Neither

  “Humans are fascinated with death. When they see someone who is close, who has touched it, they are interested.”

  “Well, it's stupid.” He slides the brush through my hair gently. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the brush on my hair. “Something Aj said got me thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “That Mom's going to have a funeral, and be buried and have a headstone. What are we going to put on it? I mean, where is she going to be buried? I don't know any of those things. I feel ashamed I never thought of them.” How could I not have considered that? Ever?

  “Your father will take care of it.”

  “But I should want to be involved. I don't want him to have to do it all himself. That's not fair.”

  “You are young, Ava. The reason they have not involved you is because they didn't want to.”

  “That's not really fair to them.”

  “It's not fair to you, either. To have to deal with those arrangements when you're losing your mother.”

  Something about the way he says I'm so young irritates me. Does he see me that way? “I'm not a baby, Peter.”

  “I know.”

  I turn to face him. “Is that how you see me? As a child that needs to be protected?”

  He puts the brush down and puts both hands on the side of my face. “I don't see you as a child, but it is my natural instinct to protect you. Part of this is because I adore you, and another part is because I have Claimed you.”

  “So you don't see me as a little girl? Someone you're stuck with?”

  “You are not a little girl, Ava.” His hands drift down my face, and his thumb brushes across my lips, then drifts down both sides of my neck. “I would not do this to a little girl,” he says, kissing my mouth slowly. I kiss him back. I certainly don't feel like a little girl.

  “Sorry, that was childish,” I say when he pulls back and smiles. “I should know better.”

  “You are human.”

  “I guess.”

  Eighteen

  Brooke

  “Hi Jamie,” I said when he opened the door to his room and found me sitting on his bed. His first reaction was shock, and then a smile spread across his face.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to see you.” Granted, I'd seen him all day. I'd hung out outside his school with Helena as my annoying shadow. She was out there now, ready to do whatever she was going to do.

  It didn't make sense to me. Yes, I understood why Jamie's friends were reluctant to accept me as a part of his life, but I didn't see where Helena fit in. Why was she helping them? What was she getting out of it? It had been my experience that people, immortal or not, didn't do things unless they got something out of it.

  She'd barely talked to me, but when she did, it was about stupid things like where I was from and things like that. She was fishing, clearly. She wanted to know what I was doing here and what I wanted with Jamie. The thing was, my original reason for coming here, to find Ava, didn't seem important anymore. I wasn't really sure why I had done it in the first place. I guessed I had lost my direction and was trying to find it again. I hadn't known this immortal life without Ivan, and I needed to find a piece of him, and that seemed like the only way. Now that I'd found Jamie, I had something else. Something warm and bright that I could look forward to. Someone who understood what it was like to be alone in the world.

  “So you decided to just hang out in my room and wait for me?”

  “I didn't think your family would take a strange girl walking through the house very well.”

  Jamie snorted.

  “Well, my dad probably wouldn't notice, and my sister and mom are at work. So you could have.” I'd heard his dad downstairs, grunting at a game of some sort. He seemed like a real winner. “So what do you want, Brooke?”

  You.

  “I don't want anything from you, Jamie.”

  “Listen, this is a lot for me to take in. I know you've explained everything, but I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking this is a dream. It's just so hard to believe that immortals exist and no one has ever discovered them.”

  “We don't want to be discovered. Besides, what do you think would happen if someone said they saw me jumping out of a tree?”

  “No one would believe it. But what if they took a video?”

  “They'd say that it was faked. And you'd be hard-pressed to find a noctalis that would let you live long enough to take a video. So there you have it.”

  Jamie looked as if he wanted to sit, but didn’t know where. The room was only large enough to accommodate a bed, a small desk and a chair. I moved over on the bed, hoping he would sit next to me. He considered for a moment, putting his book bag over the back of his chair. I patted the space next to me.

  “So this is where the magic happens?” I said.

  “Not exactly. You're only the seventh girl I've ever had in here, and two of those were my mother and sister.”

  “Lucky number seven,” I said.

  He was nervous, his heart jumping around. I liked that I made him nervous. He didn't know it, but he almost made me nervous. If I could get nervous, he would be the one to make me so.

  “What do you want, Brooke?” He wouldn't let it go.

  “Honestly, Jamie? I want to spend time with you. I just feel so... lost.”

  “What happened to the one who made you like this?”

  “He's gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He's not here anymore. He didn't die, because he was already dead, I guess. So I guess that makes me dead.”

  “You don't look dead.” He touched my knee, not meeting my eyes.

  “I don't feel dead,” I said, touching his shoulder and moving my hand across his chest, feeling his heartbeat through his shirt. It sped up, and I smiled.

  “What brought you here? I know you're here for a reason, to find someone. You can tell me.” His voice was sweet and pleading, and I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know what he'd say.

  “I was trying to find someone, but instead I found you. The other things don't matter anymore.”

  “Are you sure?” He finally looked at my face, but removed his hand from my leg. My palm was still against his chest.

