Redemption (Book 6)

10

A few hours later, I went back up the stairs and into the room, which was totally dark. I then assumed that Isaiah had either fallen asleep or found somewhere else to spend the night.

"Did you sleep with him?" I jumped at the sound of Isaiah's voice.

I flipped on the light. He was sitting on the end of the bed with a bottle in his hand and had obviously drank quite a lot of it.

"What do you care?" I snapped as I walked over to the closet.

"Because I do, Claudia," he looked at me. "Because I love you, even if you can't feel that love, it doesn't change its existence."

Something in me told me to tell the truth. "No, I didn't."

"Why?" he asked.

I turned to him. "Because I didn't want to. Now shut up. I'm going to sleep."

But I didn't sleep at all that night. I stared at the wall, thinking. I couldn't understand what I was feeling because I wasn't supposed to be feeling anything. It was a knot in the pit of my stomach, weighing me down like a boulder. Some hours later, I heard Isaiah get up out of bed next to me and walk out of the room, but I didn't move. I was hoping for some sleep, but none came. Eventually, I just got up and dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a black tank-top. I went downstairs to see if I could find some source of amusement or someone's blood to drink, but I stopped when I saw Isaiah and Louis talking in the library. I stood still high above them, watching, listening...

"Have you fallen out of love with her?" asked Louis.

Isaiah snorted. "You don't fall out of love, not when it's real. Love is like the ocean; sometimes it's calm and beautiful and other times it's choppy and stormy. Then, something happens and you just decide to stop fighting, to stop treading water, and you let yourself drown. When it's real, all you can do is let yourself be killed by it."

"Have you stopped fighting?" asked Louis, raising an eyebrow.

He took a deep breath. "No, I don't think so. Not yet at least. It's too soon to lose faith that she'll come back to me, but I know that someday, it might come. Someday, I might just get tired of fighting this battle with her every day, and that scares me. Ever since I met her, I just knew that eternity was ours. Now, for the first time, I'm not so sure if that is the truth."

"You should take her to see Henri and Charlotte," suggested Louis.

Isaiah looked up at him. "You know, that isn't a bad idea."

I decided to make my entrance at that point. "What isn't a bad idea?"

They both turned sharply to look at me and I stopped as I stood between them. Looking from one to the other, I couldn't help but wonder what I had caught them in the middle of. It was more than I had first thought it was.

"There are some people I want you to meet Claudia," he said. "Some friends of ours from when we built this town."

"Are they vampires?" I asked.

"No," Louis replied.

"Then how are they still alive after three hundred years?" I folded my arms.

"They aren't," Isaiah stood up.

"I don't understand," I shook my head. "If they're not alive, how can we go see them?"

"Well, we are in a cemetery," said Louis.

"Seriously," I gave them both a look. "What is going on?"

"You'll figure it out," Isaiah gripped my elbow and pulled me along.

As we walked out, the ceiling opened up and Marie and Isabelle dropped down. They were wearing disheveled versions of the dresses they had last night and I couldn't help the superior smirk on my face. And somehow, the two of them managed the walk of shame without an ounce of shame.

"Where are the three of you headed off to?" Isabelle asked.

"We're going to talk to Henri and Charlotte," Louis said. "So why don't the two of you get cleaned up so you don't look like the loose little urchins you are."

She sneered at her brother and the two of them walked past us.

"You two act very much like siblings," I commented as we jumped up and went into the mausoleum. "You sound like my brother and me."

"That's the thing about brothers and sisters; they're really the same everywhere," he shrugged. "Now, let's go."

"Where, exactly are we going?" I asked.

The lack of sunlight outside cast long shadows making the graveyard look even eerier than usual.

"We're going to meet some people who might be able to help," said Louis.

"Help with what?" I asked.

"Help convince you to turn your emotions back on," he said flatly.

I stopped, literally digging my heels in. "No, I'm not going to do that."

"Do you think that's an option?" Isaiah laughed. I didn't like the way he did, almost like he was laughing at me. "You're used to not having to do anything you don't want, but you forget that I can make you."

Clenching my jaw, I kept my eyes even with his and didn't break eye contact, but I was, honestly, terrified. I had pissed Isaiah off and he didn't look at me the same way as he did before, like I was someone he didn't know or like.

"There won't be a need for that, will there?" Louis asked me.

Still I said nothing but I glanced over at him for just a second.

He laughed. "Let's go. Henri and Charlotte will be expecting us by now."

We continued to walk down the winding path past cracking tombstones and crumbling, once-great mausoleums with fancy etchings of high-class names above the doors. Suddenly, we took a sharp left into the field of graves, I read some of the names. All of us stopped between two gravestones.