A Dark-Adapted Eye Read online

  The delicious smell of the cinnamon rolls didn’t draw the boys from their rooms, so I ate breakfast on my own while staring out the back door at the empty, dusty back patio. Before I’d found out about Rade, this was as exciting as my life ever got. Cinnamon rolls and more alone time than I’d ever wanted.

  After putting away the leftovers, I grabbed the newspaper I’d picked up yesterday and leafed to the classifieds. There weren’t many employment opportunities that appealed to me, but I circled ads for a call center representative and a bakery employee. I probably needed more baking practice to even be considered for that job, and answering phones sounded boring.

  I wanted to work, to not feel so idle, but Ivory was adamant that any job I got had to be during the day. Since everyone else wanted to work in the daytime too, it was hard to find anything. But we could get by without the part-time minimum wage income I’d bring in, unlike Criseyde, who needed her job and was always picking up extra shifts.

  I pushed the newspaper away from me and decided to call her. “I have a potential suitor in mind for you,” I said teasingly.

  “Who?”

  “That boy from the café at Witcher Park.” I grimaced as the words left my mouth, wondering if I’d ever be able to go there again without thoughts of the dead girl haunting me. The murder had happened so close to home. Too close. “His name is Rhys.”

  “I don’t really remember him. He must not have made much of an impression. But he was young, wasn’t he? I don’t want to date any jailbait.”

  “He asked about you when I went there yesterday. So if you ever change your mind I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to go out with you.”

  “I won't,” she insisted in a huffy voice. “That other guy gave me his number. Maybe I’ll go out with him instead.”

  We talked pointlessly for a while longer until she had to get ready for work. Left to entertain myself, I read a bit of my constellation book and then checked the calendar on the back of my door, reminding myself of the lunar eclipse later this month. I circled the date in red to make sure I didn’t forget about it.

  Later, after Ivory and Les had woken, I wandered out of my room and saw Ivory studying the paper I’d left open on the table. “You know you don’t have to get a job,” he said, turning to face me.

  “I know. But I feel like I should contribute somehow.” I shrugged. “So I can be . . . useful.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I looked to Les for his opinion, but of course he was minding his own business, chomping down on one of the cinnamon rolls. I allowed myself to stare at him for a moment, taking in the morning silkiness of his mussed hair, the way his t-shirt curved against the contours of his lean frame, the vulnerable bareness of his long feet. I suppressed a wistful sigh.

  “I’ll think about it some more. Oh, I meant to tell you,” I said eagerly. “Did you know there’s a total lunar eclipse coming up?”

  Ivory smiled indulgently. “No, I did not.”

  “I’ve never seen one before. The totality is going to last almost two hours.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Again I looked at Les and found him smiling faintly at me this time. My own lips twitched in response and I turned back to Ivory. “It’s going to be a total lunar eclipse,” I stressed. “Not partial, not penumbral. That means we’ll be able to see it, and the moon is going to be orange for a while. I’m going to watch the whole thing from the roof. It should take about three and a half hours altogether.”

  My brother frowned. “But that’s at night.”

  “Well, yeah. I’ve been on the roof a lot longer than that before.”

  “You know I don’t like that.”

  “Come on,” Les said. “Total lunar eclipses aren’t exactly common occurrences, right?”

  “They’re not,” I agreed.

  “We can watch it with her. I’d like to see it, myself.”

  “I guess we could,” Ivory grumbled. He looked pointedly away from us and turned up the volume on the TV.

  “It’ll be amazing,” I said. I turned to share a conspiratorial grin with Les, but he’d returned his attention to the news.

  How could they not see something was troubling me? Was I hiding it so well?

  “I saw a body,” I blurted. “A dead one.”

  The TV instantly went off and Ivory turned to me, hazel eyes serious. “You saw a body.”

  “In Witcher Park yesterday. I was riding Mom’s bike. The cops came and talked to me and said the girl had been killed by a vampire.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you mention this before?”

