cleverly so that everyone would believe the body left behind was a suicide. The same father who now sent his love attached to a bright red car. He tore the card in two, flung the pieces into the air, and stormed upstairs with Ronan close behind him.
“Why the hell would he do such a thing?” Fritz asked.
Picking up the pieces of the torn card and placing them together so she could read the note herself, Saoirse remarked, “He’s got some issues with his dad.”
“So bloody what! The bloke gave him a Benz! In red! It doesn’t even come in red, it had to be specially ordered!”
Ciaran understood Fritz’s confusion, but he also understood Michael’s pain at receiving a gift from his father, whom he had completely written off. He knew that he couldn’t share their history with Fritz so he tried to channel his friend’s energy and make light of the situation. “Look at it this way, Fritz,” Ciaran said. “Since Michael doesn’t want it, maybe he’ll let you drive it.”
That was all Fritz needed to hear to make him forget about Michael’s fury and abrupt departure.
Unfortunately, Michael couldn’t forget. He couldn’t forget witnessing his parents at their defining moments: his father committing an act of unconscionable violence and his mother begging God to save her son seconds before she died. Sitting on his bed next to Ronan in thick silence, it was with an unwanted sense of maturity that he realized no matter how hard he tried to move forward he could never fully escape his past.
chapter 3
Summer was no longer the same.
Deep within The Forest, Michael sat on the bank of a stream that led somewhere, nowhere, and watched the water glide over his submerged feet. Even though it was July the water felt cool, and Michael wasn’t sure if it was because the thick shade blocked out much of the sun’s rays, because the weather in this part of the world didn’t get too hot, or because as a vampire, temperature, like age, was an irrelevant concept. Watching the water trip over and through his toes, he had to admit it: he was confused. And it was all because of that stupid car.
Well, the car wasn’t stupid—it was pretty amazing actually. It was everything Michael had ever hoped for. It was like somebody reached into his brain, picked out the car of his dreams and made it materialize. But why did that somebody have to be his father?
It couldn’t have been a gift from Ronan? Or Edwige? Or even his grandfather? No, it had to come from the one person he wanted nothing to do with, the one person he wanted out of his life for good.
“Oh my God!” Michael groaned out loud. “What if that’ll never happen?”
Collapsing backward onto the dirt, Michael looked up at the pieces of sky he could see through the lush foliage and called out to the universe, “Thanks a lot, guys!” For the first time it hit him, no matter how long he lived, no matter how many birthdays he celebrated—100, 200, 362!—he would always be his father’s son instead of his own man. Most children outlive their parents, escape them, but not Michael, no, he was lucky enough to have been given the gift of immortality, but guess what? So was his father! For as long as Michael walked the earth, somewhere on the planet his father would be walking as well. “That totally sucks,” Michael moaned.
Sitting up, Michael noticed two leaves floating on the current. One was vibrant green with dark, almost black veins, the other much lighter in color, its veins, translucent. Visibly different, yet connected, the leaves touched and never separated as they rode on the water’s surface. Some mornings Michael woke up and wished he and Ronan were like the leaves, that during the night they had been taken elsewhere, far from Double A, far from his father, and David, and the threats that hung over them. But when his mind cleared and he could think like the formidable creature he was and not the child he had been for so long, he realized distance was not salvation. It didn’t matter where he was, the intangible ropes that connected him to his past and even to his enemies would still be tightly bound around him. What Michael needed to figure out was how to live with those ropes and not be strangled.
Michael splashed some water onto his face, and, as cool drops ran down his cheeks, onto his chin, into his hair, his mind took control of his eyes and he saw into the past. R.J. was standing before him, as lanky and relaxed as ever, sweat dripping down the sides of his face, his cheekbones reddened and moist. R.J.’s eyes barely opened, the sun was too strong, so he had to squint, but it was enough for him to see. “Ya lookin’ all grown up, Mike,” he said, his lips sliding into a smile when he was done talking.
Guess not everything about the past is so bad, Michael thought. Then he wondered what R.J. was really doing right now. Sadly, he figured he was probably still leaning up against the gas pump, motionless, sweating, waiting for the next customer to drive up, waiting for the next reason to move.
But where was R.J. going to go? The guy had never crossed the Nebraska state line in his entire life.
At least Michael had gotten out of there. Thanks to this father. Oh not again!
Grabbing his sneakers, Michael bounded away from the stream, his feet jamming into the earth, one angry step after another. “Why can’t I get him out of my head?” Michael asked, staring at the trees, a bit surprised that they didn’t answer. His right foot landed squarely on a rock, but instead of wincing or losing his balance, he pressed down hard. When he lifted his foot to keep walking the rock was gone, burrowed into the ground. “I’ll tell you why,” Michael said, answering his own question.
“Because every time I think of that car I think of him!”
And unfortunately it was hard not to think of the Benz since it occupied his world literally and figuratively. Regardless of where he went during the day—St. Joshua’s, the pool, some new, unexplored area of campus, even Eden—he dreaded returning home. Now, walking back from The Forest he felt the same way. At least when he reached the clearing that led to St. Florian’s he saw that the SUV wasn’t waiting for him alone.
“Nice feet,” Ronan said. “Looks like you stepped out of a page from
Michael looked down and saw that from his ankles below he was almost completely covered in mud.
“How was your walk, love?” Ronan asked.
Sighing, Michael sat on the ground next to Ronan. “You know me,” he replied. “I’m just a regular country boy.” Michael leaned back and pressed his body into the rough stone of the building, allowing its cold to embrace his skin. “I see that it’s still here.”
“Like a blighter, it just won’t leave,” Ronan said.
Michael knew Ronan was using one of his British slang words again, and he wished he had memorized more of the book Saoirse had given him for his birthday. “Blighter?”
Smiling, Ronan grabbed Michael’s knee and played with the frayed trim of his khaki shorts. “Pest,” Ronan translated. “The Benz is like a pest that just won’t go away.”
“Isn’t there an exterminator we can call?” Michael asked. The cool stone and Ronan’s warm touch almost made Michael forget how annoyed he was, almost made him feel like he was just lounging with his boyfriend on a summer afternoon. Almost, but not quite. “Or a towing company?” Michael suggested. “I’m serious, Ronan, I don’t think I can go another day seeing that ... that ... thing!”
Ronan leaned back against the stone as well. He let his hand slip to hold onto the back of Michael’s thigh and realized that the car really had been parked outside for quite a long time now. “You know, it’s against school rules to have a car parked anywhere except for the lot by the headmaster’s office,” Ronan said. “Odd that David hasn’t told you to move it yet.”
There was nothing odd about it, at least not to Michael. His father and David were working together, in cahoots with each other, so of course David didn’t care if the presence of Vaughan’s gift broke school rules. The thing wasn’t even a gift anyway; it was bait, a bribe to try and get Michael to forget every heinous act that Vaughan had ever committed. It wasn’t going to work. “My father’s one of Them,” Michael seethed. “They protect each other.”
Ronan wanted to remind Michael that that’s what families do, they protect each other, stand by one another, but he knew that Michael didn’t want to hear that. He also knew that if anyone else had given him that car Michael would be driving it up and down every road in the United Kingdom. All he had talked about was getting his driver’s license and how driving to him was synonymous with freedom.
He hadn’t changed his mind simply because he had acquired alternative methods of transportation; it was
