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  She dumped the couple of dishes into the sink before scrubbing them clean under the tap and stacking them on the draining board.

  Serenity gnawed anxiously on a nail. Why did Elizabeth have to be ill today, of all days? With Sebastian gone, she wanted to make things special for her daughter, to try to make her feel like she wasn’t missing out. And now she was curled up in bed and in pain on a day when she should be having fun with her friends.

  Hopefully, Elizabeth would feel better after she woke up. In the meantime, Serenity decided to get some work done. She’d finish up what she needed to do and hope that when Elizabeth woke she was feeling better and was ready to get her birthday started.

  She crossed into the living room and fired up her Mac, another new addition to the household. She’d picked up some work doing data entry, and while it might not be her dream job—though those aspirations seemed long behind her—the work kept her mind focused and meant she didn’t need to be totally reliant on someone else. Sebastian always made sure they had enough money, but she liked to have some modicum of independence.

  Her heart clenched at the thought of him.

  He stayed in regular contact, sending presents from all around the world and letters filled with words of love and how he missed them. She studied the postal marks, trying to track his location, but he never stayed in one place for long. Besides, she wasn’t about to beg him to come home. Not yet anyway. Perhaps when Elizabeth was a grown woman and had moved out and created a life of her own she would take the chance, but right now, with Elizabeth still so vulnerable, neither of them could take the risk.

  Still, on the occasions he called, she couldn’t stop herself from closing her eyes and imaging him beside her. Late at night, when the loneliness was at its worst, she often found herself crying into her pillow.

  Serenity took a seat in front of her computer, fired it up and lost herself in some work for a while. The time passed quickly enough and she topped up her coffee mug when needed.

  After an hour or so, she sat back, rubbed her eyes and then glanced up at the calendar hanging on the wall above her workspace. Elizabeth had given her the calendar as a Christmas present—one of those online orders she’d made herself, filled with photographs of herself and Serenity. Of course, Serenity loved the present and always being able to look up and see her daughter happy and smiling, but at the same time, she found the absence of Sebastian’s face from the collection to be like a stab in the heart.

  That time has come again, she realized. Her time to take Sebastian’s blood, something she needed to do once a month.

  She didn’t dare not take it. What would happen to Elizabeth if she were to plunge back into that nothingness she’d inhabited after Sebastian had rescued her from Jackson? She’d not known who she was back then, or even who Elizabeth was. The idea of such a thing happening again was more than enough to keep her taking the blood.

  With a sigh, she pushed herself away from her desk and headed into the kitchen. She opened the door to the cellar and paused at the top of the steps. With one hand, she reached out and flicked on the overhead light, flooding the dark, confined space below with illumination. She kept a small refrigerator down there so she didn’t need to keep the blood in her main fridge, knowing she would never want to explain the vials to anyone who might happen to pop around for coffee.

  Serenity trotted down the steps and pulled open the door of the fridge and crouched in front of it. Styrofoam trays filled with small glass vials, rubber droppers plugging the tops, lined the three wire shelves. The result looked like something that should exist in a hospital. In a way, she supposed it was her medicine.

  She lifted the closest vial from its tray and carefully squeezed the bulbous end of the dropper between her thumb and forefinger, drawing a few milliliters of blood into the fine glass tube. She tilted her head back, lengthening the line of her throat, and opened her mouth. With a gentle squeeze, she allowed one single drop of Sebastian’s blood to hit her tongue, a cool bead of liquid strength. There was something so intimate about the act, taking a part of Sebastian and placing it inside her.

  She swallowed.

  Immediately, the effects of his blood began to work on her body. The vampire blood spread out through her torso and limbs, making her whole body tingle with energy. Right away, the world became clearer. She could make out every detail of the exposed brick of the cellar walls. The almost silent skitter of a spider in its web in the far corner of the cellar rang in her ears. Her nostrils grew alive with the scents of dank mud and mildew; not something she would normally relish, but, with the effects of the vampire blood working on her, it smelled like life. She sensed the vibrations of traffic passing on the street outside, carried through the earth to this underground space.

