The Keeper's Vow (39 page)

When they walked in, Katie saw him right
away sitting on a bar stool staring down at his drink. He didn’t
notice them though. Not until Lucinda was two feet from him.

“Tristan? Why haven’t you come home? What
are you doing in a bar? You’re not old enough to—”

“Leave me the hell alone.” He turned back to
the drink in front of him. It would be the first one since he woke
up.

“Tristan—”

“I said back the fuck off.”

Lucinda stood still and steadied her
breathing. Katie wanted to warn her. Tristan was a rumbling
volcano, but only Katie could feel the earthquake beneath her feet.
He sat still as stone looking at his drink.

Lucinda tried to grab his drink but he
smacked it onto the ground right before she touched it.

“HEY!” the bartender yelled. He was a burly
man with thick side burns and reaching for something under the
bar.

“It’s alright, Birmingham. He’s my
nephew.”

Tristan stood up. “I’m nothing to you. No, I
take that back. I’m a blood-whore’s baby. You remember that letter?
I bet you do. It made my mother cry for months.”

“Hey, get out kid,” Birmingham said, wiping
the spilled liquor off the table. He didn’t take his eyes off
Tristan.

Tristan moved past Lucinda and towards
Katie. He didn’t look at her. He was walking past her as if she
didn’t exist.

“Tristan.” It came out a whisper. But she
couldn’t let him walk out the door. “Tristan.”

He stopped.

“Please, stop. Just—”

When his eyes met hers, a shudder ran down
her entire body. She felt everything. His anger. His sadness. His
regret. Everything. And it was all meant for her. He hated her to
his core.

“
You
are the worst. While you grew up
with two families and a clean conscience, I lived in solitude like
a prisoner. No one wanted me. Because I’m the real version of what
you are. Even the man who locked me away spent all this time
waiting to give you free ice cream. While you
have
a life, I
have to live mine tied to yours because your whore-mother took that
away from me. From the day you were born and until the day I die,
it will
always
be about you.”

His nostrils flared and he dug his nails
into his hands. She could feel the pain on her own hands. “I
fucking
hate
you.”

Hot tears ran down her face. She wished…she
wished that he was lying. Saying it to hurt her. But all she felt
was his hate mixed in with loss, loneliness, fear, and regret. All
of it pulsed through her until she couldn’t breathe.

Tristan walked out the door. Inside, her
heart burst and she dropped to her knees. She could even feel his
heart turning to stone and crumbling into tiny pieces—the shards
stabbed at her insides. This is what they had done to him. The way
she couldn’t breathe, the way she couldn’t stand, or feel Lucinda
pulling her up. This is what she had done to him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

How do you fix
something so broken you can’t even recognize the pieces? Katie
could see now, that his entire life he’d been trying to glue the
pieces of himself together. One by one, he tired to make himself
whole, but glue never holds up. He had come back because he
couldn’t do it by himself. He’d needed them. He’d needed her.

After seeing him in the bar, the visions got
no better or worse, they just changed. She was his nightmare. All
those times she’d thought of him as a monster, gotten angry with
him for being reclusive, the way she’d said he ruined her life. It
was all there laid out for her to see while he pounded back more
drinks. He was always drinking.

Katie was on her way to school, alone,
because Allison never walked with her anymore. Or talked with her.
Or looked at her.

Katie got as far as the school steps before
she turned around. She hadn’t drank blood and she was almost a week
over due. Her vision was fuzzy at times, it was hard to hear, and
she’d tripped over her own feet twice already in the last five
minutes. She needed to drink, but more blood meant more Tristan.
She didn’t want to feel the distinctive burn of vodka right before
he threw it up.

She wondered around downtown in a fuzz. The
first time she was downtown with Tristan, he’d followed her around
from shop to shop until she confronted him. He couldn’t just tell
her that he could hear her thoughts. No, he always had to be
indirect.

For him, being indirect was making an
effort. He always wanted her to meet him half way. She’d spent
their entire relationship expecting him to do all of the work.

Katie stopped in front of Larry’s ice scream
shop. He was in there scooping out ice cream for an older woman.
She went to open the door. It would be her first time seeing him
since that night. What would she say?

He was waving her in.

She opened the door and sat at one of the
tables. She didn’t want ice cream. Why was she here?

He waved the woman out of the store and took
a long look at Katie. He walked over to the door and locked it,
flipped the open sign over to closed, and sat down across from her.
“You don’t look well.” He didn’t sound like Larry, the friendly ice
cream man. He was Larry, the night club owner. Things had
changed.

Katie smiled. It was weak. She felt like she
was going to cry. Why
was
she crying in front of Larry in
his ice cream shop? Her head was down on the table and he patted
her back until she stopped. He didn’t ask her what was wrong, or
tell her everything was going to be okay. He just let her cry.

“I’ll tell you a story.” She heard Larry
shift in his chair. “My father used to hate me because I didn’t
need blood
and
food from the earth like him. Every one but
him saw me as a blessing from God.”

Katie looked up.

“He tried to kill me when I was ten. That
was when I found out I had the ability to heal myself.”

Katie raised her eyebrows in question.

“Because he and a few others, saw our
births—me and the other royal children—as a curse. The women
stopped being fertile, and we were the only ones ever with gifts
that were supposedly from the God that had originally damned us. It
was a very complicated time.

“Ivan is really the one who saved me. We
were best-friends growing up. Inseparable—until he moved to The New
World.” Larry drifted and stared out past her. “I had been
screaming because my father was pushing iron nails in my hands and
feet. He was going to crucify me and told me if I was really from
God that I should be glad to die. He told me neither God, nor God’s
blessings had a place in his house. Not when the rest of them were
cursed to live in the shadows.

