Suddenly, Mae threw her arms around me and pulled her close to me, hugging me so tightly I could hardly breathe. She stroked my hair and whispered in my, "Oh, love, you have no idea how marvelous everything will be when it"s all said and done."
"Mae, honey, I think you"re smothering her," Jack pointed out gently and tapped her on the shoulder.
"Oh, sorry!" Mae let go of me and took a step back, and I tried not to obviously gasp for breath. "I keep forgetting how fragile you still are."
"It"s okay." My ribs ached slightly, and it was hard to fight the reflex to rub them.
Down the hall, I could hear Milo"s clumsy footsteps and Ezra"s soothing voice as he rea.s.sured Milo that everything would be alright. He was going over the plan again, the main points that Milo needed to stick to in order to convince our mom that this was all legitimate. When they walked into the entryway, Ezra had his arm loosely on Milo"s back, and Milo did look rather pale. Despite the pep talk, Milo didn"t seem quite so positive that he wouldn"t bite Mom.
"We can follow behind you if you want," Ezra offered. Jack was going with us, as a bodyguard, but Ezra and Mae had planned on staying behind at the house.
"No, I"ll be fine." Milo sounded more confident than he looked, and I wondered if I should take them up on the offer.
"Are you sure?" Mae lovingly reached out and stroked his face, a gesture that I couldn"t even do anymore. If I did, he"d be too tempted to rip open an artery.
"Come on. Everybody"s great. Let"s get this show on the road." Jack sensed my obvious discomfort, and he was in as much of a hurry as I was to get this over with.
Reluctantly, Mae let us leave. I didn"t like how nervous she was about this, but there wasn"t very much about any of this that I liked. When we went into the garage, I walked ahead of Milo and reached the Jetta first. I grabbed for the pa.s.senger side door, planning on sitting as shotgun as I always did, when Milo growled at me. Dropping my hand, I turned to look back at him.
"Did you just growl at me?" I asked skeptically.
"I might have," Milo admitted, and there was an anger in his eyes.
"Why would you growl at me?" I persisted.
"Alice," Jack said sharply. He was standing on the other side of the car beside the driver"s side door, and he was looking at me severely from over the top of the car. "Get in the backseat."
"Why?" It was a stupid thing to get p.i.s.sed off about, but I couldn"t help it. It was ridiculous for Milo to flipping growl at me over seating arrangements in the car, especially when I always sat in the front. Jack was my friend, so I should sit by him.
"Just do it," Jack insisted sternly.
"But that"s stupid!" I protested. "Just because Milo"s a vampire, he gets shotgun? That"s not fair. It doesn"t even make sense."
"Just get in the back!" Milo snapped, and when I turned to look at him, there was a violence brewing in his eyes that terrified me. Instead of freaking out like I kind of really wanted to, I just scoffed.
47.
"This is bogus," I grumbled, getting in the backseat.
"This would be so much easier if you didn"t fight everything," Jack complained as he started the car.
"You really didn"t realize what you were getting into with her, did you?" Milo commented.
I bit my tongue, but it wasn"t an easy feat. Who the h.e.l.l did Milo think he was? There were a million things I wanted to shout at him, but I couldn"t, because he would literally bite my head off I did. That was just so unfair, too. He got to get away with being a random d.i.c.k because he could kill me. Milo was never like this.
He never would"ve talked to me like that, and Jack never would"ve ganged up on me with him.
On the positive side, I didn"t feel so bad that I wouldn"t get to be around them as much anymore.
In fact, I was pretty sure that I wouldn"t even miss Milo at all. He"d probably growl at me if I touched the television remote or something.
The entire car ride home, I just glowered. Jack had Dinosaur Jr. in the CD player, and that filled up most of the silence. Milo said a couple things that I couldn"t hear from the backseat, making me hate them all the more. Jack just nodded or grunted something in response. Suddenly, I really, really just wanted to be able to crawl into my own bed, and cry into my pillow if that"s what I felt like doing.
When we pulled up in front of the apartment building, I practically leapt out of the car. Jack grabbed my bags from the trunk, and he and Milo followed me inside. We rode up the elevator in silence, and I could see Milo tensing up. His jaw had set tightly and his kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I looked over at Jack to see if he noticed, but he kept his expression stoic.
