Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,91

spends the whole ride wondering, just like a kid, if they’re going to tell Mom.

She’s waiting for them in the living room. “How did it go?”

And Cal waits for them to rat her out, to say it was fine until they had to save her sorry ass, but Theo just nods, and Apollo grins and says, “Ghouls old fun,” because he can’t resist a shitty pun, and then Mom looks right at Cal, as if she can read the truth in her face, but Cal’s learned that truth is something you don’t just go around showing.

“All good,” she says, the words like a stone in her stomach.

And Mom smiles and goes back to watching her show, and Cal heads for the stairs, her brothers on her heels. She’s at the top when Theo catches her elbow. “You okay?”

It’s all he’s said. It’s all he’ll say.

“Of course,” she says, trying to sound bored as she pulls free, slips into her room.

A few moments later, she can hear the buzz of the tattoo gun down the hall, the laughter her brother uses to cover up pain.

She frees the straps and clasps of the makeshift armor, grimaces when she sees the tear in her favorite jeans. It’s her fault, she should have changed, should have worn something she didn’t care about losing. Cal strips, searching for broken skin, signs of injury, but there’s nothing but a few scrapes, the beginning of a bruise.

Lucky, she thinks.

Fool, she answers, staring down at her hands, the grave dirt lodged deep under her nails. She goes into the bathroom, tries to scrub the cemetery from her skin. The water runs, and in the white noise she replays it all again, scrambling backward over the weedy ground, heart pounding, the fear, the panic, the shock of shoulders hitching up against stone and the urge to throw up her hands, not to fight but to hide, to get away.

Her stomach turns, bile rising in her throat.

The Burns are hunters, and hunters don’t run.

They fight.

Cal’s hands are raw by the time she shuts off the tap.

Her dagger lies discarded on the comforter, and she knows her mother would give her hell for leaving weapons out, so she picks it up, sinks to her knees beside the bed, and draws out the leather chest she keeps beneath. She drops the dagger in among the silver crosses, the needle-thin blades, the collection of wooden stakes.

Cal runs her hand over these, pausing at one on the end, a drum stick sharpened to a wicked point. She lifts it, brushing her thumb over the initials she carved into the wood.

JF.

Juliette Fairmont.

Down the hall, the tattoo gun stops buzzing. The laughter dies away with it, and Calliope spins the wooden stake between her fingers and decides she’s ready to earn her first mark.

II

[Saturday]

There are monsters you can kill from a distance, and there are ones you have to face up close.

Cal tells herself that’s why they’re here, in the closet. Tells herself that’s why she’s tangled up in the other girl’s arms. Why she’s kissing Juliette Fairmont.

Juliette, who is not a girl at all, who is a monster, a target, a danger in the dark.

Jules, who tastes like summer nights and thunderstorms. The crackle of ozone and the promise of rain. It is one of Cal’s favorite things. That’s the idea, she’s sure, the trick. Because it isn’t real; it’s just another way to catch prey.

Which is how Juliette sees her.

Prey.

Remember that, Theo warns.

This is a hunt, adds Apollo.

And she really doesn’t need her brothers’ voices in her head right now, not when Juliette is pressed against her, as warm as any living thing. Her heart pounds, and she tells herself it’s just the high before the kill and not the warmth of the other girl’s mouth or the fact she has dreamed of both these things.

Of killing Juliette.

Of kissing Jules.

And even as her fingers curl around the stake, she wonders what would happen if they stopped here, if they left this closet hand in hand. If they went back to the party. If, if, if. She doesn’t have to do this. It’s not a sanctioned hunt.

Her family will never know.

They can just—what? What is she supposed to do? Take Juliette home for dinner? Introduce her to her family?

No. There is no future here. Not for them.

But there is one for her. One where she gets her first tattoo. Where she earns her place between her brothers. Where her father comes home from his hunt