  She knew the effects wouldn’t last long, mere minutes now that her body had grown used to the blood. In the early days, she felt the after-effects for days or more, but she didn’t any more, something she wasn’t sure if she should be happy or sad about. She supposed if she really wanted to experience more she could take more blood, but that wasn’t a path she planned on heading down.

  Carefully, she replaced the stopper in the vial and put it back in the refrigerator. Sebastian had made sure there was more than enough blood to keep her going. She didn’t fear running out, but wasting any would have felt wrong.

  With a lightness to her step that hadn’t been present on the way down, she made her way back up into the house.

  She stopped at the mirror mounted on the wall below the staircase. As she’d known would happen, her hair had curled with a lustrous shine, her creamy skin appeared smoother, and her eyes were clear with a sparkle that hadn’t been there only a few minutes earlier. Without looking, she also knew her body would be tighter and firmer, any extra pounds she might have put on over the month vanished without a trace.

  If the rest of humanity was aware of what vampire blood could do, she thought, vampires would be hunted down and locked into laboratories to be bled dry.

  Serenity scowled at her reflection and pulled a hair band from her wrist. With force, she scraped her hair back from her face and tied it into a severe ponytail. What was the use in beauty when she had no one to appreciate it? It wasn’t as though she had any interest in other men. After being with Sebastian, no other man would ever measure up. Her heart belonged to him and she could envisage no point at which she would ever feel any different.

  She sat back at her desk and forced herself to concentrate on her work. Her heart wasn’t it in, though, and she found her mind wandering, thinking about Elizabeth and, of course, Sebastian.

  Leaning back in her chair, she ran a hand over her face and then looked over her shoulder toward the wide doorway which led into the entrance hall and stairs. There had been no movement from Elizabeth’s room, though she’d been asleep for an extra couple of hours now.

  She frowned and got back to her feet. Elizabeth would sleep through her whole birthday if she wasn’t careful. She started across the room and then hesitated, weighing her decision to wake sleeping beauty. If she had a bug, she might be better to sleep it off.

  Serenity hardly believed Elizabeth was a young woman already. How those years had flown by, even with all of the craziness of their lives going on. Even though she was terribly lonely and she knew Elizabeth missed her father, she had to admit that life had been more peaceful with him gone. Nothing newly supernatural had entered their lives for five years now, though she’d desperately missed them being a family.

  I’ll go and check on her again, make sure she’s okay, she decided, heading back up the stairs toward her daughter’s room.

  Pushing open Elizabeth’s door, worry bubbled up inside her. The room was silent, her daughter’s breathing so shallow she couldn’t even hear it. If not for the shape outlined beneath the blankets, she would have assumed the room to be empty, devoid of life.

  Serenity was suddenly forced back in time, like she’d stepped through a doorway into the past. How of
ten had she felt the same way when either standing outside of or stepping into a room where Sebastian slept?

  “Elizabeth, honey?” she called out, breaking the silence.

  No response came and she had to stop herself from running, panic clutching at her heart, propelling her forward to her daughter’s bed.

  She pulled back the covers, exposing Elizabeth’s sleeping face. She looked peaceful, her lips slightly parted, her long lashes brushing against her pale cheek. Serenity reached out and placed her hand on Elizabeth’s forehead. Her skin was cool, her breathing even.

  Yet still, irrational thoughts claimed her, a fear she couldn’t put into a coherent thought or words making her act. She grabbed Elizabeth’s shoulder and gave her a rough shake.

  “Elizabeth! Wake up!” Her daughter groaned and rolled over, pulling the covers with her. “Elizabeth, I said you need to wake up now.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes opened and she twisted her head around, taking in the sight of her mother, a frown on her face. “Mom …” she whined, grabbing the covers and pulling them back over her head. “Go away. I’m still sleeping.”

