move closer to me or move away from me. “What the hell are you and what do you want with me?!” He gave me a long look, but then decided that I probably couldn’t hold it together much longer, so he answered me.
“Alice, we’re vampires.” Jack gave me an even look, and I almost burst out laughing, but then I realized that he was completely serious. I lapsed into a stunned silence, which was just as well, because suddenly there was the wailing sirens and flashing lights of the police and ambulance.
The paramedics felt that I was definitely in shock, and if I had been able to speak, I probably would’ve agreed. They couldn’t explain how either of us were alive, or where the blood all over Jack’s body had come from. They wanted to put us in an ambulance and send us downtown, but since Jack wouldn’t pass any kind of medical test, he fought them until they finally relented. He allowed them to check me over, but when they said I was fine, except for the shock, he demanded a ride home in a police car.
He sat next to me in the backseat, and while he whispered my name several times, I never responded. I just stared out the window and tried to make sense of his confession. Some things fit. Like his superhuman strength, his miraculous ability to heal, the way they never ate or drank anything, and I’d only ever seen any of them at night. But they were all tan (except for Mae, but she was British), and I’d actually heard Jack’s heartbeat last night. He didn’t have fangs, and he hadn’t eaten me. That did kind of explain what had happened with Peter, except why did they want him to eat me? What was so damn important about that? Couldn’t anybody just eat anybody?
Mae must’ve seen the police car, because she was at the front door waiting for us when the police dropped us off. Jack had thanked the officers when we got out of the car, and he took the time to wave at them when we walked in the house. Matilda jumped all over him, but he wasn’t in the mood, so he pushed her off.
“Jack, what happened?” Mae was talking to him, but she was looking me over. I didn’t even have a scratch on me, but when I’d caught my reflection in the rearview mirror of the squad car, I was completely white and my eyes were frantic and red-rimmed from sobbing.
“I totaled the Jeep,” Jack answered vaguely. We were still standing in the entryway, but he pulled off his shirt, revealing his muscled chest, and started wiping off the blood with his ruined shirt.
“Again?” Mae sounded exasperated and looked over at him. “Jack, you’ve really-”
“She knows,” Jack cut her off. He looked at me, then quickly looked away.
Even though there were still patches of blood on his back, he’d given up on that and balled his up his tee shirt, then walked into the kitchen.
“What?” Mae turned back to me, her face unsure.
“He told me that you’re vampires.” It was the first time I’d spoken since he told me, and my voice sounded hoarse and foreign to me. Mae let out a long shaky breath and looked down.
“Oh.” That was all she said. She didn’t tell me that Jack was insane, as I had hoped and half-expected, or expound on it
“So its true?” I asked. The words came out even, but I knew there were hysterics hiding behind them.
“Your throat sounds dry.” Mae forced a smile and gently put her arm around me, but she did it like she was expecting me to push her away. I didn’t, but I knew that I probably should’ve. “Why don’t we go in the kitchen and get you some water and we’ll talk in there?”
“I’m already on it,” Jack informed us as she led me into the kitchen. “The paramedics said she’s probably gone into shock, so she’ll be really thirsty. They also said that she shouldn’t drink anything, in case she needs surgery, but she’s fine, and she’s not going to the hospital tonight.”
He had filled a giant glass with cold water and ice cubes from the Pur filter in the fridge. He handed it to me, but I stopped and opened the fridge first. Just as Milo had predicted, it was completely empty. I stared into it for a minute, then Jack prompted me to drink the water.
“Jack, I really wish you’ve waited for when Ezra was home, or Peter even.”
Mae told him quietly. I shut the fridge and greedily downed the water. The thirst had kicked in, like Jack had said, and I turned to look at them. Jack was shirtless, leaning against the island, and Mae was wringing her hands, but both of them were watching me.
“It couldn’t wait anymore,” Jack explained dully.
“I know, but Ezra and Peter know so much more.” Mae exchanged a nervous look with Jack, and then smiled at me again and pulled out a stool.
“Here, love, why don’t you sit down?”
“Where’s Ezra?” I got on the stool and decided to start with the simplest questions first, the ones that seemed sane and rational. Not like, so, do you guys wanna suck my blood? That was the kind of thing I definitely didn’t want to think about.
“He’s out looking for Peter,” Jack answered, and Mae looked over at him.
She was fidgeting with a wavy strand of her hair, and I knew that she desperately wanted to touch mine. I had still been holding my water glass, which was almost empty, and I set it on the island and sighed.
“So… you’re vampires?” I asked, feeling incredibly foolish. It sounded so stupid coming out of my mouth. This was a family of normal, healthy people, and there were no such things as vampires.
“Yes, love.” Mae smiled at me, and it had to be the saddest, most terrified smile I’d ever seen. They were waiting on edge, and I didn’t understand why.
They were the big powerful vampires, and I was just one small human girl. If anyone should be scared, it should be me.
“All of you?” I looked from Mae to Jack, who just nodded solemnly. “Then why did you say that it would be better if Ezra or Peter were here? Don’t you know just as much?”
“They’re older, much older,” Mae explained, and her strained expression started to relax a bit. “Jack is barely more than a fledgling.”
“Nobody calls them fledglings,” Jack grumbled, offended at her use of the term.
“How old are you?” I remembered the first time I had asked him that, when we were waiting in the booth at the diner, and the way he had laughed at the question. This time, he just answered me, carefully meeting my gaze.
“Well, um, I was twenty-four when I turned, and that was sixteen years ago. So I guess that makes me forty.”
“You don’t seem forty,” I pointed out and he laughed at that, which went a long way to alleviate the tension in the room.
“Vampires age differently, obviously.” Jack gestured to his bare chest, which did not look a day over twenty- four.
“Physically, we don’t age much at all,” Mae elaborated. “Emotionally we mature in a much different rate. When you first turn, you’ll almost regress emotionally. Everything changes so much. Ezra knows more about the exact reasoning of everything, but from my own experience, it’s very much like being a teenager all over again. Jack’s personality is closer to that of someone in their teens than of one in their twenties.”
“Thanks,” Jack smirked.
“Part of that has to do with Jack’s personality,” Mae smiled at him. “But part of it is his age. And since our minds always stay sharp, we don’t ever really get old. We learn from our experiences and we mature, but not the same way people do. Jack will never really act like a man in his forties, no matter how old he gets.”
“I probably have a Peter Pan complex anyway,” Jack shrugged.
In retrospect, a lot of what he did made sense when I thought of him as being more about Milo’s age. Well, my age actually, which is why it never seemed creepy that he was hanging out with me, even though he was older. He never acted older. He was, after all, at my maturity level.
“How old are you?” I turned to Mae.
“I was twenty-eight when I turned, and that was… wow, that was fifty-two years ago.” She looked a little surprised herself, as if she hadn’t thought about in awhile, and then smiled at me. “So, I’m eighty. Wow. Well, that’s not as bad as Peter or Ezra.”
“How old are they?’ I couldn’t help but lean in close, scrutinizing Mae’s perfect porcelain skin. It was hard to believe that she’d even been twenty-eight.
“Oh, gosh.” Mae looked over at Jack for help, but he just shook his head.
“I only know the age they were when they turned, cause that’s how old I tell people the are.” Jack had been leaning forward onto the island, but now he stood up and leaned back on the kitchen counter behind him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Peter’s nineteen and Ezra’s twenty-six. You’re the oldest.”
