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“Your blood is no longer pure,” she continues. “But its vitality is still strong. It will serve beautifully.” Her eyes drift thoughtfully over me. “And taste just as rich.”
I step back until the edge of a table presses into the backs of my knees, and I catch myself.
“Taste?”
She closes her eyes for a moment, as if slipping into a daydream.
“It’s been more than a year since I’ve indulged in live blood.”
My mind sifts through everything I’ve heard about the events of the past year. Pieces start to click into place.
The reverend’s daughter. Found in her bathtub with her wrists cut. Her father left town within weeks, heartbroken.
Frank took his place seamlessly.
I shake my head, barely aware I’m doing it. It can’t be. Not them. Not the loving people who took me in. Not Evelyn.
“She bled out in the bathtub,” I say, and Evelyn knows exactly who I’m talking about.
“She made a sacrifice. And I thank her for it in my prayers every day. Blood straight from the source is the most potent. The warmth and the pulse. The rejuvenation was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.” She says it the way someone might say a moisturizer worked. “She lives on in me. And through me, the word spreads.”
The woman who once held my hands at the kitchen table, who told me I was precious, speaks about this girl as though her life was a useful ingredient. A girl just like me.
The coldness in her voice is shocking after all the warmth she showed me. I fell for her lies. Just like I fell for Edwin’s.
“How?” I manage, hating how helpless I sound. “How can you say that like it’s nothing?”
“You’re young. You still think death is the worst thing that can happen to a body.”
Nothing makes sense. My mouth hangs open as I drag in labored breaths. The room spins and I hold myself up against the table.
“So Frank’s sermons are just… what? Theater?”
She appears to be bored by my shock.
“We’re in small-town Iowa, darling. These people will believe anything if they think it’ll get them to heaven.”
Anger flares through me. Unfamiliar but welcome.
“Like you believe blood makes you younger?”
Her lips curve.
“Believe?” She steps closer. “Look at me. I turned fifty this year, and I can pass for twenty-five on my worst day.”
She runs her fingers lightly over her collarbone, admiring the skin as if it belongs to someone else. “Whatever I’m doing must be working, don’t you think?”
My mind scrambles for any humanity left in her. For her sense of reason. I try to cling to the piece of her that once seemed maternal.
“What about Calista?”
Her lips tighten. “Calista’s blood sustained me for a time,” she says. “But she’s been careless. I know she’s been fornicating with that boy.” A faint curl of disdain touches her mouth. “Her soul was never as pure as yours.”
All that effort to conceal Calista’s relationship was for nothing. She was hiding from the wrong kind of danger.
A sickness rolls through me. My hand lifts to my chest, trying to hold my heart in place. I thought of the Boltons as family. I slept in their home, ate at their table, and believed I was safe.
I can’t say anything to change her mind. There is no appeal for mercy. Mercy is nothing but a performance she puts on when it benefits her.
