She stared at him, hardly believing what she was hearing. Had he lost his mind?
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The antidote. The end to vampirism. What if there was an exception? One vampire who was immune? Immune because she was not yet born at the moment you chose to come back?” Not yet born? Caitlin wondered, racking her brain. Then, it struck her.
“Scarlet?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“You were warned once, long ago, that you would have a very great choice to make, between your legacy, and the future of mankind. I’m afraid that time has come.”
“Stop talking in riddles!” Caitlin demanded, standing, her fists bunched, red in the face. She couldn’t listen anymore; she felt as if she were losing her mind. Aiden was the one man in the world from whom she expected rational answers. And he was only making things much, much worse.
“What are you saying about my daughter?”
Aiden shook his head slowly, distressed.
“I understand you’re upset,” he said. “And I am sorry to have to tell you this. But your daughter, Scarlet, is the last of her kind. The last remaining vampire.” Caitlin looked at Aiden as if he’d lost his mind. She didn’t even know how to respond.
“She is coming of age,” he continued. “She will soon change. And when she does, she will unleash it on the world. Once again, our world will be besieged by the plague of vampirism.” Aiden took two steps towards Caitlin. He placed a hand on her shoulder, looked into her eyes, as serious as she had ever seen him.
“That is why this journal came to you now. As a warning. You must stop her. For the sake of mankind. Before it’s too late.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Caitlin snapped back, but feeling unsure. “Do you even realize what you’re saying? That my daughter is a vampire? Are you for real? And what do you mean, stop her?
What is that even supposed to mean?”
Aiden looked down at the floor, grim, looking much older in that moment than Caitlin had ever seen him.
And then, suddenly, she realized what he’d meant: kill her. He was telling her to kill her own daughter.
The realization struck her like a knife in the gut. She was so horrified, so physically sick from it, that she couldn’t bear to be near Aiden for another second.
“Caitlin, wait!” he called out.
But she couldn’t. Without a word, she turned and bolted out of his office.
She ran, as fast as she could, like a mad woman down the halls, determined to never, ever, come back again.
CHAPTER TWO
The entire drive home, Caitlin was sick with worry. She felt there was no rational person left in the universe. She had thought that driving into the city and speaking to Aiden would calm her, would make her return home feeling better, with everything explained and back in its rational order.
But he had just made everything a million times worse. Now she wished she’d never visited him—and more than anything, she wished she’d never gone to the attic. She wished she’d never had that dream, and had never seen that journal. She wished she could just make it all go away.
Just yesterday, everything was perfect in her life; now, she felt that everything was upside down.
She almost felt that, by going to the attic, and opening that box, opening that book, she unleashed something horrible into the universe. Something that was meant to be kept locked away.
A part of her still told her that all of this was ridiculous. Maybe Aiden had lost touch with reality after all these years of teaching. Maybe that book was just some weird relic of her childhood, some collection of fantasies she had scrawled as a young girl. Maybe she could just put that book back in the attic, put today out of her mind, and everything would be fine, go back to normal, just as it always was.
But another part of Caitlin, a deeper part, felt an increasing sense of foreboding, one she could not shake. It told her that nothing would be fine again.
Caitlin’s hands trembled as she finished her two hour drive back and pulled into her idyllic village. She pulled down her quiet side street and hoped the sight of her house would calm her, as it always did.
But as she pulled into her driveway, she sensed immediately that something was wrong. Caleb’s car was in the driveway. He was home from work, in the middle of the afternoon. He never came home from work early.
She immediately checked her cell to see if she had any missed calls, and that was when she realized: her phone had been off all day. She looked down now and saw it flashing red: 9 missed calls in the last two hours. All from Caleb.
Her stomach dropped. Caleb never used his phone. That could only mean an emergency.
Caitlin jumped out of the car, ran up the steps, across the porch, and burst through the front door—which was ajar, compounding her dread.
“Caleb!?” she yelled, bursting into the house.
“Up here!” he screamed. “Get up here! Now!”
The tone of his voice set her into a panic. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never heard him scream with that sort of urgency, never heard his voice filled with fear.
She could hardly breathe as she ran up the old staircase, yanked on the bannister, took the steps three at a time. She raced down the hall, hearing a sound like muffled cries.
“In here!” Caleb yelled.
Caitlin hurried right for Scarlet’s room. The door was ajar, and she burst in.
She stopped cold at the sight.
Lying there on her bed, in the middle of the day, was Scarlet, fully clothed, and looking very sick.
Standing over her, face grave with concern, was Caleb, holding a hand to her forehead. Ruth sat by her bedside, whining.
“Where have you been?” he asked, panicked. “The nurse sent her home from school early. They said she has the flu. I gave her three Advil, but her fever’s getting worse.”
“Mom?” Scarlet moaned, weakly.
Scarlet lay there, twisting and turning, looking worse than Caitlin had ever seen her. Her forehead was damp with sweat and she groaned in pain, squinting with closed eyes as if fighting off some awful sickness.
Caitlin’s heart broke at the sight. She ran over to Scarlet’s side, sitting on her bed, placing one hand on her arm and the other on her forehead.
“You don’t feel warm,” she said. “You feel ice cold. When did this start?”
“That’s what’s weird,” Caleb said. “Her fever’s getting worse—but in the wrong direction. She’s abnormally low: 71 degrees, and dropping. It doesn’t make sense.”