Flutter (18 page)

When Bobby walked by on his way to his room, he
smelled overly delicious. My bedroom door was shut, and the scent
of his hot blood wafted in. It had been a few days since I ate, and
vampires could go much longer than that. I had to get my hunger in
control if I ever planned on being with Jack.

So as hungry as Bobby made me, I swallowed it back
and decided to clear my head with a nice long shower. I had just
started gathering my clothes when I felt the warmth in my chest,
meaning Jack was nearby, and a moment later I heard him bounding up
the stairs.

“Hey.” Jack poked his head in, still hanging onto the
bedroom door. “Are you up?”

“Yeah, I was just about to take a shower,” I held up
my clothes for him to see. “Unless you wanted something?”

“No, go ahead and shower. But do you wanna watch a
movie after?”

“Yeah, sure,” I shrugged. “Have you slept yet?” It
was after six, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t gotten any sleep
since he got back.

“Nah, I’m okay,” he shook his head. “I’ll talk to you
after your shower then.”

“Uh, yeah, okay?”

With that, he left, shutting the bedroom door behind
him. I stood there, holding my clothes in my arms, trying to figure
out what was going on. I heard him knocking on the door across the
hall. He got more nervous, which made me nervous, so I decided to
wait to see how this turned out before I got in the shower.

“Yeah?” Peter opened his bedroom door sounding
crabby, but that was Peter.

“I went to the video store and I,
uh, rented
Brideshead
Revisited
. I know you really like it, and I
thought you might want to watch it with us. Me and Alice, I mean,”
Jack said.

“Um… sure.” Peter sounded taken back, and so was
I.

“Alice’s taking a shower, so it’ll be a little bit,”
Jack said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” There was kind of an awkward silence. Jack
must’ve finally excused himself because Peter shut his door, and I
heard Jack running back down the stairs.

In the shower, I sing very loudly
(today it was the theme to
Golden
Girls
), but even over the sound of my voice
and the water running, I could still hear Mae screaming. This would
later prove to be a godsend, when Peter explained to me that
Brideshead Revisited
is
an eleven-hour long period piece that originally aired on the BBC
in the 1980’s.

At the time, however, Mae’s desperate pleas were
enough to scare the hell out of me.

- 18 –

Once I got out of the shower, I could hear well
enough to ascertain that Mae wasn’t in immediate danger, and Ezra
was trying to calm her. But something was the matter and I didn’t
like it. I threw on a pair of my sweats and one of Jack’s oversized
tee shirts, and hurried out the door.

“I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.” That was
Bobby’s word of advice. He stood just outside of Milo’s door with a
hoodie wrapped tightly around him. “It doesn’t sound pretty.”

“You aren’t bloody listening to me, Ezra! You never
listen to me!” Mae shouted from downstairs.

“What’s going on?” I asked Bobby, hoping to gain some
insight on the situation before diving into it.

“I don’t really know. Milo and Jack left on a blood
run about fifteen minutes ago, and Mae and Ezra started fighting a
few minutes after that,” Bobby shrugged.

A blood run meant that we were getting low on bag
blood at the house, and they had gone to get some from a blood
bank. My stomach grumbled at just the thought of blood, but Mae was
yelling so much, I ignored it.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I am not going to calm
down!” Mae continued after Ezra mistakenly suggested she relax a
bit. “This isn’t something that we should be reasonable about! This
is life and death, Ezra!”

“I know that, Mae! That’s exactly why we need to
think about this!” Ezra raised his voice, but there was nothing
angry about it. He was just trying to be heard over her. “But
everyone else in the house doesn’t need to hear us yelling.”

“I don’t care who hears anything!” Mae yelled,
followed quickly by the sound of something glass smashing, like a
vase. Matilda barked in response, and Mae snapped at her to shut
up.

“See?” Bobby whispered, but the things that made him
cower were exactly the reasons I felt like I had to intervene.
Peter was still in his room, trying to sleep from the slow sound of
his heartbeat, so that left me as the only one to help out.

