My temperature wouldn’t be that low if I had walking pneumonia, I thought. Or any kind of flu or other virus. People run fevers when they get illnesses like that. I don’t think it does much to blood pressure, either.

In other words, whatever was wrong with me was no human illness.

Down the hallway, I could hear the nurse talking animatedly to someone, probably one of the doctors. Did they consider this an emergency? Were they about to take me into the hospital? If they did, could I get out again?

Quickly I pushed myself upright—too quickly. My head swam with the sudden movement, and for a second, I thought I might fall. But I steadied myself against the table and took a couple of deep breaths. Soon I felt I could walk again.

I peeked into the hallway. Selma was only a few doors down, but she was deeply engrossed in conversation with the doctor. Her words were only barely loud enough for me to overhear: “I’m sure that thermometer is working correctly. It was only ten minutes ago. I’m telling you—”

Time to hurry. I tiptoed halfway down the hall, then took off running toward the waiting room. Another nurse appeared in the corridor, and she looked startled as I pushed past her.

Don’t look back. Without slowing down, I ran through the doors and into the waiting room. “Lucas!” I called over my shoulder. “Let’s go!”

He stared at me, startled, but was on his feet in an instant. We were going to get away. We’d make it. Then we were outside, sizzling July sun enveloping me in an instant. Waves of heat rippled up from the steps and the sidewalk. It was too much, and I slumped against the guardrail. The stairs seemed to stretch and tilt beneath me.

“Bianca!” Lucas caught up with me and scooped my arm around his shoulders. Staggering against him, I was able to get down the steps and around the corner.

“Keep walking.” I panted. “They’ll come out and look for me, I know it.”

“We’re walking. What happened in there?”

“My readings were coming back weird. The nurse freaked out.”

Lucas took me down a side street, keeping our pace quick. I felt a little steadier but knew I needed to lean on him. “What do you mean, weird?”

The truth hit me then. I’d spent my whole life preparing for this moment, in one way or another, and yet it was strange and terrible to face.

“I’m not yet a vampire,” I whispered. “But—I’m no longer human.”

Chapter Nineteen

WE RETURNED HOME FROM THE CLINIC AT SUNSET. Lucas poured me back into bed, and we worried about what to do. I told him everything that had happened at the clinic and the weird readings that had made the nurse panic.

“Never happened before?” he said. I shook my head.

“Then—you’re changing. Whether you like it or not. You’re becoming a vampire. A full vampire, I mean.”

“I can’t be a full vampire unless I kill. That’s the only way it works.”

“How do you know?” Lucas demanded. He lay on the bed with me, though I was beneath the covers and he was on top of them. “Nobody really understands what happens with kids like you, right?”

“Almost nobody. But my parents understood. They never would explain most of it, but this part, they were really clear on.” I stared up at the white ceiling, studying the whorls of plaster.

“There are only two ways a person becomes a vampire. Either you’re a regular person who gets bitten repeatedly by a vampire and then is killed by the final bite, or you’re a born vampire—like me—who makes a kill. That’s it.”

“Then what’s happening to you?” He cupped my cheek with his hand. His dark-green eyes were anguished. “I can’t stand this. Not knowing. And I realize it’s got to be worse for you.”

I held his hand to my face and tried to smile. I couldn’t bear to tell him what I was starting to believe.

With my body weakening, I had begun to experience the strangest sensation—a kind of sinking, a wearing away, as though I were somehow less each day. Something inside me was fighting against the force of life, and that something was winning.

My parents had always refused to tell me what would happen if a born vampire refused to make that first kill and complete the transformation. Now I thought I knew what had frightened them so badly that they wouldn’t even speak of it.

I was beginning to wonder if the only alternative was to die.

Lucas’s fingers threaded through my long hair as he combed it to soothe me. At last I said, “If I wrote my parents a letter, would you promise to send it if—”

“If what?”

I closed my eyes. “If anything bad were to happen.”

“Bianca—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore right now. But if you would promise—it would mean a lot to me.”

Lucas was quiet for a while before he whispered, “I promise.”

The next morning, as soon as I woke up, I knew something inside me had changed for the worse.

Before, even on my worst days, I’d been able to get around a little bit. Now I was so weak I couldn’t get out of bed without Lucas’s help. To my embarrassment, he had to walk me to the bathroom. He brought me breakfast in bed, but I couldn’t eat more than a wedge of toast. Even that, I had to force down.

“Do you want me to get you blood?” he asked. His hands gripped the back of the chair so tightly that his knuckles were white. “I could catch something, or I could bust into a hospital, hit the blood bank.”