“Hey, Dad,” I said, breezing past the kitchen to bring my backpack up to my room. I stopped before I got to the stairs, swung back around, gaping. Dad was at the kitchen table, cleaning a gun. “What are you doing? Is that Paul’s?”
Dad set the solvent and brush aside, and rose to wash his hands at the sink. “Nope. Your mom and I decided to finally, haha, well, bite the bullet and buy one of our own.”
My stomach sank. Not because I minded. Going shooting with the Daniels and Franks was a family activity we’d done for years. Mom and Dad had insisted it was one of those important life skills everyone should have, like swimming, “You know, in case of zombie apocalypse,” Mom had joked. But we’d never owned one. Never needed to. Connor’s family was stocked and lived right across the street.
I knew exactly why things had changed now. And everything pointed to me.
I dropped my bag to the floor in the corner and walked slowly into the kitchen. A gun wouldn’t do anything against vampires, but it would work against hunters. The thought of Mom or Dad having to shoot one of them churned my stomach.
“Hey, cheer up, it’s just a precaution,” Dad said, all smiles as he started to put everything away, leaving just the gun, a 9MM, on the table.
I sat and stared at it with a sigh. A gun wouldn’t help me. My abilities as a vampire far exceeded what a gun could do. Somehow that made it all feel worse, that I was a more dangerous weapon than something many people feared.
For the first time, I felt a surge of wanting to tell my father the truth—everything. The girls had found out on accident, and they had been amazing ever since, not treating me any different, or acting like anything had changed, other than occasionally offering a report of someone weird they’d seen around school. I couldn’t live my whole life never telling them. Eventually they’d notice when I hadn’t aged after a decade or three.
My dad sat back down at the table across from me, the gun between us. He slid over a Tupperware container of cookies that Aurora’s mom had brought over yesterday. They still smelled amazing.
“This isn’t your fault,” Dad said.
It is though, I thought. All of it.
“Something else bothering you?”
I stared at the cookies. At the gun. At Dad. The combination made me think of Mrs. Leonard, that first day they let me into their home. “What if I have something sort of big to tell you?”
Dad rested his elbows on the table and smiled. “Then I guess you better tell me.”
“It’s big, Dad. Like life changing.”
“More than murder and mayhem?”
“Yeah.”
His expression shifted more serious. “Emery, you can tell me and your mother anything. Life changing events are what we’re here for. I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through after seeing Will like that, and having the shooting at the school. It’s too much for someone your age, any age. All I know is how much your mother and I are worrying, so I know it’s ten times worse for you. I don’t want you blaming yourself though, thinking you’re doing anything wrong. Unless you’re going to tell me you had something to do with the murders—”
“What?” I looked up from having dropped my gaze to the table, and saw the grin quirking on Dad’s face again. “That’s not funny, Dad.”
“I didn’t think it was, but you’re acting like it’s the end of the world. If you’re scared, I get that. Unless it’s something else? Feeling like…maybe you wish you had been shot?”
My eyes widened at the way his crinkled, because this finally was an honest question, and the last thing I wanted him to think was that I was suicidal. “No, Dad. I don’t want that, or think I deserve what’s been happening. It’s nothing like that.”
“Then is it a new girlfriend you’re planning to run away and elope with,” he smiled again, “because there isn’t much that would change the way I see you. Nothing could ever make us love you any differently or less.”
“It wouldn’t be a girl, Dad, not now,” I said before I realized how that sounded. When his eyebrows rose over his dark, dark eyes, I recognized the different turn this conversation had taken. “I just mean, uhh…” I couldn’t back out now, but Connor had become a more prominent life changing factor in my life than vampirism, and every other thought vacated my brain.
I stared at the tabletop again. These were different nerves eating at my insides than before, stronger ones, with sharper teeth.
“I think I might be bi,” I said, half expecting the words ‘and I’m a vampire’ to follow this sudden outpouring of honesty. “Or, you know…that I like another boy.” I peeked up slowly to see Dad’s reaction.
He blinked at me. “That’s it?”
“Uhh…yeah?” Other than the vampire thing.
After a moment of silence, he reached over and slid the bowl of cookies closer to me. “Want a cookie?”
“Dad! I’m being serious.”
“And I’m being ‘Dad’,” he laughed. “Did you expect me to freak out? You know your mom is bi.”
“Well, yeah, but…” that had seemed less important considering she married my dad.
“But what? You better not let her hear you acting like it doesn’t matter. She’d jump into her whole tirade about how sexuality has nothing to do with commitment, and you do not want to be on the receiving end of that. She didn’t suddenly stop finding both men and women attractive after meeting me and deciding to be monogamous, not any more than I stopped enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman. It’s just that now when I see one, I tend to think…boy, my wife would look good in that outfit.”
“Dad,” I groaned, though I couldn’t stop the smile from filling my face.
“I’m just saying. I never had any problem with who she is, the only thing that matters to me is that she chose me and we’re happy together. If you like this boy, the only thing that matters is whether or not he likes you back, and that you’re both honest about what you want from each other.”
