I nodded, blinking fast. I had become a burden, and we were becoming criminals. It hurt, but I had to face the consequences of our choices—and of my nature.

It turned out there was a free clinic at one of the local hospitals, so Lucas took a day off and went with me. The minute we walked in, we could see why it was free. Every chair in the waiting room was filled, some with old people who looked lonely and lost, others by entire families who seemed to have come together. Coughing echoed from every corner. Yellowed posters on the wall warned against various health risks and seemed way too focused on STDs.

I put my name at the end of a really long list, just some Xeroxed sheets on a battered old clipboard. The whole place smelled like Lysol.

“Sit down,” Lucas said. “Let’s get you off your feet.”

Although I would’ve liked to tell him not to be such a mother hen, I really did need to sit down. I felt weak, and my body kept flushing hot and cold at odd moments. Sometimes I wanted a blanket; other times, even my sundress seemed stifling.

Lucas sat next to me, and we leafed through some of the magazines lying around in the waiting room. They were mostly about being parents of little kids. The covers showed happy, healthy, beaming children who didn’t bear much resemblance to the wailing infants I saw around us. All the magazines were faded and dog-eared; the first one I picked up was nearly two years old.

“This place is creepy,” I whispered to Lucas.

“Doesn’t seem too bad,” he said with a shrug. I realized that Lucas probably had never been taken anywhere else for medical care; Black Cross wouldn’t pay for much, and they would never have been in one place long enough for him to have a regular doctor.

I remembered my pediatrician back in Arrowwood, Dr. Diamond. He’d been a kindly man with glasses who always let me pick out Band-Aids with my favorite cartoon characters on them before he gave me a shot. Mom said they’d taken me to him from the time I was a tiny baby, and I’d only just become too old for his practice when we moved to Evernight. In all that time, giving me vaccinations and checking my reflexes, he’d never noticed anything especially odd about me—though he did mention, once, how my mother seemed ageless.

My experiences with Dr. Diamond had convinced me that, if I were only sick with some normal virus, a physician would be able to help. If the problem was something vampiristic, well, I’d be out of luck—but the doctor would be none the wiser.

It took forever for them to call my name, but they finally did. Lucas gave me a wave as I headed inside.

A heavyset nurse whose nametag read SELMA walked into the exam room after me. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m having dizzy spells.” The paper atop the table crinkled as I sat upon it. “And I never want to eat anymore.”

Selma shot me a look. “Any chance you could be pregnant?”

“No!” My cheeks flamed. I knew doctors might ask you questions like that, but I wasn’t quite prepared for it. “I mean—I have—I do—I’m sexually active, I guess you’d say, but we’re careful. And I know I’m not pregnant. For sure. Really.”

“We’ll get you checked out.” Selma popped a thermometer in my mouth, and I obediently held it under my tongue as she reached for the blood pressure cuff. “How are you feeling today?”

I waggled my hand back and forth. So-so.

Selma nodded and began to put the cuff around my arm—but then she stopped. I glanced sideways and saw that she was staring at the readout screen for the thermometer. It read 91 degrees.

I’d always run a little cool—Dr. Diamond used to joke about my being 97 degrees—but that wasn’t so very unusual. Apparently 91 degrees was unusual.

“Give me that.” Selma took the thermometer out of my mouth and reset it, then popped it back in. She fastened the Velcro cuff around my upper arm and started inflating it; a tight band of pressure squeezed my bicep.

My eyes remained fixed on the temperature screen. Come on, I thought. Move up. At least to 97 degrees. She won’t think that’s too weird.

The temperature readout changed, slipping down to 90 degrees.

Selma’s eyes went wide. At first I thought she’d seen the readout, but then I realized that my blood pressure must be wrong, too. She ripped the cuff off my arm. “Lie down,” she ordered. “I’m getting the doctor in here this second.”

“It’s not an emergency,” I said weakly. “Really, I just feel sort of dizzy.”

“Lie down before you fall down.” Selma pushed my shoulders backward onto the table. Despite her forcefulness, there was something kindly in her manner; she must have been a good nurse. She hurried out, and I lay there, hands folded across my belly, trying to convince myself this wasn’t a huge problem.

Unfortunately, I knew better.

My temperature wouldn’t be that low if I had walking pneumonia, I thought. Or any kind of flu or other virus. People run fevers when they get illnesses like that. I don’t think it does much to blood pressure, either.

In other words, whatever was wrong with me was no human illness.

Down the hallway, I could hear the nurse talking animatedly to someone, probably one of the doctors. Did they consider this an emergency? Were they about to take me into the hospital? If they did, could I get out again?

Quickly I pushed myself upright—too quickly. My head swam with the sudden movement, and for a second, I thought I might fall. But I steadied myself against the table and took a couple of deep breaths. Soon I felt I could walk again.

I peeked into the hallway. Selma was only a few doors down, but she was deeply engrossed in conversation with the doctor. Her words were only barely loud enough for me to overhear: “I’m sure that thermometer is working correctly. It was only ten minutes ago. I’m telling you—”

Time to hurry. I tiptoed halfway down the hall, then took off running toward the waiting room. Another nurse appeared in the corridor, and she looked startled as I pushed past her.

