Blood Forever Read online

  My beautiful Magnus. My soul mate without a soul. How can I die without saying good-bye? Without feeling his arms around me one last time. His lips brushing my own, with impossible tenderness. His voice whispering how much he loves me.

  But Magnus isn’t here. My sister is.

  “Rayne,” I try to say through chattering teeth. My final words—I need to make them count. I need my sister to know how grateful I am to her, for all she’s done for me. For the risks she’s taken to keep me safe. I know her all too well—she’ll blame herself, decide she’s the one responsible for my death, not Bertha. That she could have somehow done more to save me.

  But she’s wrong. It’s not her fault. And it’s vital I convince her of this before I take my final breath.

  My tongue is thick in my mouth, my brain has gone sluggish, and every word has become the ultimate struggle for release. “You’re the best sister a girl could have,” I manage to say with great effort. “I…love you.”

  I want to say more—a thousand things more—but the blackness chooses that moment to sweep in and take me away…forever.

  1

  “Sunny! Rayne! Are you two still in bed? The bus will be here in ten minutes!”

  I rub my eyes groggily, confused at what sounds like my mother’s voice, just outside my bedroom door. Something I know is impossible, since she’s off ruling Fairyland and I’m, well, stuck in the land of the dead. The same place I’ve been hanging out ever since that fateful night under the streets of New York City when Bertha the Vampire Slayer decided to go and kill me.

  You know, I have to say, I’m still pretty freaking ticked off about that whole thing, by the way. I mean, hello? She’s a vampire slayer. I’m a fairy. Killing me is so not part of her job description. Unfortunately there’s really no way to lodge a complaint against her with the powers-that-be from down here in Hades, where I’m stuck for eternity.

  I pull the covers over my head and close my eyes, trying to go back to sleep. I’m exhausted after spending most of yesterday playing softball with my dad in the Elysian Fields. I know it sounds bad-daughter-ish to say, but I have to admit, I like the fact that he’s dead, too. It’s nice to have family around. I only hope when I’m finally judged, they let me stay living with him in his little white picket fence split-level in the nice neighborhood of Elysian Heights instead of sending me off to someplace like Tartarus, where the really evil people go. (Like, imagine trying to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbors bin Laden and Gaddafi…)

  “Sunny?” The voice sounds again, this time louder. I reluctantly manage to sit up in bed. It’s then that I realize I’m no longer in the cozy little guest bedroom my dad offered to me the day I showed up dead on his doorstep. Instead I somehow appear to be back in my old bedroom in Oakridge, Massachusetts, where we used to live before the fairies came after us and we fled to Vegas. My familiar posters hang on the wall and the patchwork quilt my grandmother made me sits folded at the end of my bed.

  Which is completely impossible, of course, seeing as this bedroom, as it looks now, no longer exists. The fairies burned down the entire house months ago.

  Which means…I sigh, flopping down on my bed…I must be having a dream.

  A moment later my mother sticks her head through the doorway. She’s wearing some kind of long, colorful hemp skirt and peasant blouse, the kind of outfit she used to favor before taking on her current role of Queen of the Light Court. (Fairy wardrobes require a lot more bedazzling.) It makes me smile. What a lovely dream. My old life, nice and normal, just as it used to be long, long ago.

  Mom doesn’t smile back. Instead, she crosses her arms over her chest, a frown etched on her face. “Sunshine McDonald,” she scolds. “Get up this instant. You’re going to be late for school.”

  I contemplate telling her I’m going to skip—after all, dream attendance doesn’t affect one’s GPA. But then I reconsider. If I manage to stay asleep, all the way to school, I might actually get to dream up some of my old friends and field hockey teammates. That would be pretty awesome—even if they are only figments of my own imagination.

  “Sure, Mom,” I agree, rolling out of bed, enjoying the feel of soft Victoria’s Secret silk pajamas sliding against my skin. Not many people know this, but when you die, you’re stuck in the clothing you died in until your judgment day. (Yet another reason it’s important to wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident.) The day I died, I’d made an unfortunate wardrobe decision of an itchy wool sweater that I’ve been regretting ever since.

