Page 26 (1/2)

- 1 -

The su the car with the green scent of the park, and the frightening sound of highway traffic I bit my lip and stared out the here children played in the grass The car was only idling in the parking lot, but I kept i them over

My younger brother Milo had just turned sixteen, and he talked constantly about getting his license His new obsession with cars I blamed entirely on Jack, who drove at excessive speeds in luxury vehicles Milo changed the instant he laid eyes on his Laay teenage boys, apparently

Even though I was a year and a half older than Milo, I still didn’t havelessons, and it scared me

Wearing gigantic sunglasses, Jack sat shotgun, but he didn’t really explain things to Milo He pointed to a pedal and said, “That one o” That’s it

Fortunately, Milo’s pretty cautious, so he pressed Jack for more inforue That ust sun shined brightly above us Ordinarily, that sounds like the best tiy He’d already started to yawn

Jack is not exactly like everyone else I really like hiht, with dancing blue eyes, perpetually disheveled sandy hair, and flawless tanned skin, but he’s not what I would call drop-dead gorgeous

Everything about Jack and his family is complicated, thanks to one major fact: they just happen to be vampires

They aren’t really dangerous to people, or I wouldn’t let any of theuess technically they are, since they could easily kill us if they wanted to, but I don’t think they want to They do live off human blood, but they use either blood banks or human donors

Vah they can and sometimes do Jack has never killed anyone, but he’s still a relatively young vampire He enty-four when he turned, and that was only sixteen years ago, in comparison with his brother Ezra who has been around for over three-hundred years and Peter’s nearly two-hundred

They’re not really brothers, but brothers in the way vampires are In order to turn, the human’s blood fuses with the vampire’s blood Ezra turned Peter, and Peter turned Jack This makes them close in unusual ways Peter is attracted to me, or rather his blood is But because of his attraction, both Jack and Ezra are very fond of me, and Jack much more than he should be

I know that Jack won’t do anything to put er in relation to huot in a crash, Jack would protect me over Milo, and that makes me nervous

“Are you sure you really wanna do this today?” I asked, and in the rearview mirror, I saw Milo roll his eyes

“We can just take you holared at me

Despite his age, Milo had one of those distinct baby faces His cheeks were chubby, and his brown eyes were innocently large When he threatened er he was

“Alice, everything will be fine,” Jack pro a yawn

“I’ is okay, it probably is,” Milo reminded me

We’d been sitting in the parking lot for twenty minutes while Milo made Jack explain every part of the car to hi, a disproportionate amount of the time had been spent on the stereo and the seat war antsy

When he finally put the car in drive,on the brake unnecessarily several times