by Mari Mancusi
He chuckles at that and pulls on my hand so I end up facing him. We’re way too close now. Way overstepping the three-foot-bubble rule. I can feel his breath on my face. His hands moving to my waist. I draw in a raspy breath, trying to sustain some semblance of control.
“Um,” I say, suddenly not at my most articulate. My heart is beating out of control and I feel like I’m going to keel over. How can one guy have so much sex appeal?
Then I remember. The Vampire Scent. I’m not really attracted to him whatsoever. It’s just those pheromones of his that have got my juices flowing. Ha!
I pull back. “Is there a way you can turn off the Vampire Scent thing?” I ask. “’Cause it’s kind of throwing me off my game here.”
He laughs and yanks me closer, our bodies now flush against one another, my curves molding into his hard, flat planes of stomach muscle. He feels so good I can barely stand up.
“As my blood mate, you are immune to my Vampire Scent,” he whispers in my ear, tickling the lobe with his breath. “Any attraction you feel is all your own.”
See? I truly am doomed.
“Eh, please. You’ve totally got it wrong. I don’t, er, feel any attraction,” I manage to say, reluctantly pulling myself away from his embrace. “I mean . . . um . . .”
He releases me with a grin. “Right. No attraction whatsoever. Good to know.” He doesn’t look like he believes me for one second. Which is understandable, since I don’t even believe myself.
“I’ve, um, got to get going,” I say, stepping backward a few steps. In fact, I need to ditch this scene ASAP—before I throw myself at him and succumb to the passions of the night. (Wow, do I sound like a romance novel or what?) “Don’t want to piss off my mom and get grounded for missing curfew for the third night in a row.”
Magnus nods. “Of course. I understand.” I strain to see if he looks disappointed, but he’s keeping a complete poker face. “It is probably for the best. I have much to do.”
“Great. Okay.” So why do I feel this deep sense of disappointment all of a sudden? What did I want him to do, grab me and drag me back to his lair and have his wicked way with me against my will? He’s a gentleman. A retired knight in shining armor, trained in the code of chivalry. Not some barbarian caveman with no respect for women.
“So when do we leave for England?” I ask, turning to walk toward my parked car. Magnus follows, a few steps behind.
“As soon as possible,” he says. “I shall arrange for the private jet tonight. Meet me at the Manchester Airport tomorrow at four P.M. and we will go from there.”
“Okay,” I say, fishing through my purse for my keys. I unlock and pull open the front door. “Then, till tomorrow, I guess.”
“Till tomorrow,” Magnus repeats.
We both stand there for a moment, as if each is unwilling to be the first to walk away. Why does this have to be so awkward?
Finally Magnus turns to leave.
“Mag?” I call after him.
He stops and turns back to look at me. “Yes?” he asks in a low rumbly voice that totally turns me on all over again.
“Thank you.”
He nods slowly and starts walking again. I hear him mumbling something under his breath. Something I can’t quite make out. But something that sounds an awful lot like “Anything for you, my love.”
But I’m sure I’m just hearing things, right?
15
But I’m a Vampire, Not a Druggie!
I arrive home only three minutes after curfew. I probably broke every speed limit in the book to make it, but I figured if any cops were going to start writing tickets, I’d stick them with my Vampire Scent. It has to be said, that sure is one useful supernatural power. (Except of course when it turns on lesbian secretaries and weirdo perv teachers. That I could do without.)
I unlock the front door to my house and step inside. The place is completely dark. I wonder if everyone’s already in bed. Though I suppose Rayne’s probably still awake, typing away on her computer as usual. Which is good ’cause I’ve got to work out a plan with her. Since I can’t exactly tell Mom I’m skipping town for a couple days to make an impromptu trip to England hoping to find the lost cup of Christ that will purify my blood and remove the vampire taint, my dear sister is going to have to cover for me.
I enter the hallway, trying to tiptoe. No need to wake everyone up. But my Keep Quiet plan is immediately foiled when I accidentally step on a loose, creaky flagstone. Damn.