  Mom nods, seemingly satisfied that I’m up for good, then heads out of my room, presumably to go bug my sister. As I search through my closet for a nonitchy outfit, I hear a sudden scream coming from the next room.

  What the—? Afraid the dream might be turning nightmare, I rush out of my room and into my sister’s. Rayne’s got the covers pulled up to her chin and she’s staring at Mom as if she’s some kind of ghost of Christmas past.

  “Oh my God, it worked! It really worked!” she starts babbling, over and over again.

  “What worked?” I ask curiously. Her gaze sweeps over to me and she bounds out of bed, throwing her arms around me and squeezing me tight. She’s dressed in her favorite Emily the Strange nightgown and I realize she has dirty-blond hair—like she used to before she dyed it last year to differentiate herself from me.

  “You’re crushing my ribs,” I point out. In fact, for a dream hug, it really kind of hurts. I attempt to pry her fingers off me, but she clings on tight, as if she hasn’t seen me for years. From the corner of my eye I can see Mom shake her head.

  “The bus will be here in less than ten minutes,” she announces. “I would like to see you both be on it.” And with that, she walks out of the room.

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod,” Rayne cries, thankfully releasing me from her death hold and bouncing over to her bed. “I can’t believe it. It really happened! He really did it!”

  “Who did what?” I ask, starting to get a little annoyed. My dream was much more peaceful before Rayne decided to invade it.

  My twin turns to me, her eyes wide. “Don’t you remember?” she asks. “Oh, please say you remember. At the very least I need you to know what’s going on here. I can’t be the only one.”

  I draw in a slow breath. “Remember what, Rayne?”

  Rayne purses her lips, as if she doesn’t want to say. Then she pulls me onto the bed and places a hand to my ear. She leans in close. “Hades,” she whispers.

  I pull away. “Of course I remember Hades, you idiot. I’m stuck there for eternity, after all. Except when I manage to escape for a few blissful dream minutes. Which, I might add, you’re not exactly helping me make the most of.” I make a move to abandon the bed. But Rayne is too quick—grabbing my hand and jerking me back down.

  “Sunny,” she says, her voice low and serious. “This is no dream.”

  Her words send a chill down my spine. “But what else could it be?” I find myself asking, against my better judgment.

  She looks at me solemnly. “We’ve been given another chance.”

  “Another chance?” I am so lost at this point it’s not even funny.

  “Look.” She draws in a breath. “Remember how I traveled to Hades to free your soul and everything?”

  Again with the remember. As if I could forget how, only two days ago, my sister showed up at my dad’s front door with her boyfriend, Jareth, and vampire rock star Race Jameson. They had this crazy story about how they planned to make a deal with the devil to get me out. Very sweet of her and all, but, to be honest, I wasn’t that optimistic that she could really pull it off. After all, there are only a few people in this world reported to have been brought back from the dead, and most of them are pretty important. Like, Son of God–type important. Why would anyone make an exception for me?

  I realize my sister’s still talking. “Well, I finally got my audience with Hades, thanks to the help of his wife,” she says. “And I begged him to let you out. But he wouldn’t.
He said it was against the rules or something, and that if he did it for you, he’d have to do it for everyone, yada, yada, yada.” Rayne rolls her eyes, telling me exactly what she thinks of that little technicality. “But he owed me—after I helped him win his video game. So we made a bargain anyway.”

  I bite my lower lip, beginning to get a bad feeling about this. Something about my sister and her so-called bargains, which never seemed to work out in my favor. “Which was…?”

  “He reset the clock for us. Basically sent us back in time, into our old bodies. Before any of the badness happened.” She dashes to her computer and pulls up the calendar. “See? It’s April fifteenth.”

  I stare at her, realization hitting me with the force of a ten-ton truck. “April fifteenth?” I repeat. “Of last year…?”

