Generation V Read Free

if Brian hadn’t been a cop, everything would’ve been okay. Maybe it would’ve ended in blood no matter what. But as I got older, I started whining about going to my relatives’ house for dinner. For a while they were able to dismiss it, but when I was nine, my whining was getting worse, and one day I made a mistake. I told Brian that I didn’t like the way my blood mother touched me. That it made me uncomfortable. He asked for details, which at first I was smart enough not to give.But he reassured me, told me that he could protect me, and I was dumb enough to believe him, so I told him what I had to do at those monthly dinners.
    Brian was on the phone with my mother’s lawyer within half an hour. The lawyer was expensive, and the first thing he started doing was threatening to take me away from them. Brian and Jill didn’t have much money—that’s why they’d been chosen to take care of me, just in case this happened. They didn’t have enough money to fight for me, and maybe another couple would’ve backed down, would’ve believed what the lawyer was saying—that nine was a difficult age, I was an imaginative child, and that everything was just fine. Don’t rock the boat.
    Brian went to work and started looking into my mysterious relatives. He hadn’t done that before—maybe he knew on some level that he wouldn’t like what he’d find. He’d made a total of three phone calls before he got one of his own, from the chief of police. The message was simple—if you want to keep your job, stop looking into Madeline Scott.
    At home, Jill got a call as well, from Prudence. She wanted to come over, to talk to them, to clear up any confusion that might’ve arisen because of my “story.”
    Maybe if she hadn’t said it that way, it would’ve been fine and she could’ve smoothed things over. Maybe if Madeline had told Chivalry to handle it, everyone would’ve been okay. But maybe Madeline already knew what direction this was heading, because she gave it to Prudence.
    Jill called Brian. He pulled all the money they had out of the bank, and Jill started packing.
    I didn’t really understand what we were back then. Maybe if Madeline and Chivalry hadn’t shielded me so much, I would’ve known enough to try to talk Jill and Brian out of it, to calm them down, to lie. To save their lives.
    Prudence arrived before Brian came home. I knew she was at the door and I begged Jill not to open it. She loved me enough to believe me, and she didn’t open it, but it didn’t matter. It’s only in stories that vampires need an invitation.
    Jill was dead when Brian came home. He saw her body before Prudence killed him.
    Prudence made sure that I watched it all.
    Then she brought me back to Madeline.
    The bus jerked to a stop, and I realized that I’d missed my stop. I got off and walked an extra four blocks, trying to push the past away.
    My apartment was the third floor of an old Victorian that had probably been stately and grand when it was built. It was still pretty nice on the ground floor, which was a women’s lingerie boutique, but the upper two floors were showing the wear and tear of about two decades of renters. I paid more than I could really afford for the apartment, but I liked the old woodwork, the big windows, and the hardwood floors. I had an only moderately overpriced parking space in the back where I kept my aging Ford Fiesta, which I’d bought at a police auction. I’d later learned that its suspiciously reasonable price was not because it was the older (and far homelier) model of Fiesta, but because at one point it had been Exhibit A for the state of Massachusetts. During my ownership it had shown no further murderous tendencies, however, andnow seemed content to simply rust and drip oil. Because the bus lines were within walking distance, I even had the hope that I could baby the Fiesta into lasting another few years for me. I was close to Brown University, where I’d gone to college, and my expired