My blood approves

“You don’t want to watch him die, Alice!” Mae insisted with tears in her eyes. “I know that you don’t love him quite the same way that I love my daughter, but even knowing that Philip died was devastating. Leaving them behind is hard, it is so very hard, and you’ll question it forever. But there is no other option. Immortality requires you to leave everything behind.”

“So you expect me to turn my back on all of this, all that you have to offer, because Milo will die? He’s going to die anyway! Me staying human doesn’t make him live forever!” I countered. “But you and Jack and Peter won’t die. I am meant to be with your family. I don’t know how I could possibly go back to living my life knowing that you’re out there and I’m not with you. You said it yourself. It’s an impossible thing to return back to.”

“You just needed to know,” Mae looked at me earnestly. “You needed to know exactly what you’d be giving up. It’s not fair to ask you something that you don’t understand. I wanted to give you a chance, so you wouldn’t make the same mistake that I did.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want me to turn?” It was painful to think that Mae wouldn’t want me around.

“No, no, of course not, love.” She reached out and gently stroked me cheek. “I would want nothing more than to spend forever watching you turn into the amazing woman I know you’ll be. But I know the price of turning better than anyone, and if I can spare you from any pain, I will.”

“But as a human, people will still die around me,” I argued. She dropped her hand from my face, but kept her sad eyes on mine. “I’ll be touched by even more death as a human than I would be as a vampire. At least you guys won’t die.”

“That is true. But that doesn’t make leaving your brother any easier.” She forced a smile at me, then turned the car back on and drove away from her daughter’s house. “It’s just something that I thought you should think about it.”

“Thank you,” I murmured and sunk low into the seat. I stared out into the darkness, watching the houses and trees roll past us. Mae had started singing softly along with the stereo in attempt to alleviate her own sadness by the time we got back home. She had left me with an impossible choice. Leave behind my brother, or leave behind them.

Chapter 15

The covers were pulled completely over my head in attempt to keep the daylight out, but when I finally poked my head up, there was no light spilling in.

Part of it was because of the insanely thick curtains that blanketed every window of the house, but the main reason, according to the clock on my nightstand, was probably because it was after six, and the sun had already set.

Last night, I had again stayed up all night with Jack, watching his DVDs of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and very deliberately not talking about the elephant in the room: whether or not I planned on ever becoming a vampire.

It still all seemed so completely surreal that my mind couldn’t even comprehend it. There was no way I could possibly understand all the ramifications of my decision when I couldn’t even fully believe it was true. I was staying in a house with a family of vampires. And yet, last night, I had spent the entire night watching an old TV show on DVD and trying not to entice one of them to bite me. How could I possibly reconcile those two ideas? The utterly mundane with the totally supernatural? One of those things just didn’t belong.

Instead of dwelling on it any longer, I rolled over and grabbed my cell phone off the nightstand. I vaguely remembered my sleep being interrupted by the jingle of my phone, but I had been too tired to answer it. When you’re still human, staying up all night can be incredibly exhausting.

So what? Are you like really sick or something? That was a text message from Jane. Along with, Hello? Are you ignoring me? At least she still cared, which I actually found to be kind of surprising.

There were three from Milo, and I was reluctant to read them. I didn’t want to think about him being alone in that apartment all the time. Lately, I’d been forcing him to be by himself a lot anyway, but this was different. I’d at least been there some of the time, and he had known that he wasn’t completely alone. Now it was just him and very rarely Mom. He didn’t really have any friends, and on top of that, he had his current issues with his sexuality. It was a very cruel time for me to leave him.

Are you done going to school now?

Mom asked about you. She’s worried. Maybe you should apologize to her now.

I’m worried too. When are you coming home?

I groaned and pulled the covers back up over my head. How would I answer that? I was probably never coming home, and I’d probably never talk to him again. But I couldn’t exactly say that. I didn’t want to. Just yesterday, I’d promised he’d be in my life forever, and apparently, that was a total lie.

“Are you up yet?” Jack asked sunnily, and I assumed he was standing in my doorway.