Fairytales

Chapter 21

"Still think you're crazy?"

I looked up to glare at Chase across the room. "Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to."

Sometime during the conversation—during which he'd done a very bad job of convincing me this wasn't all just a very crazy nightmare—those ominous clouds outside had finally opened up. The pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof filled the silences.

I took a deep breath. Keep it together, DeAngelus. You can't freak out yet. "So you're a..."

Chase, who sat in the lazy boy across from me, winced. "Yeah."

I nodded, feeling my head start to spin.

"You drink blood?"

Chase nodded yet again. I waited a second, giving my brain long enough to freak out or get over it. It got over it, at least for the moment. It was remarkable how much of this I could handle without jumping on top of the couch again. Maybe it was because I still kind of thought I was hallucinating.

Next question.

"Okay. Okay if you're..." Breathe. "A vampire." Another wince. "Why don't you burn in the sun? Vampires are supposed to burn in the sun."

He shook his head, looking like he didn't really want to answer. "Not that kind of vampire." He said slowly, picking each word like it had power. "I'm sensitive to it, but I don't necessarily burn."

I nodded. Facts. I'd focus on the facts.

"You knew vampires existed before you were...changed?"

Chase winced again, hearing the hint of accusation in my voice. "Suspected. I didn't know. It would have been crazy to think I knew any of this insanity existed."

I sat back against the couch, letting that sink in. Crazy. He had no idea.

"And you have no idea why Carmen and Jack attacked us."

Chase raised a hand to massage his forehead as if he had a headache. "I don't know. I suspected there was something off about them a long time ago. They didn't exactly try to hide it."

"How long?"

He closed his eyes for a second. "Two years."

I clenched my jaw. Two years, and he hadn't even thought to warn me.

Chase stood, moving to the center of he room to pace. "I didn't think they'd come after me." He continued, oblivious to the hurt I'd felt at his last statement. "I don't even know how they knew I'd..." He made a low noise that was perilously close to a growl. Keep it together. "They made it pretty clear that they were using you to get to me. The question is, why?"

I shifted in my chair, hating how I kept sinking into the couches puffy cushions. "You obviously knew something." I said, not even trying to hide the accusation in my voice this time. "All those pictures on your computer. The crime scene photos. You must have found something they didn't want you to know."

Chase paused in his pacing to look at me. "You were in my room?"

I held up my hand. "Not important right now. What did you find?" I didn't ask him why he didn't tell me about it, why he thought he couldn't confide in me, but it was there, and we both knew it.

Chase began pacing again.

Despite my tough act, I glanced at the door again, but only when Chase was pacing in such a way that he wouldn't see. Now that I'd gotten over my fear of Chase himself, I kept expecting the door to be torn down or the locks to fly off in an explosion of force, announcing in a flurry of broken wood that we were under attack again. From what I'd seen today, the King twins would have had no problem doing just that. And yet, despite our obvious whereabouts (Michael had practically yelled it to the world) there had been no sign of them. Yet, anyway.