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At the restaurant they didn’t speak much. They sat near the pinball machines, which beeped and whirred, and people walked by, talking and laughing. The world was still spinning for everyone else even though theirs had changed forever. It wasn’t time yet, Saber thought, to reassess everything she knew. It was time to recover, to make her hands stop shaking, to look aroundat her new friends, if that’s what they were, as they sat stewing in their own terrifying, unsettling, confused thoughts.
On the drive back to Doug’s house they made a plan to meet again in a few days.
“If there’s anyone who doesn’t think they can do that again, who doesn’t want to be a part of this, there’s no shame in that,” said Doug, as they pulled up to his house.
“No, we don’t have a choice,” said Lozen, her voice dark and steely. “We’re in this now.”
20
“Do you want to go to the Glacier Christmas Party?” her dad asked her as they sat opposite each other at a Mexican restaurant near the ferry. She’d met him after he got off of work. It was five thirty and dark out, people walking past the window in rain coats and tall boots, their faces darkened by hoods.
“Huh?” Saber asked. “What?”
Christmas seemed like a foreign concept, or something left behind in her old life. Then she saw the lights strung up on the street lamps, the little artificial tree by the host stand of the restaurant. It was Christmastime.
“Saber, you haven’t really seemed like yourself lately.”
“Oh, uh, exams, sorry. What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you wanted to go to my company Christmas party. You could get a new dress, whatever you want.”
“Sure,” Saber said. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
She was anxious about her exams. School had been a blur. Lozen had been able, somehow, to focus on school concurrently with their vampire killing escapade, had almost seemed to cope by throwing herself into work. Saber, on the other hand, was feeling unfocused, distracted, and maybe a little traumatized,constantly remembering the moment when she plunged the stake into Laurel Jenning’s dead heart.
“The party is on the seventeenth,” her dad said, “at a fancy hotel in downtown Seattle. I think it’ll be nice.”
“The seventeenth, got it.”
Of course, she thought of Ansel and wondered if he’d be there. She’d kept him a secret from her friends, even Lozen, and couldn’t help but wonder if that was a mistake that might haunt her.
What if he found out she’d killed a vampire?
What if he alreadyknew?
At school after Thanksgiving break, she had run into Elise and Sophie, who had looked through her, like they didn’t see her. They were still subdued and tightly knit after the death of their friend, but Saber couldn’t tell if they were intentionally shunning her or were really too grief-stricken to even notice other people. She couldn’t help but wonder who knew what, and if Derek and the other vampires were aware of who’d killed their new recruit.
The lack of knowing was driving her a little bit insane. She wondered constantly if she was in danger, if Derek somehow knew that she was responsible for Laurel’s destruction.
The group decided, when they met again at Doug’s house, that there was nothing to do but wait.
“We don’t know where they are,” Lozen said. “So I don’t know what else we can do.”
“We’ll find them,” Mia said. “Or maybe they’ll just leave.”
“To go kill people somewhere else?” Elijah asked.
“Perhaps it’s enough to save our own community,” Doug said.
Mia sat cross-legged on the couch sipping tea that smelled like vanilla.
“I have to say.” She sighed a little. “I’m in a bit of trouble with my people.”
“Your coven?” Lozen asked.
“I thought some of them wanted to get rid of the vampires. Even they were upset that I did it on my own.”
“You didn’t do it on your own,” Elijah objected, sounding a tiny bit hurt.
