Blood Forever Read Online Free

the ceiling. Long ago, when we were kids, Rayne and I had pasted glow-in-the-dark stars up there and some of them had stayed stuck. Unlike my reality, that is, which has suddenly become completely unglued.
    “Magnus,” I whisper, finally admitting aloud what’s been niggling at the back of my mind. My sweet vampire. What happened to him when time reset? Did he lose all memory of me and the things we’d shared over the last year? Does the Magnus in this time period even know I exist?
    I let out an involuntary gasp at the thought. All those moments, all those memories, stolen away. Rayne lies down beside me, also staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s the worst part. I had to leave Jareth behind, too.”
    I turn to glance at her, pulled out of my self-pity for a moment as it hits me exactly what my sister’s given up for me. She could have easily left me to rot in the Underworld and gone off to live happily ever after with her vampire boyfriend. But now, just like Magnus, Jareth won’t know her from a hole in the wall. She’s given up her true love—her eternal happiness—all for my second chance.
    “I’m sorry, Rayne,” I whisper, reaching over to squeeze her hand.
    “I can’t tell you what it was like,” she says, choking on herwords. “To have to sit there and tell him I’m leaving him, only moments after promising I’d stay by his side forever.” Her voice cracks on the word
forever
and I realize she’s lost something else in addition to her love. She’s no longer a vampire. No longer immortal. Everything she’s ever wanted in life has been ripped away. For me.
    “Why did you do it?” I ask. “I mean, you could have just left me there…” Her sacrifice is so stunning, it’s hard for me to come to terms with it.
    “Because I knew in my heart it was for the best,” she says simply. “It wasn’t just your death. Everything was bad. Magnus had been caught by Pyrus’s wolves and would be tried for treason. The vampires in the Blood Coven had been kicked out of the Consortium and would have had to live a life of starvation and exile.” She turns her head to look at me, her eyes pleading for my understanding. “I couldn’t bear to let everyone suffer because of my mistakes.”
    “Rayne, it wasn’t your fault—”
    But she waves me off. “That’s not important now. What’s important is you have a second chance,” she insists. “A chance to live the life you were supposed to live. A normal life without vampires and other supernatural surprises. Without all the darkness I dragged you into that night when Magnus bit you instead of me.”
    My mind flashes back to that fateful night at Club Fang. The moment my life changed forever. Would I have done things differently if I knew then what I know now?
    I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

3
    “ H ey, Sunny, you ready for the big game tonight?”
    I turn around as my old friend and field hockey teammate Amanda taps me on the shoulder in the lunch line at school that afternoon. Wow. I haven’t seen her since—
    Yesterday. Sunny, you haven’t seen her since yesterday. At least in her mind.
    “Oh, totally,” I force myself to say, trying to keep my voice as casual as possible. It’s been so weird seeing all these people I haven’t seen since Rayne and I left Oakridge High for Vegas last November. Especially since to them, no time has passed at all. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
    “Good,” Amanda pronounces, looking relieved. “When you weren’t in homeroom first period, I got worried. We have
got
to win this match against Haverhill tonight or we are totally screwed for the rest of the season.”
    “I know, right?” I find myself saying, trying hard to muster up an appropriate level of concern over some random high school sporting event that I couldn’t care less about. I mean, really. Winning? Losing? What did it matter in the long run? It wasn’t as if anyone’s life were at stake. As if an evil vampire