Page 14 of Death's Daughter
Oh, God. Happy’s.
Devon and his mysterious announcement, whatever that is. Lennie needing Daan to drive her home because she was so upset. And Carter, disappearing without a word after a spectacle that probably only reinforced his resolve to stay the hell away from all undergrads, including yours truly.
That, at least, is probably for the best. It was never going to work out anyway, with who I am. We were only going to tangle ourselves up further, causing more pain, more possible destruction.
But it doesn’tfeelfor the best. It feels like surgically removing my heart while I’m awake. Without any anesthetic.
I groan aloud, pressing my face into the pillow belatedly to muffle the sound. Then I crack one eye open, expecting to see Chessa launching her own pillow at me for waking her up so early.
Chessa’s bed is a messy tangle of covers and clean laundry she hasn’t put away yet, but she’s not in it.
I close my eyes with relief. Chessa’s out for her morning run already. And that’s good because I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about everything. Or anything.
I need more time. Maybe more sleep. Everything is better with more sleep.
I frown, though. For as early as it likely is, I actually feel all right. Oh, not emotionally. Emotionally I’m the wreck I alwaysam, but physically, other than a slightly stuffy nose, I feel good. Like, really good.
Too good.
Distantly an alarm bell begins to ring in my head. My eyes snap open, and I take stock mentally. I’m wide awake. Energetic. Satisfied. The perpetual gnawing of hunger at my core is absent.
No.Sated.
In a specific way that I haven’t felt in years.
I launch myself upright in bed, hand flying to my face and that stuffy nose. My fingers come away sticky with blood. A nosebleed.
Shit. Shit!That’s only happened twice before—three times, if you count the other half of the Ferris wheel couple, which was truly an accident. Always when I’ve fed past the point of fullness.
You mean when you killed someone.The little voice in my head sounds dazed, happy instead of biting and angry as it usually does.Sucked them dry. Devoured all their life energy. Did what you were made to do, as a first-generation child of Death.
Chessa. I rip the covers off of me, half falling in my hurry to get to my feet. This is my worst fear coming to life—to death—that I would in a state of hunger and emotional uproar lose control and feed without meaning to.
But once I’m up, it’s clear that Chessa’s not on the floor between her bed and the piles of textbooks or curled up in the corner by her overflowing closet, all gray-faced and filmy-eyed, staring up at the ceiling.
The room is truly empty, and Chessa’s running shoes and neon pink jacket, usually left by the door, are gone. She’s really not here.
I bend over, dry-heaving in relief, my stomach roiling. After a moment, though, the nausea fades, and I drop back onto my bed, trying to work out what’s going on.
If Chessa is gone and presumably fine, how am I full?
Maybe from feeding off Devon last night? That had been a burst of bitterness, a wallop of power. And from someone like me, another child of the Old Ones.
But no, I hadn’t felt this good when I went to bed. Chessa had gone back out to meet some friends at a fraternity party, but I stayed in, curling up with my laptop andFriday Night Lightsuntil I dozed off. (I never know if I want to sleep with Kyle Chandler’s Coach Taylor or have him scold me about my grades, but that’s par for the course for me.)
The girls next door, Darby and Mena, maybe? Technically I’m probably only a few feet away from Mena when they’re both in bed on opposite sides of the wall, but it’s a wall. I’ve never been able to—
A scream, thin and piercing, rises up from outside, slipping between the bottom edge of the window and the sill with the sound of the rain.
I go still, ears pricked to pin down the location of the sound.
Behind me. Coming through my window, not Chessa’s. The side of the house, then.
I scramble across my bed toward the window at the head of it, searching for the source.
Outside, everything is misty and gray with fog and rain turning to possible sleet. But three stories below my window—in what used to be a garden full of Mrs. Branwick’s prize rosebushes and is now a sculpture garden filled with those smooth river rocks and a half-dozen metal and stone works of art—I catch a bright flash of color: neon green jacket and yellow running tights. A girl with a long dark braid dangling down her back paces back and forth on the running path that curves past the sculpture garden, her hand pressed to her mouth. Not Chessa, thank God.
But Not-Chessa is staring at something closer in, nearer the building.