I went downstairs and found Matilda looking as
worried as a dog can look. Mae stood to one side of the living
room, and she was even worse than yesterday. Her hair was a frizzy
mess, and her skin was blotchy from yelling and crying so much. She
hadn’t changed her pajamas in days.

Glass was shattered all over floor in front of her. A
heavy glass statue of a swan had sat on the mantle, and she
would’ve had to have thrown it very hard to make it shatter like
that.

“You’ve woken Alice,” Ezra told Mae, almost tiredly.
He stood on the far side of the room across from her, wearing silk
pajama pants and a tee shirt. Apparently, they had started fighting
immediately after waking up.

“No, I was awake. I just got out of the shower.” I
tugged at my hair to demonstrate. It dripped wet down my back since
I hadn’t had a chance to dry it.

“I don’t care if I wake her! I don’t care if I wake
anybody!” Mae raised her head to the ceiling as if to wake anybody
else that might be sleeping.

“Will you knock it off? This isn’t about them. This
isn’t their fault,” Ezra said.

“How is it
not
about them?” She pointed at me,
but she refused to look at me. “This is completely about them!
They’re why you won’t do this!”

“No, that’s not true. They have no bearing on this,”
he shook his head.

“Bloody hell they don’t! They have
everything to do with it! You wouldn’t even turn Alice because her
brother had just turned, and I
know
you wanted her to turn!” Mae gave him a knowing
look that I didn’t understand, and he shook his head. “Don’t be so
damn condescending, Ezra! I know you turned her brother for her! So
why won’t you do this for me?”

“This is an entirely different situation, and I won’t
do this. Absolutely not.” He was quiet, but his voice was so firm
and finite.

“Dammit, Ezra!” Mae wailed, tears
streaming down her cheeks. “You can’t deny me this! You have no
right!
No right
!”

“I cannot allow this, Mae, and I am sorry.” He pursed
his lips tightly but didn’t budge.

She looked ready to collapse, but he made no move
towards her. I wanted to help, but I was afraid of how she might
react to me. If Ezra wasn’t going to tend to her, then I didn’t
think that I should either.

“You are not sorry! You are cold and you are cruel,
and I cannot spend my life with you!” She was sobbing so hard she
had to grip onto the back of the chair to keep from falling over.
“I will not let you make this decision for me! You can’t!”

“You’re right. I cannot make this choice for you, but
I will not tolerate it, either. You can do whatever you like, but
you will not be allowed in my house with that abomination,” Ezra
said coolly.

“Abomination
?” Her voice cracked. “We are the abomination! She is merely a
child, and I want to save her!”

“You cannot save her, Mae! You can only turn her into
a monster!”

“Like we’re monsters?” Mae brushed a strand of her
hair from her eyes and looked down at the floor. “Maybe we are, and
maybe she would be too, but she would have a life. And it wouldn’t
be a bad life. She could have everything that we have to
offer.”

“We have nothing to offer her,” he said.

“How can you say that?” Mae gaped at him, then she
looked at me with hate for the first time, and I flinched. “Is it
because of her? Because of Alice? She gets everything you have to
offer? You let Jack turn her and gave him no repercussions, even
though you had just turned her brother. For her.

“She is not the only thing in this life that needs
you, Ezra! In fact, I don’t think she even needs you! You aren’t
that indispensable to her!” Her lips quivered, and she glared at
him. “You aren’t that indispensable to me either!”

“If I’m some kind of burden, I can leave. I don’t
want to cause any problems between you two,” I said quietly. I
hadn’t completely figured out what their fight was about yet, but I
certainly didn’t want to be the source of it.

“You’re not a burden,” Ezra said, looking
apologetically at me. “Don’t worry yourself with this. You can go
up to your room.”

“What if she moves out?” Mae latched onto an idea,
and her entire demeanor changed. She took a few quick steps closer
to Ezra, deftly missing all of the broken glass on the floor. “She
and Jack could move out. He can take care of her, and Milo is
already self-sufficient. Peter is gone most of the time anyway. We
have the room, and we have the time.”

“Alice and Milo are not ready to be on their own like
that,” Ezra said. “And it isn’t about them! You keep trying to
solve something that isn’t the problem. Even if everyone moved out,
and it was just the two of us, I would still say no. This cannot be
done, Mae, no matter what anybody else does or doesn’t do.”

