Mr. Marchand roared indignantly and sank his fangs into my forearm, tearing viciously into my flesh. I screamed, pulling uselessly at the arm caught in his teeth.

“This was stupid! This was so stupid!” I yelled as he bucked and dodged. I used my good hand to stab the syringe into his neck and push the plunger.

All of this was enough to make Mr. Marchand shake me off of his back and throw me. I went flying, soaring through empty space and crashing into a thick oak tree. My shoulder bore most of the impact, with my injured arm flopping forward and hitting the bark with a distinct snap. With a wet shriek, I slid to the ground. My arm hung limp and useless at my side, the pain in my shoulder so hot and intense that I was grateful for the radiating agony of breathing through broken ribs to distract me.

Beyond the stabbing clutch of every breath, my side felt funny—heavy and sort of caved in. I tried to look toward the fighting vampires, but the movement tilted my world on its axis, and I dropped into a dizzy spiral. I clutched at my head, hypo forgotten, as a storm of howls and growling filled my ears. The noise was growing closer, almost at my feet. Unable to turn my throbbing head, I moved my fingertips along the cool blades of grass, anything to distract me from the nauseating waves of pain. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the welcoming darkness behind my eyelids.

I lost track of time. I opened my eyes to see the leaves moving gently over my head, then drifted off. There was a crunch and a screech, followed by silence. I awoke to find Cal kneeling at my side. He moved me to lean against him. I howled at the movement, clutching my injured arm to my chest. The vocal effort had me coughing, blood bubbling over my lips and into my good hand.

“Cal,” I rasped. He gingerly moved me into his lap, cradling my face against his neck. I whimpered, my uninjured fingers curling around his shirt collar.

“Shh, it’s bad,” Cal whispered. “You’re losing a lot of blood, and there is internal damage.”

I carefully moved my head back to give him my best unimpressed glare, under the circumstances. “Duh.”

My inappropriately timed sarcasm seemed to lift his spirits, or at least the corners of his mouth. They quirked up, then quickly dropped down. He stroked my cheek, so softly I could barely feel it. “Iris, you could—you could die. Do you want me to turn you?”

My hand dropped away from his chest. And for a moment, I wanted to say yes. I wanted the pain to be over. I wanted everything to stop. I wanted to stay with Cal forever. But there was Gigi to consider. Poor Gigi, who had already lost her parents and counted on me to be her whole family. If I was a vampire, if I “died” before she turned eighteen, they would take her away from me. I wanted to give her time to adjust to the idea. I wanted to have my last human moments with her, eating Peanut M&M’s and watching John Hughes movies. I didn’t want to show up on our doorstep with fangs.

And even with the crippling agony, I remembered the not-so-small problem of Cal’s wanting to leave my little backwater town the minute he could make tracks. And since he seemed to have just killed Mr. Marchand, that minute had arrived. When he’d asked me whether I wanted to be turned, he never specified that he would stay with me while I adjusted to being a vampire. What if he became bored with me? What if he didn’t know how to love someone after so many years? What if he turned me, only to leave me the moment I rose? I couldn’t handle that. Better that he left me human and damaged than alone for a foreseeable eternity.

“No.” I wheezed. “No. Get me to a hospital. Find Gigi.”

Cal’s expectant face fell for a second, and then he recovered and smiled down at me. He murmured something in Greek and kissed me on the forehead, just as I passed out.

17

Once your vampire guest “leaves the nest,” it’s doubtful that you’ll hear from him again. The undead are not big on thank-you notes and hostess gifts.

—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

I woke up. And Cal wasn’t there.

Gigi was sitting by my bedside, her head slumped against the mattress, drooling. There was a car-battery-sized box of Godiva truffles on the nightstand, along with a stack of Teresa Medeiros novels and an arrangement of white and purple irises. Next to the chocolates, Gigi had placed a picture of the two of us dressed in western gear for her high school’s Fall Festival. Our arms were slung around each other, and we were grinning like loons, which may have had something to do with the deep-fried Snickers bars we’d just consumed.

My eyes grew hot and prickly as I looked down at her sleeping face. I slipped my good hand over the dark, silky strands of her hair. I remembered braiding it into pigtails for the Fall Festival and the first time I’d helped her pin it up for a dance. Tears slipped down my cheeks. She was growing up so fast. I’d almost missed it. I could have missed everything.

Ben came through the hospital-room door, trying to balance two fancy coffees and a bag stuffed with the blueberry scones that Gigi loved. I wiggled my uninjured fingers at him, and he stopped in his tracks.

Ben Overby had made a special trip across town to the Hollow’s lone Starbucks to get my sister to eat. His stock had gone up in my book, exponentially.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, grinning at me. “You’re awake!”

Gigi’s head shot up from the mattress. Her face had wrinkles where the rough sheets had bunched under her skin. And there was a patch of dried drool on her cheek. But Ben’s eyes lit up at the sight of her, even when she shrieked like a banshee and launched herself at me.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again!” she cried, hugging me with one arm and slugging my leg with the other. “All that talk about being responsible, and do what I say, and then you get into a fistfight with vampires!”

