Page 18 of House of Royals

After saying grace, everyone digs into their dinner.

“School starts on Monday, right Elle?” Ian asks around a mouthful of some kind of food that’s so Southern I don’t have a name for it. Since we ate only an hour ago, I’m having a hard time fitting anything else in my stomach.

She nods. “Sophomore year,” she says with a cringe. “Do you think you could drive me into town to get the rest of my stuff tomorrow?”

“I’ll take ‘ya, child,” Lula says. “Been takin’ care of ‘ya fo’ the last how many years? I’ll keep on keepin’ on.”

“Yes, Lula,” Elle says, looking down at her plate with a knowing little smile.

I glance over at Ian. His eyes flit over to mine. “She can’t drive anymore, and hasn’t been able to for quite a few years. Thankfully, her hearing isn’t what it used to be either.”

I look back at her, and she’s staring at her food, munching slowly and deliberately.

We finish our meal and Lula shuffles off to bed, even though it’s barely seven o’clock. Elle clears the table as Ian and I do the dishes.

“How old is your grandmother?” I ask when we’re nearly finished and Elle has said goodnight to go read a book.

“She’s eighty-seven,” Ian says as he dries the last plate and puts it away. I drain the dishwater and dry my hands. Together we walk out to the back porch and sit on the top stair.

“She’s Elle’s caretaker, isn’t she?” I ask quietly as the sun starts to slip toward the trees.

Ian nods. His eyes drop to the steps we sit on. His forearms rest on his knees, his fingers tightly knitted together.

“What happened to your parents, Ian?”

He chews the inside of his lip for a second, and I can feel the gears turning in his head. He picks at a hangnail before finally answering me.

“We lived in this little, crappy house closer to town when I was a kid. It always smelled like swamp, even though we were miles from it. One night when I was ten, I was lying awake, listening to my parents fight for the thousandth time. They fought all the time. Elle was sleeping on the bottom bunk, even though she probably should have been in a crib—she was only two, snoring like a wolf.” He chuckles, his eyes rising to the horizon, and shakes his head.

“There was a loud shatter, like the door being busted down. My mom screamed and dad yelled. There were gunshots.” He swallows and his eyes fall back down again. “I was scared, scared to death. But I climbed out of bed and cracked open the door. It looked right out into the living room. What I saw…there wasn’t any logical explanation for it to a ten year old.”

I know what’s coming and imagining the scene? It’s horrific. I fight the urge to reach out and rub a hand over Ian’s back.

“There was this man there,” he says, his voice hardening, but showing the slightest emotion. “Eyes glowing red, face covered in these horrible black veins. His face was covered in blood. Dad was already dead, drained dry. The vampire was holding Mom. She was stone white.”

A shiver runs up my back. As horrible as my own mother’s death had been, at least I hadn’t witnessed her murder. In such a brutal and unnatural way.

“The vamp looked up at me, and I thought for sure I was dead. Elle, too. I should have screamed, but I could only stare at my dead mom.” His voice cracks just slightly, but overpowering it is anger. “The thing just stared at me…for a long time. Finally, sense came back to my brain. I slammed the door shut, locked it. I grabbed Elle from her bed. She started crying. I crawled out the window with her and started running.” Ian takes a deep breath, his eyes rising back up. “I ran here. To my grandmother’s house. I told her what I’d seen. The crazy thing was that she believed me.”

Finally, hesitantly, I reach out and place a hand on his back. His body is warm through his t-shirt. I rub my hand back and forth lightly just twice.

Ian had been just a kid. He was so young and so innocent. And in an instant, he’d become an orphan. But instead of crying, instead of breaking down like pretty much anyone else would have, he grabbed his baby sister and saved both of their lives.

Ian looks back at me, his eyes serious and heavy. “You hear that ignorance is bliss all the time. I had no idea as a kid how bad Silent Bend’s vampire problem was. And is. And the thing is, half the town is fully aware of it.”

“Whatever this House is that you keep saying is going to come after me, they’re all vampires, aren’t they?” I ask, taking my hand back.

Ian nods and then stands. He reaches out a hand and pulls me to my feet. “Yeah. And I’ll tell you about them, but first we have to lock the house down.”

When we walk back inside, Ian makes his way to Elle’s bedroom. “You need to go anywhere else tonight?” he asks.

She looks up from her book, lying on her bed, and shakes her head.

“’K,” Ian says. “I’m going to lock up now. We’re going to bed.”

“Alright,” she says, glancing over at me. But it isn’t suggestive, considering what Ian just said. This girl knows her brother. It comforts me that she knows Ian isn’t like that. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” he says as he pulls her door closed.

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