"Are you okay?" I asked Milo quietly outside our apartment door.
"Yeah," he nodded, but he definitely looked pale.
"Maybe we should do this another time," I suggested. I really wanted to get this over with, but not that the expense of my mother or my brother.
"No. Let"s do this." Milo pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
Thankfully, Mom kept the apartment dark. Milo still looked like Milo, but there had been drastic changes that would be much less noticeable in dim lighting. There was a light on over the kitchen sink, but the rest of the apartment was dark. A scratched Led Zepplin record played softly in the living room, with Robert Plant crooning about when the levees break.
"Mom?" I said cautiously, following Milo inside.
"Oh, good, you"re finally here." Mom burst out from her bedroom, a cigarette glowing in her hand, and her hair looked much less frizzy than it usually did. Her lips were stained with a too-red lipstick, and I realized that she was going out. "I don"t have much longer to wait."
"Are you going somewhere?" I asked.
Milo had deliberately moved into the shadows of the apartment, but I lingered in the light of the kitchen. Jack sat my bag on the floor and hovered next to me, hoping to catch my mother"s attention. She was flitting about the living room, searching for something, so she hadn"t quite caught onto the fact that he was there. The last time they had met, Mom had swooned over him so badly I had to fight the urge to vomit.
"Yes, yes, in a bit," Mom waved me away and stumbled upon what she had been looking for a a 48 tumbler full of brandy. She took a long drink, then turned back to look at us. "Now what did you want to talk to me about?" She finally saw Jack, and inhaled deeply, breathing a scent he had that drove the entire human population wild, except for me. "Oh, I didn"t realize you had guests."
Her eyes widened happily and she actually batted her eyes at him.
"Jack just gave us a ride," I explained lamely.
"It"s good to see you, Miss Bonham," Jack gave her a little half wave, and she placed her hand over her chest.
"You were at a vacation house, weren"t you?" Mom asked breathlessly and sat down in a chair in the living room. Apparently, he made her too weak in the knees to stand anymore.
"Um, yeah," Jack nodded, going along with the lie I had told her earlier.
"Did you do a lot of swimming?" Mom was undoubtedly picturing him in a swim trunks, and I wanted to gag.
Milo made an almost inaudible sound, and Jack suddenly stepped forward, closer to him. When he tensed up, I tensed up, and that would be a horrible thing to do right now. If my heart sped up, Milo would notice it, and it would make it even harder not to kill us all.
"We did tons of swimming. It was fantastic," I blurted out randomly. "But Mom, Milo really needs to talk to you. He, uh, has something major to tell you."
"Oh?" Mom struggled to pull her gaze from Jack to Milo, but fortunately, her eyes didn"t have to travel far. Jack had moved even closer to Milo, and I knew things were not going as well as everyone had promised they would.
"Yeah, it"s really great news," Jack added enthusiastically in an attempt to sway her towards our way of thinking.
"Here." Milo thrust his hand forward, holding out a crumpled letter in his hand. His voice had taken on an icy tone that made him sound nothing like himself, and if Jack hadn"t been there to distract Mom, there was no way she would"ve bought any of this.
"What are you shoving at me?" Mom sounded irritated and made no attempt to get up and retrieve the letter from him.
"It"s a letter." Carefully, Jack pried the letter that Ezra had worked so hard on from Milo"s fingers and walked over to her. When he handed it to her, their fingers briefly touched, and Milo made that inaudible sound again.
"A letter?" Mom peered down at the paper once she had recovered from touching Jack. She attempted smooth out the paper, but the dim light and her poor eyesight made it almost impossible for her to read, I"m sure. "Well, what"s this about?" She looked back up at Milo. "Just spit it out."
"I"ve been accepted to a boarding school in New York," Milo answered stiffly. "Thanks to my grades, I"ve received a full scholarship. The semester stars in a week, and they want me to get there early. So. I"m going to leave tomorrow."
"What?" Mom looked skeptical and concerned. Milo was the good one, and she wasn"t used to him not making any sense. "Why didn"t you tell me about this sooner?"
"I just found out about it for sure a few weeks, and I was waiting for the right time to tell you," Milo 49 said.
