Chosen Read Online Free PDF

my arms around Grandma and hugged her.
    â€œActually, I found it in a very junky used book store that was going out of business. It was a steal. After all, it’s only a first edition of Stoker’s American release.”
    â€œIt’s cool beyond belief, Grandma! Thank you so much.”
    â€œWell, I know how much you love that spooky old story, and in light of recent events I thought it would be ironically funny for you to have a signed edition,” Grandma said.
    â€œDid you know Bram Stoker was Imprinted by a vampyre, and that’s why he wrote the book?” I gushed as I oh-so-carefully turned the thick pages, checking out the old illustrations, which were, indeed, spooky.
    â€œI had no idea Stoker had a relationship with a vampyre,” Grandma said.
    â€œI wouldn’t call being bitten by a vampyre and then put under his spell a
relationship,
” my mother said.
    Grandma and I looked at her. I sighed. “Mom, it’s way possiblefor a human and a vampyre to have a relationship. That’s what Imprinting is about.” Well, it was also about bloodlust and some serious desire, along with a psychic link that could be pretty disconcerting, all of which I knew from my experience with Heath. But I wasn’t going to mention that to Mom.
    My mother shivered like something nasty had just run its finger up her spine. “It sounds disgusting to me.”
    â€œMother. Do you not get that there are two very specific choices for my future? One would be that I become the thing that you’re saying is disgusting. The other would be that sometime in the next four years I die.” I hadn’t wanted to get into it with her, but her attitude was seriously pissing me off. “So would you rather see me dead or see me an adult vampyre?”
    â€œNeither, of course,” she said.
    â€œLinda,” Grandma put her hand on my leg under the table and squeezed. “What Zoey is saying is that you need to accept her and her new future, and that your attitude is hurting her feelings.”
    â€œ
My
attitude!” I thought Mom was going to launch into one of her tirades about “why are you always picking on me,” but instead she surprised me by taking a deep breath and then looking me straight in the eyes. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Zoey.”
    For a moment she looked like her old self, like the mom she’d been before she’d married John Heffer and turned into the Perfect Stepford Church Wife, and I felt my heart squeeze. “You do hurt my feelings, though, Mom.” I heard myself say.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. Then she held her hand out to me. “How about we try this birthday thing again?”
    I put my hand in hers, feeling cautiously hopeful. Maybe there was part of my old mom left inside her. I mean, she’d come alone,without the step-loser, which was pretty darn close to a miracle. I squeezed her hand and smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
    â€œWell, then, you should open your present and then we can eat cake,” Mom said, sliding over the box that sat next to the as yet untouched cake.
    â€œOkay!” I tried to keep the enthusiasm in my voice, even though the present was wrapped in paper covered with a grim nativity scene. My smile held until I recognized the white leather cover and gold-tipped pages. With my heart sinking down into my stomach, I turned the book over to read:
The Holy Word, People of Faith Edition
printed in expensive gold leaf cursive across the cover. Another glittering of excess gold caught my eye. Across the bottom of the cover it read,
The Heffer Family.
There was a red velvet bookmark with a gold tassel stuck inside the front pages of the book and, trying to buy time so I could think of something to say other than “this is a truly awful present,” I let the pages fall open there. Then I blinked, hoping what I was reading was just a trick of my eyes. No. It was really