I unwrapped the thing and eyed her. “What did you do when this happened before?”
She shrugged. “I had a nest. There was a bunch of us. We’d just migrate somewhere gloomier. But I can’t do that now.”
“You can’t?”
Nina used her fingernail to pick at a grain that my ShamWow missed. “Nope. This is home. This is where I have roots.”
I couldn’t help but feel a tender warmth growing in my belly. “That’s sweet, Neens.”
She narrowed her eyes, but her lips were quirked in a tight smile. “Don’t get used to it.”
“So, what happened to the people you used to nest with?”
Another shrug. “Some moved on, one got killed, some . . .” She waved at the air.
I sat across from her, my eyes wide. “What?”
“There’s a huge suicide rate among vampires.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“Eternity is a really, really long time.”
I frowned, considering, and Nina let out a long sigh. “Think about it. Every minute you’re alive is one moment closer to your demise. Every single moment, you’re aging. Your body is breaking down, cells don’t reproduce, everything is slowing down. Every day is one day closer to your death. Not me. Not us. Every day is . . . just another day. Every moment is just another moment. No closer to death, no closer to any kind of finality. You should be happy with your wrinkles, with your gray hair.”
I felt my upper lip roll into a snarl. “What’s the homicide rate among vampires? Big?”
Nina rolled her eyes. “You’ve got romance. You’ve got ’til death do us part.’” There was a distance in her eyes, a wistfulness that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. “It’s romantic.”
“Do you ever—” I kneaded my palm, looked away. “Do you ever think about it? Death, I mean? Suicide?”
Nina swallowed. “Eventually, we won’t be friends anymore. You’ll age and I’ll look like this. Will will die, you’ll die and . . . I’ve thought about it. It scares me, death. I don’t know where I’d go.”
“You mean like Heaven?”
Nina cracked a half smile that was mirthless.
“You’re a good person, Neens. Of course you’d go to Heaven. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“I damned my nephew, Sophie.”
“But only because your sister begged you to! He would have died otherwise. He was sick. You had to save him. That was a good thing to do.”
She stood up and headed toward her bedroom. “Was it? He’s alone, like me. We’re all alone.”
My voice was small. “You’d go to Heaven. Your soul is good.”
Nina’s hand was on the doorknob, her back to me. “I don’t have a soul.”
She clicked the door shut behind her and I kneaded the ShamWow in my hands, good and evil flip-flopping in my mind. Was it really that easy? Did the good become bad—even if things were out of their control? Nina had been turned into a vampire—but she was good. And Sampson—turned into a werewolf. A good man turned into a bloodthirsty animal. If he did things—terrible, heinous things—while he was a werewolf, things that he didn’t remember the morning after, in his human form, did that make him bad through and through?
I swallowed hard and stood up, pressing the cloth to the fake veneer table and scrubbing until my shoulder ached.
Because there was something else.
It nagged at the edge of my mind. A murmuring that I couldn’t stand to hear—but couldn’t seem to shut out.
My father.
The devil.
I tried to push the thought—the image—away, but it was etched in my mind. If a girl was born of evil, could she ever truly be good?
The next morning was hotter than the previous one and I dressed in gauzy layers. I poured myself a travel mug of coffee while assuring Nina, who stared up at me with the most pitiful puppy dog eyes in the underworld, that I would bring her a whole cache of celebrity trash magazines and let her color my hair once I got home.
It was surprising how a play-by-play of Kim Kardashian’s postdivorce woes and a box of Clairol Ravenous Red could bring a fanged smile to my roommate’s pale face.
“What about me?” Vlad said with a monotone glower.
“BloodLust Four?”
Vlad glanced down at his computer screen—currently flashing the blood-splashed graphics of BloodLust 3—and grinned. “Cool.”
“Anything you want me to let Dixon know?” I asked Nina.
She pressed her lips together, then turned up her tiny ski-jump nose. “Not at all.”
I stepped into the hallway and paused in front of Will’s door. I took a few tentative steps, then pressed my ear to the door.
“You know, it works better if you hold a glass to it.”
I whirled around, clutching my thundering heart while Mr. Sampson smiled at me from the hallway.
“I’m sorry, I uh—knocked,” I lied, “but I didn’t hear anything. Wanted to make sure you were okay.”