Page 67 of Life and Death
I stared at her for a minute, till half her mouth twitched up into a smile.
“How long have you been seventeen?” I asked.
“A while,” she admitted.
I smiled. “Okay.”
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
This was better, though. Easier, with her just being herself, not worrying about keeping me in the dark. I liked being on the inside. Her world was where I wanted to be.
“Don’t laugh—but how do you come outside in the daytime?”
She laughed anyway. “Myth.”
The sound of her laughter was warm. It made me feel like I had swallowed a bunch of sunlight. My smile got bigger.
“Burned by the sun?”
“Myth.”
“Sleeping in coffins?”
“Myth.” She hesitated for a moment, and then added softly, “I can’t sleep.”
It took me a minute to absorb that. “At all?”
“Never,” she murmured. She turned to look at me with a wistful expression. I held her gaze, my eyes getting trapped in her golden stare. After a few seconds, I’d completely lost my train of thought.
Suddenly she turned away, her eyes narrowing again. “You haven’t asked me the most important question yet.”
“The most important question?” I echoed. I couldn’t think of what she meant.
“Aren’t youcuriousabout my diet?” she asked, her tone mocking.
“Oh. That one.”
“Yes. That one,” she said bleakly. “Don’t you want to know if I drink blood?”
I winced. “Well, Jules said something about that.”
“Did she now?”
“She said you didn’t . . . hunt people. Your family wasn’t supposed to be dangerous because you only hunted animals.”
“She said we weren’t dangerous?” Her voice was deeply skeptical.
“Not exactly. Jules said you weren’tsupposedto be dangerous. But the Quileutes still didn’t want you on their land, just in case.”
She looked forward, but I couldn’t tell if she was watching the road or not.
“So, was she right? About not hunting people?” I tried to keep my voice as even as possible.
“The Quileutes have a long memory,” she whispered.
I took that as a confirmation.
“Don’t let that make you complacent, though,” she warned me. “They’re right to keep their distance from us. We are still dangerous.”
