Page 65 of Life and Death

“Then what?”

“That you’ll be . . . upset. Unhappy.”

She lifted her hand off the gearshift and held it out toward me—just a few centimeters. An offer. I glanced up quickly, to make sure I understood, and her eyes were soft.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I can handle it.”

I took her hand, and she curled her fingers very lightly around mine for one short second, then dropped her hand back to the gearshift. Carefully, I placed my hand over the top of hers again. I ran my thumb along the outside of her hand, tracing from her wrist to the tip of her pinkie finger. Her skin was sosoft—not that it had any give at all, no, but soft like satin. Smoother, even.

“The suspense is killing me, Beau,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to start.”

Another long moment of silence, just the purr of the engine and the sound of my hitching breath. I couldn’t hear hers at all. I traced back down the side of her perfect hand.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” she suggested, her voice more normal now. Practical. “Is this something you thought up on your own, or did something make you think of it—a comic book, maybe, or a movie?”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “But I didn’t think of it on my own.”

She waited.

“It was Saturday—down at the beach.”

I risked a glance up at her face. She looked confused.

“I ran into an old family friend—Jules, Julie Black. Her mom, Bonnie, and Charlie have been close since before I was born.”

She still looked confused.

“Bonnie’s one of the Quileute leaders. . . .”

Her confused expression froze in place. It was like all the planes of her face had suddenly hardened into ice. Oddly, she was even more beautiful like that, a goddess again in the light of the dashboard dials. She didn’t look very human, though.

She stayed frozen, so I felt compelled to explain the rest.

“There was this Quileute woman on the beach—Sam something. Logan made a comment about you—trying to make fun of me. And this Sam said your family didn’t come to the reservation, only it sounded like she meant something more than that. Jules seemed like she knew what the woman was talking about, so I got her alone and kept bugging her until she told me . . . told me the old Quileute legends.”

I was surprised when she spoke—her face was so still, and her lips barely moved.

“And what were those legends? What did Jules Black tell you I was?”

I half-opened my mouth, then closed it again.

“What?”

“I don’t want to say it,” I admitted.

“It’s not my favorite word, either.” Her face had warmed up a little; she looked human again. “Not saying it doesn’t make it go away, though. Sometimes . . . I thinknotsaying it makes it more powerful.”

I wondered if she was right.

“Vampire?” I whispered.

She flinched.

Nope. Saying it out loud didn’t make it any less powerful.

Funny how it didn’t sound stupid anymore, like it had in my room. It didn’t feel like we were talking about impossible things, about old legends or silly horror movies or paperback books. It felt real.