A light switches on in the kitchen, making me jump back in surprise, my heart leaping to my throat.
“Sunny? Is that you?”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Just Mom. For a split second I was thinking the Slayer might have figured out where I lived and was having a midnight snack while waiting to dust me.
Then again, it’s very possible that a curfew convo with mom could be more painful.
“Yeah, mom. It’s me.” I glance longingly at the stairs that lead up to my dark, cozy bedroom. The fluorescent kitchen light is giving me a headache, even from here. But I know there’s no way I’m going to escape a lecture at this point.
“Do you want some Tofutti?” she asks. “I’m making myself a dish.”
“No thanks,” I say, reluctantly heading into the kitchen. Only my mom would consider ice cream made out of tofu a special treat. I prefer Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey myself, and hey, don’t those guys work to save the planet, too?
I plop down at the breakfast bar and rub my eyes with my fists. I’m so tired. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since this whole thing started. At the same time, I feel really wired and I doubt I’ll be able to get any sleep tonight either. At least until dawn, and then Rayne will have to drag me out of bed. I wonder if I can fake sick and avoid school . . . I really need a good day’s sleep.
“Are you sure you don’t want any? I have some sugar-free carob syrup to put over it,” Mom says, holding up the jar. I cringe. I didn’t like that imitation hippie chocolate stuff before I became a vampire. I’m certainly not going to develop a taste now.
My mom finishes squirting carob on her Tofutti and puts the bottle and container back in the fridge and freezer, respectively. Then she sits across from me at the breakfast bar and spoons a large scoop into her mouth.
“Mmm,” she says, licking her lips. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
I laugh. “Oh yes, I do. Remember, you forced us to eat this stuff as kids. I didn’t taste real ice cream till fourth grade.”
“Yes, and that was only because Evil Aunt Edna corrupted you. One mouthful and you became a hopeless junk food junkie,” Mom says with a sigh, taking another spoonful. “And you never looked back.”
I smile. I know she’s not really upset. She raised Rayne and me to be our own people. To have our own thoughts and dreams and ideas. And diets. She taught us her way, but never insisted we follow it. She’s cool like that.
“So how did your test go today?” Mom asks, studying me with eyes that on the surface look completely innocent. But I know she’s asking a weighted question.
“Um, fine. Fine,” I mumble. I really suck at lying. Unlike Rayne, who could enter the Lying Olympics and win the gold medal, hands down. I mean, I thought twins were supposed to have identical DNA, but somehow Rayne got the Good Liar gene and I got stuck with the Face Gives Everything Away one.
“Mmm-hmm,” my mom says, sounding more than a bit skeptical. “And your night tonight? Did you have a good night?”
“Yeah, it was okay,” I say, praying for no follow-ups. But it seems the interrogation gods have no plans to show me mercy.
“Where did you go?”
“Um, a coffeehouse in Nashua.” Figure I might as well be as truthful as possible, without mentioning the whole vampire thing, of course.
“I see.” My mom presses her lips together for a moment. “And what did you do there?”
“Drank coffee . . . ?” Well, duh.
“And who did you drink this coffee with?”
I squirm in my seat. “Er, a few friends.”
Please don’t ask who, please don’t ask who, please don’t ask who.
“Who?”
Damn.
“Um, there was Rachel and Charity . . .” Who gave me a goblet of their own blood to drink before taking off, I imagine telling her. Wasn’t that just so nice of them? And then Jareth showed up. Vampire General, you know. Out to protect Magnus, king of the vampires and my blood mate for eternity, unless I can swing by England tomorrow to pick up the Holy Grail. You don’t mind if I skip school for that, do you?
I wonder how many milliseconds it would take for her to dial the men in white coats?
“Rachel and Charity?” Mom repeats, tapping her temple with her index finger. “Don’t think I’ve heard you mention them before. Do they go to school with you?”
“Man, what is it with the third degree, Mom?” I retort, unable to hold back my guilty annoyance a moment longer. “I mean, since when do you care who I hang out with or what I’m doing?”
