The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ve looked into this, okay? Indirect sunlight doesn’t hurt.”
    “So you’re saying that I could just stand under a nice shady tree and be fine?”
    He hesitated for a minute, as if debating whether or not to tell me something, and then said quietly, “I did once.”
    I stared at him, waiting for the grin. Because this was a joke.
    It didn’t come.
    “Riley said…,” I started, and then my voice trailed off.
    “Yeah, I know what Riley said,” he agreed. “Maybe Riley doesn’t know as much as he says he does.”
    “But Shelly and Steve. Doug and Adam. That kid with the bright red hair. All of them. They’re gone because they didn’t get
     back in time. Riley saw the ashes.”
    Diego’s brows pulled together unhappily.
    “Everyone knows that old-timey vampires had to stay in coffins during the day,” I went on. “To keep out of the sun. That’s
     common knowledge, Diego.”
    “You’re right. All the stories do say that.”
    “And what would Riley gain by locking us up in a lightproof basement—one big group coffin—all day, anyway? We just demolish
     the place, and he has to deal with all the fighting, and it’s constant turmoil. You can’t tell me he enjoys it.”
    Something I’d said surprised him. He sat with his mouth open for a second, then closed it.
    “What?”
    “Common knowledge,” he repeated. “What do vampires do in coffins all day?”
    “Er—oh yeah, they’re supposed to sleep, right? But I guess they’re probably just lying there bored, ’cause we don’t… Okay,
     so that part’s wrong.”
    “Yeah. In the stories they’re not just asleep, though. They’re totally unconscious. They
can’t
wake up. A human can walk right up and stake them, no problem. And that’s another thing—stakes. You really think someone
     could shove a piece of wood through you?”
    I shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, not a normal piece of wood, obviously. Maybe sharpened wood has some
     kind of… I don’t know. Magical properties or something.”
    Diego snorted. “Please.”
    “Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t just hold still while some human ran at me with a filed broom handle, anyway.”
    Diego—still with a sort of disgusted look on his face, as if magic were really such a reach when you’re a vampire—rolled to
     his knees and started clawing into the limestone above his head. Tiny stone shards filled his hair, but he ignored them.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Experimenting.”
    He dug with both hands until he could stand upright, and then kept going.
    “Diego, you get to the surface, you explode. Stop it.”
    “I’m not trying to—ah, here we go.”
    There was a loud crack, and then another crack, but no light. He ducked back down to where I couldsee his face, with a piece of tree root in his hand, white, dead, and dry under the clumps of dirt. The edge where he’d broken
     it was a sharp, uneven point. He tossed it to me.
    “Stake me.”
    I tossed it back. “Whatever.”
    “Seriously. You know it can’t hurt me.” He lobbed the wood to me; instead of catching it, I batted it back.
    He snagged it out of the air and groaned. “You are so…
superstitious
!”
    “I am a
vampire
. If that doesn’t prove that superstitious people are
right
, I don’t know what does.”
    “Fine, I’ll do it.”
    He held the branch away from himself dramatically, arm extended, like it was a sword and he was about to impale himself.
    “C’mon,” I said uneasily. “This is silly.”
    “That’s
my
point. Here goes nothing.”
    He crushed the wood into his chest, right where his heart used to beat, with enough force to punch through a granite slab.
     I was totally frozen with panic until he laughed.
    “You should see your face, Bree.”
    He sifted the splinters of broken wood through his fingers; the shattered root fell to the floor in mangled pieces. Diego
     brushed at his shirt, thoughit was too trashed from all the swimming and digging for the attempt to