Don’t look back. Without slowing down, I ran through the doors and into the waiting room. “Lucas!” I called over my shoulder. “Let’s go!”

He stared at me, startled, but was on his feet in an instant. We were going to get away. We’d make it. Then we were outside, sizzling July sun enveloping me in an instant. Waves of heat rippled up from the steps and the sidewalk. It was too much, and I slumped against the guardrail. The stairs seemed to stretch and tilt beneath me.

“Bianca!” Lucas caught up with me and scooped my arm around his shoulders. Staggering against him, I was able to get down the steps and around the corner.

“Keep walking.” I panted. “They’ll come out and look for me, I know it.”

“We’re walking. What happened in there?”

“My readings were coming back weird. The nurse freaked out.”

Lucas took me down a side street, keeping our pace quick. I felt a little steadier but knew I needed to lean on him. “What do you mean, weird?”

The truth hit me then. I’d spent my whole life preparing for this moment, in one way or another, and yet it was strange and terrible to face.

“I’m not yet a vampire,” I whispered. “But—I’m no longer human.”

Chapter Nineteen

WE RETURNED HOME FROM THE CLINIC AT SUNSET. Lucas poured me back into bed, and we worried about what to do. I told him everything that had happened at the clinic and the weird readings that had made the nurse panic.

“Never happened before?” he said. I shook my head.

“Then—you’re changing. Whether you like it or not. You’re becoming a vampire. A full vampire, I mean.”

“I can’t be a full vampire unless I kill. That’s the only way it works.”

“How do you know?” Lucas demanded. He lay on the bed with me, though I was beneath the covers and he was on top of them. “Nobody really understands what happens with kids like you, right?”

“Almost nobody. But my parents understood. They never would explain most of it, but this part, they were really clear on.” I stared up at the white ceiling, studying the whorls of plaster.

“There are only two ways a person becomes a vampire. Either you’re a regular person who gets bitten repeatedly by a vampire and then is killed by the final bite, or you’re a born vampire—like me—who makes a kill. That’s it.”

“Then what’s happening to you?” He cupped my cheek with his hand. His dark-green eyes were anguished. “I can’t stand this. Not knowing. And I realize it’s got to be worse for you.”

I held his hand to my face and tried to smile. I couldn’t bear to tell him what I was starting to believe.

With my body weakening, I had begun to experience the strangest sensation—a kind of sinking, a wearing away, as though I were somehow less each day. Something inside me was fighting against the force of life, and that something was winning.

My parents had always refused to tell me what would happen if a born vampire refused to make that first kill and complete the transformation. Now I thought I knew what had frightened them so badly that they wouldn’t even speak of it.

I was beginning to wonder if the only alternative was to die.

Lucas’s fingers threaded through my long hair as he combed it to soothe me. At last I said, “If I wrote my parents a letter, would you promise to send it if—”

“If what?”

I closed my eyes. “If anything bad were to happen.”

“Bianca—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore right now. But if you would promise—it would mean a lot to me.”

Lucas was quiet for a while before he whispered, “I promise.”

The next morning, as soon as I woke up, I knew something inside me had changed for the worse.

Before, even on my worst days, I’d been able to get around a little bit. Now I was so weak I couldn’t get out of bed without Lucas’s help. To my embarrassment, he had to walk me to the bathroom. He brought me breakfast in bed, but I couldn’t eat more than a wedge of toast. Even that, I had to force down.

“Do you want me to get you blood?” he asked. His hands gripped the back of the chair so tightly that his knuckles were white. “I could catch something, or I could bust into a hospital, hit the blood bank.”

“I don’t want any blood. I don’t want anything. Just—some water, maybe.”

Really, I didn’t even want the water, but at least that way Lucas could feel like he’d done something for me.

The passage of time meant nothing to me; I didn’t go outside at all. Lucas called in sick to work; I was scared he’d get fired, but then again, maybe a chop shop didn’t expect every single employee to show up every day. When I asked him about it, Lucas nodded. “Places that break the law don’t usually get too excited about enforcing the rules. Don’t worry about me, okay, Bianca? Just take care of yourself.”

But how was I supposed to do that?

That night, Lucas went out to fetch some more groceries, returning in record time with paper bags he tossed on the table and seemed to forget about. “Hey,” he said. “Were you able to look at your book?”

“A little.” He’d found a paperback copy of Jane Eyre earlier that day and brought it to me, but I felt too dizzy and weary even to read. The black type against the white pages seemed to burn my eyes.

Lucas nodded and sat in the chair. I wondered if he sat there now because he wanted more distance from me than he could get if he sat on the side of the bed, or because he wanted a better look at my face. He sat staring at the floor, his forearms on his knees. One foot scuffed against the floor, back and forth, revealing the agitation he had otherwise fought so hard to hide.

“Whatever you want to say,” I whispered, “just say it.”