“I need you to tell me the truth. About everything.” My hysteria was giving way to tears and I fought to keep myself from crying. “Did my mother kill herself ?”
Grandma pressed her lips together, her eyes rolling upward as if the answer she was looking for was somewhere above her.
“Oh, God, it’s true. That’s why she doesn’t appear to me. She’s”—I paused, swallowing saliva that had gone metallic and sour—“not in the same place as you are, right? She can’t appear to me.”
“Sophie, who told you this?”
“Tell me the truth, Grandma. Did my mother commit suicide?”
“Your mother loved you very much.”
“Did she do it?” My voice was barely above a whisper.
I watched the grey-tinged curls on my grandmother’s head waggle as she nodded her head, her chin low in defeat. “Yes, it’s true. But Sophie, you have to understand—”
“And my father? Lucas Szabo, the college professor. Only he wasn’t a college professor, was he? Did Mom know, Grandma? Did Mom know that he was the devil?”
My grandmother looked away and I felt a pang of despair as I watched a glistening tear roll silently down her cheek. “She wasn’t sure at first,” Grandma said. “She promised me she didn’t know.”
I gritted my teeth. “She killed herself. If anything would have happened to you, would my father have taken care of me?”
“We had to keep you safe.”
“And suicide was my mother’s answer?”
“The Vessel of Souls existed long before you did, Sophie.”
I crossed my arms, slumped into a dining room chair. “What does that have to do with anything? My mother took up with the devil. My mother fell in love with Satan.”
“To her credit, he was very charming.”
“Grandma!”
Grandma’s eyes were stern. “You don’t know everything, Sophie.”
The tears started to spill over my cheeks before I even knew I was crying. “She fell in love with him and then she abandoned me. Is it because she knew what I was? Because she knew I wasn’t real—that I was a Vessel?”
“Sophie Lawson, you are as real as any of us in this room.”
I stood up angrily. “Forgive me if that doesn’t give me much comfort, Grandma. You’re a cantaloupe and Nina’s been dead for a hundred years!”
I sniffed, storming past Nina, who stood in the kitchen, stunned, and leaving my grandmother, openmouthed, in half a cantaloupe. I was about to walk into my room when I heard my grandmother’s voice ring through the apartment.
“Being the Vessel of Souls is not a bad thing, Sophie Lawson. But dying to protect it is!”
I slammed the door behind me and flopped down on my bed, letting the tears come. If it weren’t for me, my mother would still be alive. My mother killed herself and Ophelia knew it. I rolled onto my side and curled my knees up into my chest and let the tears shake me. One time in my life the strangest thing was being the only breather in an office full of the undead. Now I had no idea who—or what—I was, though it seemed like the whole world already knew. I hugged my knees, rested my head on my arm, and fell asleep.
I tossed and turned most of the night, staring at the red numbers on my digital clock and finally putting on my iPod to try and drown out the chatter that was going on in my brain. The next morning I awoke with the cord from my headphones wrapped around my neck and my sheets bunched on the floor. I was still achy and tired but did my best to keep the events of the last night—from jail to Vessel to suicide—out of my head. When I padded into the kitchen Nina was still there, sipping from a coffee mug and leaning against the cabinets, ChaCha asleep at her feet.
“You look good today,” she said with a cheerful smile.
“I love that I can always count on you to lie to me.”
Nina handed me a Starbucks from the fridge and slung her arm across my shoulders. “That’s what best friends are for.”
I unscrewed my drink and slumped at the kitchen table. Nina sat across from me. “So, speaking of fabulous best friends, I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Because you’re a vampire?”
“Yeah, and because my best friend feels like her life has been turned upside down.” Nina reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze.
I felt another lump forming in my throat, but I smiled. Nina’s skin may be cold, but her touch warmed me nonetheless.
“You need answers, so I’m going to help you get them.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
Nina offered me a wide grin that showed off her white teeth—pointed incisors and all. “Close your eyes.”
I laid my head against the table and moaned. “No, no more surprises. From now on, I’m never losing consciousness, never closing my eyes, never opening doors. And I’m only eating clear broths.”
I could practically hear Nina’s eyes rolling.
“I was in jail!” I wailed.
I looked up as I heard the paper fall onto the table. A piece of folded yellow notepaper lay in front of me. I grabbed it.
“What’s this?”