The Willing by Aila Cline Page A

stay long.” She paused a moment. “Especially not for
dinner.”
    Rachel smiled at this, but didn’t
address the issue. “Why are you looking for Shasta?”
    The girl swallowed and breathed deeply
for a solid minute before answering. Delilah and I looked nervously
back and forth to each other, but Rachel just held her with that
steady Rachel stare.
    “My name is Emily. It’s all pretty
complicated, so do you have a while?”
    “All night,” Rachel answered simply.
“And all morning if necessary. We don’t actually blow up or
anything if the sun touches us. Anne Rice got it wrong.”
    The Lycanti girl asked her next
question with all due seriousness. “You don’t sparkle, do
you?”
    Delilah laughed. I hadn’t heard her
laugh in ages, but it is always a magical sound, full of the life
we once had. “Hell no, girl. I have to have the sun and margaritas
in my life—in any life I live. Sparkling in the sun with my natural
beauty? That’s just too much for normal people to handle. Though if
you happen to have a sexy male werewolf in your pocket who looks
like Taylor Lautner, please feel free to make him available at any
time! I’m pretty sure I have a few dollar bills around here
somewhere.” She waggled her eyebrows at us, and the tension was
gone. I am pretty sure I laughed for like five minutes. Of course,
we had to spend at least an hour talking Team Edward or Team Jacob
and giving specific counterarguments as to why or why not Bella
should date one or the other.
    We weren’t monsters of different
families anymore. Instead, we were four young women making fun of
popular culture. Enlightened individuals, of course. Finally, in
the early hours of the morning with me pretending to scratch my
face when I was, in fact, yawning, all of the good-natured
giggliness had been expelled from our systems.
    Rachel grinned. “So, Emily of the
Lycanti. Tell us a story.”
    And as if the long night had never
touched her, that girl talked and talked. She didn’t know any of
our names, but she told us her entire life story. I never realized
that a person could talk so much. It’s like she had no filter.
Anyone could hear her story and judge her however they wanted. I
tried not to. I knew what those iridescent blue eyes could do to a
woman’s senses.
    Parts of it hurt. It hurt so bad that I
wanted to run away and not hear the rest of it. But like an addict,
I hung on for mention of Luka. I would have suffering Dying again
if I could just see Luka one last time. After all, you never forget
the man who loved you. It’s also pretty damn hard to forgive the
man who killed you.
    At the very end of it, the emerald-eyed
Emily sat up in her bed, back ramrod straight as if she were Queen
of England. All of us were flabbergasted by her story. Some of it
didn’t seem believable, but then again, when you’re a vampire, lots
of things become believable. I think though, she finally surprised
Rachel at the end of her story.
    “And that’s why I need your help,”
Emily told Rachel. “I need an army. A vampire army. And I need it
quick.”
    Rachel stood there in silence for a
moment, weighing her options. Yes, Rachel is definitely the
level-headed one out of us. My mind was fluttering like a butterfly
on acid after that story. Delilah had let out a skeptical but
reverent “damn” to punctuate it. Rachel, however, had merely nodded
and accepted all of it as the daily travails of a Lycanti who
happened to be in our house after calling me by name.
    “Can you help me?” Emily
asked.
    Rachel’s silence did not stretch on for
much longer. Delilah and I had no right to answer Emily. Only
Rachel could decide for this house. That privilege is always
reserved for the Eldest Blood.
    “Yes,” Rachel finally said. “But there
will be a price. A price measured in blood.”
    Emily did not look shaken by Rachel’s
dramatic declaration.
    She merely answered, “I understand. But
first, I need to find Shasta.”
    Rachel’s eyes cut to me as