Wait. What? “You do?”
“You want me to talk to him, help him.”
“No. I want you to…tell me about him.”
His brow furrowed with confusion. “I don’t understand. He’s your friend. What could I possibly know about him?”
“I think…I think he was once a patient of yours.” Here goes.
First, her father’s breath hitched. Then the color drained from his face.
“You do know him,” was all she said.
He looked away from her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Once.”
“Did you kick him out of your office?”
Rather than answer, he pushed to his feet. The chair skidded loudly against the kitchen tiles. “It’s late.” There was no emotion in his tone, only distance, as if his thoughts were already someplace else. “You should shower, get some sleep.”
“I’d rather talk to you. Aden needs help, Dad. Not the kind you’re thinking, though, so please don’t tell me never to see him again. I love him like a brother and want to see him happy. And the only way he’ll ever truly be happy is if we find a way to free the people—”
“Enough!” He slammed a fist against the table, rattling the dishes. Fire burned in his eyes. They weren’t flames of fury or exasperation but of hopelessness. It was a look she’d seen only once. The day her mother died and he’d had to be the one to break it to her. “Enough,” he repeated flatly. “We’re not going to talk about this.”
Startled, she froze in place, unable even to breathe. What was he thinking? What had started that fire? “But he told you we would someday meet, that he would be my friend. Even you can’t deny that he wasn’t a crazy little boy but a—”
“I said that’s enough. You need to go to your room. That isn’t a suggestion but an order.” With that, he turned on his heel and stalked away. Down the hall, a door slammed. The door to his office, she knew. Never before had he shut her out.
Her dad remembered Aden. That was clear. But
ADEN CAME AWAKE with a jolt, sitting upright, panting. Sweat covered his body, soaking his shirt to his chest. His wild gaze roved his surroundings…he was in his bedroom, he realized, frowning. What time was it? Through the window he could see the crescent moon, so it was late at night. The silence of the house caused his ears to ring. Everyone was asleep.
He was home, yet he didn’t remember getting here. He hadn’t done his chores, hadn’t spoken to Dan. Last thing he remembered was standing in the woods with Victoria, her teeth in his neck.
His head jerked left and right. Where was—
“Shh.” Victoria was suddenly sitting beside him, pressing a finger against his lips. “You’re all right. You have nothing to worry about. I took care of everything. I cleaned the barn and fed the horses, though the animals weren’t happy to see me. I convinced Dan and the others that you came home when you were supposed to. Dan even thinks the two of you had a nice long chat about your study session.”
Slowly his muscles loosened their vice-grip on his bones. He eased back down, now noticing the ache in his neck. He reached up, but there were no puncture wounds. She must have healed him. By licking his neck as she’d done to his lip?
“Thank you.” He was a little embarrassed that she’d done so much for him. He was the guy and she was the girl.
“No. I returned to him when I promised and he, in turn, took me home. He went back to Mary Ann and I snuck out to return to you. I’m so sorry I took so much of your blood, Aden.” She gripped his wrist, her strength enough to crush him. He didn’t complain. Any touch of Victoria’s was welcome. “I should have pulled back, would have pulled back, but you tasted so sweet, better than anyone, everyone, and all I could think was that I wanted, needed more.”
Despite the ache inside him, he shivered in remembrance. His mouth dried and his muscles jerked.
“I told you I was an animal,” she cried.
“No, you’re not.” Whatever she’d pumped into his vein…dear God. He wanted more. He pried her fingers from his arm and twined his own through them. “What you did…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. You need blood to survive, and I want to be the one to give it to you. As long as I’m alive, I want to be the one you come to, the one you feed from.” His thumb traced the smooth skin of her wrist. Her pulse raced.
She sniffled. “You speak as if you won’t always be around, as if you know you’ll be leaving soon.”
Should he tell her about Elijah’s vision?
He anchored his free hand under his head and stared up at the ceiling. If he told her, she could decide to leave him—for good. A doomed teenager was not exactly good boyfriend material. She could decide to try and save him—which would do her no good and only cause her anguish. Trying to change Elijah’s visions was like trying to stop a tidal wave. With the right tools, you could build a dam, but eventually that dam would break and the damage would be a thousand times worse.
Only once had Aden tried to save a person he’d known was going to die. He’d kept one of his doctors from getting into a car he’d seen crash in his mind. Sadly, she’d escaped the crash only to die later that same day. A pole had fallen from the top of a building and slammed its way through her chest, he’d been told. Rather than die instantly as she would have in the car, she’d died slowly, painfully. He shuddered.
Whether Victoria would leave him or not, she deserved to know the truth. She’d stood up for him to her father, had given him the best days of his life, laughing with him in the water, kissing him, drinking from him.
“Come here,” he said. He released her hand and held out his arm in open invitation. Eagerly she stretched out beside him, her head burrowing in the hollow of his neck. “I have something to tell you. Something you won’t like, something that will probably scare you.”
She stiffened against him. “All right.”
There was nothing left to do but say it. “I’ve seen my own death.”
“What do you mean?”
He heard the horror in her voice and wished he could take back the words. Instead, he plowed ahead. “Sometimes I know when people will die. Sometimes I know how they’ll die. Awhile back I saw my own death, the same as I’ve seen a thousand others.”
Her palm flattened on his chest, just over his heart. She was trembling. “And you’ve never been wrong?”
“Never.”
“When is this supposed to happen? How?”
“I don’t know when, only that I won’t look much older than I do now. I’ll be shirtless and there will be three scars on my right side.”
She sat up, silky hair tumbling down her shoulders and back, and gazed down at his stomach. Without asking permission, she lifted his shirt. There were scars, but not the three parallel lines he’d seen in his vision. “To have scars you must first be injured, and that injury must have time to heal.”
“Yes.”
Her expression hardened with determination. “Once you’ve rested, you will tell me everything you know about this vision and we will do everything in our power to stop it. For what is the point of knowing something in advance if you can’t change it?”
Aden reached up and caressed her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into the touch. Some other time, he would tell her the consequences of trying to prevent someone’s death. He’d given her enough to deal with for one night. Here, now, there were a thousand other things to talk about, a thousand other things to do.
“Have you noticed anything different about my room?” he asked. “Anything different about the people here at
