Burned (Book1) The White Rose Vampire Series

Chapter One

One thing I learned in grief was the stark reality the world doesn't stop. It doesn't care about your tears or the hardships that happened to you and those you love. It continues to spin, and people proceed to move about their days as if nothing earth-shattering has happened. 

I noticed that in the weeks after my parents died. It made me wonder how many times I walked by someone screaming in the corners of their brains while in my blissful ignorance I went about my life, but it also made me notice things I usually would have ignored.

Like the huge manor house, The White Rose Manor, that overlooked Brockhurst, Tennessee was called beautiful by most people but had always sent a shock of foreboding through me. The odd thing about the fear was that it was joined with the strange need to step closer to it and find out its secrets. It only became stronger in the days after my parent's death. 

I wasn't the only one who stared at The White Rose Manor with an equal mixture of fear and foreboding because Izzie felt the same way, but Izzie had always been a bit different than most. She had always felt things stronger. She was more sensitive. It was one of the most compelling things about her because it didn't match how people thought she would be because on the outside she was a tough, sometimes rebellious girl. Still, she seemed to be the only one who felt as if the house were staring down at all of us in town, cursing us in some way.

However, if I really thought about it, my feelings about the home may have had something to do with the three brothers who owned it. Dimitri, Jonathon, and Bastian Gage were popular, well-liked, and handsome. God, were they handsome. Until the day my parents died, I had convinced myself it was their beauty that made me uncomfortable but the day I returned to school, it turned into something more noticeable. The youngest brother, Bastian stared at me.

I told myself maybe he felt bad about my parent's death and didn't know how to approach me to offer his condolences, but he would be in the middle of a conversation with one of his friends when I walked in and all conversation would stop. I suppose I would have thought I was imagining it if Izzie hadn't noticed it too. So, I hid from him thankful that Jonathon and Dimitri didn't do the same thing until I could no longer avoid him.

It was a month after my parent's death when I got the letter telling me that though my classes were paid for, my dorm and books were not. My parents had paid for those and since their deaths took all their savings, I was responsible for the rest.

It was the financial advisor, who called me to her office a week before I was to leave my dorm. She wanted to help me and had found a job cleaning. It included room and board. The relief was visible until I realized it was at The White Rose Manor. I almost turned it down but the panic of being homeless stopped me and I accepted before my fear could overtake me.

"You'll move in on Sunday," she chirped as if it was the greatest news in the world.

I nodded unable to speak over the lump in my throat. The moment she dismissed me, I ran out of the building with tears burning my eyes as I tried to come to grips with the fact I would be living in a house that terrified me on Sunday...Sunday...Nothing good happened to me on Sundays.