“You still smell like him, and I have to get it out!”
“No!” Bobby shouted fiercely. “You’ll just have to deal with it! I just got attacked by a vampire, and I’m feeling bad enough without you clawing out the back of my neck!”
“Fine.” Milo sighed and threw the bloody rag in the sink, then he seemed to have a change of heart.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. You had a really bad night, and I’m just glad you’re alive and that you still want to put up with me.” Ashamed of his behavior, Milo stared down at the sink.
“I’ll always want to be with you,” Bobby smiled at him and gently touched his face. Milo lifted his hid and they kissed, just long enough for me to feel embarrassed that I was in the same room with them. I cleared my throat loudly, and Milo blushed a little when they stopped.
“Sorry about that.” Milo dried the cuts on Bobby’s chest and shoulder so he could apply some giant sized Band-Aids. Mae had bought up them last summer after Matilda had jumped on me and gave me a nasty cut across my thigh, and fortunately, there were still plenty left over.
“So all those scratches, those are from Jonathan’s fingernails?” I nodded at Bobby’s chest.
“Yeah, I think so,” Bobby said, watching as Milo bandaged a particularly nasty one that ran down his collarbone. Hopefully, none of them would leave scars, or they would damage his tattoos.
“That’s weird. Clawing at you seems like such a girlie thing to do,” I wrinkled my nose. Sure, that is how I had fought against Jonathan, but I was a girl, and I was openly a terribly fighter.
“Maybe, but our fingernails are more like claws,” Milo said absently. “It’s a weapon we have, so why not use it?”
It wasn’t until he said something that I looked down at my own nails. Before I had turned, I had bit them all the time, but I lost the urge. They were longer than I had ever had them before, but I hadn’t really thought about them being stronger. I tested one out on my arm and winced. They were strong like tiger claws or something, but thankfully, they didn’t look like them.
Milo and Bobby continued talking, getting more flirty and lovey, so I tuned them out. Milo had gotten awfully freaked and possessive because Jonathan had bit Bobby, and he hadn’t even drank his blood or anything. It surprised me a little because Milo had never been the possessive type, but I suppose that had nothing to do with he was as a person. It was all part of being a vampire, but I had never gone through it because nobody else had ever bitten Jack since we’d been together. Or at least that I know of. I had no idea what he was doing now. For all I know, someone could be biting him. Lots of someones could, or he could be biting lots of people. He could be doing anything, and I had no idea when or if he would ever be back.
After Milo finished getting Bobby cleaned up, they went back up to his room so they could change out of their costumes, and Milo needed to wash off all his make up still. Ezra and Mae were still up in Peter’s room with Jane, so I sat on the steps and waited for someone to tell me what was going on.
The night seemed to drag on forever, but finally, Ezra descended the stairs towards me.
“How is she?” I got to my quickly but held onto the wall, bracing myself for bad news.
“I don’t know,” Ezra shook his head, and sometimes, I wished he was the kind of guy that didn’t always have to give it me straight. Sometimes, it would be nice to get things sugar coated.
“She’s been doing this for too long. Part of the reason her bite looked so terrible was because she had scar tissue building up. He had to gnaw through it to get to her veins.”
“Oh my gosh!” I gasped, feeling disgusted.
“But the good news is that she hadn’t actually lost as much blood as I’d originally thought,” Ezra gave me a weak smile. “I didn’t give her any blood, although we did give her IV fluids.”
“You have IV fluids just laying about?” I wrinkled my nose at him.
“In a houseful of vampires and the occasional human, someone is going to lose too much blood eventually, and its best to be prepared,” Ezra explained. “Your friend is resting now, but only time will tell how well she will do. Mae is giving her vitamins and plenty of water, and that’s the best we can do.”
“Why didn’t you give her a transfusion? Wouldn’t that have fixed her right up?” I asked.
“No. Like I said, she’s been doing this too long,” Ezra said gravely. “Her blood wouldn’t mix or coagulate right with fresh blood. She has too much vampire saliva in her, messing with how her body, and that’s thanks in part to how much the vampire had to tear into her. Fortunately, that might actually be to her benefit. Our saliva can be very helpful in the healing process, and I have a feeling that the only thing that has been keeping her alive the past few days is how much she has in her system.”
“So the fact that she’s getting bit too often is killing her and saving her life?” I looked at him dubiously.
“So it would seem,” Ezra sighed. “You can go up and see her if you like, but she’s unconscious.”
“Unconscious like sleeping or unconscious like coma?”
“Only time will tell,” Ezra answered sadly.
