Chapter Sixteen

They got back to the hotel not long later, though AnnMarie did stop to order takeout on the way back. When they arrived back, Esther watched AnnMarie carefully as she ate a bowl of fried rice, feeling slightly angry about the fact that it smelled so good, though she tried to hide her frustration from AnnMarie.

When she was finished eating, they sat across from each other on the bed, and AnnMarie emptied the paper bag, which was filled with a hefty stack of books. They were all very worn, showing obvious signs of age. The spines had split, the pages were yellow and begging to chip.

Esther picked them up one by one and glanced over the titles with a frown.

"Half of these books are focused on summoning spirits." She said as she looked through them.

AnnMarie looked up from the book she was currently thumbing through.

"The witch from the shop told me that the only way to know for sure how to break a blood curse was to ask the person who placed it on the bloodline." AnnMarie said. "Apparently it's a lot different from a simple curse."

"I guess it means that person is dead then?" Esther said.

AnnMarie grimaced, and glanced to the side.

"As far as I know." She said. "It"s been in my family as far back as my mama could remember."

"But you don't know who placed it?" Esther asked.

AnnMarie shook her head.

"No. My mama wouldn't hardly talk to me about it. The only time she even got close to talking about it was when she was yelling at me for making friends. She would tell me how selfish I was and how I should feel ashamed of it. Any other time she just acted like it didn't exist."

"So then what should our next move be?" Esther said, mostly to herself. "Would we have to summon one of your ancestors and then ask them who placed the curse?"

AnnMarie let out a small huff of air, and the look on her face made Esther assume she didn't want to contact her ancestors, even in ghost form. Her brow furrowed, but then softened after a moment.

"There's a lot of stuff up in my attic." AnnMarie said. "A lot of it is pretty old, and I've never gone up there to look through it because the attic gives me the creeps. It's too close to that weird room. There could be something up there that could help us."

Esther remembered seeing the piles of boxes up there when she had ventured up into the attic a couple of months ago, but she hadn't bothered to check any of them at the time. They had seemed like junk.

"It's worth a shot, since we're going on nothing at the moment." Esther said.

"Maybe we should make a list." AnnMarie suggested.

With a nod of agreement, Esther reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the notepad that sat by the lamp.

"Okay, so-" AnnMarie started. "First thing first, we need to figure out who the person who placed the curse is."

Esther nodded as she clicked the pen and started to write.

"But then we have to actually do the summoning ritual." AnnMarie said. "And I've never done magic. Are you any good with it? You can do your vampire magic, right?"

"It's... not exactly the same." Esther said. "It's not as versatile or as powerful as a witch's. I can put people to sleep, I can mildly charm them, and I have a couple of other things that assist me when hunting, but it's nothing compared to the scope of what a trained witch could do."

"So you can't, like, see ghosts or something?" AnnMarie asked sadly.

Esther shook her head.

"But I do have something that might help us when we get that far." She reached into her pocket, and pulled out the shimmery business card that Breanna had given her. "The witch gave me her business card before we left. She was interested in the fact that I'm undead, and I feel like she would help us if I reached out to her."

AnnMarie took the card excitedly, but after a moment, her face fell.

"Esther... I'm sorry about what happened at the store."

Esther tensed at her words. Her sympathy hurt, somehow. There was a part of her that felt like the witch's reaction was what she deserved. She was dead, after all, and most people automatically reacted to death with discomfort and disgust. It was normal.

Esther decided to feign ignorance.

"What do you mean?" She asked, setting the notepad aside.

"When you were kicked out of the store." AnnMarie, unfortunately, clarified. "I was just upset that you had to be treated like that. It's not fair to you."

But it is. A voice in her head said. Maybe it was her own.

Esther glanced away.

"AnnMarie, I'm vampire." She said. "Of course people are scared of me, you should think that there's probably a good reason for that."

Somehow AnnMarie looked hurt at her words.

"But you wouldn't hurt anyone. You've told me so yourself!" AnnMarie said. "And you can't help that you're undead. It shouldn't change how people treat you."

When she heard AnnMarie say she wouldn't hurt anyone, she suddenly felt stretched too thin. A memory popped into her head.

Luce, one her knees, begging to be killed.

A painful decision between two equally bad options.

A situation that was brought on by her own selfishness, her own need to pssess someone completely.

She clenched her fist to try and drive the feelings out.

She wanted AnnMarie to stop. To stop trying to justify her. She wanted to change her mind.

"I have hurt people before, AnnMarie." She said. "I've killed someone. When I first moved in with you, it was for my own convenience. It was so I could live off of your blood, and then vanish when I was ready to move on. I was taking advantage of you. It would do you good to keep that in mind when you think of me."

AnnMarie blinked a couple of times in stunned silence. She opened her mouth like she was about to say something, but the only sound she made was a whimper as tears began to slip down her cheeks.

Esther swallowed, suddenly horrified at herself, despite how sure of her actions she had been just a few moments ago.

"I mean, Annie-"

AnnMarie shook her head, and quickly wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.

"No, it's fine." She said. "It's stupid of me to assume that you have the same kind of feelings I do."

Esther was somehow hurt by the words, although it was more or less what she was constantly trying to convince everyone around her of.

When AnnMarie said them, it hurt.

She wanted to reach out and grab her hand, which was small and shaking. She wanted to feel the warmth in her tiny palm spread into her own, and to feel comfort from the heat of it, rather than pain. But something held her back.

It was something that told her not to get too close, if she really did care about the girl.

"Let's just forget about it." AnnaMarie said. "Let's forget about it. We'll go back to looking at these books."

Esther nodded, now unable to look at her.

And so that's what they did.