Amelie looked right through her, even when Claire lifted her wrist and showed her the bracelet. The gold was frosting over again, already, and Claire felt the insidious chill coming back.
"You're a coward," Claire said.
Amelie's eyes snapped into focus on her. No other reaction, but that alone was enough to make Claire want to shut up and take it all back.
She didn't. Instead, she took a deep breath and forged on. "You think Sam wants you to sit here and wish yourself to death? I mean, I get that you're hurting. But it's just so high school."
Amelie frowned, very faintly - just a tiny wrinkle of her brow. "What happened to your face?"
Oh. The burns. "Forget about me. What's going on with you? It feels - so cold."
While she was talking, she realized there was something strange about Amelie's hands. She was wearing gloves . . . dark ones. No, that wasn't it. There were spots of white skin showing through the . . .
The blood. Her hands were covered with blood. And there were slashes on her wrists, deep ones. Those should have healed, Claire thought as her skin tightened all over her body, and she shivered in panic-shock. She had no idea why Amelie's wounds stayed open, and kept on bleeding; vampires just didn't do that.
But Amelie had found a way. And that meant she was trying to kill herself, for real. This wasn't some melodramatic cry for help. She hadn't expected help, or looked for it.
That was why she'd been angry.
Claire felt a burst of absolute terror. What do I do? What do I say? She looked up at Michael, but he was standing behind and away from Amelie - he couldn't see what she saw.
Eve, though, did. And unlike Claire, she didn't hesitate. She flopped down on her knees on the cold grass next to Amelie, grabbed the vampire's left arm, and turned it so her wrist faced upward. There was something sticking out of the cut, and Claire might have gone a little faint when she realized that Amelie had stuck a silver coin into the wound to keep it from healing.
Eve pulled it out. Amelie shuddered, and in seconds, the cut sealed itself, and the blood stopped flowing.
"Idiot child!" she snarled, and shoved Eve back as she reached for the other arm. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"Saving your life? No, I pretty much get the concept. Now behave. Bite me and I swear I'll stake you."
Amelie's eyes swirled red, then went back to their normal, not-quite-human gray. "You have no stake."
"Wow, you're literal. Maybe I don't have one now, but just wait. You bite me, and it is on, bitch. . . . I don't mean you're a bitch; it's just an expression. You know?" Eve's chatter was only meant to distract. While she was talking, she took Amelie's right arm and pulled the silver coin out of that cut, too.
The flow of blood from Amelie's hands into the dirt of the grave slowed to a drip, then stopped.
And Claire felt the chill inside her own body fade, too, as Amelie healed. Finally, she could feel her life again - the heat in her body, the beating of her heart. She wondered if that was how Amelie felt all the time - that icy winter silence inside.
If it was, she understood why Amelie was here.
The night rattled through the branches of the trees and swirled Amelie's pale hair around her face, hiding her expression. Claire watched the wounds on the vampire's arms fade from red slashes to pale lines, then to nothing.
"What the hell were you doing?" Michael asked.
Amelie shrugged. "It's an old custom," she said. "Offering blood to the lost. It takes will and ingenuity to do it properly."
"Don't forget stupidity," Eve said. "That kind of thing would kill most people, never mind most vampires."
Amelie slowly nodded. "It might have." Michael, who'd been more appalled than any of them, from the look on his face, finally found something to say. "Why?" he asked. "Why would you do this? Because of Sam?"
That actually got a smile, or at least a suggestion of one, on her pale lips. "Your grandfather would be very angry with me if he thought he was the cause. He'd think me a helpless romantic."
Eve snorted."There's romantic, then there's dramatic, and then there's moronic. Guess which this would be."
Amelie's smile faded, and some of the spark came back into her eyes. She lifted her chin, staring down her nose at Eve. "And you do not wake up daily and paint on your clown makeup, knowing it sets you apart from your fellows? What's the phrase your generation uses? It takes one to know one?"
"I'm pretty sure that phrase was hot about fourteen generations back, but yeah, I get your point. And I may be into drama, but hey, at least I'm not a cutter."
"A what?"