“There has to be something!” She
knelt on the ground at his feet. She was literally begging him, and
when she took his hand, he didn’t pull away, but he wouldn’t look
directly at her. “Ezra!
Please
! I have never asked you for
anything like this before!”

“You’ve asked me for plenty like this before, and I
have indulged you too much,” he sighed. “But I cannot do this. I
won’t.”

Mae let go of his hand and sat back on her heels.
Closing her eyes, she rubbed at her forehead, and I knew she was
trying to think of something.

“What if
she
wanted it?” Mae looked up at him,
but she was talking about me. I was getting increasingly
uncomfortable with the way she talked about me like I wasn’t
standing right here.

“I don’t know why you have this idea that I have some
special relationship with Alice.” He sounded tired by the idea, but
he wouldn’t look at me.

“Because you turned her brother for her! I know you
were against adding more vampires, but you did that for her
anyway!”

“Yes, and I did the same with Jack,
for
you
.” Ezra
looked severely at Mae. Her face darkened with shame, and she
looked down at the floor.

I had no idea what Ezra was talking about. From what
I knew, Peter had turned Jack in order to save his life. The story
that I heard from everyone never made any mention of Mae or Ezra at
all. It had been an act of compassion, and for some reason, that
made Mae squirm.

“That was different,” Mae said quietly.

“Yes, it was. Because Alice actually cared for her
brother. He wasn’t just some random kid.” Ezra looked off at the
wall behind her. “And Milo’s young, but he is not a child.”

“She is innocent! She deserves a life!” Mae twisted a
tissue in her hands and turned to look at me, pleading with me.
“Alice, tell him! I don’t care what he says! He’ll listen to you!
If you tell him that he needs to do this, he will!”

“I-I don’t really know what you’re talking about.” I
turned to Ezra for help, but he just looked grimly at me. “I can’t
tell him anything if I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“My great-granddaughter Daisy,” Mae said, silent
tears sliding down her face. “She is only five years old, and she’s
going to die. She hasn’t had a chance to live her life yet. But if
we turn her, she can live forever. She can do anything!”

“Except grow up,” Ezra reminded her. “She can never
fall in love or get married. She’ll never be able to live on her
own or drive a car or even go to a bar. She’ll depend on you for
everything, forever, and that may delight you, but she’ll hate you
for cursing her to this life.

“Other vampires will never accept her, or you, for
it,” he went on. “They’ll try to kill her because she’s an
abomination against everything we are. And that says nothing to our
more perverse underbelly, who thrive on making childlike vampires
to live as their slaves or to trade with human pedophiles in
exchange for blood. Is that really the kind of life you want for
her? Do you think that’s what her hopes and dreams amount to?”

“It won’t be like that,” Mae insisted. “We will
protect her and love her, and she’ll have everything a child could
ever want.”

“But she won’t really be a child forever! She’ll be a
woman trapped in a child’s body with a child’s temperament for all
of eternity. That is a horrible thing to do to someone you claim to
love so much,” he said.

“You don’t understand!” Mae looked desperately at
him, and he met her eyes. “I cannot let this happen! I swore I
would never watch another one of my children die!” He exhaled
deeply and matched her intense expression with a calm one of his
own.

“Then don’t watch,” Ezra said.

“Ezra!” I shouted, unable to believe that he would
say something that cold to Mae.

“I know she is hurting, but I can’t do this!” His
collected façade evaporated for a moment, and he was merely
exasperated and worried. Mae had gone back to looking at the floor
and crying, and for a brief second, he looked completely lost.
“There is nothing I can do to rectify this situation.”

“So then comfort her! Don’t yell at her!” I told him,
still in shock over how icy he had been to her.

“No, it’s alright, Alice,” Mae said wearily and shook
her head. “I knew what I was going to get from him. Ezra is many
things, but he is predictable above all else.” Sighing, she got to
her feet. She wiped the tears from her face and tried to smooth out
her hair. When she had composed herself a bit, she turned to look
at him. “I will do what I have to do.”