  “But are you feeling all right?” Serenity persisted.

  “I’m fine. I’m just sleeping. Go away.”

  Serenity sighed and left her be, backing out of the room. Had Elizabeth entered her moody teenage years already? Although there had been plenty of times over the past thirteen years where she figured her daughter had hit that point already, she had been dreading the day it would actually happen. She gave a rueful smile. Well, she didn’t intend on physically dragging Elizabeth out of bed, so she guessed she’d just have to wait.

  There seemed to be too many hours in the day now. When Sebastian had been around and Elizabeth was small, Serenity stayed up during the night to spend time with him. Now, with him gone and Elizabeth becoming more and more independent, she found herself with too much time on her hands and no way to fill it except think. Even when caught up in her work, her mind drifted, wondering what Sebastian was doing and where he was. She felt as though an invisible thread still bound them, that even though he wasn’t physically with her, he still made up a huge part of their lives. She knew the blood she still needed to take had something to do with how she felt. After he first left, she’d found their continuing bond to be too great a source of pain, as though that were the thing that made her unable to let go of him, the reason for him to be constantly in her thoughts.

  Hoping to help herself to heal and get on with her life, she’d attempted to take Vincent’s blood instead. Although the connection shifted, her love for Sebastian didn’t change. She thought of Vincent as only a friend, but she’d still been overwhelmed with guilt, feeling as though she was essentially betraying Sebastian.

  In a way, she supposed she had been. She’d only attempted it the once, and, despite Vincent’s insistence that these things would take time, she’d not wanted to try again.

  Her job didn’t help matters. Working from home was isolating, with no one else to speak to except for the occasional phone call to head office, and she tended to communicate by email. She also knew she came across as standoffish, perhaps even aloof, to the other mothers at Elizabeth’s school. That she lived alone—except for Elizabeth, of course—in this big house always gave people something to gossip about, and she couldn’t help but find herself bristle toward the curious glances she earned at the school gate. She didn’t intend to come across that way, but she struggled to fit in with other people. Whenever someone tried to strike up a conversation with her, she found herself staring at them, thinking, you have no idea about the secrets the world holds, and losing track of the exchange.

  Her sense of isolation wasn’t a new thing, though, she reminded herself. Loneliness had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember.

  Having too much time to think wasn’t a good thing. After the events of five years ago, she’d almost driven herself crazy with worry, wondering what the fallout would be of Bridget’s death. As far as Serenity knew, the case of Bridget’s disappearance remained open. With no body, the police couldn’t upgrade her disappearance to murder.

  Serenity had been worried someone might have seen Bridget’s car at their house, but no one came forward with any information and she had no idea what Sebastian had done with the Prius. Of course, the police came around to ask questions, but she told them she’d seen Bridget the day before her disappearance when she’d come to visit Elizabeth, but hadn’t seen or heard from her since. Elizabeth had been able to confirm her report. When the police asked after Sebastian, she told them Sebastian had left her, gone traveling, and she had no idea where he was or when he was coming back. Again, she’d been worried the cops would find something suspicious in her story, but it seemed that men leaving their wives and families wasn’t too unusual, a thought she found depressing.

  She settled back down at her work, losing herself in the mundane task of entering figures into spreadsheets. Eventually, she glanced at the clock. Morning was rapidly turning into afternoon. She knew Elizabeth was technically a teenager now, but this bordered on the ridiculous. As long as the girl was feeling all right now, she saw no reason for her to still be lazing around in bed.

  With a sigh, she pushed back her chair, intending to go and tug the covers off Elizabeth’s bed, but the sound of movement from the stairs caught her attention. She stepped out into the hall to see Elizabeth come trotting down the wide staircase. Her long dark hair was pulled into a high ponytail, a flush of color in her porcelain cheeks.

  “Hey, honey.” Serenity smiled at her as she approached. “I was about to come up and wake you. I assume you’re feeling better?”

