The Sunlight Slayings (19 page)

“Sure,”
Emalie grunted. She clearly didn't want to hear about Jenette right now.

“So,” Dean continued, “do you think your parents already knew about Emalie and the Brotherhood?”

“I don't know what they knew,” Oliver finished, “except they knew they couldn't trust me.” Realizing this almost made Oliver feel better. His parents—
my vampire parents
—had seen through his lies again. What were they going to do to him when he got home? “Who cares,” he mumbled.

“What?” asked Emalie.

“Nothing.” He looked to Emalie. “When the Brotherhood had you, did Braiden say why they didn't want me to open the Gate?”

“No,” Emalie replied. “They just grabbed me from the basement, without a word. But I bet we can find out about that, too,” she added hopefully.

Oliver nodded, and now it sank in that for the first time since back in December, Emalie was talking about things that they were going to do together. He and Emalie and Dean …

He had his friends again. The thought made him smile—

“Oliver?”

Oliver looked up at the sound of the girl's voice. A group of vampire kids had stopped in front of them. There were unknowing human teens passing in clusters as well, coming from the nearby Vera Project, where an all-ages show must have just ended.

“Um, hey,” Oliver said, but Suzyn just stared coldly at him.

“Nocturne?” Theo pushed his way to her side. “What's up, Ollie, we thought you might still come to the p—whoa …” His eyes widened, taking in the zombie and human that Oliver was sitting with. “No … way …”

“That's disgusting,” Suzyn said coldly. She stormed off and the group quickly followed.

Oliver could hear Theo as they left: “Me? Nah, I never doubted that he was a freak. I was just waiting for the right time to let you all know.…”

Oliver just nodded to himself. He listened as the snickering group walked off, and realized that he felt relieved. There. He was a misfit again, at home and at school. Everything was back to normal.

“Don't worry about it.” Dean patted Oliver on the back. “Let's get out of here.”

Oliver shrugged. “Sure.”

“Your dad's probably worried about you,” Dean said to Emalie.

“Yeah, we should do that,” she agreed, then added out of nowhere, “but I want ice cream.”

“Huh?” Oliver replied.

“Ice cream.” Emalie smiled. “It's a food.”

“Yeah, I know.… I—okay, sure,” said Oliver. Besides, he was up for anything that delayed him going home.

“You were just frozen in time and you want ice cream?” Dean asked.

Emalie turned and punched him in the shoulder, much harder than she would have if he were alive. “Which means I missed dinner,” she replied, defiantly cheery, “and now I'm hungry. So there.”

“Dick's has milk shakes,” Oliver offered. “Some vampires work there, too, so we can get a discount.”

For a moment, Oliver, Emalie, and Dean looked at one another. Oliver wondered if they, too, were considering how weird it was to be treating one another like normal friends, despite all the weirdness surrounding it, and all the worry that the future held. Yet as they took off into the night, he could only hope they were enjoying it half as much as he was.

Eventually, the night had to end. They headed to Emalie's and found her dad worried sick, which seemed to please Emalie as much as it annoyed her.

Standing in the alley behind the house, before Emalie had gone inside, they'd spent a moment figuring out what would happen next.

“Let's meet Friday night to try to locate your master,” Emalie suggested.

“Cool,” Dean said, the idea making him look away nervously.

“And maybe this week,” Emalie continued, “I can look for more info on your parents, I mean—your old parents, Oliver—”

“My real parents,” said Oliver.

“And there's got to be information about Nexia out there somewhere,” Dean added.

“Yeah, online or something,” Emalie agreed. “We have to figure out why the Brotherhood was so determined to slay you.”

“They'll probably try again,” said Dean.

Oliver felt them both look to him. “Right,” he said. The danger worried him, but he liked making plans, and yet the truth was, all these plans involved him surviving whatever was going to happen when he got home.

“Okay, I should go,” said Emalie. “Oliver, just—I'm sorry again, about the Scourge.”