  “Yeah. I am. I was looking for something I didn't need to find.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Stay. If you want me to.” I took my hand away, waiting for his reaction.

  “I do,” he said, cupping one side of my face. “You're not the only one who's lost.” His thumb caressed my lip and he leaned closer, as if he was going to kiss me. “You're not going to kill me, are you?” His fear was palpable, but also his wish to kiss me. It was like I could feel it in his skin.

  “I'm going to try not to.” I hoped I'd said the right thing. I couldn't lie to him about something like that.

  “I can't picture you hurting anyone.”

  “I have. I've killed a lot of people.” My lips moved against his finger, and I wanted to flick out my tongue and taste his skin. I knew just what it would taste like. Cinnamon and sweat and life.

  “I don't want to think about that.”

  “I don't, either.” I didn't want to think about anything but his lips on mine and his hands on my body. I wanted him everywhere. I wanted him to burn away the memories of all the bad things I'd done. This was the first time I was ashamed of all the things I'd done since I'd become immortal. I hadn't thought about the lives, about the people. They didn't matter. I'd justified it in my mind.

  I thought back to that moment when I'd almost killed him. What if I had? I wouldn't be sitting on this bed with this boy who somehow was scared of me, but still wanted to kiss me.

  He was leaning in when we heard the door slam downstairs. I'd heard the car coming, but I didn't want to ruin the moment with him.

  Jamie sighed and pulled away.

  “Here we go,” he said, getting up and going down the hall. His father had a beer in one hand and was p
ointing the other hand at Cassie. Her polo shirt did little to conceal the growing bump under it. She smelled like French fries and grease.

  I stayed down the hall, but just out of sight.

  “I'm not going to have you bumming in my house anymore.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “I don't care. How about you move in with that loser that you spread your legs for?”

  “Dad,” Jamie said in a quiet, but stern voice.

  “You shut your face. This has nothing to do with you.” Jamie had told me about his dad and his drinking. I was all too familiar with living with an alcoholic. When things were good, you were always terrified they were going to get bad again. His dad had been doing well lately, but there was always that chance.

  “Give me the drink, Dad,” Jamie said, holding out his hand. “You were doing so well.” Cassie stood next to Jamie, a show of sibling solidarity. I wished I'd had a sibling to help me like that.

  “You can't tell me what to do in my own damn house. I'm the man of this family, and if I want a beer, I'm going to have one.”

  “What about Mom? What about us?”

  He swayed a little on his feet. Any minute he was going to go down. “All you do is take from me. I give and give and give, and all you do is take. Well, I'm going to take mine.”

  “Dad, we've been trying to help you. Just give it to me.” Jamie motioned for the beer again, but his dad pulled back and tried to go for a punch.

  That was it for me. I dove from my spot and grabbed his arm, bending it back.

  “Who the hell are you?” He was strong for a human, but I was immortal and he had been drinking. I could snap every bone in his body with two of my fingers and not think twice.

  “I swear to God, if you lay a hand on anyone else, ever again, I will kill you. Do you understand?” He struggled, but there was no way he could get free. I made sure I turned him so he saw my face.

  Cassie gasped and clutched onto Jamie, no doubt wondering where the hell I came from and worried that I was going to hurt him. Oh, I was going to do more than that.

  “Let me go, little girl.”

  I pulled him toward my face and hissed at him so he got the full effect of how unnatural I was. “I'm not a girl. I'm your worst nightmare. You will get your act together, because as much as you don't deserve it, your family loves you and you treat them like garbage. It stops today. You will stop drinking. You will get off your ass and you will be the husband and father you should be. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Good luck with that. I'm going to ask you one more time.” I twisted his arm until it was almost at the breaking point. Just a little bit farther...

  “Brooke. Enough.”

  “Not yet,” I said, enjoying the pain on his face. “I could kill you right now and not care at all. But that boy over there loves you, so I won't. Why don't you save some of your self-pity for him? So, are you going to get your sorry life together?”

  He tried to get free, but I had him good. He growled in frustration. His alcoholic breath would have choked me if I still had to breathe.

  “Fine, fine. Let go.”

  I give him one more twist and then shove him to the floor. The beer drops from his hand, and I catch it before it hits the floor, spilling not a drop.

  “I should smash this in your face, but I'm going to toss it down the drain, along with the rest of it. You will be alcohol-free for the rest of your life.” He cursed at me from the floor. “Well, I'm so sorry you feel that way.”

  I marched to the kitchen, finding every single bottle of beer, vodka, rum, any kind of alcohol, and pouring them all down the drain. The house reeked of booze and I could still hear him groaning in the living room. Cassie tried to help him up, but he tried to shove her away.

  “Lay a hand on her and yours will be gone,” I sang.

  He huffed, but let her help him up and into the chair again.

  “What did you do that for?” Jamie said, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Because someone had to. When it comes to drunks, sometimes the best way to get through to them is by force. I've had personal experience.”

