Darkness Will Come to Light [1]

XXVII. Discovery

Savannah and Melaina met in the library after school to write their partner French paper. Things were still unsaid between them, but they were talking and hanging out regularly. That was a start.

"Do you need a ride home?" Sav offered. Melaina nodded, "Yeah, thanks."

The girls began to pack up their French books and laptops. "Everything going okay with your foster family?" Savannah asked.

Mel only nodded.

She tried again. "They're very...unusual. Antisocial. Are they nice to you?"

"They've been really kind, yeah. I'm still getting used to it, though."

"I'm here if you ever want to talk about what happened with your dad. You're strong, Mel."

"I don't want to think about him. I have to start a new life."

Melaina barely heard the blonde's soft words: "With or without me?"

Life was easier now, living with the Cullens. Mel felt like hurting herself less than when she was with her stepdad. She took in a deep breath. "Do you--do you want to spend the night this weekend, maybe?"

Savannah's aqua eyes widened. "For real? At the Cullens' mansion?"

"I mean, that's my home now. So yeah."

"I'll ask my mom, but yes, I would love to."

"I promise we'll talk about things, okay? I need you."

Savannah pulled her best friend into her arms. "I've missed you so much. We have a lot to catch up on."

Melaina smiled and nodded, but internally she was worried. Did she make the right choice letting innocent Savannah back into her destructive life?

"I want all the details on those Cullen boys. I cannot believe they're all adopted when they look so similar. Those beautiful gold eyes... like wow."

Mel made a face at Sav's dreamy tone. "Those are my brothers now."

"No," Savannah corrected, "foster brothers. Not blood-related or related by law."

"True, but it's weird to think of them as anything other than overprotective siblings. Like seriously, there is zero privacy."

Sav wrinkled her nose. "Sounds like my house." She stood up and straightened out her flowered dress. "I guess your new family is not so different from mine after all."

In the back of her mind, Mel knew that the Cullens were different from the very beginning. She pushed it aside at first, but there were so many things about her foster family that never quite added up. Then Savannah mentioned some usual traits of the Cullens--their likeness of golden eyes and inhuman beauty, so Mel let her suspicions come to the front of her mind.

She didn't realize how much it bugged her until that moment when she really thought about it.

Yes, Mel knew that she kept secrets herself, but the Cullens read her like an open book. Where was the same trust in her that she had with them?

"I need a book for my English project. I'll be right back and then we'll head out." Melaina nodded at Sav to show that she heard her. Savannah pushed her chair in and wondered off.

Flipping to a clean page in her notebook, Melaina pursed her lips and began a list.

· Eyes change color
· Pale skin, cold
· Incredible beauty, flawless skin
· Very all-knowing...feelings, thoughts, actions, school, life
· Advanced hearing and eyesight, sensitive smell
· Avoid sunlight and going out on nice days
· Never actually eat or drink
· Incredibly fast and graceful, strong
· Never react to the temperature, never sweat or shiver

Melaina's phone rang but she paid no mind as her fingers click-clacked across the sticky keyboard. Alice called twice more, only to continuously reach Melaina's automated message system.

The Cullens had a lot of unusual habits and characteristics that made it almost too easy to research when she relocated in front of a library computer.

Vampire.

The Cullen family was a coven of blood-drinking, sun-avoiding supernatural creatures. Mel sucked in a breath and released it slowly as it sunk in.

Albeit crazy and otherworldly, her conclusion made sense to Melaina. She would have guessed vampire or angel. There was no way her family was human.

The reality of the discovery hit her, delayed but strong. Her breathing picked up. She could feel the blood pulsing through her body. Vampires.

What confused her most about the answer was that she didn't fit into the equation. A human living in a house of vampires? What good did that do them except for the next meal? She had been living there for months and no one had made a move to drink her blood.

But were they going to?

Although Mel lacked the same inhuman grace or beauty as her foster family, she fit in with her pale skin, dark circles, and antisocial behavior. Was that the reason they took her in?

Maybe I'm somehow a doppelganger sacrifice?

Mel frowned and tried to calm herself down before she was dragged into a full-blown anxiety attack in the middle of the library.

Hearing Sav pick up her bag and make her way over to where Mel sat, Mel clicked off the website about vampires and logged off. "You ready?" Her voice was almost too shaky to be casual, but Sav didn't notice.

"Yeah. I had to check out Catcher in the Rye. I don't want to buy a book if I'm not actually interested in reading it," Sav huffed.

"Just wait 'til college," Melaina said with a laugh but there was an edge to it. She didn't want to think about her future yet. Mel shoved her Sleeping with Sirens notebook in her bag and followed Savannah to her mother's waiting Avenger.

Her leg bounced up and down anxiously the whole ride home.