My Blood Approves (18 page)

When I got downstairs, I felt dazed and I
was panting. There was a very real chance that I had just barely
averted danger. And the worst part was part of me still wanted to
rush back upstairs and let him do whatever he wanted with me as
long as I could still be with him.

“
Alice?” Milo asked. He and
Jack were standing in the middle of the living room, holding
plastic guitars, but I could barely even see them. The whole world
felt hazy and I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or not. “Are you
okay?”

“
You were with Peter?” Jack
had stopped playing the game and turned to look at me. He eyed me
over, and he saw something that made his face harden. “Come here.”
I felt frozen in place, so he commanded more harshly, “Come
here.”

This time I listened and walked over to him,
moving like a zombie.

“
Did something happen to
her?” Milo’s voice got higher the more scared he got.

Jack didn’t answer him. Instead, he looked
me over with this odd expression on his face, a cross between
disturbed and jealous. He put two fingers underneath my chin and
lifted it up, revealing my neck. He turned my head this way and
that, inspecting me carefully.

When he was done, his expression had
softened, and he looked satisfied.

“
Come here,” he repeated,
but this time, he looped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me
closer to him. “You’re okay.”

I threw my arms around him, hugging him
tightly and relishing the safety of his arms. I sobbed into his
chest, unable to hold it back anymore, and he kissed the top of my
head.

“
What happened?” I heard
Ezra’s melodic voice boom behind me, but I hadn’t seen him when I
came in. He seemed to have materialized at the sound of my
crying.

“
I don’t know! She just
came downstairs crying!” Milo explained plaintively. He was upset,
and I wished somebody would just tell him that everything would be
okay. Why wasn’t Mae here when I needed her?

“
Did something happen?”
Ezra demanded, and there was an edge to his voice.

“
No,” Jack said softly,
stroking my hair.

“
Are you sure?” Ezra
persisted.

“
Yes, I’m sure,” Jack
replied, growing irritated.

“
I’m going to talk to
Peter.” I didn’t hear Ezra leaving, but I knew he had
anyway.

“
What’s wrong with her?”
Milo sounded panicked.

“
Nothing.” I pulled away
from Jack a little but made sure to keep his arm around me. I
wouldn’t feel as safe or sturdy without it. Wiping at my tear
stained cheeks, I forced a smile at Milo. “I’m fine.”

“
You’re not fine!” Milo
insisted with wide, worried eyes.

“
It’s just… girl stuff.” I
tried to shrug it off, and I couldn’t tell if he saw through it or
not.

It was a perfectly reasonable explanation
that while I was upstairs, alone with a very attractive guy, he had
said or done something to offend me, and that’s what had upset
me.

In fact, that would be much more plausible
than what had actually happened, which was that I had become so
entranced with somebody that I almost let him slaughter me.

And I was pretty sure that this
attempted-murder had happened not because he hated me, but because
he was attracted to me.

“
Like what?” Milo narrowed
his eyes.

“
I don’t wanna talk about
it.” I just shook my head and looked away.

“
What’s going on?” Mae
shouted suddenly, and my heart soared at the sight of her standing
in the doorway. She rushed over to me, placing her hands her firmly
on my shoulders to look in my eyes.

“
She was upstairs with
Peter,” Jack explained. Mae’s expression changed from one of worry
to shock, and she turned to look at Jack sharply. “Nothing
happened.”

She softened, looking sympathetically at me.
Before she pulled me into a hug, it finally dawned on me.

Whatever had happened or almost happened
with Peter, they knew it. Ezra had sent me upstairs, knowing
exactly what would happen. Meaning, he had sent me to my probable
death.

What the hell was going on here? And why
didn’t I feel as terrified as I should? In fact, as Mae stroked my
hair and murmured words of comfort in her soft British accent, I
felt nothing but safe. What was wrong with me?

“
I’m okay, really,” I
insisted, and she finally released me.

“
I hope you mean that.” She
smiled sadly and pushed strands of hair back from my face, and then
straightened up.

“
I do.” I nodded firmly,
and Jack playfully ruffled my hair, as if to reaffirm that
everything was okay.

“
And who is this?” Mae
turned her attention to Milo. Just looking at her made his anxiety
disappear, and he returned her open smile.

“
I’m Milo, Alice’s
brother.” He looked a little embarrassed by the look she was giving
him, and I knew the feeling. She reached out and touched his face
gently (his chubby cheeks were hard to resist) and grinned
warmly.

“
I’m Mae, Ezra’s wife.
You’re so much cuter than I’d thought you’d be.”

“
Thanks?” Milo replied
unsurely.

“
Have you had a tour of the
house yet?” Mae had already started looping her arm through his,
and she’d missed her calling as a real estate agent. Milo shook his
head no, and she laughed a little. With that, she led him away on a
tour.

As soon as they were out of earshot, I
turned to Jack and hissed, “What the hell happened?”

“
You tell me,” Jack
countered evenly, and I might have overestimated how much he
knew.

“
You have an idea of what
happened, don’t you?” I asked. He didn’t answer me, so I continued,
“You have suspicions. There was something that you were afraid
happened.”

“
I wasn’t afraid,” he
answered quietly, but the fog of Peter was wearing off and I could
feel how unnerved he really was.

“
Jack, I trust you,” I
whispered fiercely. “Don’t betray that trust.” An amused but pained
expression flitted across his face, and he shook his
head.

“
He’s not gonna hurt you,
Alice.” Then he turned to look at me. “None of us are.”

“
Then…” I trailed off,
trying to understand what was happening. “But Peter told me to go
before he did something very bad to me.” Jack let out a long breath
through his teeth and stared off at some point above my
head.

“
Well… I guess we all just
have different definitions of what hurting you means.”

