“Are you okay?” Roland asked, startling me.
“I’m fine.” Or I would be when they left.
He ran a hand through his dark hair, his gaze sweeping up my body. “You don’t look okay. Are you sick?”
I must have looked pretty bad for him to ask that. I shook my head. “It was just a bad dream. I’m good now.”
“That must have been some dream,” Peter muttered.
“It’s a little scary being alone in a new place,” I lied. I was less afraid of their presence, but I wouldn’t be able to relax until they were gone. I looked from Peter to Roland. “Why are you here at this hour? And how did you get in?”
“I have a key,” Roland answered. “My mother and I took care of the place for Sara and Nate over the winter.”
I remembered Sara mentioning the woman who watched the place for her. “Judith?”
He nodded. “That’s her.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. Sara trusted him with her place and he seemed like a nice enough guy, but I didn’t like the idea of anyone else having a key to this apartment while I was here.
“You don’t need to watch the place anymore,” I told him. “You can leave the key here with me.”
He opened his mouth, and for a moment, I thought he was going to argue. But then he gave a small nod and removed a key from the set in his hand. He held it out to me.
I shook my head and pointed at the dresser closest to the door. “You can put it there on top of the dresser.”
Frowning, he did as I’d asked.
I swallowed hard. I hated the fear that clogged my chest, but what if Sara was wrong about her friends? They might be good people, but they were werewolves, and werewolves hated one thing above all others. They also had incredibly sensitive noses. What if they smelled me and somehow sensed what I used to be? What would they say if they knew I’d once been their mortal enemy?
I knew Nate’s story, how he’d been made a vampire just to hurt Sara. Roland and Peter were okay with him and held no animosity for him. But Nate had been a vampire for a week. I’d been one for twenty-one years, and in that time, I’d done unspeakable things. Somehow, I didn’t think the werewolves would be as forgiving if they knew exactly what stood before them now.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you for coming to check on me. It’s late and I-I’m very tired. I’d like to go back to bed.”
Once again, Roland looked like he was going to say something, but he seemed to change his mind. “No problem. Sorry we frightened you.”
I shook my head, attempting a smile. “It’s my fault for asking Sara not to tell anyone I was coming here.”
Peter gave me an apologetic smile and headed down the hallway to the front door. Roland looked at me for a moment longer, and then he followed his friend.
I waited until they were at the door before I walked to the bedroom doorway. The hallway was dark, but there was enough light from the bedroom to see Peter’s quick wave before they let themselves out.
I let out a long breath and sagged against the doorframe. When I heard the faint sound of their feet on the steps, I ran to the door and slid the deadbolt. Leaving the door, I went to the living room to peer through the drapes at the two figures getting into a classic Ford Mustang. The car rumbled to life, and they drove off.
It wasn’t until the taillights disappeared from sight that my strength deserted me. I slid down the wall and sat on the floor with my knees drawn up to my chest as I fought to stop the panic attack hovering at the edges of my frayed composure.
I’m okay. I’m safe. It was my first night on my own in a strange place, and I’d woken up to find two strange men in my room. Anyone in my shoes would have reacted the same way, especially someone with my past.
Except there was no one else with a past like mine. Nate and I had talked for many hours, and he was the only person who could even remotely understand what I was going through. As far as we knew, we were the only two people in the world to have been made human again after being a vampire. It was like being reborn and given a new lease on life.
It was also lonely and isolating to not be able to share your experience, your guilt, and your crushing fears. Nate had been a vampire for a week, and it had affected him so profoundly he couldn’t even come back to the place where it had happened. What did that mean for someone like me?
I still wasn’t sure why I’d agreed to come here when Sara offered it to me. She and Tristan would have set me up anywhere in the world, and I came to live in the home of a former vampire in the heart of werewolf territory. Either I was looking for some twisted form of penance, or I was trying to prove I was stronger than my demons. Perhaps both.
It grew chilly sitting there in only shorts and a tank, but I couldn’t make myself get up and go back to bed. The dreams I’d been able to forget temporarily because of my unexpected visitors came back with perfect and heartless clarity. No matter how much I tried to block them out, the ghosts of my past were always there, forcing me to relive their horrors over and over.
I was raised Catholic, and I was taught there was a heaven and a hell and a place in between. A place where God sent you to suffer your sins until he decided to take you into heaven or send you to hell. I’d stopped believing in God after a week with Eli. God couldn’t be real and abandon me to that kind of horror.
Now I wondered if he was real after all. I’d lived in hell, and my soul was too tattered to go to heaven.
Maybe this was my purgatory.
* * *
I grimaced and scrubbed at the skillet for what seemed like the hundredth time. How could anyone burn eggs so badly, even someone who hadn’t touched a stove in twenty years? I’d thought I’d be able to make scrambled eggs, at least. Good luck there.
Letting the skillet slide back into the hot, soapy water, I looked at the two blackened slices of bread sitting in the toaster. Tears pricked my eyes. I couldn’t do anything right. What was I thinking, trying to do this on my own?
Laughter reached my ears through the window I’d opened to let the smoke out. I looked down at the two teenage girls walking along the waterfront, shopping bags swinging from their arms. They were probably sixteen, and seeing them brought back a memory of going to the mall with my best friend Chelsea. Back then, my biggest worries had been what clothes to wear and how to convince my parents to let me stay out an hour later. I’d had no idea that monsters existed outside of my nightmares.
Stop this. One thing I’d learned since I’d been healed, it was that there was no use in looking back at what might have been. The past was the past, and I couldn’t change it. I’d gotten a chance to start over, something no other vampire victim could do. For them, the only release from that life was death. Sara saw something in me that had made her save me, and I wouldn’t repay her kindness by wallowing in self-pity.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was hiding out in this apartment when I should have been out there exploring and getting to know my new home. I came here to start over, and it was time to get on with it.
I dried my hands on a towel and went to my room to change into capris and a light top. There was a slight chill in the breeze coming through the window, so I grabbed a thin sweater in case I needed it. Cold was another sensation I was adjusting to. Vampires didn’t like extreme cold, but they could tolerate lower temperatures than humans. This past winter in Idaho was the first time I’d been cold in a long time.