You okay?’ Theo asks.

‘Headache,’ I answer, feeling fatigued, even though I felt great after having some of his blood.

‘Can I get you anything? Panadol? Nurofen?’ he pauses. ‘Quick tap of the vein?’

I side-eye him, unable to stop the smile forming on my face. It’s still so difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that I’m here with a vampire and have not only shared his blood more than once, but we’re now joking about his blood being on-tap. So much has happened in such a short amount of time.

‘Thank you, but I’ll be okay. I’m just going to close my eyes for a bit.’

‘Okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

My chest warms at his words. Cold, cruel, heartless. That’s what vampires are supposed to be. Theo is nothing like that. Or at least that’s what I’ve seen in the short amount of time I’ve gotten to know him.

The tires hum against the road. The landscape outside the window blurs into shades of dusk, trees slipping past like shadows. I’m staring at the outside world, trying to let it distract me from the noise in my head.

I don’t know what’s real anymore or what to think. I was raised to believe vampires were monsters. Not just dangerous – evil. No exceptions. No questions. They were the reason my family locked the doors with spells at night. The reason we trained in secret, the reason I was always being warned, always being watched.

Now I’m on a road trip with one who has not hurt me, even though he easily could. Not once has he even threatened me. Not when I told him what my family did to him, not when I wouldn’t let him out of the cell he was in. I’ve seen more humanity in Theo than I was seeing in the people who raised me. The boys, at least. I didn’t even recognise them in the end – the witches I called family. They were supposed to be the people who loved and protected me, but everything about them is built on lies, and I can’t tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. All the lines have blurred.

My hands curl in my lap. They’ve been in my head. I know it now. There’s no other explanation for the holes in my memory, waking up in places I don’t recall falling asleep, feeling like I’ve missed time. I thought I was going crazy.

And for what? To protect me? To use me? I want to be angry – and I am – but mostly I just feel lost. Like I’ve been stitched together out of lies and now the seams are starting to split. How much have they taken from me? How much have I forgotten? How long have they been doing this to me? My whole life, or only recently?

I glance at Theo, the very real and dangerous vampire beside me in the driver’s seat. Calm, focused, barely blinking. He doesn’t look like a monster. He looks lost and confused, just like me. We seem to be more similar than I ever realised.

Pressing my forehead to the cold glass, I close my eyes. I don’t know who to believe. I don’t know who I’m supposed to trust, but I can feel something shifting inside me. The witches raised me to see the world in black and white, but I think I’m starting to see it in full colour.