  “One month and one week before prom,” Rayne announces triumphantly. “And…”

  “One month before Club Fang,” I realize aloud. “One month before Magnus bites me by mistake.” I stare at my sister, the implications of her so-called bargain hitting me hard and fast. Could it be true? Could we actually be back in time?

  “Oh, Rayne,” I cry, looking at her with horrified eyes. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve given you a second chance,” she says stoutly. “A chance for you to choose your destiny once and for all.” She pauses, then adds, “Are you willing to take it?”

  2

  Back in time. My stomach flip-flops as I stare at my sister, trying to make sense of it all. Back in time?

  Rayne’s done some crazy stuff before, don’t get me wrong, but nothing like this. My mind races as I try to catalog the events of the past year. All the life-changing stuff we’ve experienced. All the supernatural events. Vampires, werewolves, fairies. Everything that happened to us…has it really now unhappened?

  Rayne’s hopeful smile fades, her enthusiasm sliding into nervousness as she waits for me to say something…anything. I shake my head, not knowing whether I should kiss her or kill her. I mean, she did manage to do the impossible—to bring me back to life. But at what cost?

  “I’m sorry, Sun,” my sister says after a time, her voice thick with regret. “I know it’s a lot to take in. And believe me, I didn’t make the decision lightly. But Hades left me no choice. He’s really a ‘my way or the highway’ type of guy, if you want to know the truth. And not half as good at video games as he thinks he is.”

  I lie back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Long ago, when we were kids, Rayne and I had pasted glow-in-the-dark stars up there and some of them had stayed stuck. Unlike my reality, that is, which has suddenly become completely unglued.

  “Magnus,” I whisper, finally admitting aloud what’s been niggling at the back of my mind. My sweet vampire. What happened to him when time reset? Did he lose all memory of me and the things we’d shared over the last year? Does the Magnus in this time period even know I exist?

  I let out an involuntary gasp at the thought. All those moments, all those memories, stolen away. Rayne lies down beside me, also staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s the worst part. I had to leave Jareth behind, too.”

  I turn to glance at her, pulled out of my self-pity for a moment as it hits me exactly what my sister’s given up for me. She could have easily left me to rot in the Underworld and gone off to live happily ever after with her vampire boyfriend. But now, just like Magnus, Jareth won’t know her from a hole in the wall. She’s given up her true love—her eternal happiness—all for my second chance.

  “I’m sorry, Rayne,” I whisper, reaching over to squeeze her hand.

  “I can’t tell you what it was like,” she says, choking on her words. “To have to sit there and tell him I’m leaving him, only moments after promising I’d stay by his side forever.” Her voice cracks on the word forever and I realize she’s lost something else in addition to her love. She’s no longer a vampire. No longer immortal. Everything she’s ever wanted in life has been ripped away. For me.

  “Why did you do it?” I ask. “I mean, you could have just left me there…” Her sacrifice is so stunning, it’s hard for me to come to terms with it.

  “Because I knew in my heart it was for the best,” she says simply. “It wasn’t just your death. Everything was bad. Magnus had been caught by Pyrus’s wolves and would be tried for treason. The vampires in the Blood Coven had been kicked out of the Consortium and would have had to live a life of starvation and exile.” She turns her head to look at me, her eyes pleading for my understanding. “I couldn’t bear to let everyone suffer because of my mistakes.”

  “Rayne, it wasn’t your fault—”

  But she waves me off. “That’s not important now. What’s important is you have a second chance,” she insists. “A chance to live the life you were supposed to live. A normal life without vampires and other supernatural surprises. Without all the darkness I dragged you into that night when Magnus bit you instead of me.”

  My mind flashes back to that fateful night at Club Fang. The moment my life changed forever. Would I have done things differently if I knew then what I know now?

  I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

  3

  “Hey, Sunny, you ready for the big game tonight?”

  I turn around as my old friend and field hockey teammate Amanda taps me on the shoulder in the lunch line at school that afternoon. Wow. I haven’t seen her since—

  Yesterday. Sunny, you haven’t seen her since yesterday. At least in her mind.

