“Ivy?” I called, knocking hesitantly on my bathroom door, hearing only the water running. There was no answer, and so knocking again, I pushed the door open. A heavy mist blurred everything, filling my lungs and making them seem heavy. “Ivy?” I called again, worry striking through me. “Ivy, are you all right?”

I found her on the floor of the shower stall, crumpled in a huddle of long legs and arms. The water flowed over her bowed head, blood making a thin rivulet to the drain from her neck. A shimmer of lighter red colored the bottom of the stall, coming from her legs. I stared, unable to look away. Her inner thighs were marred with deep scratches. Maybe it had been rape in the traditional sense as well.

I thought I was going to be sick. Ivy’s hair was plastered to her. Her skin was white and her arms and legs were askew. The black of the twin ankle bracelets showed dark against the white of her skin, looking like shackles. She was shivering though the water was scalding, her eyes closed and her face twisted in a memory that would haunt her the rest of her life and into her death. Who said vampirism was glamorous? It was a lie, an illusion to cover the ugly reality.

I took a breath. “Ivy?”

Her eyes flashed open, and I jerked back.

“I don’t want to think anymore,” she said softly, unblinking though the water flowed over her face. “If I kill you, I won’t have to.”

I tried to swallow. “Should I leave?” I whispered, but I knew she could hear me.

Her eyes closed and her face scrunched up. Drawing her knees to her chin to cover herself, she wrapped her arms around her legs and started to cry again. “Yes.”

Shaking inside, I stretched over her and turned off the water. The cotton towel was rough on my fingertips as I grabbed it and hesitated. “Ivy?” I said, frightened. “I don’t want to touch you. Please get up.”

Tears silently mixing with the water, she rose and took the towel. After she promised she would get herself dried off and dressed, I took her blood-soaked clothes along with my slippers and robe through the church to drop them on the back porch. The smell of burning blood turned my stomach like bad incense. I’d bury them in the cemetery later.

I found her huddled in her bed when I came back, her damp hair soaking her pillow and her untouched cocoa on the nightstand. Her face was to the wall and she wasn’t moving. I pulled the afghan from the foot of the bed over her, and she trembled. “Ivy?” I said, then hesitated, not knowing what to do.

“I told him no,” she said, her voice a whisper, torn gray silk drifting to rest atop snow.