Oliver met the gaze from her wide, clear eyes and felt a knot twist inside him, tightening and making him want to run away from her—it felt awkward, and annoying, but he fought the feeling, holding her gaze and saying, “It's good. I mean, it's okay. We're good.” As he said it, an unrelated thought popped into his mind, from a few nights ago. Something he could do—something he wanted to do … But he said nothing about it right then.

Besides, Dean was already snickering at him. “Dork,” he chided.

Oliver smiled.

Emalie headed inside. Oliver and Dean watched for a while to make sure things went okay, and when they did, they both headed home.

Oliver's pace slowed as he walked up the sewer beneath Twilight Lane. The familiar feelings of doubt returned as he entered the basement door—the same old anxiety of unknowing, the same old frustration that things had to be so strange, so wrong—but at least there was also a twinge of comfort because, unlike a few months ago, he didn't feel alone now.

He wound up the stairs and entered the kitchen. Forks and knives were scraping dinner plates in the dining room. Oliver reached the doorway. Phlox, Sebastian, and Bane were all sitting, eating silently. Now Phlox looked up—

And then looked down at her plate without a word. She grabbed her goblet and took a sip. Oliver felt a stab of worry. He saw that Bane had noticed Phlox's reaction and was now wearing a smile miles wide.

Bane, the favorite son.… There were more questions for him. Had he known what would happen when he ignited that orb back in the school gymnasium, on the night of Dean's death? Did he even know that someone else had entered that scene?

“Sit down, Oliver.” It was Sebastian, his back still to Oliver.

Oliver slid nervously into his chair. There was a plate in front of him, with a perfect slice of butterscotch meringue pie in a chocolate cookie crust. A goblet stood full beside that. Oliver dared a glance around the table. Bane was still grinning at him. Phlox and Sebastian were looking at their plates, eating intently.

What did this mean? Oliver slowly took a bite, waiting for the explosion, the yelling, but it didn't come. Not on the second bite, not on the third …

Phlox put down her fork, then dabbed at her mouth with a cloth napkin. “Do you think they will try again, with the Scourge?” she quietly asked Sebastian.

Sebastian paused, fork in midair. “Now that they've lost their element of surprise, I don't think so. We sent them a message tonight, a bloody one. I think the Brotherhood will bide their time … at least for a while.” The way Sebastian spoke, it sounded as if he'd heard of the Brotherhood before. “Schools will reopen on Monday, at any rate.”

“Man,” Bane muttered.

Neither Phlox nor Sebastian responded.

Another silent minute passed. Oliver's gut was doing flips. How could they not be saying anything? Were they mad? Why weren't they yelling at him? Was this a good thing? Oliver finished his pie in huge, nervous bites.

“Do you want any more?” Phlox asked tightly, eyes still on her plate.

“No thanks,” Oliver mumbled. He had no idea what to do. Should he just excuse himself from the table? That seemed to be what came next. But was that really the plan? To act like everything was normal?
Maybe they're okay with everything
, Oliver thought briefly, but how could that be?

At that moment, Oliver felt something snap inside. He couldn't take this anymore.
No, don't say anything!
he thought desperately—but then he did:

“So now what?”

Phlox looked up. She met Sebastian's eyes, then looked back down at her food. “What do you mean,
now what
?” she replied softly.

What
did
he mean?
Just drop it!
he thought wildly, but no, he needed to know what this was going to be. “I mean, now what, with me? I—you guys know about … about Em—”

“We're not going to talk about it,” Phlox interrupted. She finally looked at him, and her eyes were smoldering. “That's what.”

Oliver felt a rush of anger. “What do you mean ‘
not talk about it
'?”

“I mean not … talk … about it,” Phlox hissed. “And you …” She paused and took a sip from her goblet. “You're going to get over it.”

“Over what?”

“Over her.”

“But—”

“That's enough,” Sebastian said sternly. “Go get ready for bed.”

Oliver couldn't believe it. This was their solution? To not talk about it?

“Fine.” He left the table and stormed downstairs, trying to figure out what had just happened.