“Well, technically, being thrown into the tree did most of the damage,” I said, yelping in pain when she halfheartedly slapped the side of my head. “I’m sorry!” I huffed as her weight squeezed the air out of my lungs. “Ow! Ben, get her off me!”

Ben looked pretty damned amused as he set the coffee and pastry aside and pulled my sister back into her chair. She promptly burst into tears and buried her face in Ben’s shirt. “Sorry, Miss Iris. She’s had three days to bounce between panic and pissed-off. You gave us quite a scare.”

“Three days?” I exclaimed.

“Ophelia Lambert, that creepy vampire chick, picked us up at the Dairy Freeze after you were brought here,” Ben said. “We called her as soon as we got to a main road, told her she needed to get to the Marchand house. She said the same thing you did, to get to a well-lit, populated place and stay there. She came to pick us up, said Mr. Marchand was dead and you were hurt.”

“Marchand is dead?”

Ben nodded. “Cal poisoned him, gave him some of the same stuff he was given but a much bigger dose. Ophelia said you would understand that. She told us that you were brought here but not to worry about the bills, because the Council would take care of whatever the insurance didn’t.”

“Massive internal bleeding!” Gigi yelled with sudden authority.

“You had massive internal bleeding,” Ben informed me calmly while my sister raged. “A few broken ribs, a wound on your arm that required surgery, a lot of broken bones on your left side, and a punctured lung.”

“Severe concussion!” Gigi added between sobs.

Ben nodded. “And a concuss—”

“Severe!” Gigi cried.

“A severe concussion,” Ben finished, patting Gigi’s back. “Your legs are OK, though. That’s something.”

Gigi continued to cry softly. I reached out to touch her but gasped at the searing pain in my arm. “I’m sorry, Geeg, I really am. No more fistfights with vampires, I promise.”

“I was all alone!” Gigi cried, untangling herself from Ben and throwing herself back on my chest. I wheezed at the impact and the radiating waves of agony in my ribs. “The doctors kept asking me questions about living wills and DNRs and insurance. I didn’t know anything about that stuff. They shoved all this paperwork at me, and when I said I was only seventeen and couldn’t sign it, they called Child Protective Services! They said I might have to go to foster care if you didn’t wake up. I guess I never realized what would happen if—if something—if you—”

“Shhh,” I said, patting her head.

“I’m so sorry if I’ve ever been mean to you or made you feel lame because you were trying to take care of me. I know you work hard and worry a lot and give up stuff to make sure I’m OK. And if I ever make you feel like it’s not worth it, I want you to kick my ass.”

“OK.”

“And ground me. In fact, I’m thinking of grounding myself after that bullshit I pulled with John. I can’t believe Ben put up with it. Oh, but can I be ungrounded on April 23? Because that’s the prom, and Ben asked me.”

“Watch your language,” I said as she dabbed at the tears on my cheeks. “And sure, you can go to the prom. We’ll go dress shopping as soon as I’m out of traction.”

“OK.” She sniffed, brightening a little when talk turned to silhouettes and color choices, whether it was tacky for Ben to match his bow tie and cummerbund to her dress.

As my sister chattered happily and Ben cautiously picked through the Godiva box, all thoughts of lying vampire Romeos and nearly dead sisters were abandoned for corsage floral schemes. I couldn’t help but wonder where Cal was. I was hurt, injured while saving him, and he couldn’t come to the hospital to check on me? Had he gone back to the house to check on Gigi while I was unconscious? Had he already left town?

I cleared my throat, trying to focus on something beyond the hot tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. When Gigi finally took a breath, I focused on the boy standing awkwardly at her side. He was looking everywhere but at me, which made me think that my hospital gown was a little more revealing than I’d previously believed. I plucked nervously at the robe, tightening it at my throat. “Ben, I’ve been meaning to ask you, but I’ve been unconscious. How did you find us?”

Ben blushed. “There’s this new app for the iPhone called FriendRadar. If a phone that’s on your contact list is within a hundred feet, it will ping until you’re standing right in front of that person. It’s supposed to help you find your friends at the mall or the movies or that sort of thing. But I rewrote the software to increase the range. I was supposed to be picking up Gigi at your place the night John took you guys. When I got there and saw the house tossed, I turned on the app and followed Gigi’s signal.”

“How much did you increase the range?” Gigi asked.

Ben cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “I probably shouldn’t tell you that. It’s not entirely, um, condoned by the FCC.”

“You’re a genius,” I told him. “You have permission to date my sister, for real this time. No curfews, no restrictions, no base limits.”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure that’s the painkillers talking,” Ben assured me, squeezing Gigi’s shoulder affectionately. “We can talk more about dating rules later.”

Gigi’s mood darkened suddenly. “I should have dated you all along. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t fallen for John’s crap, Iris wouldn’t have gotten hurt. You know, that night at the movies, I was texting him because he wanted to know where I was. He was trying to figure out how much time he had to search our house and then jump us. Asshole.”

I patted her cheek, wincing when the IV pulled at the skin of my wrist. “Geeg, you’re not a bad kid. You’ve never made me regret taking you on. Question my sanity? Yes. But never regret. Even with the John thing. You just made a series of really bad decisions, which is something I can identify with.”

“You mean with Cal?” she asked.