Taken at Dusk (Shadow Falls 3)

The tapping stopped.

Kylie lay there, listening. The silence suddenly seemed ominous. She took in a shallow breath, and the sound seemed abnormally loud. The window was locked, right?

She recalled opening it the day before, hoping to invite in a breeze. And no, she couldn't recall locking it afterward.

But hey ... considering the types of intruders Kylie feared the most, the kind that could create sinkholes and materialize out of thin air, what was the chance a locked window would stop them?

So why, Kylie wondered, did the distinct sound of someone lifting her window send sharp jolts of fear straight to her heart?

Chapter Twenty-nine

Kylie bounced out of bed, and her heart leapt with her. Her gaze shot to the window, where she saw two hands gripping the windowsill.

A scream rose in her throat, but then Della's voice echoed outside the window. "Try to crawl in the window and I'm gonna crawl up your ass! And the position is just about right for me to do it."

The hands disappeared. Someone hit the ground.

Kylie ran to the window to make sure Della didn't engage in a fatal fight. Della, in her loose-fitting blue cotton Mickey Mouse pajamas, had her hands on her hips, standing over someone laid out on the lawn. Her eyes were a bright green.

"Shit!" Ellie said, her own eyes glowing. "I just wanted to talk to Kylie." She looked over at the window to Kylie and grabbed her baseball hat that read, LITTLE VAMP.

"See that?" Della pointed toward the front porch. "It's called a door. And most people use them."

"I didn't want to wake anyone else."

"Then you wait until a decent hour!" Della countered.

Kylie didn't know what Ellie wanted to discuss, but if it had anything to do with Derek, Kylie was willing to hear her out.

"It's okay," Kylie said. "Come on in."

"Oh, right. Reward bad behavior!" Della looked disgusted, but Kylie couldn't help it.

Ellie smirked at Della, then stood and started to climb in the window again.

Della yanked her back. "Use the freaking door!"

When Kylie walked out of her bedroom, Della was gone and Ellie sat on the sofa.

"What's up?" She went over and sat in the chair next to her.

She looked up. "I don't know, I just wanted to talk."

"About what?" Kylie asked.

Ellie pulled one leg up to her chest. "A couple of things. Derek said you might be a good person to talk to about my issues."

Kylie chest tightened. "If this is about you and Derek-"

"No." She rolled her eyes. "I wasn't lying when I said there was nothing between us ... romantically. I like Derek as a friend. A good friend, but that's all. And that's some of what I wanted to talk about."

"I'm not following you," Kylie said.

"I'm worried about Derek. He's really upset about you two, and I sort of feel it's my fault. And when something's your fault, you feel responsible for fixing it."

Kylie frowned. "It's not your fault. Things weren't going right when he left."

"Yeah, he said that ... but still..."

"It's not your fault." Kylie cupped her knees in her palms. Did Derek really regret everything? The question hung somewhere between her head and her heart. "What's the other thing you needed to talk about?" she asked, not wanting to discuss Derek. She wasn't ready to delve into that Pandora box of emotions. The past was the past.

Ellie shrugged and adjusted her cap again. "I just don't think I belong here. I feel bad that Holiday worked so hard to get me accepted, but ... I think it's best I go."

Kylie leaned forward. "You want to leave Shadow Falls?"

"Yeah." She frowned. "All of it just doesn't feel right."

Her words didn't make sense, so Kylie just shook her head. "All of what?"

She glanced at Della's bedroom door and scooted over to the end of the sofa, closer to Kylie, and lowered her voice. "The whole supernatural world. Derek said you would probably understand because you felt the same way for a while. I mean, don't you miss it? Don't you miss being normal? Just hanging with your old friends? I want that back. I miss ... Before I worried about what I wanted to take in college. Now I worry about where I'm going to get my next pint of blood."

"You can't leave, Ellie. I'm not mad at you, if that's what this is about. I mean, at first I was hurt, but..."

"It's not that. Really," Ellie said. "Even my own kind here aren't exactly welcoming," she whispered. "But that's not even it. Nothing about being this"-she waved a hand up and down her body-"feels right. I miss ... being human. I miss my mom, who died a couple of years ago." Her voice shook with emotion. "Maybe if I just lived among humans, I would feel better."

A wave of empathy for Ellie washed over Kylie. Damn if she didn't know exactly how the girl felt. "It's hard," Kylie said. "But you can't leave here. Holiday says that most of the young vampires end up joining gangs just to survive." A question slammed into Kylie's mind. Was Ellie the vampire who was going to die? Was she going to leave Shadow Falls and get mixed up in something terrible?

The question caused Kylie to catch her breath.

Della's bedroom door opened and she flashed across the room and stopped right in front of them, her hair a little in disarray. Kylie got an image of her burying her head under a pillow, trying not to listen. Not that her plan worked.

Both Kylie and Ellie looked at Della.

Ellie scowled. "You've been listening, haven't you? Can't a person have-"

"Yeah, nitwit. I tried not to, but I've been listening," she said in her best smartass tone. "But Kylie's right. You can't leave. Nothing is easy about being us, or trying to fit into a new family of vampires, but it gets easier."

"How?" Ellie asked.

Miranda's door swung open. "You make friends," she said, and stumbled into the room, looking half-asleep.

"Does everyone listen in to everyone else's conversations in this cabin?" Ellie asked, sounding annoyed.

"Pretty much." Miranda came over and dropped on the sofa beside Ellie. "Friends don't keep very many secrets."

"But you guys aren't my friends."

"We could be," Kylie said, and Della and Miranda nodded.

Ellie's gaze widened and she looked away, but not before Kylie saw emotion in her eyes. The warm sensation filling Kylie's chest reminded her of the feeling she got at the falls, and she knew it had been the right thing to say. Then for some crazy reason, she saw a flash of the funeral vision in her mind.