Chapter 1

There are defining moments in our lives where we can look back later and think, “That was when everything changed,” or “that’s when I knew.” For me, that moment came shortly after my sister told me the man I thought of as an older brother, Elliott, had been killed by a Vampire Hunter. Even though I’d known for the last several months that I would go through the Transformation process like my sister Cadence had as soon as I turned seventeen and was considered old enough, when I found out that Elliott was dead, that I’d never turn around to find him standing just over my shoulder again, or watch in surprise as he snuck into my bedroom window to talk to me in private so as not to alert my parents, or look up into a crowd and see his smile, that’s when I knew what I would do with my life, the path I would choose.

It's too bad fate had other plans, ones I would’ve never seen coming that sweltering June day when Cadence told me about Elliott.

I had fallen asleep that afternoon, dreaming that Elliott was still alive, that this was all some sort of a not-so-funny joke, so when I awoke a few hours later to the soft sound of my mother’s voice next to my ear, telling me I needed to come down for dinner, it was like everything hit me all over again, and fresh waves of nausea and despair made me burst into tears once more. My mom understood; she had loved Elliott, too, and she wrapped me up in a tight hug and held me until I was finally able to temporarily pull myself back together again.

Cadence was likely still downstairs with her boyfriend Aaron, and both of them had been very good friends with Elliott. I’d remembered wondering how they were even functioning earlier. Why were they not both hanging on by a thin thread like me? My sister has seen a lot of death lately—her friend Drew was, apparently, killed by Vampires, though I still didn’t have the whole story on that one—and her ex-boyfriend Jack had actually been turned into a Vampire, though I don’t even know how that happened either—and Cadence had shot him a few months ago. What I do know I am knowledgeable about only because Elliott trusted me enough to tell me what he could. Everyone else had been lying to me for months, or in the case of my parents, years, and I was getting quite tired of it. Eventually, once I was able to breathe again, my intentions were to start asking questions. But for Elliott’s sake, I would try to stay calm and endure for now.

With my mom’s arms around me, I managed to untangle my legs from the blankets and head toward the door. She didn’t let go of me, even when we reached the foyer. “We are all going to fly to Kansas City tomorrow,” she said quietly. “There will be a memorial.”

I looked up at her, thinking that seemed awfully quick, but then, I guess I didn’t even actually know when Elliott had died. Rather than asking that question, I simply said, “Okay,” and walked a little ahead of my mom into the dining room.

My dad, Eli, and Cadence and Aaron were already there at the table, and everyone had food on their plates, including me. I sat down in my usual chair, next to my sister, and noted that Aaron was sitting where Elliott had always sat when he visited. I tried not to hold that against him. He had been more forthcoming with information earlier than my sister had been, and now that they were officially dating, I thought I should do my best to try to like him, even though the hatred I’d felt toward him for months for choosing to date some other girl, Eliza, instead of my sister, made it a little more difficult.

“I think we should say a prayer,” my mother announced. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d prayed over dinner, except for on a holiday, but I didn’t mind. I was doing my best not to think, not to feel, just to be there so that I could make it through mom’s baked chicken without breaking down again. I took my sister’s outstretched hand and my dad’s and bowed my head, trying not to question how the God my mom was speaking to, the one that she said, “loved us completely,” and “held our hearts in His hands” could keep taking the people we loved away from us, but then she gave Him a bit of a reprieve when she said, “we cannot always understand Your ways, but we know that they are for the best.” I thought long and hard about that and decided now was not the time to try to figure out the secrets of the universe, especially since I was new to a whole bunch of its secrets very few people knew anything at all about, so once my mom was done, I began to cut up my meat, marching pieces of chicken around my plate so it looked like I was eating while I listened to the grownups make small talk.

I wasn’t hungry, and I imagined if I actually put any pieces of chicken into my mouth, I might regurgitate everything I’d eaten hours ago for breakfast right there all over the dining room table, so I took a few bites of mashed potatoes but nothing more solid than that. My mom was asking Cadence about Ireland, and I tried to remember if I knew my sister had been there. She’d told me more than I expected earlier, thanks to Aaron allowing her to do so, but I would have to go back over the conversation a few times to figure out exactly what all of it was. Right now, I didn’t want to think or feel or be aware of anything.