“Really?” I had been asking more as a lark, but if there was a possibility that she could really be comatose, it didn’t seem right that we were just keeping her in an upstairs bedroom.
“Shouldn’t we get her to the hospital or something? They have equipment and machines and all kinds of things!”
“If I thought there was anything they could do for her that we couldn’t, I would’ve already taken her there. She just needs to rest and rebuild her blood.” Every time Ezra said anything, he sounded like he was an expert on the subject. His voice was deep and firm, and his accent made him endearing. But right now, I had to question his judgment.
“No offense, but you’re not a doctor! How can you possibly know? They have so much stuff there, and if she’s dying, they can put her on life support!” I shouted.
“She’s not dying, not yet, but if you think she would be better suited at a hospital, or she would be happier living out the rest of her existence on life support, I will take her there,” Ezra said, not unkindly. “But I have spent most of the past 300 years trying to keep the human victims of vampires alive. I doubt highly that anybody at the hospital can make that same claim, but yes, they do have more advanced medical equipment than I do.”
“I understand,” I looked down at the steps, feeling somewhat embarrassed about questioning him.
He wasn’t upset about it, and I was perfectly justified, so I swallowed it down. “As long as she’s stable now, I say we leave her here. But I reserve the right to take to her the hospital if her condition worsens.”
“You’ve always had that right, whether it worsened or not.” Ezra gently touched my shoulder, trying to comfort me and alleviate my inappropriate shame. “Why don’t you go see her?”
Truthfully, I was probably arguing with him just to avoid seeing her. Ezra would always do what was best for everyone, and I knew that. If he couldn’t take care of Jane her, he wouldn’t have brought her back.
But I didn’t want to see her, knowing how sick and frail she looked. Jane had often been superficial and a bitch, but she was always powerful. She carried herself with grace and purpose, and the last thing she’d ever want anyone to see is her being weak and small.
Slowly, I pushed open the door to Peter’s room, and I felt guilty for even going in there, but that was leftovers from kissing him. In his huge bed, Jane looked even smaller. Mae sat next to her, monitoring her pulse and blood pressure, all by ear and touch. Jane was just a thin little line down the center of the bed. Her arms were over the covers, and they were literally nothing but skin and bone. Her normally manicured nails were broken and chipped horribly. A bandage was over the bite mark on her neck, so at least I didn’t have to see that again. Her hair was still short, but her roots were showing and she had split ends.
Jane wasn’t even making time for hair appointments anymore. Mae had changed her out of her designer dress to put her in more comfortable pajamas, and left her dress discarded at the end of the bed. It looked dirty and faded. The only thing in life that had ever really mattered to Jane was her appearance, and she had completely let it go.
Mae tried to say a few comforting things to me, but there was nothing that could really make me feel any better about this. When I saw her at the club last week, I should’ve just dragged her away, no matter how much she fought me. Or better yet, I never should’ve told her about vampires, or let her see Milo after he turned. If Milo had never bit her, if she’d never found it, if she’d never even met me. I know I wasn’t the one that made her go to the club night after night, looking for a fix, but I had set this course of events in motion.
If had a made a different decision any number of times, she wouldn’t be here, knocking on death’s door.
I stood at the end of the bed, just watching her chest rise and fall with each breath. Every time she exhaled, it felt like forever before she breathed in again, and it was an eternity between heartbeats. Every second she was alive, I was certain it would be her last. I barely even noticed when Peter came in the room.
That’s how hard I was concentrating on Jane.
“Sorry. I just came into grab a few things,” Peter said apologetically, and hurried into his bathroom.
Since Jane had taken over his room, he was gonna sleep on the couch tonight, and if he was getting ready for bed, it meant that it was getting pretty late.
“You should probably go get some rest yourself,” Mae suggested. “I’ll stay with Jane and make sure she’s alright. It won’t do her in good if you stay up all day exhausting yourself.”
“You’ll let me know if something happens?” I chewed my lip. For some reason, I thought that when I stopped watching her, that’s when she’d stop breathing.
“I’m just across the hall from you,” Mae smiled at me. “She’ll be just fine, love. I can feel it.”
Reluctantly, I went out into the hall and gently shut the bedroom door behind me. I stood right outside the door, listening for a minute, and when her heart kept beating, I started to believe that maybe she wasn’t going to die right then. I let out a sigh of relief that sounded suspiciously like a sob, and then I took another deep breath to try to keep back the tears. Peter came out of his room behind me and almost bumped into me, since I hadn’t bothered to take a step away from the door yet.