“And when is that?” I asked.
“Soon,” he said. “Sooner than later. But time is of little consequence to you now. After all, we are immortal. We have all the time in the world.”
I didn’t have all the time in the world. I needed to stop the vampires, though I had no idea how. I wanted a more definitive answer, but I knew I wouldn’t be getting one from Jonathan Ravenwood. Time had ceased to have meaning for him, just as human lives meant nothing to him. After a few more minutes, he told me I was free to attend classes and that he would expect me to come to check in with him every week, just as Svana and Viktor did.
When he was gone, I paced my room again, too agitated to sit still. Part of me agreed with his assessment about my past. It didn’t matter now. He’d taken me from my parents, who were probably sorely disappointed that their baby turned out to be an ordinary human with no magic. Meanwhile, my parents were grappling with their weirdo, misfit daughter. And all along, I hadn’t fit because I didn’t fit. I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t belong to my family.
Still, they were my family. Josie was my sister. Dad was my dad, complete with bad jokes and blustering laughter. Mom was my mom, despite her plastic smiles and complete cluelessness. And Gramma was my gramma, the same one who had let me eat the cookie dough when Mom wasn’t looking, who had known something was wrong when I was exchanged for her real granddaughter, but who had raised me and loved me as if I were her real family. Even if I had never fit with my family, they were still my family.
I had no idea who this other family was. What exactly were faeries, anyway? What supernatural abilities did they possess? Who was to say they wanted me back? Maybe that girl’s parents loved her and accepted her as their own, and they wouldn’t want some stranger to show up and disrupt their lives. And the girl, the real Timberlyn, would she hate me for showing up and trying to replace her? Maybe she was happy in her family. Just because I’d never fit, that didn’t mean she was the same. She might fit perfectly well, might love being a faerie child.
I’d never know if I would’ve been better off if Mr. Ravenwood hadn’t stolen me. I might not have fit with my real family any better than I did with the Brinks. There was no use speculating because I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t go back in time. The other girl might be better off never knowing she’d been traded out at birth. Our parents, both sets of them, might be better off not knowing.
But did I really have the right to make that decision for them? True, we couldn’t change what had already happened. That didn’t mean they didn’t deserve the truth.
It was up to me to find them, to tell them the truth. First, I had to finish my transformation, though. I had to get a hold on my impulses, so I wouldn’t show up and start attacking people in their closely guarded supernatural community. And of course I still had to find their secret refuge, one that they’d designed specifically to stay hidden from outsiders.
That was okay, though. I was good at finding out secrets. And maybe the reason I’d always been an outsider in my own world was that I’d never been meant to live outside theirs.
Chapter Five
Alarick didn’t come that night, but I had so much to think about I barely noticed. By the time he showed up a week later, though, I’d had plenty of time to mull over the fact that he didn’t want to see me sooner.
Svana opened the door for him, and he stepped into the doorway, his huge frame filling the space almost completely. God, I’d forgotten how enormous he was, like a wall of muscle. Vampires were deceptively strong, but werewolves… They looked every bit as strong as they were.
“Hi,” I said, not sure what else to say. A million thoughts and emotions swirled through me. This was a boy I knew more intimately than anyone on earth, and yet, he hadn’t been with me through the last few months, through the most trying and traumatic days of my life. This was a boy I loved, a boy I’d thought was meant for me, but he hadn’t come running the moment he’d been able to see me again. The last time he’d seen me, I’d been a werewolf, and if not his fated mate, at least I had been a potential, temporary mate. Now I was also a vampire, and though he didn’t know it, some other things, too.
“Hey,” he said, looking as awkward as I felt.
“I’m just gonna go,” Svana said, giving me a tiny smile before pulling the door closed behind Alarick. We stared at each other a moment. He looked the same, but somehow different than I remembered.
“I thought you’d come visit as soon as Viktor told you I could have visitors,” I said, my tone coming out more accusatory than I meant. I didn’t want to show my hand so easily when I couldn’t read Alarick’s face at all. But I couldn’t keep the hurt from my voice.
“You didn’t want to see me all summer,” he said. “Suddenly, I’m supposed to drop everything and come running like a dog when you call?”
I drew back, stung. “I was… Sick,” I said, not sure how else to explain to him that I couldn’t let anyone I liked see me like that, sucking down bags of blood like a frenzied animal, tearing them open to lick the inside
