Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
“You’re right,” I tell her. “That’s a good quote, actually.”
“Is it? Should I write it down?”
“Yeah. You should.”
She grabs her phone and quickly adds that to her notes app. “Hey, our pic from last night got so many likes! Want to see?”
Smiling, I nod and spend the next few minutes looking through Mabel’s Instagram account. It seems the majority of her followers are interested in seeing what it’s like to be a rich vampire, but there are a ton of comments saying she’s surprisingly relatable.
“You said that was my first kill last night,” Mabel says, abruptly changing the subject. “It wasn’t.”
“I meant the first demon kill.”
“I killed the first person I drank from,” she tells me and casts her eyes down. “I didn’t mean to. I bit him too hard and the bleeding wouldn’t stop.”
“Oh. I…I honestly don’t know the right thing to say here. Sorry?”
“I didn’t even drink all the blood. I just watched him die because I didn’t know what else to do. I hid the body in a closet for three days until it started to smell. Then I told Zek and he cleaned it all up.”
“I’m sure there’s a learning curve to drinking blood.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much what I was told, but I never wanted to do that again. That’s why I only drink blood that’s already been spilled.”
“The tea cups make sense now.” I give her a half smile, thinking about how confusing it has to all be. She didn’t want to become a vampire and yet she is one against her will and she has to drink blood.
“I don’t ask where the blood comes from,” she goes on. “Zeke brings it to me. I don’t want to hurt anyone. That was the one thing I had him promise me.”
“Zeke?”
“Yes. Before Xavier turned me. I told him never to let me hurt anyone. I saw a lot of it. Not all that I can remember. My children that remained human wouldn’t want anything to do with me if I was a killer.”
“This whole thing is so messed up.”
She laughs and makes a face. “I know, right? But you’re okay?”
“I mean…no. This is a lot to take in. None of it makes sense and yet it does and the spell wouldn’t have worked if my parents weren’t there.”
“I don’t know how magic works. Maybe try again?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I shake my head. “I don’t know much about how magic works either.”
She gets her phone out again. “Blackwood?”
“Yeah.” I lean in, watching her put different things into the search bar. “Blackwood murder” brings up a few different crimes, and searching the specific names gives us nothing. If the Order was behind this, then they would have scrubbed the internet of everything.
“Things rarely turn out how you expect,” Mabel tells me. “I’ve seen that enough just in the hundred or so years I’ve been here.” She logs back onto Instagram. “I can say with certainty that plans change at the last minute more times than not, even for people like Xavier.”
“That’s true,” I agree. “What’s that phrase that’s something like make plans and God laughs or something like that?”
“We have to be adaptable.”
“Yeah, we do.” I lay down and let out a heavy sigh. “At what point are we fooling ourselves though? Adapt, be willing to change, blah, blah, blah. It’s just crap we tell ourselves so we don’t feel disappointed.”
“That’s probably true, too. But what’s the alternative? Hate that life took a turn we didn’t want it to take and be miserable?”
“That is a choice.”
She lets out a snort of laughter and lays back next to me. “I wanted to leave the Order.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Back then, women weren’t allowed to hunt. I hated being told I wasn’t enough. I was good at a lot of other things.”
“You are.”
“I did leave the Order, not on my own terms, but I left.”
I turn my head, looking at her. “You came here.”
“Not here here. But the main house.”
“Main house?”
She nods. “The one in Long Island.”
“Long Island?” I repeat as my mind starts to whirl.
“Mh-hm. The house is quite fine. A few of Xavier’s great-great-great-great progenies live there now.”
“I need a history book just for this family,” I quip and Mabel laughs. “Xavier and Theo are brothers by blood. Xavier was turned, then he turned Theo.”
“Yes. But he never turned his sister because she was pregnant at the time and didn’t want to outlive her children.”
“And she was Ezekiel’s…mother?”
“Grandmother.”
“Okay,” I say. “They’re from Spain.”
“Yes.”
“And they came here, to this area in the south during the Revolutionary War?”
“I think maybe a little after? But yes. They help build this city.”
I sit up, shaking my head. “What about the New York house then?”
She sits up as well and shrugs. “I think it was just good real estate. It’s very fancy. I went there before I was turned. I didn’t know it was a business meeting then. About me.”