"That"s why we want to the vacation house," Jack smiled a little too broadly. "As one last hoorah before he goes."
"What?" Mom repeated. Jack had gone a long way towards convincing her, but there was still more left to go. "I don"t understand why you wouldn"t tell me about this."
"I was afraid you"d be angry about me leaving." Milo didn"t sound afraid or apologetic, though. He sounded like a robot.
"Why would I be angry? I"ll ever done is stress how important a good education is for you kids, so you don"t end up like me." Mom softened a bit and looked down at the letter, trying to read it in the darkness. "So you"re leaving tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
"How are you getting there?" Mom looked back up at him.
"Plane. Jack bought the tickets for me." Milo gestured towards him, and Jack smiled back at her.
"Oh." Mom swallowed, and looked at me for the first time. "You knew about this?"
"Um, yeah," I shrugged.
"And you didn"t tell me?" Mom snapped.
"No. I didn"t. Neither did Milo. But thanks for getting angry with me," I grumbled.
"Oh, never mind." She glanced at the clock and then quickly downed the rest of her brandy. "I don"t really have time for this." She stood up, brushing her back from her forehead. "But you"re leaving tomorrow, right? So I"ll have a chance to say a proper good-bye to you tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Milo lied. He was leaving tonight, and she wouldn"t realize it was too late. The plan was for him to leave a note explaining that the plane left before she woke up or something. Whatever fit, so he would never have to see her again.
"Alright then." Mom nodded once and put out her cigarette in an ashtray. She grabbed her oversized purse from the table, and she headed over to the shadows where Milo hid by the door.
"Have a good time tonight," Jack interjected, carefully putting himself between her and Milo. She was going to go in for a hug, and it was still too soon for Milo to handle something like that.
"Oh, I will." Mom gingerly touched her hair, taken back by Jack"s interruption, and unable to figure out how to rectify it. She smiled at him, and then turned to me, returning to her usual scowl. "You.
We"ll talk later."
"Looking forward to it," I lied.
"Yeah, I"m sure you are," Mom muttered, and then walked out of the apartment.
After she was gone, I tried not to think about how tremendously sad that was. That was the last time Milo was ever going to see his mother, and he couldn"t even hug her good-bye. She hadn"t always been the greatest mom and spent most of her time anywhere but home, but she was still our mother. She loved us the best she could, and she deserved a better good-bye than that.
50.
"Oh, h.e.l.l," Jack exhaled shakily once she had left, and I saw his whole body relax. "You"ve gotta get that under control."
"I"m trying!" Milo insisted. "But it wasn"t my fault! You saw the way she as fawning all over you-"
His voice turned into a low snarl, and Jack held up a hand to stop him.
"Yeah, I was there, but seriously!" He shook his head in disbelief. "Milo! You can"t be like that!"
"Be like what?" I asked, confused. I had a.s.sumed that tension had been all about Milo being hungry and unable to control bloodl.u.s.t, but I didn"t understand why it would be solely directed at our mother. That was a little disgusting, actually.
"Nothing," Milo mumbled sheepishly.
"Go pack up the rest of your stuff." Jack gestured too his room tiredly. "Let"s get out of here before you do something really stupid."
"Sorry," Milo apologized and slunk off to his room.
Once he was gone, I whirled on Jack, and whispered fiercely, "What was that about? What"s going on?"
"Remember how things were complicated before?" Jack asked, shooting a glance over his shoulder to make sure that Milo was out of earshot. "Well, they just got a whole lot worse."
"What are you talking about?" I narrowed my eyes at him, trying imagine how things could get any worse than they already had.
"Milo is jealous," Jack explained quietly.
"Of what?" I shook my head, uncomprehending.
"Well..." Jack scratched the back of his head and sighed. "Everyone who interacts with me."
"What?" I leaned back and tried to put it together.
"Okay see... the thing is, vampires bond with whoever turns them," Jack elaborated, his blue eyes swimming with apologies. "I told you about how close I was to Peter and Ezra because we shared the same blood. We"re part of the same person, almost. Well... so now since Milo drank my blood, we"re really bonded.
And it"s a little different than it was with Peter or Ezra because... apparently, Milo had a crush on me before he turned. And with the bonding, that"s suddenly intensified."