Secret Secrets

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Questions? I had so many.

"Explain to me why your eyes are red but Della's aren't. I mean those are vampire eyes, right? You weren't born with them or anything?" I asked.

Gabriel grinned and shook his head. "All vampires have red eyes. Della uses contacts because she thinks they will help her blend in more."

"Why don't you use them?" I was cuddled up close to Gabriel now, hanging onto his every word.

"You can barely see out of the things! I don't know how Della survives like that." He yawned and pulled out his cell phone to check the time-one in the morning. "We should probably head back in."

I was getting tired, and there was always time for more questions later. Gabriel and I kissed good night and headed back to our rooms. I tried to be as quiet as I was before, but once I got into the room, I could tell Della was awake. "Where were you?" She snapped in the darkness.

"I couldn't sleep, I went out for a walk." I led the best I could.

"No." Della said. "You were with Gabriel."

"Is that a problem?" I asked, but I got no answer. Just the sound of Della's breathing-it sounded soft as it usually did when she slept. Why had she gone back to sleep? It took it as a blessing and went back to bed myself, wondering what the next day held.

Surrounding me were mountains of paper plates, metal trays filled with small snacks, and crying people, myself being one of them. Eliza's casket sat in the middle of the spare church room we were in. Closed casket, of course. No one's stomach could handle a bloody murdered corpse like that.

Nothing about this day felt right. Eliza hated funerals and always used to tell me that she wanted to be cremated. Obviously that wasn't going to happen, taking that her dead body was only a few feet away, and that bothered me. Why hadn't the Sanders given their daughter what she wanted? She was dead after all. Or maybe she had never told them and they had just decided a funeral felt right.

As I sat on an uncomfortable pull out chair in the corner, I observed everyone who was walking around. Some of them talking about the night she was murdered, listing off incorrect facts. But I was too deflated to correct them. "It's not fair," I whispered to myself. "It's just not fair."

"Venice, you were zoning out again." Gabriel announced to me as I came back to my reality-math class. He reached his arm over and slammed a purple post it note down on my desktop. "The teaher wants to see us after class."

"I'm not surprised." I said, reading the post it to myself-You and Venice stay after class. We need to talk. "We probably need to start building a strategy."

Gabriel took the note from me and crumpled it in his fist. "How involved in this do you want to be?"

I smiled at him playfully. "We can discuss that after class."

And that we did.

"Venice, you need to be kept safe." Dax told me at our impromptu meeting after math. Gabriel stood near him, leaning against the chalk board.

"Why does the girl never get to do anything?" I asked, practically slamming my foot down.

"Because," Gabriel said with a sweet smirk. "the girl is the most irreplaceable."

I walked over to him and gave him a hug. "Very smooth, but not smooth enough. I don't want to be on the sidelines here, guys! Give me a shot!"

Dax looked very disgusted with Gabriel and I holding onto each other, so I tightened my grip. "We'll see how everything plays out." Dax said.

I nodded. "That's a start."

Dax looked up at the clock. "You two need to get to class. Any chance you could stop by after school?"

I looked at Gabriel. "I don't see why not." He said.

"Great," said Dax. "then we can start talking about the strategy part. Now get out of here, you still have a day of classes ahead of you!"

Gabriel and I reacted like any other teenager would to that statement-with a groan of protest.