Jeez. I take back all that cool mom stuff. Every single last coolness point awarded over the years. Gone. Tonight, she’s as much a pain in the butt as the rest of my friends’ moms.
“Since when do I care?” she repeats, raising her eyebrows. Uh-oh. I so don’t like the raised eyebrows thing. It never turns out good. “You want to know since when? I guess it’d be since your sister told me you were studying at the library all night. Alone.”
Oh.
Damn it, I knew I should have called Rayne on her cell on the way home to find out if she’d taken it upon herself to cover for me.
“Oh. Right,” I say. I’ve got to save this or I’ll be grounded and it’s going to be a heck of a lot more difficult to get to England with Magnus. “We were studying. Drinking coffee and studying. This is sort of a library-slash-coffeehouse kind of place, really. It’s the new ‘in’ thing, actually. Everyone says coffeehouses are the new libraries. Like you get your caffeine and then you study. It’s great and—”
“Sunny, are you on drugs?” Mom suddenly asks, point-blank.
I stop talking immediately, but I think my mouth is still hanging open in shock.
“Am I on . . . drugs?” I repeat incredulously. She’s got to be kidding me, right?
“It’s a simple question.”
She’s not kidding. I can tell by the oh-so-serious expression on her face. I can’t believe it!
“I know it’s a simple question, but why would you ask it?” I demand, very insulted at this point. “Do I seem like I’m on drugs?”
My mom shrugs. “Actually, yes, you do. You’re out till all hours of the night and you lie about where you are. You throw up first thing in the morning. Your eyes are completely bloodshot and your pupils dilated. Your hands are trembling and you’re paler than Rayne with her pancake makeup on. So, yes, I have to say, you do seem like you’re on drugs.”
Okay, fine. She’s got a point. But still . . .
“I’m not, though,” I deny, knowing I sound totally lame. But how can I defend myself without spilling the crazy truth, which she’ll never believe anyway?
“Sunny, you can tell me if you are,” Mom says, putting down her Tofutti spoon. “I know that many teens experiment. I myself dabbled plenty back in the seventies. Pot, acid, you name it, I probably tried it. But if you’re going to partake, you need to do it safely. And I want to make sure you’re not doing anything dangerous. I love you and I don’t want to lose you.”
I seriously want to bang my head against the table in frustration. I can’t believe my mom thinks I’m doing drugs. And I have no idea how I’m going to convince her otherwise. I mean, everything she’s listed is basically a symptom of me turning into a vampire, yet I can’t very well tell her that.
“I can assure you, Mom,” I say, swallowing back my annoyance. I know she’s just trying to help, but I’m tired and cranky and just want to go to bed. “I am not, nor am I planning to be anytime in the near or far future, on any kind of drugs.”
My mom sighs deeply, running a hand through her long graying hair. She always jokes that Rayne is the cause of all her premature grays. Tonight, I think she’s putting the blame on me as well.
“You know, I had hoped we’d have the kind of mother-daughter relationship where you’d feel free to talk to me about this kind of stuff,” she says sadly. “I know it sounds cliché, but I wanted to be your friend as well as your mother. Someone you’d share things with and know that I wouldn’t judge you for them. I wanted to have a different kind of relationship with you and Rayne than I had with my own mother.”
“You do. We are friends,” I cry, reaching over to place my hand over her forearm, succumbing to a major guilt attack. “I do tell you everything. I love you, Mom. It’s just honestly, this time there’s nothing to tell. I’m simply not on drugs. Period. End of story.”
My mother nods slowly. I can see a tear slip from the corner of her eye. Great. Now I’ve totally upset her. But what can I do? I can’t tell her the truth this time. There’s no way. But by keeping silent, I’m making it seem like I don’t trust her.
Gah, this is so hard.
“Sunny, I hate to do this to you,” Mom says, swiping her wayward tear on her sleeve. “But I feel it’s for your own good.”
Uh-oh.
“If you’re not on drugs, then you’re obviously sick or something. ’Cause you don’t look good. So I need you to stay in until you start looking better.”
