“Yes, Your Highness?”
Okay, score. “I need to ask a favor.”
He looked positively tickled. “Anything! Anything I can do to serve you!”
His enthusiasm kind of squicked me, but I needed him, so I rolled with it. “There’s a prince in Hudson, Luis Montezuma. I need to ask him an important question about his rite of passage. Ask him—how should I put this exactly? Ask him what it was like. Ask him if anything changed. Is he somebody new?”
The Igor was actually writing my words down on the back of his hand with a ballpoint pen. “Anything else, Princess?”
I wanted to tell the kid to take a shower and change his clothes, but I didn’t want to be rude. I shook my head. “Just hurry back,” I said. “I need to know before six o’clock tonight.”
Since I was already at the stop and it was nearly time for me to meet with Mrs. Kirov, I hopped onto the first bus that pulled up. I always carried my pass, but I felt a little naked knowing that my phone was still charging at home on the dresser. I also never told my mom where I was going, but it would serve her right to worry a little. Maybe then she’d realize how much she’d miss the irritating parts of me too.
That probably wasn’t fair.
She was afraid the ritual would change me into someone completely new, and now I was too. I leaned my head against the window. It was closed to keep out the heat, and the air-conditioning chilled the interior almost too much. Because this was Sunday, the bus was nearly empty. The only passengers were me and a mom with her kid in a stroller up near the front. She had bags of groceries stuffed into a two-wheeler beside her. The kid had fallen asleep, and she looked ready to join him.
The breaks hissed at every stop as we jerked along. What if I did lose me tonight? Would it be like dying, completely winking out of existence, or would I know I’d lost a part of me? Would I care? What if the new me wasn’t interested in trying to fix the hunt permanently?
If that last concept was true, it sort of defeated the whole purpose of tonight’s plan. I mean, yes, we needed an immediate solution, but the bigger problem would not be solved if the new me swanned off to live naked in some cave with the rest of her kin.
Still, unlike my mom, I had a harder time imagining that the vampire soul I’d possessed all this time was truly a complete stranger. Didn’t I become “her” when my fangs dropped? Presumably “she” had been with me since the moment I drew my first breath. When I licked Thompson, I awoke as her on my sixteenth birthday. I did feel a little strange, maybe even different, those times when I activated my superpowers, but not so much that I wasn’t myself. I always remembered who I was, what I was doing, why I was doing it. I never felt possessed by someone else with a completely different personality or agenda.
Maybe I had nothing to worry about.
Someone should tell my fingernails the news. I’d chewed them down to stubs by the time I made it to the stop on Rice Street closest to the Hmongtown Marketplace, a collection of warehouses surrounded by a gate. There was a big red sign with gold lettering out front, but it still had an air of privacy, a subliminal warning for strangers to stay out. I went through anyway, making my way over to where I thought Mrs. Kirov would most likely be—near the open stalls of the farmers’ market. Underneath semipermanent tin roofs, sellers laid out boxes of vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, green onions, as well as some bundles of interesting-looking greens I wasn’t entirely sure I recognized. I hung out near the wall of warehouse number two, from which vantage point I could scan most of the doors to the other enclosures and much of the open-air market.
There were a ton of people there; we’d have good cover for the exchange. Most were of Asian descent, but I was by no means the only white person, and I saw other families of various hues here and there. One of the sellers had set up a large-screen TV and was blasting an action film in a foreign language. I got so caught up watching the kung fu–style action that I never saw Mrs. Kirov approach.
“Ana,” she said softly, but I jumped anyway. She held a bag in her hand. It was one of those big square plastic bags with a handle, such as you might carry clothes in. It was plaid, and when I took it, it was so heavy, I nearly dropped it.
“Ice,” she explained. “You’ll want to keep it cool until you need it.”
Did blood spoil? I wasn’t sure that anything that would mistake a Ukrainian death walker for a living person would care all that much, but I nodded. “How much were you able to get?”
“Four pints,” she said. She had her hands on her hips and was shaking her head at me, as if she still thought this was the stupidest plan ever.
Any more criticism and my confidence would completely erode, so I thanked her, promised to keep her secret, and took off.
I hid the bag of blood in the carriage house. Then I went inside and dodged questions about where I’d been with the classic “out” that implied it was my business. Mom grumbled that I’d missed lunch, but otherwise she left me to my own devices. I managed to go the rest of the remaining hours without fretting too much over the upcoming ritual. By five thirty, the biggest thing on my mind was what to wear. Thompson had texted earlier that I should dress up, though not super formally. I’d tried to get him to give over more details, but he was determined to surprise me. I got the feeling he really just wanted to see me in an actual dress. At school, I tended to go for Goth casual—lots of black, comfortable clothes.
I owned a few sundresses, and I pulled them out of my armoire to inspect them now. One was pink. I had no idea where I’d gotten anything that hideous and determined it must have been a gift from some distant relative. I had no memory of ever wearing it.
The other two were pretty standard, though when I put the whitish one on, the girl in the mirror looked young and foolish. The darker one fit me in all the right places and had a more sophisticated vibe—at least as much as a sundress could. I fluffed out my hair and decided that with some work, I could look all right.