  “I don’t know. It was scary and weird. I’d never seen a dead person before.” I swallowed hard. “It—her legs—”

  “Never mind,” Les said sharply.

  Ivory turned him. “It could be her,” he said. “The same one that’s been killing girls all over town.”

  “What girls?” I asked.

  My heart thumped when Les’s pale green eyes came to rest on me. “There’ve been murders,” he said. “Girls your age. It’s clear a vampire did them, but there have been so many it’s just astounding. It’s all the police can do to contact families, let alone find out who’s doing it.”

  “Not that they’re trying very hard,” Ivory muttered.

  “And you two are trying to find the vampire who’s responsible.”

  They both nodded.

  “Are you all right?” Ivory asked.

  “Yeah,” I said truthfully. “It’s just . . . I try not to think about it . . . I don’t really know what to do.”

  “You can talk to us. Either of us. If you need to.”

  “You’ll never forget it,” Les said. “Not completely. You just have to accept what you saw and move on. Accept that by calling the cops you did the only thing you could do. It’s behind you now. No use dwelling on it.”

  “Remember, though, it could have been you. Or Criseyde.”

  “Ivory!” I cried.

  “Sorry. Would you like us to stay home tonight?”

  “I think I’ll be better off without you, thanks,” I said dryly.

  After the guys left that evening, I microwaved some popcorn for dinner and settled on the couch to watch a show about the secrets of the universe. This was one I had seen before, and though I had planned to try to look at Saturn again that night, it wasn’t long before the flickering of the screen lulled me to sleep.

  I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the lights flicked on harshly, forcing me out of slumber. The front door slammed as the guys thundered in. I blinked and sat up, wondering why they were making so much noise when usually they were quiet coming home. The bowl of popcorn fell off my lap onto the carpet, scattering the few remaining kernels. Scowling at the floor, I bent to pick them up.

  “What are you doing?” I mumbled grumpily.

  “Move, Asha,” Ivory huffed.

  I looked up, squinting my eyes against the light, and only then did I realize something was terribly wrong. Ivory, holding some kind of bundle in his arms, nudged his way past me to the couch. He laid the bundle down gently.

  It was a girl. I came to my feet, holding the bowl, and studied her with widened eyes while Ivory conferred quietly with Les. Her pale blonde hair was long, trailing off the couch to the carpet. She was young, perhaps my age or a little older, with a delicate face and limbs that looked slightly too thin to be healthy.

  And she was covered in blood.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  No one answered me. Not that I’d really expected anyone to. Les had gone to get stuff to clean the girl up while Ivory set about examining her for serious injuries. If the blood was any indication, she had a lot of them. I backed into the kitchen, absently setting the bowl down on the counter. I didn’t want to get in the way, but somehow I couldn’t stop myself from watching.

  I had never seen so much blood.

  For the next hour or so, I drifted from the living room to my room and back again as Ivory a
nd Les took care of the girl. She remained unconscious while they cleaned off most of the blood and when she woke, groggy and weak, she showered off the rest. Her hair was slicked back and braided neatly when she came out of the bathroom wearing one of Ivory’s t-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants, both rolled up several times over her short limbs. Her pale skin was riddled with bruises and cuts, but none of them looked serious enough to have warranted so much blood.

  She curled up on the couch and stared wanly into a corner of the room with giant blue eyes. Ivory offered her a glass of water, but she shook her head.

  “Is she all right?” I asked in a small voice. I was relieved to find she would live, but the blood had unnerved me.

  “She’ll be fine,” Les said. “She’s a vampire.”

  “What?”

  “We found her in an alley, covered in blood.”

  “But . . . how did you know she was a vampire?” I asked.

  Ivory fixed me briefly with his cool blue gaze. “I’ve told you these things, Asha. How to spot a vampire is something everyone needs to know these days. See the lackluster quality of her skin and hair? How the fangs cause that slight protrusion of her upper lip? The fact that you can’t see the veins beneath her skin? The glitter of her eyes?”

