Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Heather stopped writing. Wait . This was a dream—only a dream. Not a glimpse into the mind of a woman twenty years dead. Just a dream, a recurring one that she’d had for years, not an interview with a victim.

Sighing, Heather tossed her pad and pen onto the nightstand and sat up. She wrapped her arms around her sheet-draped knees. Eerie was on his back at the foot of the bed, his belly up for pats. He watched her through slitted, contented eyes.

“Morning, you,” she said.

Just a dream, yes, but one that was refusing to fade. She still heard the creak of the car door opening, Shannon’s drunken giggles, still smelled cigarette smoke from the tavern. Just a dream, but one that’d dropped her deeply into her mother’s mind, a dream laden with more details than ever before.

Ever since D.C .

Sighing, she glanced at the clock. The red, glowing numbers shocked her completely awake. 11:45 a.m. Shit! Jumping out of bed, Heather plucked her robe up from the chair and slipped it on over her PJs, belted it.

Ever since she’d been shot, she’d been sleeping later and later. She wondered if the shock to her system had altered her biorhythms. She’d never really been a morning person, but had learned to cope over the years, like most people in the human workaday world. Could Dante, while healing her, somehow have changed her? She went still inside at the thought.

Mantra: One thing at a time.

Drawing in a deep breath, Heather pushed aside her troubling thoughts, knowing she’d examine them again later and in more depth. She stepped into the hall and smelled fresh-brewed coffee, the welcome scent filling the house.

She paused in the hall, combing her fingers through her hair for several moments before she realized she was gathering energy, preparing for Annie.

But instead of moving forward, she closed her eyes, uncertainty and desperation twin spikes nailing her in place. Could she help Annie? She was running out of options, running low on hope. Sure, the truth about their mother might grant insight into Annie, but would it be enough to save her?

Shannon’s bleak thought echoed within her: Have I lost her?

Heather opened her eyes. No. I can’t. I won’t . Shoving aside her doubts, she walked into the dining room. Annie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofa, flipping through one of Heather’s books on vampires— While We Sleep . A mug rested on the coffee table.

Annie glanced up. “Hey. Good noon. There’s coffee.”

Heather smiled and nodded. “Yeah, same to you. And thanks.” Going to the kitchen, she pulled a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee into it, sugared and lightened it with half-and-half. Curling up on the sofa, she asked, “How you feeling? No hangover?”

Annie closed the book, and placed it back on the coffee table. She shrugged. “I’m fine.” She glanced over her shoulder at Heather, her blue, black, and purple hair swinging against her face. “I’m sorry about last night, about all the stuff I said about Mom. Seeing those pictures…I mean, I never imagined…”

“I know,” Heather said. “Nothing ever prepares you for the reality.”

Annie’s apology surprised her. Normally when she spun out of control, lashing out at everything and everyone around her, she’d pretend afterward like it’d never happened. Or excused it away as just being drunk.

“How do you handle it? Seeing bodies, I mean? Does it ever freak you out?”

“Sure, it freaks me out from time to time. And to be honest, I don’t know how I handle it, I just do.” Heather took a sip of coffee, then added, “I have to if I’m going to find out who killed them.”

“But Mom’s been dead for ages,” Annie said, pushing her hair back from her face. “Why are you digging into it now?”

“Because I watched someone else speak for his mother and realized no one, not even Dad, had spoken for our mother.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Dante.”

“His mom was murdered too?” Annie asked. She curled a lock of hair behind one ear, revealing the studs circling its rim, her face thoughtful. “No wonder…”

“No wonder what?”

“Nothing.” Annie shook her head. “He’s nothing like the other guys you’ve dated. Well, I mean, aside from the fact he’s a freaking vampire.”

“True.”

“And he looks awfully young. You robbing the cradle? Or is he like centuries old?” Annie scooted around to face Heather. Sunlight glinted from the rings looped through her eyebrows.

“Thanks, thanks a lot, Little Ms. I’m-Twenty-six. Wait till you’re thirty-one. He’s twenty-three, so he’s been out of the cradle for a while and we’re not dating, anyway.”

“Oh. Excuse me.” Annie rolled her eyes. “Sleeping together, not dating.”

“Okaaay, let’s turn this conversation to you,” Heather said. Eerie hopped up onto the sofa and, purring, graced her lap with his warm presence. She set her mug on the arm of the sofa and petted him, smoothing her palm down his silky, furred back. “So what’s the plan? Is this just a visit, or are you seeking sanctuary?”

Annie’s shoulders hunched forward, her body stiffened. “Fuck, I haven’t even been here a day and you’re already trying to get rid of me.” Setting her mug back on the coffee table, she rose to her feet.

“Don’t start,” Heather said. “I’m not trying to get rid of you. You broke into my house and I want to know if you have a plan. What about your apartment in Portland? Are you moving here? What about a job? Your meds? Therapy?”

“Oh, I get it.” Annie turned around, her hands clenched into fists. “Let’s just lobotomize Annie. Make everything much simpler for you, wouldn’t it?”

Heather picked up Eerie and placed him on the cushion beside her. “Quit twisting things around! This isn’t about me!”

“Sure. Uh-huh.” Pointing her middle, fuck-you finger at the carton on the table, Annie said, “That dead bitch is more important to you than me.”

Fury pushed Heather up from the sofa and onto her feet. “Annie, stop,” she said, voice low and tight. “Stop, right now.”

“You only care about the dead ! That’s all you think about! Talk about!” Annie yelled. “Maybe if I died—”

Heather grabbed Annie’s shoulders. “Don’t say that!”

“It’s true!” She knuckled a fist into Heather’s shoulder. “What if you’d died, huh? What if you’d fucking died and left me all alone?”

Hot pain knotted Heather’s shoulder, but Annie’s words hurt worse than her punch; her words knifed Heather’s heart and stole her breath. What if you’d died?

Heather wrapped her arms around Annie and pulled her stiff, but unresisting body into hers. Hugged her tight. “It’s all right. We’ll figure it out. You know I’d never ditch you. It’s just that things aren’t safe—”

“Let mom stay dead, Heather. Let mom stay dead so we can be a family again.”

Heather went still. She felt cold, like winter had awakened within her, gray and icy and stark.

I want us to be a family again. All of us. But don’t dig up the past, Heather. Look to the future and let the dead remain dead .

Maybe no one’s phone had been tapped.

She’d only told one person what Dante had done. She poured her secrets and confessions into Annie, believing that as keeper of Annie’s whispered yearnings and manic desires, her sister wouldn’t judge her. Believed their shared secrets strengthened the bond between them—sisters and survivors.