  “Oh, totally,” I force myself to say, trying to keep my voice as casual as possible. It’s been so weird seeing all these people I haven’t seen since Rayne and I left Oakridge High for Vegas last November. Especially since to them, no time has passed at all. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Good,” Amanda pronounces, looking relieved. “When you weren’t in homeroom first period, I got worried. We have got to win this match against Haverhill tonight or we are totally screwed for the rest of the season.”

  “I know, right?” I find myself saying, trying hard to muster up an appropriate level of concern over some random high school sporting event that I couldn’t care less about. I mean, really. Winning? Losing? What did it matter in the long run? It wasn’t as if anyone’s life were at stake. As if an evil vampire would take over the town and cause mass destruction if we didn’t score a goal. Heck, I played the same game the first time around and I can’t even remember what the outcome was.

  It’s funny. I thought I’d be so psyched to get back to school. To go back to my former life and see all my old friends. But so far the first day back had been nothing short of a total nightmare. And not one of those dramatic, freaky nightmares that at least would be interesting. It was more like that movie Groundhog Day, where I felt as if I’d already lived it a thousand times before.

  “By the way, I heard Jake Wilder might be stopping by the game tonight,” Amanda adds, giving me a not-so-subtle wink.

  Jake Wilder. Wow. I’d almost forgotten he even existed. It’s hard to believe the resident school Sex God—the one I crushed on hardcore back in the day—was once a very important person in my life. Thinking back, I can’t even remember what I saw in him. I guess he was good looking. And popular. But he couldn’t hold a candle to Magnus. The most wonderful boyfriend in the entire universe.

  Who I’d probably never see again.

  Before heading to school, Rayne and I had made a pact. To live a normal, vampire-free life from this point forward. Too much badness had happened, my sister reasoned, because of our dalliances in the otherworld. It was better for all involved if we stayed out of it altogether and lived normal, everyday lives from this point forward.

  But though in my head I knew she was right, my heart was singing a different song. How could I ever waste time going after someone like Jake Wilder, when I knew someone like Magnus existed on the fringes of my reality?

  I get my lunch—some nasty, dried-up chicken nuggets and fries—and follow Amanda over t
o the table where the rest of my team appears to be debating the various pros and cons of different brands of lip gloss with quite a bit of venom, considering the subject matter.

  “Oh-Em-Gee, are you for real?” Olivia cries in disgust. “That stuff is like liquid glue! The one time I wore it, I almost got stuck to Carter permanently when I kissed him!”

  “As if that’s a bad thing,” Ava shot back with a devious smile on her lips.

  “Please,” cut in Jessica. “I make my own lip gloss. All you need is a little beeswax. A little honey…”

  “So, um, anyone hear about that crazy terrorist attack over in Syria this weekend?” I butt in, after checking my phone for a time-appropriate current event. “Pretty scary, right?”

  The girls turn to look at me as if I have three heads and have just announced that I enjoy waterboarding over the weekends for fun.

  “Um, yeah. Scary,” Olivia says quickly. Then she turns back to Jessica. “So wait. You make your own? But can you tint it that way? I much prefer tinted gloss…”

  Oh God. I rise from my seat and flee the inane conversation, purposely leaving my inedible lunch behind me. Was this really what my friends thought was important? Had I once thought it was important, too? Then I remember the ridiculous amount of lip gloss I’d pawed through this morning in my bathroom drawer trying to find a tube of toothpaste. Evidently so.

  But not anymore. Try as I might, I can’t seem to bring myself to care about lip gloss or field hockey games or cute boys with no personalities. I can’t care about English or math or getting good grades. All these things that once took priority in my so-called normal life now seem flat and dull and ridiculous.

  I have to face it: I’m not that girl anymore. That innocent, naive creature who flitted through life without a care in the world for anything but her own well-being. And I can’t go back to being her, no matter how hard I try. Not when I know what’s out there, under the surface of our world. The battles, the chaos, the intrigue. And most important, the most beautiful, sweet, loving vampire in the entire universe.