A Dark-Adapted Eye Read Online Free PDF Page B

I glared at them both, arms crossed in front of me. “She shouldn't have gone, and yes, she should have known better, but she's alive, isn't she?”
    Thanks to the vampire who'd bitten me ten years ago. That seemed a little strange.
    “She could easily have been—”
    “She's alive ,” Les insisted. “And she won't do anything like that again. Will you?” he added, looking right at me. I shook my head, anger abating. Ivory stared into the middle distance, breathing deeply to calm himself.
    Les took his cereal bowl to the kitchen and after a moment Ivory looked up. “I'm sorry, Ash. I shouldn't have reacted like that.”
    “I'm sorry, too,” I said grudgingly.
    “Listen. I know we work a lot and keep odd hours, but we're doing everything we can for us as a family. But maybe we should alter our priorities just a little. We missed your birthday, so I think we should do something for you. We could have dinner here, maybe some drinks. Just a night with no worries and no vampires. Tomorrow night, maybe. What do you think?”
    “Can we watch movies?” I asked.
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “I'm inviting Criseyde.”
    Ivory shrugged. “I'd be worried if you didn't.”
    “Thanks, Ivory.” I leaned over for a brief hug.
    He hesitated for a moment when I pulled back. “If something ever happens to me . . .”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Just, you know, an accident. In my, er, line of work—”
    “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I said stubbornly.
    I left the room before he could say anything else I didn’t want to hear and put his words firmly out of my mind. On my way down the hall I glanced at Les, who leaned against the counter in the kitchen. He was looking at his cell phone, that stray lock of hair falling over his forehead as always. Once I passed out of sight, I bit my lip in longing. He'd stood up for me, but now he'd probably go back to acting like we barely knew each other. How could he be so indi fferent to me? How could he never touch me or rarely look at me?
    I flopped onto my bed with a sigh. Criseyde would advise me just to tell him how I felt and move on if his feelings didn't mirror mine. I fantasized about doing just that all the time, yet I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it if he rejected me. The fear of him not loving me outweighed the hope that maybe one day he'd be mine.
     
    ~
     
    Ivory didn’t like when I sat on the roof. To him it was only a matter of time before some vampire realized I was up there and came to get me. It was always about vampires with him. They were his life. I was his life. But I needed one of my own, and the roof was somewhere I could go when the house and everywhere else felt too suffocating.
    I was about twelve when I started climbing out my bedroom window. My dad would come home, stinking and slurring and picking a fight with anyone he saw, and there was always a chance he’d come in and start yelling at me for no reason. I’d used a broken patio chair to get on top of the cinder block wall and from there it was easy to swing up on the sandpaper-rough shingles of the low roof.
    My brother didn’t understand my love of the stars. He didn’t understand why I had photoco pied star charts from books at the library and spent weeks familiarizing myself with the sky. Or the awe I felt tracing the star-glutted Milky Way with a pair of binoculars. Or the satisfaction of feeling like the center of the universe as well as the smallest, most insignificant thing in it.
    Tonight, instead of looking up, I stared west toward the city that had almost claimed me. It used to be full of white lights, pretty and sparkling, burning all night. Now it looked less ene rgetic, less promising. More depressing. It wasn’t any place I would dream of going, but it was all we had now.
    In a way I was lucky the city was rundown and half dark these days. Less light pollution meant the sky was wealthy with constellations and the gauze of our galaxy was clearly visible to a