“You’re grounding me?” Crap. I can’t be grounded. I have to sneak off to England tomorrow. How can I sneak off to England tomorrow if I’m grounded?
“No, not grounding, exactly.”
“But I can’t go out.”
“Right.”
“At all.”
“You can go to school . . .”
“So how is that not grounding?” I demand.
She shrugs. “I guess it is. I just always hated that term. It sounds so . . . totalitarian.”
“Then why be a fascist dictator?” I try.
“Sunny, please.” My mother rubs her temples with her forefingers. “It’s late. I’m tired. You have school tomorrow. Go to bed.”
“Fine. Whatever,” I retort. I jump off the bar stool I was sitting on and head toward the hall. “Some cool mom you turned out to be,” I mutter under my breath, secretly hoping she can hear me.
16
The Great Twin Caper
I trudge up the stairs, totally bummed out, and hang a left toward Rayne’s bedroom, praying she’ll still be awake. If anyone will know what to do in a sitch like this, she will. After all, she’s the original bad girl in the McDonald household. I’m just playing catch-up.
I see a crack of light under her door and lightly knock. “Rayne? Are you awake?” I whisper.
“Yeah, of course. Come in.”
I push open the door and enter the room. She’s got it dimly lit with a black light, and cutouts of bats and spiders on cottony webs glow green on her walls.
She’s sitting at her computer, with some kind of role-playing computer game up on her screen. She signs off as I enter and invites me to sit on the bed with her.
“So how’d it go?” she asks eagerly. “Did Mag come up with a way to turn you back?”
“Yeah, sort of. He researched and says he’s found something that will purify my blood and remove all the vampire taint for good.”
“Great!”
“No, not great, actually. I mean, great that he found something, but not so great that the something in question isn’t exactly sold at Wal-Mart.”
“Great stuff never is.” Rayne shakes her head. “So what is it? Eye of newt? Mummy dust? Vial of slime from the Bog of Eternal Stench?”
“Worse. Blood from the Holy Grail.”
“Ouch.” Rayne pulls her feet up on the bed so she’s sitting cross-legged. “How the heck are you going to get hold of that? Does the Grail even exist?”
So I relate all that Magnus told me about th
e Grail, its supposed resting place in Avalon, and our impending trip. She looks impressed.
“First a tour of the vampire coven, now a holiday in jolly old England. You’re so lucky,” she says when I’m finished. “I’m totally jealous.”
“Please. I’d so rather have you go in my place,” I say with a sigh. “I have no idea how I’m even going to get there.”
“I thought you said Mag had a private plane. That’s amazingly cool that he has a private plane. I bet it’s all luxurious with beds and everything. You know, if I had the opportunity to be with Magnus on a private plane with beds on it, I’d be an official mile-high club member before we landed. Maybe even before we took off.” She grins evilly as I swat her on the knee.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. It never ceases to amaze me that whatever the subject matter at hand, Rayne can think of a way to relate it to sex.
“What? You don’t think I could do it?”
I laugh. “Are you kidding? I’m just shocked to learn you’ve never done it before. I figured you’d be a mile-high platinum member in good standing, Slut Girl.” Now it’s Rayne’s turn to swat me. “Hey! You hit way too hard!” I protest, rubbing my abused knee.
“You know, for a vampire, you’re a real wimp, Sun,” Rayne says with a laugh as she collapses on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Like mine, hers is also lit up by glow-in-the-dark stars affixed during our misspent youths. “So when are you going to England?”
“Well, I’m supposed to leave tomorrow night. But I don’t know how I’m going to get out of the house. Mom’s evidently decided that I’m some crackhead and has subsequently put me under house arrest.”
“Are you kidding me? Mom’s grounded you? Wow. She must be really worried.” Rayne sits up. “After all, she’s not exactly the grounding type.”
“I know, I know,” I groan. “But she thinks I’m all on drugs or something. ’Cause of how I look and stuff.”
“Puh-leeze. You on drugs? Come on!” Rayne snorts in disgust. “She knows you better than that. I mean, I can see her saying I’m on drugs. But you? Give me a break.”