With luck, Thompson wasn’t hoping for anything fancier than this. I didn’t really have too many other options.
I was weirdly excited about this date. As I made myself prettier, I hummed happily along with the radio I’d switched on. I’d tuned it to the country station because the last thing I needed was some commentary about Ingress or that stupid song about me to come on the radio and ruin this moment. I was going to focus on Thompson, dang it.
When the doorbell rang, I actually squealed a little. I tried to compose myself in a more dignified manner, but I took the stairs two at a time hurrying to answer it. Mom was already there, giving Thompson the talk about when I was supposed to be home and how she expected him to treat me with respect.
“Mom!” I could feel her magic swirling in the dust of the foyer. “He already knows better than to piss off a witch.”
“True enough,” Thompson agreed. He’d been zapped by Bea in the past.
I smiled at the effort he’d made for our date. He looked really handsome in a button-down shirt and tie. I noticed he still wore jeans, at least, so I wasn’t terribly underdressed. He had flowers in his hands. This time he offered them to Mom. “For you.”
If I kept dating him, our house was going to turn into one gigantic floral arrangement. But Mom was flattered. She’d looked pretty shocked that I’d talked openly about magic, but her face softened at Thompson’s offering. “Oh, they’re lovely.”
Taking advantage of her distraction, I scooped my hand under Thompson’s elbow. “See you.” I waved.
“Don’t forget to be back—”
“Before sundown,” Thompson and I said in unison. He added, “I’ll remember, Mrs. Parker.”
When we’d gotten to the truck, I said, “It’s Dr. Parker, actually. My mom is a college professor, PhD.”
“I have to call your mom ‘Dr. Parker’?” Thompson said as he held the door open for me.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “Nik used to call her Amelia.”
Thompson seemed to consider th
is option very seriously. “I don’t think I can do that. It seems disrespectful.”
I shrugged as I buckled in. “It always seemed creepy to me. As if they were friends.”
Thompson chuckled and shut my door. Through the windows, I watched him come around to his side and slide in.
“Where are we going?” I asked excitedly, no longer able to keep the huge grin from my face.
“It depends on how adventurous you feel,” he said with a sly smile. “I was thinking Kurdish food.”
I had no idea what that even was, but it sounded cool. “I’m up for it.”
“Or we could do the Mongolian Grill in Roseville. Depends whether you want quiet or exciting.”
I’d have my fill of exciting later. “Quiet sounds perfect tonight.”
“Babani’s it is,” he said, and started up the engine.
I had no idea if that meant we’d settled on Mongolian or Kurdish, but I didn’t much care. The sun was still fairly high in the sky. It wouldn’t set until nine o’clock. I had three hours to enjoy dinner.
I looked over at Thompson, suddenly wondering what we were going to talk about for three hours. Thanks to my vampire princess lifestyle, most of my conversations tended to center around dealing with major disasters. What did normal people talk about?
“So, how was work?” I asked lamely.
“It was fine,” he said.
Hmm, not off to the best start. I’d better try again. “Is that what you want to be? A landscaper?”
Thompson gave me a look that said I should know better. “I want to be an actor. My dad wants me to be a landscaper.”
I realized I had no idea what my mom wanted me to be. The Queen of Witches? As far as I knew, however, she had no plans to give up that title until she died. Honestly, I didn’t even know how the whole magical royalty worked. Had my grandmother been the queen before Mom? Or was it an elected position?
“You look confused,” Thompson noted.
I couldn’t exactly explain what I’d been thinking, so I asked, “Are you going to go to the U for acting? I guess they have a program.”
Mom sometimes brought home course catalogs from the various colleges at which she taught. I flipped through them in the bathroom sometimes, reading all the various offerings.
Thompson shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Haven’t thought about it?” I repeated, shocked. Everyone I knew was already obsessing about where to apply to college, even though we’d only be juniors next year. But then, most of us were already in the international baccalaureate program. College was on the mind.
“My dad is really just an overpaid lawn mower, and I have two younger sisters. My best hope for college is a hockey scholarship,” he said. “I’ll go to wherever I’m recruited and hope they have a good theater program.”
I couldn’t imagine not choosing a college for its academic track, and I was kind of stunned. It was such a different approach; his answer killed conversation for a few minutes. Plus, he had two sisters? I’d had no idea.
We drove down John Ireland Boulevard. Straight ahead was the white marble of the capitol building, and the sun glinted on the golden chariot at the top of the dome.
It was Thompson’s turn to make a stab at conversation. “Do you have a favorite band?”
“Not really,” I admitted. I hated this question. When I dated Nik, everyone I met judged me by my taste in music. And, trust me, with a bunch of professionally minded musicians, I always fell short. “I’ll listen to anything—rock, country, show tunes, whatever. I just like songs I can sing along to.”
I thought for sure Thompson would be disappointed, but he seemed pleased with my answer. “Yeah, you know, the guys on the crew listen to all sorts of stuff. I’ve even found a Spanish-language station that’s not too bad.”
He switched on the radio to show me. We laughed at the sound of familiar commercials done in another language. The music made us smile too, and Thompson and I tried to sing along to a few choruses.