“
Was that meant to be
comforting? Cause it wasn’t,” I snapped, crossing my arms on my
chest.

“
Let me put it this way:
You are a top priority for my family.” Jack said, but he’d finished
the conversation.

He still had the plastic guitar hanging over
his shoulder, and he unpaused the game and clicked out of the
two-player level he’d been playing with Milo. He started playing a
song, and when I asked him what that meant, he ignored me.

I flopped back on the couch next to Matilda
and stroked her long, white fur. Everything with Peter had
exhausted me. My skin flushed with embarrassment at the thought of
running into him. I had made a fool of myself, and he was in
trouble with Ezra.

But even with that, I still really wanted to
see him. My very being wanted to be near him again, and it would be
worth anything.

As predicted, Mae completely enchanted Milo.
They seemed made for each other. She was all motherly love, and he
was all motherless child.

When they made their way into the living
room, Milo went back to playing video games with Jack. I curled up
on the couch with Mae, resting my head on her lap, and let her play
with my hair.

“
I know you’re hurting now,
but things will make sense, love,” Mae murmured, pushing my hair
from my eyes. “Everything happens for a reason.”

The nights of barely sleeping had caught up
with me, and the soothing comfort of Mae was too much. I drifted
off to a sleep filled with dreams of Peter. They were probably the
best dreams I’d ever had.

When I woke up, I felt good, but incredibly
disoriented. The living room was dark, and I was alone, except for
Matilda, who snored loudly on the floor next to me.

I moved a little on the couch, preparing to
start calling for Jack or Milo, but then I heard voices talking
softly nearby. And then I heard my name, so I stopped moving and
strained to hear.

“
Well, we obviously can’t
leave Alice alone with him anymore.” That was Jack, trying to
protect me from Peter.

“
No, I agree.” Ezra’s deep
voice sounded like a lullaby when he kept it low. I imagined that
it would be tranquil to have him sing me to sleep. “But they’ll
have to eventually.”

“
But she’s not ready for
it,” Jack said. “He’s not ready for it.”

“
You’re not ready for it,”
Ezra countered.

“
Maybe not,” Jack relented.
“But he feels too conflicted for anything to work. He’s just making
everything harder on her than it needs to be. I mean, you saw her
today.”

“
It’s incredibly painful,
rejecting it,” Ezra calmly said. “Peter’s showing a tremendous will
just going against it, but eventually, he’ll give in. It’s
impossible. Whatever pain he thinks he’s avoiding, this is far
worse.”

“
How do you know?” Jack
asked him suspiciously. “You never rejected it.”

“
I did at first,” Ezra
said, then backtracked. “I tried to ignore it, and that was brutal.
But I saw Peter after what happened with Alice.”

“
And?” Jack pressed Ezra
when he didn’t say anything.

“
He’s not taking it well,”
Ezra said simply.

“
How much longer will this
go on?” Jack asked, and I couldn’t help but notice a hint of
sadness in his voice.

“
Not much longer.” Ezra
breathed deeply. “We’ll just have to keep an eye on both of
them.”

“
Ezra!” Mae called from
another room, sounding farther away than them. “Come here! Milo’s
beat me at chess twice already! You’ve got to try against him! He’s
amazing!”

“
I’ll be right there!” Ezra
shouted back to her, then spoke quieter to Jack. “You
understand?”

“
Yeah,” Jack said
reluctantly.

I didn’t hear Ezra’s footfalls when he
walked away, but that didn’t surprise me. Jack’s silhouette
appeared in the doorway, and I quickly closed my eyes, pretending I
was sleeping.

Matilda whimpered as he walked past her, and
he patted her head before sitting on the couch next to me. As soon
as I felt the couch moved, I stirred as if I was just waking
up.

“
Did you sleep
okay?”

“
Yeah,” I nodded and moved
so I was sitting on my knees facing him. My voice sounded thick
from tears, but I hoped he would think it was from
sleep.

“
Hey are you okay?” Jack
sounded sad and worried. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I could
map out the concerned expression on his face.

“
Yeah, just
tired.”

“
I gathered that when you
passed out.” He tried to keep his tone light, but he
struggled.

What Ezra had said had gotten to him too,
and when he felt anxious, I felt it even worse. It wouldn’t be much
longer before I started to cry.

“
You sound upset,” I
said.

“
Nah, I’m fine,” Jack
insisted, shaking his head in the darkness.

“
Jack, promise me that I’ll
be okay. You know I’ll believe anything you say, so just promise me
that everything will be okay.” My voice sounded more nervous than I
would’ve liked.

“
I know you can’t
understand right now, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Then
he put his arm around me and pulled me close to him, resting his
chin on the top of my head. “I’m upset because I care about you too
much. The problem’s me, not you. You are gonna be better than fine.
I promise.”

“
You’re right. I don’t
understand,” I said. He stroked my hair, and I moved my head on his
chest. Then I realized something odd. “I can’t hear your heart
beat.”

“
Just listen
harder.”

Pressing my ear closer to his chest, I
listened hard, and, there it was, very faint and incredibly slow. I
wasn’t timing it, but it couldn’t have been beating more than ten
or twenty times a minute.

“
It’s so slow!” I jerked my
head back so I could look at him. “Are you okay? You’re not having
a heart attack, are you?”

“
No,” Jack laughed, this
time sounding more like himself. “That’s just the way my heart
beats.”

“
But that’s not the way
it’s supposed to be.” I furrowed my brow, trying to understand.
“That’s not how my heart beats.”

“
I know.” He was mildly
amused, but my confusion always seemed to entertain him. “I can
hear your heartbeat.”

“
How? You’re way over
there.” He was actually sitting right next to me, but he was still
too far away to hear. “You’re hearing isn’t that good.”

“
It is for this one thing.”
He reached out and put his hand gingerly on my throat.