Later, lying sleepless in his coffin, the thoughts clicked together in his head:
It just means that they don't have a solution. They don't know what to do
. So where did that leave things?
It leaves things stuck right where they are
, he thought reluctantly. Not one place or another. And maybe that wasn't so bad, for now.

Get over her
.

Oliver almost laughed. Yeah, right.

After breakfast the next evening, Oliver asked: “Can I go down to Harvey's?”

“Why?” Phlox countered. She was dicing the legs off of a pile of frozen cockroaches on the stone counter. Her chopping seemed to grow louder.

“To get a sorbet,” he said simply.

Silence again. “All right.” Phlox said without making eye contact.

“Thanks.” Oliver grabbed his sweatshirt before anything more could be said. It seemed that the rules were the same as they had always been. Everything was apparently fine, until someone figured out what to do next.

Well, Oliver knew what he was going to do next. He set out into the night, going two places, neither of which were Harvey's.

When Oliver arrived at the second of his two destinations, he placed a package wrapped in deep purple paper and tied with a crimson bow, on a cement landing. He knocked lightly on the door in front of him—the knock of a coconspirator—then flipped up into the air. He landed on the wall and scrambled quickly to the peak of the roof. Then he flipped over, feet to the overhang of the roof, and hung, inverted like a bat. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, and watched the basement door.

There was silence. The door creaked open. Emalie's braided head peered out into the night, glancing left and right. Then she looked down and sighed, the kind that could be annoyance or surprise: With Emalie, it was usually both.

She crouched down and picked up the package, tossing it in her hands a few times. She untied the bow, draped it around her neck, and tore at the paper. The sounds of its ripping startled a cat beneath the nearby parked van.

Emalie balled up the paper and stuffed it in her back pocket. She flipped open a cardboard box, pushing aside folds of tissue paper, and when she saw what was inside, she gave a sharp intake of breath: This one was unmistakable.

Oliver couldn't see her face, but he could tell by the way that she held the clunky old camera out in front of her, letting its worn chrome corners play in the streetlight, that she must be smiling. And that made Oliver's gut clench and burn with nerves, yet this feeling was something just a little bit different than his usual suffering, than anything he'd felt before—

And it was all the difference in the world.

Below, Emalie held her new camera to her eye, the same model as the one she'd broken. Oliver heard the shutter click—heard the quiet ripple as she advanced the roll of film he'd put inside. She turned, clicked again. Then, without so much as a glance upward, she hurried back into the basement, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Oliver stayed there, hanging still. Then he flipped upward, somersaulting and landing on the roof. He raced ahead and leaped into the air, quieter and faster than he'd ever moved before. Wind and rain whipped at his face.

There were worries, there were fears, and most of the future seemed confusing, but in that moment, if Oliver could have glimpsed his reflection, he would have seen a surprising grin.

BONUS / Interlude

Amethyst and Jade

Emalie's Account: Part Two

These entries originally appeared on Emalie's blog between the

events of Book Two and Book Three

April 6, 5:45 a.m.

Hey, it's me.

Long time no type. I've been a little out of sorts since Valentine's Day. Some girls get a romantic dinner at a fine restaurant. I got the fine restaurant, and a romantic … blood draining? I barely got out of the Space Needle with my life. If it hadn't been for Oliver …

He gave me a new camera too! A nice old clunky one. Just between you and me, that was sweet of him. As you can see, I'm not calling him “it” anymore.

A lot's happened since I last wrote. We proved that Oliver didn't kill Dean. Someone was watching and waiting that night in the school, and
he
killed Dean, then hid his work behind a false memory. That someone is Dean's master, and we don't know who he is or what he's up to … yet. We're using a master location enchantment once a month to try to find him. No luck so far.

There was more trickery too. While I was searching for Dean's killer, the Brotherhood of the Fallen hired a wraith to possess me and used me to try to slay Oliver. That slimy Braiden Lang character seems to think Oliver's destiny is a danger to humanity. We don't know why that is yet either.