  “Oh.”

  “You should really watch the news sometimes,” my brother continued. “You should know what’s actually happening out there, especially if you’re going to let Criseyde drag you to vampire clubs and go out after dark and generally put yourself in danger at every turn.” He sighed. “Excuse the sarcasm, but sometimes I don’t think you understand how vulnerable you are.”

  I glared at him. “I guess what I meant to ask was why you brought her back here if you knew she was a vampire.”

  “She was hurt. Some men jumped her. Humans.”

  “Three of them,” the girl said darkly. I looked at her with muddled sympathy.

  “What’s your name?” Les asked.

  She steeled her lower jaw but didn’t answer.

  “Aleskie,” Ivory supplied at last. We all looked at him and he explained, somewhat sheepishly, “I went to school with her. She was in a couple of my classes.”

  “I don’t remember that,” the girl said stubbornly.

  “What were you doing in that alley tonight, Aleskie?” Les asked.

  She looked back and forth between the guys for a moment before she let out a resigned sigh. “I was just . . . I was trying to find someone so I could feed. I don’t drink blood very often—I don’t like doing it—but it’d been a long time and I was hungry. I saw someone near the back entrance of a store and so I went up to him. Then the other guys came out of nowhere and just started . . . beating me.”

  “A man,” Ivory said. “You were trying to attack a man?”

  Aleskie frowned. “I wasn’t trying to attack him. But yes, it was a man.”

  The boys shared a look. “It’s not her,” Les said.

  “Who?”

  “Some vampire is killing a bunch of girls,” I said, not really sure why I was getting involved. Ivory shot me a dark look.

  “I know who did it,” Aleskie said. “I know who’s murdering those girls.”

  When everyone turned to look at her, she seemed to shrink back into the couch cushions. “Well?” Ivory said.

  “I mean, I might know. Probably. Her name is Lucinda. She has a taste for young women’s blood. She favors it.”

  “What else do you know about Lucinda?” Les demanded.

  “Not much,” Aleskie admitted. “She hangs out in clubs. Human clubs. I guess that’s where she gets her . . . um, prey.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She flinched at his harsh tone. “I heard it. You hear things from other vampires every so often . . . I’ve never seen her, but apparently she’s some kind of vampire celebrity, I don’t know. I don’t think I’d like to meet her. A lot of vamps would, though.”

  “That’s valuable information.” Ivory appeared thoughtful for a moment. “Aleskie, I think you could be useful to us. If you don’t give us reason to kill you, that is.”

  Her long-lashed eyes widened. “Wait—”

  “All you have to do is help us,” my brother continued hastily. “I remember you as a human, but as a vampire you might give us a small advantage. I’m going to get you some blood so you don’t attack any of us. Les will stay here and watch you.”

  Before Aleskie could say anything, Ivory slammed out of the house. A moment later his pickup squealed angrily down the street.

  “Where’s he getting blood from?” I asked. “The hospital?”

  “Yeah.” Les cut a sharp glance at the vampire girl. “But that’s not an ideal option. People need that blood for saving lives, not feeding vampires.”

  “You don’t know how much it means—” Aleskie started.

  “Save it,” he snapped.

  “There’s something else,” she said, and waited until he looked at her before continuing. “I know where Lucinda is going to be tomorrow night. That club. The big one. It’s supposedly her favorite.”

  “Stars,” I said.

  Rubbing a hand over his eyes, Les turned to me. “Ivory and I were arguing about this when you came home yesterday. We’ve talked about it ever since the murdered girls started showing up, but we’re never going to agree on it. He’s not going to like me asking you now, but it’s not his decision.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Whether or not you’d like to help us catch this vampire. Lucinda.”

  “What do you mean?” I heard the creeping apprehension in my voice.