  Once my mother had been so wasted, she'd chucked a bottle at me and it had hit me in the face. I'd been cooking dinner, or else I would have ducked. The bottle bounced off my back, onto the carpet and somehow didn't break. I grabbed it, knocked her on the back of the head and told her never to do it again. She just stood there, stunned, and I saw the shock on her face. She'd cried, apologized and had gotten clean for a few days. It had been a glorious four days until she'd gone out with friends to a bar and after promising me she wouldn't drink, she came home wasted with a loser under her arm.

  “I can't believe you did that.”

  “He deserved it. I know he's done it before and he would do it again. As long as I'm here, he won't.”

  “You can't make people change, Brooke. They have to want to.”

  “True, but you can give them a push. A wake-up call.” I tipped in two bottles at once, watching the murky liquid flow down the drain.

  “I should be pissed, but that was kind of awesome.”

  “It was pretty badass. I've always wanted to do something like that and now I can.”

  “You're really beautiful.”

  I knew he was exactly one-and-a-half feet behind me. I knew that his hand was reaching for me. I dropped one of the bottles and spun to face him. Without hesitating, I crushed my mouth to his, yanking him down with probably a little too much force. He tried to say 'ow' but it was lost in our kiss.

  It was more of an attack than a kiss. My lips tried to devour his. It was like I was trying to swallow him whole. I wanted to bite his lips and suck his blood. I wanted to feel his hot skin against mine, right there in the kitchen.

  “Brooke,” Jamie said when our lips parted for a second. His voice made me realize that his breathing was labored, and I'd probably been suffocating him. I couldn't have that.

  “Sorry. I've wanted to do that ever since you pulled your truck over to the side of the road.”

  His chest heaved and he couldn't stop staring at my lips. “Me, too.”

  He smiled and kissed me again, only slow, soft and delicate. It was hard not to try and devour him, but I held back.

  “I want you to stay,” he said.

  “I want to stay.”

  Nineteen

  Peter

  Ava gets up early the next day to prepare for their road trip. Claire grew up several hours east of Sussex in a town called Machias, and driving to the house will take nearly the whole day.

  “I will run alongside the road. I will be with you the whole time.”

  “I know, I know,” she says, wrapping her hair into a bun.

  The day is going to be unusually hot, so she's wearing cropped pants and a t-shirt that shows off her arms. I want to lick every inch of her exposed skin.

  “You're doing that thing where you stare at me and then you think about things. You know I can feel what you're thinking.”

  I do sometimes forget that she gets emotions from me as much as I get them from her. I am not used to having emotions, let alone sharing them with anyone.

  “Now you're looking at me like I'm a piece of earth-shattering cheesecake you want very much to devour.”

  The truth is not that far from it. I want to devour her. I want to take her and taste every part of her, savoring every inch. This is not the right time.

  “You should get ready,” I say so she will stop standing in front of me and making me want her.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  She goes to the bathroom and I shut my eyes. I am consumed by her. Sometimes it overwhelms me.

  Ava

  “Surprise!” Dad and I both yell as he leads her out to the car, hands over her eyes.

  “Oh, wow, it's, um, the car.” She looks confused for a moment, looking back and forth from me to Dad and pretending she knows what's going on.

  “Mo
m, it's not the car. We're going on a road trip!” I say, throwing my hands in the air.

  “Really? Where are we going?”

  “What would be the fun in that if you knew?” She's going to figure it out as soon as we get on the highway and start toward Machais, but at least we can keep the mystery for a little while.

  “Oh come on,” she says, pouting at Dad. I glare at him. Do not give in to the pout, Dad.

  “No way, Taylor. I hardly ever get to surprise you, so I'm going to make this one count.” Because it might be one of the last, he doesn't say.

  Dad and I pack the car with typical road trip stuff. I made a picnic lunch, snacks, and I bring jackets and all the things we could need in an emergency. Dad double-checks that we have jumper cables, a tire jack and anything else that we might need if we have car issues. I think we are prepared for everything that could go wrong. As soon as I think that, I freak out a little. I feel like I need to knock on wood or something.

  “You sure you didn't forget the kitchen sink?” Mom says as we shove her in the car among all the other crap.

  “Oh no! I forgot the sink,” I say, clutching my hands together. She laughs and puts on her seatbelt.

  “Where's Peter today? Why didn't you invite him to come with us?” She's really asking if I'm going to freak out and get sick like the last time he left. God, I would rather die than go through that again.

  “Oh, he's busy. Family stuff. But he's never far from my mind,” I say, hoping she gets the hint. She nods, as if she understands.

  “Let's get this show on the road,” Dad says. We all strap in and he turns on the radio.

  “Oh!” I say, remembering. “I made a road trip mix.” I fiddle in my purse and find the clear CD case, handing it to Mom.

  “What's on it?”

  “Road trip songs,” I say. “Put it in.”

  She does and “Ticket To Ride” by The Beatles blasts through the radio. Mom claps and starts singing along as Dad drives up the road. Aj isn't here yet, but I have the sneaking suspicion Dad is going to call her when we're on our way. I think they have something planned.