Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander

he’d be a vampire too. Maybe if he was given a choice in the matter he’d run things differently. I hoped that I would, if it ever happened to me.
    *   *   *
    After we finished with Hell’s bathroom, Jackson led the way to the stairs for the second floor. We passed a side hall with a door at the end of it and I stopped.
    There was sunlight on the other side of that door. I knew it.
    “Hey, no, don’t even think it—” Jackson said, turning around.
    “Why isn’t it guarded?” I stared at it over his shoulder. It was locked, but it wasn’t like the thick oak doors downstairs—it was just a normal-looking door. Wide, but mostly decorative. Impulsive muscles answered desires I hadn’t voiced yet—I knew I had the strength to tear it in two. Jackson moved to stand in my way before I could do anything.
    I was stronger than he was right now, I knew it. I could take this mop in my hands and snap it and stab it through his neck if I had to—what the hell part of me was thinking that?
    The same part of me that hadn’t been afraid of killing Lars.
    I quieted in horror just as Jackson started speaking.
    “Think things through, Edie. It’s not locked from this side because it doesn’t need to be. You could leave, but you wouldn’t get far. And there’s nowhere that you can hide; Raven would always be able to find you. You don’t want to piss him off like that—you haven’t seen him mad.”
    The human part of me was like a compass—I knew it was late afternoon in winter now, and the sun was beginning to dip. If I did leave I couldn’t get far enough by nightfall, and after nightfall there’d be nowhere I was safe.
    I didn’t have any ID so I couldn’t fly—and it’s not like I had any money to buy tickets anyway. I could find a police station—and tell them what? That vampires were after me? Ask them to keep me safe inside a cell? I’d seen my share of crazy people working at the hospital, I knew exactly what the cops would think and say. Rightly so. And I’d seen before how vampires could command people to make them do what they wanted them to. If I gave any cops my real name they’d think I was insane—I was sure I was on the roster of those who’d gone down with the Maraschino . If I gave them a fake name, and seemed crazy enough, they might keep me in a holding cell overnight, which was when Raven would show up and convince everyone there that I didn’t exist, after he told one of them to fetch me.
    I could call Asher, but what then? Torture him and then put him in harm’s way? Ask him to take on an entire vampire House on his own?
    I stared at the door, a hundred different pathways spooling out inside my head, none of them ending well, like reading a choose-your-own-adventure book where every option made you die or, worse yet, killed someone you loved.
    “I shouldn’t have shown it to you this early. Please, trust me. If you left like that your lives would be in terrible danger.” Jackson grabbed my wrist and gently pulled me toward the stairs. I stiffened and he quickly let go—but it wasn’t because of his touch, it was the plural he’d used. “I’m sorry—I overheard Wolf and Raven talking before they left last night.”
    I swallowed. “Does everyone know?”
    “Just them. And me.”
    I wondered what the outcome would have been if Lars had known—if his hammer would have been aimed at my belly instead of my head.
    “They’ll find out eventually, I mean, they can’t help it—when it starts having its own heartbeat, they’ll be able to hear it with fresh blood. We can hear babies here all the time, fetal alcohol syndrome ahoy. But I won’t say anything to anyone before then, I swear.”
    Just how far could I trust him? I didn’t know. I might not know until it was too late. It seemed like the only way to find out anything here was the hard way. He stepped back, giving me a little space. “Come on—we still have two more floors to go,” he said, and I reluctantly