Vendetta

“Was it someone at the party who spiked it?” My uncle Jack continued his pointless interrogation.

I gave him the same answer I gave the police. “Yeah, but there were so many people there, it could have been anyone.”

Jack nodded thoughtfully. “Was there anyone you didn’t recognize? What about that new family on Lockwood Avenue?”

“No,” I replied resolutely. “In fact, if it wasn’t for that family, I might have ended up in way worse condition.”

“What?” he snapped, the softness in his voice disappearing.

“One of them found me on my way home and brought me to the hospital.” I left out the part about Robbie Stenson; I didn’t want my uncle thinking about me kissing a boy. Besides, I could barely think about it myself without feeling my skin crawl.

Jack set his mouth in a hard line, squaring his jaw. “How do you know he wasn’t the one who drugged you in the first place?”

“What are you talking about?” I didn’t bother to keep the mounting irritation from my voice. I would not let Jack taint this good deed with his preconceived notions of Nic’s family. “He didn’t drug me. He wasn’t even at the party!”

“I don’t know,” Jack grumbled. He looked to my mother, but she was staring past him, evidently fed up with his visit. She had done her best; she had lasted four minutes.

I released a sigh that turned into a yawn. “Even if he did drug me by magical intervention, then why would he bring me to the hospital and get them to call Mom?”

“I’m sure there are ways he could —”

“Please,” I labored. “Just stop. You’re being paranoid.”

“It’s exhausting,” added my mother, her voice clipped. She folded her arms across her chest and moved closer to me.

I covered my mouth, stifling another yawn.

“OK,” Jack conceded. “I’m just worried, Sophie. Can you understand that? I want to make sure you weren’t targeted.”

I may have been tired, but I wasn’t too exhausted to register the oddness in my uncle’s statement. “Why would someone target me?”

My mother bristled beside me. Her tolerance for Jack’s paranoid mutterings had run out a long time ago. After all, it was this habit that had led my father into the mess that had gotten him thrown in prison. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” he said, more to himself than to us. He dragged his hands across his face and through his hair. I surveyed him: his bloodshot eyes, his week-old stubble, his blotchy skin. Even his lips were pale.

“Sophie’s OK, Jack,” my mother said, biting back whatever else she might have wanted to add. It was clear he was troubled about what had happened to me, and there was no point antagonizing him for it. “I think you need to get some rest. We all do.”

“OK,” he relented to my mother. “I’ll go.”

He smiled at me then; it was a sweet, hopeful sort of smile with just a shadow of something darker.

“When are you coming back?” I sounded like a child again, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted my uncle close by. He was the unpredictable, wilder half of my calm, measured father, and right now he was doing his best to be both of them for me. He might not have been succeeding very well, but we were still bonded, he and I. And even though my mother would never dare admit it, without my father, we all needed each other.

He ruffled my hair. “Soon,” he said gruffly. “I’ll call you.”

He paused with his hand on the door. “And remember what I said. Keep to yourself.”

“I will.” I lied easily this time. Jack’s paranoia had only made me more determined to find out exactly what was going on around me. And I suspected some of those answers were in the Priestly house.

After two days, I had almost fully recovered and was ready to begin my investigation.

I wasn’t surprised that Nic hadn’t tried to contact me after I was discharged from hospital, because nothing Nic did or didn’t do surprised me anymore.

I walked to his house in the early afternoon. Pausing outside the wrought iron gates, I surveyed the mansion with a growing sense of foreboding. There was only one car in the driveway, and suddenly I felt horrified at the thought of coming face-to-face with any of Nic’s other family members. After all, I was still a Gracewell — whatever terrible thing that meant to them — and there was nothing I could do to change that.

Steeling myself, I marched through the open gates and crunched along the gravel driveway. When I reached the red front door, I rapped on the knocker and edged back into the driveway, waiting nervously.

After what seemed like an eternity, the door was unbolted in three metallic thumps, and heaved open to reveal a statuesque figure, darkened by the shadowed hallway behind him. But I knew that outline almost as well as I knew his voice.

“Sophie?” Nic hovered in the doorway, immaculate in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. His feet were bare.

“Hi,” I ventured, watching him clench and unclench his jaw. “I want to talk to you.”

Anchoring his hands on either side of the door frame, he leaned out at an angle and searched the emptiness behind me. “Sophie,” he said again, but softer this time. “What are you doing here?”

By the way his eyes searched mine, I knew there was still something between us. The air around us pulsed, and I decided to cut to the chase before it consumed me. “You don’t have to play dumb about the other night.”