Flutter Read Free Page B

you! Forbid her from going!” Milo had started getting nervous and fidgety, traits that were
    becoming increasingly uncommon with his new-found vampire confidence.
    “Yeah, you try forbidding her,” Jack rolled his eyes, but there was an underlying weariness to it.
    He held my hand as we walked downstairs where Mae and Ezra were waiting with his
    luggage. On the
    table, there a small duffel bag full of special containers that Mae was carefully packing with blood from bags.
    We survived mostly on blood donations, thanks to a set of clinics they ran similar to the Red Cross. People
    donated blood thinking it was for blood transfusions in humans, but really, they were
    sustaining almost the
    entire species of vampires.
    When traveling with blood, as was often a necessity, they had to use special equipment.
    Airport
    security would find it highly suspect if they knew that Ezra was boarding the plane with bags of blood. They
    used metal cans that looked like whip cream, lined to make it impossible for dogs to sniff out, should that
    arise. Mae filled the duffle bag with ice packs to keep them cold, and while Ezra usually got weird looks, he
    always got through it by saying he was some kind of whip cream salesmen, and so far, it had seemed to work.
    As a result, he also had a surprisingly vast knowledge of whip cream.
    Ezra stood next to her, sifting through the papers to make sure they were all in order. As soon as I
    had turned, he set about getting all the documentation set up so I could live my life with them without any
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    suspicion. That had been a source of contention since I had insisted on keeping my last name Bonham instead
    of changing it to Townsend, like the rest of them. Nobody had actually cared except for Jack, but he didn’t
    understand why I wouldn’t want his last name. I didn’t really have any explanation for it, especially since that
    was Milo’s last name too, but I just wasn’t really ready for everything about me to change.
    Someday, I’m sure
    it would change, but for now, I wanted to hang onto every part of myself that I could, even if it was just my
    name.
    On the plus side, Ezra had my age changed to eighteen, since it would be far easier for me to do
    things if I wasn’t a minor. They had done the same thing with Milo when he turned, even though he was really
    only fifteen, but he looked closer to nineteen anymore so it made the most sense.
    All of Ezra’s information said that he was twenty-nine, even though he had actually been twenty-six
    when he turned, but it was that way with all of them. Jack was really twenty-four, but his license said he was
    twenty-seven, and Mae’s said that she was thirty-one, even though she as three years younger than that when
    she turned. They had been living this life, this name in this house, for four years already, and they had to
    change along with it. They wouldn’t be able to pull off their ages for much longer, though, which meant that
    they were going to have move very soon. As it was, Jack didn’t really pass for twenty-seven, and he would
    never make it as thirty.
    “When was the last time you ate?” Ezra asked me, but he didn’t look up from passport. It was brand
    new, and he was inspecting it for any mistakes.
    “Um, yesterday,” I replied.
    There was a constant thirst with me, but it wasn’t the same as being thirsty when I was human. My
    mouth wasn’t parched, and my stomach didn’t feel empty like I was hungry, either. I just felt this need inside
    me, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The closest feeling I could I can recall is when I ran
    too fast in gym, and my muscles would start ache from the oxygen depilation. It would be this slow, swelling
    cramp that seemed to permeate through me, and I was just desperate to stop running.
    Except the relief for
    this wasn’t the lack of motion; it was blood, and that thought was accompanied by a frantic lust.
    Fortunately, I had managed to have a reasonable level of control