“You make it sound so easy.” I slumped further in the chair, leaning back, then decided I did want a cookie and snagged one. Dad did too. “I guess I didn’t know what to expect, telling you about this. I thought you’d react more like…”
“Like Paul did with Connor?” His voice dropped lower, softer.
“Yeah.”
Not that Paul had been awful in quite the way most people fear about coming out to their parents; I’d never expect that from Paul or Georgia, but he’d still been shocked, maybe even disappointed, and asked a few too many times if Connor was sure. It weighed on Connor for a long time, that question. I felt the same weight now, but Dad didn’t ask.
Instead, he said, “You gonna tell me who it is? Or is that a bigger secret?”
I finished the rest of my cookie rather than answer.
“Fair enough,” Dad nodded.
“It’s still kinda new,” I said. “And weird. And I haven’t technically told him. We keep dancing around it, but I’m pretty sure he knows, and that he feels something for me back. The whole thing took me by surprise. Ever since the Leonards, I don’t, we’ve just…we’ve found ourselves in more and more intimate situations. Which has never happened before. Not like this. And I’m around him every day, like all the time, and…” I looked up to find Dad smiling at me again, “…and I am so giving away who it is, aren’t I?”
Dad chuckled, dimples showing. “I can play ignorant if you want.”
I had to laugh too. This was a complete mess from what I’d expected to tell him.
The clock on the wall reminded me that I had limited time to get what I needed and rejoin Connor and the others across the street. “Thanks, Dad. We’re figuring it out. Or we will. I have to head to the middle school. This…I mean,” I gestured at the bowl as I stood from the table, “the cookies helped.”
�
�They are a cure-all. I think I’ll have two more,” he said, and did take two cookies before replacing the cover, “before your mom gets home and hides them on me again.”
I considered confessing my other secret, but now wasn’t the time. Dad pulled me in for a hug before I could leave the kitchen, kissed the side of my hair, squeezed too tightly on purpose until a gasped and laughed, and smacked his back to be let go. And with the release of pressure as his arms loosened, some of the other pressures on me dissolved with it.
Chapter 27
Connor
Opening night went off without a hitch. Connor made sure to stay out of Auroroa’s way and to do all of his prop work in a timely manner, never where he shouldn’t be, no repeats from Joke Night on an actual show night. She would not be forgiving if someone slipped up.
Everyone was so exhausted from getting through the first night, no one even complained about having to hurry along with greeting the audience after the show so they could get home before curfew, even if it was a bit of a rush. Mark and the other adults would stick around afterward to make sure anything left unfinished was completed or placed back where it should be for tomorrow night.
Connor slept like the dead—or maybe undead; he hadn’t thought to ask Emery if his sleep patterns were messed up from being a vampire. They didn’t have any plans to see each other until makeup and hair call the next night, which technically was when Connor should be making sure his Mom’s newest batch of sardine goop was stocked and ready. The actual Styrofoam sardines they could reuse; the goop, not so much. But after dedicating all of Saturday during the day to getting ahead on homework so he wouldn’t have to think about anything the rest of the weekend, he snuck up to the makeup room as soon as he had the chance to see Emery.
“Dude, you seriously killed it last night,” Connor said, leaning back against the makeup counter while Emery added powder to his face to counter the bright lights of being on stage. “Alec and Wendy coming tonight?”
“Yeah. Actually in the audience this time too, not just lookout. They don’t think the hunters will attempt another public attack, not with all the cops they have watching the place. Officer Nustad is even going to tail us to Aurora’s and stakeout until morning, just to be safe.”
“It’s like you have your own secret service watching over you.”
“With none of the perks of being president.”
“There are perks?”
Emery flicked some of the excess powder on the end of his brush in Connor’s direction, filling the air with tan-colored dust.
“Hey! My pasty complexion would look awful that shade. Save the brown and beautiful for yourself.”
Emery laughed and turned away with that brilliant smile again, eyes diverting and then flicking back to Connor at a side angle, as if to make sure he wasn’t teasing. Oh, Connor thought Emery was beautiful, that was never in question, so he forced himself to meet Emery eye to eye and not flinch away, answering his questions with silent certainty.
Either that, or Connor was totally missing all of Emery’s cues and making a complete jackass out of himself, but he preferred to believe the former.
They were interrupted by the flurry that was Jules getting her blond curls fluffed, and painting her lips red for the show. Before long, Connor and Emery were on opposite ends of the auditorium, actor and stagehand, playing their parts.
Aside from them being off center when they rotated the set between Acts I and II, enough that Aurora literally dangled over the pit for a moment since the end of the set lengthwise was just shy of being too long for rotation on a good day, night two went as perfectly as night one. The ‘whiskey’ leaked, and Amos nearly tripped during one of the comedic handoffs of the bottle between characters, but nothing noticeable or catastrophic happened.
Alec and Wendy, playing the parts of husband and wife, even hovered after the show to congratulate Emery on a wonderful performance.