Okay, now I was having fun.
All too soon, we pulled up next to a meter; it was free to park on the street after four thirty p.m. The building was an old-fashioned three-story redbrick structure with awnings over the businesses on the first floor. I thought it wouldn’t have looked out of place in Boston, especially since the adjacent building had fancy columns on a second-floor balcony.
The sign in the window told me we’d come to the first Kurdish restaurant in America. I wasn’t even sure where a Kurd’s land was, though the font they’d used reminded me of Aladdin.
The interior was elegant. There was exposed brick along one wall, and the windows were tall. Sunlight poured in through the glass, shining on gray tile flooring. There were booths, but they weren’t like anything you’d see in a malt shop. They were more like tall-backed cushioned chairs. The tables were polished wood.
Thompson had been watching my face as I looked around. “Do you like it?”
“I do,” I said.
The waitress directed us to one of the fancy booths and gave us each a menu. I studied all the interesting-sounding dishes. Thompson had been there before and had some recommendations. There was an explanation about where Kurds were from on the back of the menu. Apparently there was once a Kurdistan, but it now included parts of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
There weren’t a lot of other people at dinner yet, so the restaurant had a cozy, intimate feeling. I found myself looking less at the menu and more at Thompson. Could I really date a guy who was so clean-cut? I mean, look at that square jaw! It was like something out of a men’s health magazine.
So normal …
Not like Nikolai, the slayer, or Elias, the vampire.
Nik still haunted me. That kiss! The whole romantic gesture of “I’ll wait for you” and writing love songs about us. Of course, I’d already tried dating Nik. Even though I was still obviously attracted to him, our relationship had been disastrous. There was the whole slayer/vampire thing, and also the rock star/nerd problem.
I ran my fingers on the wood of the table, thinking how nice it was to be on an actual date.
Elias had totally ruled when it came to romance. I loved being courted by him. He was attentive and protective and … he could only come out after dark. That made traditional dating more difficult. I’m sure we could still have done it if we’d put our minds to it, but now he was headed off to possibly get into this weird loveless political alliance with the Southern captain.
Thompson came with his own set of problems too. We didn’t have that much in common, outside of theater, and I couldn’t talk to him about the most important stuff in my life. But, man, he was fine to look at, and he was revealing a new … kinder side of him I’d never known.
And he could be so sweet. Flowers! Dates! I could get used to this treatment.
He caught me staring and smiled. “What are you thinking?”
I blushed and changed the subject. “Did I tell you I got into Festival?”
“No, that’s awesome!”
My diversion worked. We talked about Renaissance Festival until the waitress came to take our orders. I chose something based on its cool sound—“sheik babani.” Thompson picked something I couldn’t pronounce, but the waitress nodded as though she thought he’d made a good choice.
“This is so fun,” I told him. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
He gaped at me, as if momentarily stunned. Then he asked, “Seriously?” When I nodded, he continued. “What did you do with Nikolai?”
“Mostly I went to his concerts,” I said, conveniently leaving out all the bits where we practiced magic or chased after ancient vampire artifacts.
“Dude never took you out?” He still seemed flabbergasted. I shook my head. “Well, we’ll have to fix that.”
I liked the sound of that more than I could say.
We passed the rest of the evening in pleasant companionship. The food was good, even if Thompson’s dish looked lik
e he was eating eight-inch-long meat-filled torpedoes. Mine turned out to be eggplant, which was not on my top-ten favorites list, but it tasted awesome. Only once or twice did our conversation lag. I found out that Thompson and I both liked weird, old horror films like Halloween, and secretly enjoyed the Harry Potter series.
When the bill came, I didn’t know what to do. If this had been an outing with my regular theater pals, I’d have offered to split the bill, but I had no idea what the etiquette was on an actual date. Did Thompson expect me to go Dutch?
Thompson, however, clearly had a plan. His wallet was out. When he saw the worry in my expression, he said, “It’s on me.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe no one has ever treated you right before.”
Treated me right? “What, like a princess?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “Like a princess.”
I was really sad when the time came to say good-bye. We lingered in his truck, holding hands. We’d been silent for a long time, savoring the moment.
The sun began to dip below the trees. Thompson squeezed my hand lightly. “Are you going to be okay tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “We’re doing brand-new magic. It could be risky.”
“Risky? How?”
I looked him in the eye. I didn’t want to lie to him, not after tonight. “I could come back different.”
He seemed to think about this for a moment, and then a deep frown etched his face. “How?”
I looked into his face for a long time, trying to decide what I could say. I never heard back from the Igor, so I didn’t know if losing my witch soul would change me. What if the vampire-me dumped Thompson without any explanation? Would that be fair? I supposed the new me wouldn’t care, but the old me, the person I was right now, found that it mattered a lot. Thompson was a decent guy. I always assumed he couldn’t handle the truth about me, but what if I was wrong about that too?
Tonight seemed the time to try. After all, I might not be myself for much longer. If he freaked out and left—well, maybe it was meant to be. Perhaps I’d even be sparing him something worse from wicked vampire-me. I was sworn to secrecy about witch stuff, but I was sure there were contingencies in place for when the magic affected someone else—someone important.
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