The laughter lingered long after the lemonade was gone.

  Throughout the conversation, I smiled when I was supposed to. Nodded at the right moments. Played the role of grateful drifter with the borrowed name and hidden past. But like Icarus before me, I was flying too close to the sun, and at any moment some divine power might melt my wax wings and strike me down for my arrogance.

  Happiness is not for murderers, Thorn told me. Joy is not for those who allow children to suffer. You violated the bonds of family and of love, yet you want to join this family and seek this love? So nauseating!

  Katie’s voice echoed in the corners of the kitchen, long after her jubilation had ceased. In the silence that followed, I could still feel it. A presence. A warmth that didn’t belong to me, but I wished with everything in me that it could.

  At some point Lloyd clapped his hands together and stood. “Well, we’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” said Derek. “The work never ends around here.”

  The two of them drifted down the hallway toward the bedrooms, the house floorboards creaking with every step they took. Katie gave me a lingering glance before following after them.

  Carol gave me a kind smile. “Goodnight, Alex. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t.” That was another lie. I’d become far too accustomed to speaking falsehoods of late. In time, I might well spin so many deceptions that I’d confuse myself and forget who I really was.

  Part of me wanted that. Who wouldn’t want to forget such a past?

  The lights clicked off one by one, until the only illumination left was the small lamp over the sink, casting a jaundiced glow across the countertops. I remained at the table, staring at my own hands. Cruel as my thoughts could be when others were nearby, they were like a pack of wolves leaping upon a wounded lamb when I was left alone. Every fang was a past sin and a lingering temptation, a reminder that I was damned.

  Yet, the pack scattered at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall once more.

  Katie.

  She leaned against the wall at the end of the hallway, her feet bare. Her ponytail had been loosened, allowing her hair to fall around her shoulders. I stared in renewed awe at her beauty with her face framed by such curtains.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the words caught in my throat. Instead, I closed it and gave another shrug.

  Something in her face changed. No longer did she bear the playful smile she’d kept the whole evening. Her posture sagged, and she looked at me sideways rather than straight on. At first I thought it was suspicion, but the softness in her expression spoke to something else. She looked at me like one might gaze upon a wounded animal.

  “Well, don’t think too much,” she said. “You’ll lose sleep that way.”

  I smirked, “What is this sLeAp you mortals speak of?”

  “Us mortals?” The smile returned to her irresistible lips. “And what exactly are you? A vampire?”

  “Sometimes I think I might be,” I said, giving a grin that showed my teeth.

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  She laughed under her breath and crossed the room, stopping a few feet away. Not close. But closer than she needed to be. My heart raced, and I took a half-step back from her, considering the door as a possible escape.

  “So…” She looked down, her long eyelashes lying against her freckled cheeks. “You really don’t want to tell me anything about yourself?”

  The question was like a net ready to fall on me at any moment. I considered fabricating a completely different past. One that hid my sins away, and spun the truth to make me look like a hero or victim rather than the villain in my own story.

  “No one wants to hear me talk about myself,” I said at last. “Sometimes people think they do, but they all come to regret it.”

  She perked up, raising an eyebrow. “That sounds like a challenge.”

  “More of a warning,” I replied.

  She studied me again, her pity and amusement turned to curiosity. I started to lament my own choice of words. “Warning” implied something dark, and darkness was always interesting. Some people were frightened of the dark, but others were determined to illuminate it, and search out the demons that may be lurking there.

  “Funny,” she said, “you don’t seem dangerous.”

  Neither did Ted Bundy, I thought.

  A long silence passed between us, all the while her eyes remained locked on my face. Shame prevented me from meeting her gaze. My cheeks burned, and a sickly feeling stuck in my throat.

  I swallowed it and gathered enough breath to speak. “You should go to bed, Katie.”

  She hesitated, then sighed and rubbed her head. “Yeah. You too, Alex.”

  She turned and walked away, her footsteps fading down the hall until the house was silent again.

  I realized that I had been holding my breath and let out a long exhale.

  The quiet encased me like walls closing in. I needed to leave that house. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

  I returned to the garage alone, the loft welcoming me with its familiar odors and emptiness. My thoughts raised their snouts and sniffed the air, the pack of them ready to hunt their prey once again. My mind was wounded, and could not flee far from them.

  I lay on the narrow bed, staring up at the rafters.

  Sleep came eventually, thin and restless. I would have loved to dream of Montana, and the Christmas gatherings with family. Instead, my interactions with Katie had reawakened carnal desires in me, and with that came the horrors of my younger days.

  Such touch never should have happened to one so new to the world.

  In my dreams, intimate images of Katie conjured from my vivid and disobedient imagination flooded to the forefront of my mind. Yet, they were all too soon interrupted by memories of what was done to me so long ago. Intimacy led to suffering, I’d learned that at a young age. The images and sensory echoes poked and prodded at me, causing me to thrash in my bed.

  Just when I started to think of myself as a victim, the visions changed, reminding me of the night that I let the same thing happen to my sister. I was in the room. I saw her and him under the same blankets. I heard the words of reassurance he whispered to her. Lies spoken to convince that little girl to cross a line she was afraid to cross. Or rather to allow him to cross her line that should not have been crossed.

  The images haunted me, and the torture was as effective as any rack or iron maiden. I was mistaken in comparing my own thoughts to wolves. They were more like demons who crept in to engage in sadistic pleasures.

  Please! I cried out in my nightmares. Please make it stop! I know I did wrong. I want to do better. I’ll do anything, just make it stop!

  But their cruelty would not relent. For so long, I’d focused on what my father had done to me. I blamed him for my silence, but isn’t it a father’s duty to discipline a wayward child? I thought of him as a bad parent for so long, and I called his actions abuse, but what level of retribution is needed for a son who does such wretched things? I was the source of his anger. I was the reason he was so hateful.

  I deserved his fingers upon my throat. I deserved to die.

  At this, I awoke with a start. I gasped for air, finding that my mouth and throat were dry. Cursing under my breath, I arose from the bed and made my way to the loft’s bathroom. There, I turned on the sink and filled a small cup with water. The cool liquid was soothing in my throat, but every other muscle in my body still carried lingering aches from my discordant dreams.

  Whispers of guilt still lingered, and I could almost hear their voices. Where once Thorn had been my sole tormentor, now it seemed like there were countless enemies around me. Shadows on the walls appeared as faces in the dark, their eyes upon me. Though I wore pajamas, I felt naked before their gaze, and a chill washed over my flesh.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, slowly falling to my knees in front of the bathroom sink. Though none could hear but the demons surrounding me, I spoke it in the vain hope that it would reach those I’d wronged. My sister. My mother. Lilah. Opehlia. Even my father, who did the best he could to tame such a wicked son. “I’m so sorry.”