  Les’s eyes were serious, his expression grim. I could see how hard it was for him to say his next words. “I mean, Asha, would you be our bait.”

  ~

  Being a vampire meant falling into a coma-like sleep during the day, at least as far as Aleskie was concerned. She overtook Ivory’s bed after slurping up the bag of blood he’d brought home. He tacked a blanket over his window to keep it dark for her, and then he and Les traded off sleeping and checking on her. They were rightly suspicious of her vampire nature, but she never moved.

  “She’s nearly healed already,” Ivory told me midmorning, while Les slept. He stowed a couple extra blood bags in the fridge.

  “But they really hurt her,” I said, eyeing the bags with distaste. “Those guys who jumped her.”

  “Vampires heal fast. Sleep helps. And blood.”

  I shuddered a little. “Vampires are so . . . so . . .”

  “Believe me, Asha,” he said sagely. “I know.”

  “If you agree to help us,” Les told me when Ivory next dozed, “we’ll go to Stars tomorrow night.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I want you to think about it. I don’t want you to worry because this might not even amount to anything, Aleskie could be wrong, or lying . . . Anyway, I’m going to check the place out tonight, so we’re at least somewhat prepared.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll let you know in the morning.”

  “Don’t feel pressured. You don’t have to help.”

  It had been an odd day and I didn’t know what to do with myself. The house hummed with the usual afternoon sounds: car doors slamming as the remaining people in the neighborhood returned from work, the shrieks of children freed from school.

  Bait.

  I sat in my room thinking about it. The very word reminded me of fishing, which wasn't exactly a pleasant association. I'd been once with my family, the one and only time we ever did anything together. We’d camped up in the mountains before the vampires came. Ivory had tried to show me how to put the worm on the hook but I was too disgusted to even touch the thing, so I'd used raw bacon instead. I hadn't caught anything and after a while I'd grown tired of fishing anyway. It was boring, requiring a patience even I didn't have.

  Ivory wouldn't want to let me wriggle around like that worm on the hook and he wouldn’t ask me to. I was his sister. What did it mean that Les, on the other hand, was
willing to ask me to put myself out there to attract a vampire? Though if there was no other way to catch this vampire called Lucinda, it was better to use me, I supposed, than some innocent stranger. Maybe that was his reasoning.

  Tomorrow night, he had said. It would happen so soon. Too soon. There wasn’t nearly enough time to decide how I truly felt about the matter, yet I had to decide quickly. No pressure, he’d said. Except I did feel pressure, because how could I say no? This was the first time they'd asked for my help. The first time they'd needed it. Maybe I didn't want to be potential vampire fodder, but I didn't want to let them down. Or any of the girls who might become Lucinda’s future victims if I refused to help.

  I couldn’t stop picturing the girl in the park. I imagined others like her, dead because I’d done nothing.

  Les left after dark to check out Stars and the surrounding area, while Ivory and Aleskie, who’d finally woken, talked in his room. Since he’d said she could be useful to us, I assumed they were discussing vampire-related things. I hoped whatever she had to say was helpful, but it was beyond odd having a vampire in the house when I’d been taught they were evil killers—and when I’d seen evidence of what they did to people.

  Thinking about helping made me feel strangely peaceful. I took the phone up to the roof and called Criseyde during her break. She filled me in on some work gossip while I trained my telescope on Saturn. Fine-tuning the focus, I looked at its rings of ice particles that were like tiny moons and cast shadows on the surface of the planet.

  “So he’s probably getting fired,” she said, wrapping up a story about a time thief coworker.

  “That sucks. I’m looking at Saturn.”

  “You are such a nerd.”

  “Oh yeah? Wait till you hear this.”

  I didn’t tell her about the dead girl, but I filled her in on our unexpected houseguest and what Les had asked me to do. She remained silent after I said I was considering it.

  “So? What do you think about it?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “Just thinking about those vampires at Shiver . . . I’d never voluntarily put myself in a situation like that again.”