Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

like Ava now, she also sounded more like her.
    Why was Ava having more of an influence on Marla than I was having? I was the one with whom she spent most of her time. After school, she was usually in my room, not Ava’s. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so flippant with her when she started asking me more questions. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to get her to go to Ava. I wondered if she thought I didn’t like her or want her around me. Now that I thought about it, she had been avoiding me more and more in the house. These suspicions were about to be elevated.
    After a few moments of silence between us, Marla suddenly said, “Don’t look for me after school today.”
    “What? Why not?”
    “Ava is coming for me.”
    “When?”
    “Before the final period. She has permission to sign me out, you know. Daddy made sure of that.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “She didn’t say exactly. She just thinks we should spend more time together.”
    I was silent. Why was Ava doing this now? Were things going to move this quickly?
    “You know,” Marla said, almost as if she had developed the ability to listen in on my thoughts, “she’ll be leaving us sooner than we think.”
    I turned to her.
    “In fact, we’ll all be leaving Los Angeles,” she continued.
    “How do you know this?”
    “A little bird told me. How do you think?”
    “No, really, Marla. Do you know anything about that?”
    “I heard Mrs. Fennel and Daddy talking this morning.”
    “Daddy didn’t come down this morning.”
    “No,” she said. “You have that wrong. Daddy didn’t come home until this morning.”
    “Oh. What did they say?”
    “Maybe I shouldn’t be the one telling you this. Maybe you should go to Ava,” she said spitefully.
    “I never told you to go to Ava with your questionsunless I really didn’t know the answers, Marla. Don’t be a little bitch.”
    She laughed. “I heard Daddy say the arrangements were being completed. He thought maybe another two months or so at the most, and most likely sooner. That’s what I heard.”
    “You’re sure? He said another two months or so at the most?”
    She shrugged. “We’ll have a family meeting, and he’ll tell us everything when he’s ready to tell us. But you know what I think now?”
    “What?”
    “I think Ava will be leaving before we move.” She smiled. “And then you’ll be my big sister. That’s why she wants to spend more time with me.”
    Another two months or so? That meant possibly two more hunts before we left.
    Was that my heart thumping, or had we gotten a flat tire?
    The commotion that had begun in my mind didn’t stop all morning. I don’t think I heard more than a few words my teachers spoke. I know I did poorly on a quiz in math. I couldn’t stop thinking about Buddy. He had such a trusting smile, such innocence in his eyes.
    Even when I sat eating my lunch in the noisy cafeteria, I couldn’t get myself to stop thinking about Buddy. I opened my purse and found his phone number. For a while, I just sat there looking at it. It felt hot in my fingers, as hot as the greeting cards Ava claimed lovers sent each other. The scribbled numbers were a way of connecting myself to him, resurrecting his face, his smile,and his trusting eyes. I had not come as close to kissing any boy as I had come to kissing him that night at Dante’s Inferno. His lips haunted me now.
    When I rose and walked out of the cafeteria and out of the building, I knew that what I was about to do could be the beginning of the end for me as far as my family went. Ava’s recitation of Mrs. Fennel’s warnings about love replayed in my mind. “Men and women of high intelligence will do the most foolish things in pursuit of passion. Because their passion is so all-consuming, they will want to possess the object of that passion. It will drive them to sell out their own family…”
    I took out my cell phone. Was I terribly afraid? Yes, so frightened my fingers wouldn’t work the tiny buttons. I had to sit on a bench and take deep breaths to try again. Slowly, I brought the phone to my ear and listened as the call went through. It rang twice, and I flipped the phone closed.
    I can’t do this
, I thought.
Once I do this, Daddy will hate me forever. I can’t.
    I stood up to go back inside the building, but my feet felt glued to the ground. There was a tumultuous battle going on inside me, my heart against my mind.
    Why call him?
my mind was asking.
What can you say? Where do you