  Elizabeth smiled back. “Yeah, I’m good. Jasmine and Emily just texted me. Is it still okay that we go and hang at the mall? You said we could eat there, remember? My birthday treat.”

  “Sure,” she said, pleased her daughter was well and wanting to do something fun. “But you know I’m not going to leave you at the mall on your own?”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “'Course.”

  This matter had caused several arguments over the last few days. Elizabeth thought she was old enough now to be able to go on her own, especially as some of her slightly older friends did. Serenity, however, would let hell freeze over before allowing Elizabeth to go unsupervised. Instead, they’d come to a compromise where Serenity would be in the mall, but would hang back and allow the girls to shop and eat alone.

  “You promise to keep your phone on you as well,” Serenity continued, wanting to make sure she could still get hold of Elizabeth should she lose track of her. “And it’s charged, right?”

  “Yes, and yes,” said Elizabeth, rolling her eyes again.

  “I’m just checking. Are your friends coming here first? Do they need a ride?”

  “Nah, I’m meeting them outside the mall.”

  “Okay. Well, how about that breakfast now? Although it’s more like lunch.”

  Elizabeth’s expression changed, what color she had in her cheeks draining away. “I’m not really hungry. Anyway, I don’t want to spoil my appetite if I’m going to eat again soon.”

  “I think you should have something.” Serenity frowned. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, honest.” Elizabeth seemed to pull herself together, the flush returning to her cheeks. “Stop fussing.” She rubbed her hands together and grinned. “Now where are those presents?”

  Serenity laughed. “All right. Which one do you want first?” Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, but Serenity put out a hand to stop her. “Let me guess … your father’s.”

  “No offense.” Elizabeth shrugged.

  “None taken.”

  They headed into the kitchen and Elizabeth picked up the small parcel Sebastian had sent. She eagerly tore off the simple brown paper the present was wrapped in. A tightly folded note rested on top of the gift, but Elizabeth put it to one side for the moment and opened the box.

  “Oh, wow.”<
br />
  She lifted a necklace from the package, dangling the chain from her fingers. As she held it higher, uncoiling it from its box, she revealed a pendant hanging from the chain. A stone striped with browns and ambers was set in the same silver-colored material as the chain.

  Elizabeth took the pendant between her fingers. As she tilted it, the stone caught the light, the brown morphing to coffee, the amber to gold. The stripes and shades didn’t remain the same in a single moment, morphing, shifting and changing with the light.

  It was beautiful.

  Serenity experienced a small twinge of jealousy, but quickly pushed the emotion away. “That’s gorgeous. Do you want to wear it now?” Elizabeth nodded. “Turn around and I’ll help you put it on.”

  She clipped the necklace around Elizabeth’s slender throat and then turned her daughter back around to admire the present. The stone pendant settled against her skin, just above the curves of her small, budding breasts. The way the stone looked against her pale skin stirred something inside her—an uneasiness?

  Where had these feelings come from all of a sudden? she wondered. Nothing had changed.

  She reached out and touched the chain. “I’m guessing this isn’t silver. Must be white gold or perhaps even platinum.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “Really? Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t think your father is any good at buying silver.”

  Elizabeth’s hand went to her mouth and she laughed. “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about that.” She picked up the folded note and read it out loud. “A beautiful necklace for my beautiful daughter. Wish I was with you both. All my love, Dad.”

  They both fell into a wistful silence, feeling his absence even more for the love he’d sent into their lives with a few simple words.

  Serenity didn’t want Elizabeth to be sad on her birthday, so she forced a smile. “Well, you’re probably going to hate my present now.”

  “No, I won’t,” she said, hopping up and down, clapping her hands.

  For a moment, Serenity was taken back to when Elizabeth was still small. How sad she would never get that time back again. When children were grown, that was it. A tiny part of her grieved for the toddler Elizabeth had once been, missing that small person who’d put her whole world into the security of her mother’s arms.