Free Afterlife by Claudia Gray Page B

it.
    We encouraged him to come here because we wanted him to feel
comfortable being a vampire, I thought. How can that happen if eveqbody else
nijects him?
    Every time he walked past a human student, his whole body
went tense; I could see it in the set of his shoulders and the lines of his
face. But he determinedly didn’t look directly at them, and his steps never
slowed. His resolve was as strong as his hunger, at least for now.
    Lucas kept going, heading toward the north tower where the
guys roomed. I stayed with him. A few flakes of ice crystallized on the
windowsill nearest me, and hurriedly I floated higher, closer to the ceiling.
Until I learned how to avoid creating frost, it might be better for me to stay
up high, where at least nobody was likely to see it.
    The crowd began murmuring, as though there were some
commotion. I glanced back and saw that the students were parting — that someone
was shoving them aside to get closer to Lucas. Apparently Mrs. Bethany hadn’t
managed to calm everybody down.
    I folded myself tightly in a corner. Lucas cocked his head,
hearing the danger before he saw it, and turned to face his would — be
attacker. Probably it was some younger vampire guy, only at Evernight for a few
laughs, ready to turn into a killer again the first time he felt like it — like
Erich, that jerk who’d stalked Raquel during our first year here. Lucas would
be able to handle somebody like that easily, I knew.
    But when the attacker appeared, it was somebody Lucas couldn’t
handle. Somebody I couldn ‘ t handle.
    It was my mother.
    Mom stood in front of him, fists at her sides, eyes wild.
“Is it true? Tell me.” Her voice shook. “I want you to look me in the face and
tell me it’s true.”
    Lucas looked like he’d been punched in the gut. As he opened
his mouth to answer. though , Balthazar pushed his way
to their side and grabbed Mom’s arm. “Not here,” he said quietly.
    Mom didn’t even turn her head, like she couldn’t see or hear
Balthazar, but after a moment she nodded and stalked toward one of the
staircases. It was like she was daring Lucas not to follow her, but he did.
Balthazar started to come, too, but Mom shot him a look that froze him in place
on the stairs.
    She led him into a small office on the second floor. I went
along, although I desperately didn’t want to hear what I knew had to come next.
    As soon as he’d shut the door behind them, Mom said again,
“Tell me it’s true, Lucas.”
    “It’s true,’ Lucas said. He looked deader than he had the
night after he’d been killed. “Bianca died.”
    My mother stumbled backward, like she’d been spun so hard
she was dizzy. Her face crumpled into tears. “She was supposed to live forever,”
she whispered. “Bianca was going to be our little girl forever.”
    “Mrs. Olivier, I’m so sorry.”
    “Sorry? Sorry? You convince our daughter to leave her home
and her parents and forsake the immortality that’s rightfully hers — her
birthright — and she dies, she’s gone forever, and the only thing you can say
is sorry?”
    “That’s all I can say!” Lucas shouted. “There aren’t words
for this! I would ‘ve died for her. I tried to. I failed. I hate myself for it,
and ifl could take it back I would, but . . . but…” His voice choked on a sob. He steeled himself and managed to say, “If you
want to kill me, I won’t stop you. I won’t even blame you.”
    My mother shook her head. Tears streaked her face, and a few
caramel — colored strands of hair stuck to her flushed cheeks. “If you hate
yourself as much as you say — if you loved her a tenth as much as we loved her —
then you deserve immortality. You deserve to live forever, so you can suffer
forever.”
    Lucas was crying, too, but he never turned his head away,
steeling himself to keep meeting my mother’s eyes. It was more than I could do.
This Wasn’t Lucas’s fault. It was mine.
    For one second I considered appearing in the room. If