“And you as well, Connor,” they stopped when they caught sight of him, back a ways from the actual talent most people wanted to see after the show, “I know these things don’t run themselves. What was your role as stagehand?” Alec asked.
The American accent threw Connor, but other people were within earshot for him to offer a snappy comment. “Sardine manager. And pants prepper for Emery.”
“Is that an official title?”
Wendy elbowed him hard enough in the ribs that he actually gasped. “Be nice, dear,” she said sweetly, in an ‘or I’ll murder you’ sort of way. Connor loved having a pseudo aunt who could kill a man fifteen different ways in his retinue.
“Have fun tonight at any rate. It’s when the chaos dies down that you’ll want to be watchful.” Alec leveled a serious stare on Connor before grinning with a touch of his manic side and whisking Wendy away.
Connor really needed to ask them what they did all day. Did they meet up? Discuss Connor and Emery and their annoying, teenage ways? Get Mexican for lunch at Miguel’s and compare notes? How did one be part of a thrown together but highly effective hunter-vampire duo?
Connor’s thoughts were interrupted as Aurora grabbed his arm and yanked him back down the hallway to the auditorium. “Party time, Con-Man. Let’s get a move on already.”
A whirlwind of minutes later, everything was as in place as it needed to be for tomorrow’s matinee, all of the actors out of their costumes, everything packed away neatly, as the whole collection of students involved in the show—and a handful of others tagging along for fun—headed to Aurora’s for the cast party in one long procession of vehicles.
Emery used one of Aurora’s handy makeup wipes to remove the gunk from his face by the time they pulled into her driveway. It wasn’t only Officer Nustad keeping watch on the house with dozens of kids piling in to claim the large split level as their own for the night, but two other squad cars strategically placed around the neighborhood as well. It almost would have put a damper on the night’s festivities, but Aurora was having none of that.
Music blared from upstairs, where various finger foods, soda, and punch had been setup in the kitchen, and the furniture had been rearranged downstairs to accommodate as many sleeping bags as possible. A few people claimed couches, though Aurora had first pick as hostess.
She’d graciously offered her bedroom to Emery and Connor for later, which Connor did not need to think of like that if he didn’t want to give himself a heart attack, and the way Aurora had looked at him when he explained why they wanted the room had not helped.
“Mavus is going to suck on your neck at the party? If you two just want an excuse to make out, the room is all yours. No need to invent reasons.”
“We’re not—”
“Oh please, you better be, or I will be highly disappointed.”
Aurora looked like her mother—practically a carbon copy—despite her father’s white-blond hair and pale blue eyes. Her parents were only there when they arrived though, electing to stay over at Aurora’s grandmother’s a few blocks down.
Her mother had put a hand on her hip and said, “You’d have to be the biggest dumbasses on the planet to pull anything stupid with three cops hanging around the neighborhood, so behave yourselves.”
Other adults moved in and out during the cast party, like Mark. Although, once he left, and it was only the remaining kids who’d be staying through the night, the nature of the games they played shifted.
“Who’s up for ‘Honey, if you love me’?” Sophie shouted above the din of people talking and lounging in various chairs and spots on the floor.
Connor groaned. Whoever was ‘it’ had to pick someone in the room to approach, say ‘Honey, if you love me, won’t you please, please smile’ and get the other person to laugh before they finished the phrase. Connor could get other people to laugh fine, but he hated how he always cracked when someone went for him.
If adults were present, there were generally rules about no touching, or no inappropriate touching anyway. Without any adults left in the house, all rules promptly went out the window. There were many creative ways to draw out saying that simple phrase. If the person laughed, they were the next one ‘it’. If they didn’t, their attacker had to move on to the next person.
The various attempts and people who cracked, or didn’t crack, had everyone roaring with laughter before long. Hopped up on too much adrenaline and sugary food and drink, curfew and the cops outside became a distant memory.
The color drained from Connor’s face when Nick ended up ‘it’ after several rounds and headed his direction. Nick was collected, stoic in most situations, which meant people expected him to be dull or at the very least respectful of boundaries.
He was not. At all. He was like a polite time bomb that could do something completely out of character at a moment’s notice.
He snatched up Mandy’s plate of strawberries and whipped cream that she’d only eaten a handful of, eliciting a mild protest, and set it down beside Connor as he knelt in front of him.
“Honey, if you love me…” he started, and damn it, Connor’s cheeks were already twitching. Nick grabbed Connor’s right hand and dipped his pointer finger in the whipped cream, “Won’t you please, please…” and opened his mouth to suck off the sweet substance in one long, smooth motion.
“Oh my god!” Connor burst out laughing, wiping his finger on his jeans after his initial shock, and pushing Nick away from him, “I hate you so much right now! But clearly J. J. is a very lucky man.”
Nick’s deeper laughter rumbled, though his expression remained more of a quirked smile on only one side of his face.
“You’re up, Con-Man,” Aurora announced.
Life as a Teenage Vampire Page 22