Ivan was smaller than me then, but he had
the strength of a thousand men. My father was about to put the
final nail through my skull when Ivan hurled Father across the room
and said he’d kill him if he ever touched me again. Ivan had thick
black hair like Tristan—but it was at his shoulders then.

No one knew what his gift was. I was the
only one to ever see him use it. I kept his secret, and he kept my
father away from me until the day came when we had to kill our
fathers.”

Katie swallowed.

“Tristan reminds me of Ivan. He hardly ever
smiled, and when he did it was always a mocking smirk that, most
times, I wanted to slap off his face. And he was always…cryptic. It
was easier to make a cat walk on water than it was to get him to
speak openly.”

Katie sat up in her chair. “Tristan stayed
with you after didn’t he?”

Larry nodded. “I kept him in my house in New
York.” Lawrence was quiet for a while.

Katie tried to make sense of it. There had
to be a reason.

“Tristan is a—troubled boy. I can’t say I
approve of you having a relationship with him. Let alone being
bonded.”

Katie looked away. First: they
didn’t
have a relationship
.
Second: Larry wasn’t exactly someone
who could approve or disapprove. Third: Tristan wouldn’t be so
troubled if he’d raised him instead of leaving him in a house to
raise himself like a potted plant.

“I can tell by the look on your face—you
didn’t like what I just said.” Larry laughed. “You’re like your
mother.”

“How’d you know my mother?” Katie said,
feeling intruded on.

Larry stood up and walked over to the
counter. He grabbed something and came back. He handed her
Allison’s cellphone. “Maybe we’ll talk about that next time? I
can’t make any money if I’m closed, and you never pay.” He smiled
at her teasingly, but there it was. Evasion. How had he known her
mother? Why did he own an ice cream shop near her neighborhood
called ‘
Kat’s’
ice cream.

She left. She didn’t want to open that can
of worms. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Nope.

She waited outside of her school when the
last bell rang. She went in and waited by Allison’s locker. They
still weren’t talking to each other, but she needed to give her her
cellphone back.

As soon as Allison saw her she scowled. She
opened her locker and put her books away, all the while acting as
if Katie wasn’t there.

“I have your cellphone,” Katie said.

The locker slammed. “You had my phone this
whole time?”

“No—I.”

“
Unfreakingbelievable.”
Allison
grabbed it from her.

“I didn’t have it. You left it—forget it.”
Katie turned to walk away.

Allison stopped her. “What’s been up with
you?” Allison looked a little sheepish, like maybe she was talking
about the weather and not worried.

Katie almost lied. But when she opened her
mouth, the truth poured out instead. “My best-friend hates me.
Tristan told me that he hates me. My dad and Lucinda won’t talk to
me. Traci thinks I’m a failure, I can’t see most of the time, I’m
tired. I think I might puke again—for the third time today. I have
daymares and nightmares without even closing my eyes. And I think
the ice cream man is my father.”

Allison stared at her. “Wait. Have you gone
to the hospital—Larry? You think Larry is your dad?”

“No hospital. Lucinda says it’s withdrawals.
And yeah, Larry. He all but told me just now. My father is the ice
cream man. I think I might puke again.”

She did and Allison waited outside of the
bathroom stall.

“So before we attack that beast of a reveal,
tell me what you’re withdrawing from?”

Allison’s voice was dangerous.

“I’m not on drugs. Is there anyone else in
here?”

Allison’s footsteps clicked up and down the
bathroom. “No.”

Katie opened the stall and splashed her face
with water. “Blood.”

Allison nodded. “You’ve—how long? What’s it
like.”

“First time was the last time as far as I’m
concerned. It taste like rot and—” Katie couldn’t continue. She
couldn’t tell her about Tristan. She could never tell anyone. “It’s
been a rough few weeks.” Katie looked at Allison through the mirror
avoiding her own face. She had adopted a grayish look about her and
tried her best to pretend she was still okay. Still herself. “How
about you?”

“Me what?” Allison cocked her head to the
side. Was Katie that bad of a friend that Allison didn’t know she
was asking,
‘how are you.’
Was that such a foreign concept
to Allison? Katie’s stomach tightened.

“How are you handling the—breakup and
stuff?” Katie wanted to ask about the divorce but maybe she wasn’t
considered privileged enough to bring it up. Allison was keeping
her distance and looking a bit nonchalant.

“Oh. Adam and I are talking again. Turned
out he thought I stopped liking him because I was snapping at him
all the time. I was just mad about my parent’s divorce. If I’d had
just told him we could have avoided it all. I probably could have
talked to him about it. His parents are divorced too. It’s really
not that big of a deal. I mean it’s not like they were the perfect
couple or anything. To be honest, I’m kind of glad my dad is moving
out. Anyway—”

Katie nodded.

Allison nodded.

“Sorry,” they both said at the same
time.

They were never good at making up from
fights. They would usually pretend like the fight never happened
and move on.

Allison took a deep breath. “So Larry.
How—creepy.”

“Tell me about it.”

They were out of the bathroom and walking
downtown, making sure to avoid the ice cream shop. Allison brought
up good points: it made the free ice cream less-creepy; it was cool
to have a vampire dad; at least he was
in
the picture; and
he never specifically said it, so she could be jumping to
conclusions, though it’s highly unlikely.

They also agreed on the faults: it was still
one-hundred percent creepy that he owned an ice cream shop; her
mother left him for a reason; and worse—what he did to Tristan. How
could he neglect his best friend’s kid, or any kid for that
matter?