happened!”
Get control of your own fear, Ronan; don’t let him sense it. “No, that’s not what I meant. Of course I believe you,” Ronan said. “I’m just confused.” And incredibly afraid because if a dead girl was compelled to show you a vision of your crazy mother and your father, a man so duplicitous my own mother doesn’t even trust him, then there could be no good reason for her motives. “It doesn’t make sense to me, Michael. Why would Imogene show you a vision of your parents?” Ronan asked. “I mean, she didn’t even know them.”
“I don’t know,” Michael said quietly. “But I’m glad she did.” Slowly, Michael recounted what he’d seen and how it made him feel. “She was never ashamed of me, Ronan.” The words carried with them such emotional weight, such a tight hold on his past, Michael could hardly lift his head. He stared at the ground, felt the tears well up in his eyes. “I hated her for so long.” Ronan felt all the anger rush out of his body when Michael looked at him, his expression so pleading, so unconcealed, his voice so remorseful. “Why was I so quick to believe she could hate me because I’m gay?”
The need to hear Michael’s story was replaced with the need to comfort him. Ronan wrapped his arms around Michael and the embrace was eagerly accepted. Proud that he would allow his tears to fall so easily, so shamelessly onto his shoulder, Ronan whispered softly into Michael’s ear, “Because you spent so much time hating yourself.”
Michael cried even harder, held on to Ronan tighter. He wished he was wrong, he wished he could push him away and yell at him for saying such a stupid thing, but he couldn’t. Michael had found it so easy to hate himself for who he was that it seemed only natural that everyone else, including his mother, could hate him just as easily. Through his tears, he told Ronan the rest of the dream. “But she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking to my father.”
Ronan felt his skin shiver for the second time. Your mother was ashamed of your father, he repeated to himself. That can’t possibly be good. “Don’t worry about that for now,” Ronan said, glad that Michael couldn’t see his face or his concern clearly. “You don’t need them anymore.”
“I know, I know that,” Michael said, escaping from Ronan’s embrace just a little to look him in the face. “I have you and that’s all I need.” He meant the words, knew they were fact, but there was more, more to confess. “I wish I had them too, though. I wish I had parents who were together and who loved each other and who lived in a dumb little house somewhere so we could visit and I could bring you to meet them.” Michael laughed at the image in his mind, he and Ronan standing on a doorstep, nervous, awkward, then his parents, a united, loving couple greeting them with open arms, ushering them into their home, into their lives. Ronan was smiling at him; he understood. “My mother really could be lots of fun when she wasn’t, you know, completely out of her mind.”
She had to be incredibly special if she was capable of raising someone as wonderful as you, Ronan thought. He held Michael’s slender neck between his hands, the neck that he had bitten into, the neck that had given itself to him so willingly so they could be joined forever, and all Ronan wanted to do was lean in and kiss him, but just as he parted his lips, he saw Phaedra.
“Oh God.”
Lying on the ground, her limbs twisted in a peculiar way, Phaedra didn’t appear to be alive. The only part of her, in fact, that seemed to be moving was her hair. Lifted by the wind, the long curls rose and fell as if they were breathing while the rest of her body remained motionless. Michael and Ronan, shocked to see their friend in such a state, were frozen, in awe of what they were seeing, until Ronan realized action was needed.
“She needs help.”
Michael heard Ronan’s comment but couldn’t respond. His friend was in this position, this lifeless state, because of him. Phaedra had come to his aid and clearly she wasn’t up to the challenge; she wasn’t as powerful as she had been, and defending Michael had left her vulnerable. He didn’t want to admit it, but it looked like it left her on the brink of death. “Ronan,” Michael said. “Is she . . . is she breathing?”
Kneeling next to the girl, Ronan bent his head so his ear hovered over her mouth. Nothing. He bent down closer and was relieved to feel a faint exhalation of air brush against his skin, soft but distinct. “Barely.”
So too was her flesh. Just like her breath, it was faded, dim, the veins, blue and haphazard, could be seen underneath the skin like an absentminded drawing under tracing paper. Clearly, her life was fading in front of their eyes and Ronan had no choice but to seek human intervention. “We’ve got to get her to MacCleery.”
“Do you think he can help her?” Michael asked, knowing full well that Phaedra’s condition was out of the realm of a mortal doctor’s range of knowledge.
Looking at the girl, who felt weightless in his arms, Ronan said, “I don’t know, love, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Nodding in agreement, Michael knew they would be taking a risk bringing Phaedra to Dr. MacCleery. Who knew what he would find when he examined her. On the outside she looked like a normal girl, but upon further inspection he could stumble upon the fact that she was anything but. It didn’t matter, it was a risk they were going to have to take, for they had to do something, even if it meant putting all their lives in jeopardy. “Let’s go.”
“No,” Ronan corrected. “I should go myself.”
“Absolutely not,” Michael said. “Whatever happened to Phaedra happened because she was protecting me. I have to be by her side in case . . . in case . . .” Michael couldn’t even finish his sentence. He heard the words shout inside his head—in case she dies—but he couldn’t speak them. He wasn’t strong enough to acknowledge the possibility out loud, even in Ronan’s presence, that his friend might die because of him. Luckily, Ronan understood.
“She’s not going to die, Michael. She can’t die, not really,” Ronan reminded him. “I just don’t want you around Lochlan. I don’t trust him.”
“But if you don’t trust him, why are you going to let him help Phaedra?”
The body he was carrying actually started to feel even lighter. Time was running out. “I don’t have time to explain,” Ronan said, already walking toward the infirmary. “I trust him as a doctor, but not as a friend of our people.”
Michael wasn’t sure he understood the distinction, but he was too tired to question Ronan further and too scared to keep Phaedra from the one man who might be able to help her, so he kept his doubts to himself. “Let me know the moment you find out what’s going on.”
“I will,” Ronan replied, then ordered, “Now go straight home and stay there.”
Michael nodded as he watched Ronan practically fly out of The Forest and then he started to follow him. He took one step, however, and felt something crunch under his foot.
Looking down, he saw what it was: eyeglasses, the lenses shattered, the frame broken in half but held together by a string of crystal beads. Touching the smooth surface of one of the beads, he knew this is what he felt in the darkness, in the fog. His attacker had been wearing them, but why would a vampire wear glasses? As a disguise maybe? A means of deception to make him look more human? Michael didn’t know, but the more he stared at the destroyed glasses, he knew he had seen them before. For the life of him he just couldn’t remember who had been wearing them.
“MacCleery!”
Bursting into the doctor’s office, Ronan wasn’t surprised to find it empty. It was the middle of the night, but still he had to find the doctor. Holding Phaedra as securely as he could, Ronan kicked open the door to the private examining room, thinking the doctor might be inside conducting some late-night research or even tending to another student. “MacCleery! We need help!”
“What the hell is going on in here?!”
Whipping around, Ronan saw the doctor standing in the doorway. His hair was a mess and he was clutching an unzippered coat close to his body to ward off the chill. He banged his foot against a filing cabinet to get rid of the snow that clung to his slippers, obviously he had dressed in a hurry to get here. “I saw you run in here, from my window,” MacCleery said. “Going so fast I thought you were some kind of animal.”
Raising the limp body in his arms, Ronan replied, “It’s Phaedra, she’s been hurt.”
Lochlan eyed Ronan suspiciously, but replied, “I could tell she looked half dead from my window.” With a disapproving glare, the doctor swept past Ronan and grumbled for him to bring Phaedra into the examination room. Gently he placed her on the examining table and stepped out of the way as the doctor grabbed a few medical instruments off a side table. Ronan watched helplessly as the doctor listened for her pulse, shone a light
