“I understand.” Charlotte looks down. “I miss my mommy and daddy, too. The people here take care of me, but I wish they’d let me have a sister or a friend.”
I slow blink.
Sophia hugs the woman, almost vanishing into the puffy dress. “Bye. Nice meeting you”
“Bye.” Charlotte waves at us, then resumes playing dolls alone.
Joan is all too eager to leave, and hurries out the door. I take Sophia by the hand and follow. We’re halfway down the corridor before my sister breaks the silence.
“She’s nice.”
“Charlotte’s… special.” Joan exhales. “Looks creepy, but she’s more of a child than your sister.”
“Mind if I ask why?” I bite my lip. Am I going to turn into her eventually?
“It’s not the bloodline if that’s what you’re worrying about. Poor woman already had a whole bunch of bats dancing around in her upstairs before ol’ Mr. Hargreaves gave her the Transference. Had ta be going on 150 years ago when he found her in the place.”
“The place?” asks Sophia.
“Back in the 1890s, they tossed people with mental problems in asylums or prisons without much of a second thought. Some harmless woman like her might land in the same cell as Jack the Ripper. Didn’t help her much bein’ a servant girl.”
“Why’d you say servant weird?” I ask as we enter the room where all the other vampires are hanging out.
Joan stops a few steps in and whispers, “Because the wealthy family she worked for didn’t exactly pay her. Not quite the same situation you lot had over in the States, more an indenture in theory. I’m not old enough to have been around when it happened, so I’ve just got folklore and whispers. Some people think she killed the Lord and Lady. Some say she merely watched another killer work, and it broke her.”
“She didn’t hurt anyone,” says Sophia.
“Nice to think she didn’t.” Joan sighs. “Anyway, the poor girl’s lost her mind, and wherever she lost it, she ain’t about to find it again.”
“So sad…” I squeeze Sophia’s hand.
“If ya really want to know, ya can ask ol’ Mr. Hargreaves when he shows up here. They say he felt sorry for her. Got her out of the asylum before it killed her. Kinda treats ’er like a daughter. Easy to find him. Crazy old bastard still dresses like it’s 1850.”
I chuckle. “He’d probably get along well with someone I know. Interesting, but we’re not going to be here long. What I said about our parents freaking out is true.”
“You came all the way to London without them knowing?” asks Joan.
“Yeah.” I pull out my phone to check the time: 10:28 p.m. Might not be too late to catch a flight.
“How’d you manage that?”
“Magic,” says Sophia.
“Hah.”
Klepto appears in a flash in Sophia’s hands. “Mew.”
“Feck!” Joan jumps back, staring at her.
“Yeah. I had the same reaction the first time, too. Umm… which way to the airport?”
Joan points. “Ya bloody well can’t miss it. It’s bastarding huge. Fly southwest from ’ere. Looks like a big brown rectangle from the air wif a lighter band down the middle.”
“Great. Thanks!”
Sophia gives me this guilty look, but keeps quiet.
Maybe we should help the mystics, but I still can’t let her get involved in something so dangerous.
17
The Worst Part is Waiting
Well, crap.
Good news: Heathrow airport is super obvious from the air. Guess being easy to spot from altitude is a good quality to have in an airport. Wouldn’t want 747s randomly popping into people’s backyards. Bad news: only two flights go nonstop to Seattle each day, and neither one departs this late. British Airways has one leaving at 3:40 p.m., arriving at 6:00 p.m. Seattle time (estimated). Sounds awesome, only like two hours, right?
Nope.
Time zones. It’s anywhere from a nine to eleven hour flight.
The earlier flight leaves at 9:40 a.m. No way in hell am I making it on board a plane so early unless I’m packed in a trunk and have a helper. We’re going to try racing to the airport to get on the later flight. If it doesn’t pan out, some poor person is going to become my unwilling servant for a day. I hate the thought of mentally dominating a guy to escort Sophia and ‘Sarah-in-a-box’ on an international flight, but a few truths mitigate my guilt.
One: Sophia flying ‘alone’ with a giant piece of luggage is going to raise eyebrows.
Two: If I’m corpse-sleeping, I can’t use mind control to make sure no one interferes with Sophia.
Three: Sophia’s going to freak out being on an airplane alone.
Oh, there’s a four: my parents will pay the person back for the airfare.
However, taking a flight while I’m a little more than figuratively dead to the world is far from an ideal situation. And crap. If they x-ray my trunk, they’ll discover my skeleton. Ugh. Call me a worrywart, but human ‘remains’ in a piece of checked luggage is probably going to raise a few eyebrows. Guess I now know why vampires still use boats.
New plan: do not miss the 3:40 flight.
To help us make the time, we got a room at the Novotel London, a hotel basically right at the edge of the airport grounds. Since we’ll be going back into the airport in broad—hopefully gloomy—daylight when my powers don’t work, I obtained our tickets tonight, exploiting a manager override for children of British Airways employees. Courtesy of a few implanted commands, the ticket agent and manager think our dad’s a pilot who works for the airline. Easy peasy as they say.
The simplest plans often fail in the biggest ways, but I’m hopeful. All I need to do is wake up as soon as I can, likely close to 2:30 in the afternoon, then rush with Sophia to the terminal and act casual. I’d feel much more comfortable on a late flight where I’m online the whole time, but a girl’s gotta take risks sometimes to get things done.
“You forgot a five,” says Sophia, flopping on the bed in our hotel room.
“What?”
Klepto teleports from the floor to my shoulder, rubs against my cheek, then jumps on the bed.
“You explained why turning a person into a servant wasn’t bad. You missed a five.” She yawns. “Wait, it’s not really another reason. I’m tired. I mean, we have another option so you don’t have to make someone into your vampire slave.”
“I can’t fly us myself. It’s too far.”
The kitten curls up on top of Sophia’s chest.
“No.” She swishes her feet back and forth. “We could help the mystics and they send us back the same way they brought us here.”
“Soph…” I kick my sneakers off and lay next to her. “You’re only getting started with this magic stuff. What kind of idiot would I be to let you charge into a fight with a spirit capable of killing mystics who’ve been doing magic for longer than you’ve been alive?”
“He’s a ghost. And I don’t gotta blow him up. Maybe. He talked to me once, right?”
“Because he needed something. He knew you could break him out of the jar, and he also knew you are way too nice for your own good. He lied to you. Pretended to be a poor, sad trapped spirit suffering in agony.”
Sophia sighs at the ceiling. “He told me he did bad things and deserved to be punished, but he’d already been executed. The jar was too much. He didn’t pretend to be suffering.”
“He preyed on your niceness. Didn’t he promise you he wouldn’t hurt anyone if you let him out? He already lied.”
“Sorta.”
“What do you mean, sorta?”
She rolls her head to look at me. “He said he wouldn’t hurt any innocent people.”
“But he has.”
Klepto stretches.
Sophia looks up at the ceiling again. “He doesn’t think mystics are innocent people.”
“Ugh. Look, I’ll think about it, okay? Go to sleep.”
Klepto hops off her to the bed.
<
br /> “Okay.” Sophia gets up, changes into her nightgown, and goes into the bathroom.
Minutes later, she returns and crawls in bed smelling of toothpaste. I sit beside her, staring at the blank TV. Hopefully, the mental command I gave the hotel manager holds and no cleaning people will barge in on us before we’re gone. This room has some serious curtains. I might even be able to stay online in here during full daylight. Not surprising for an airport hotel, really. People who work nights and need to fly late sleep during the day, so a dark room helps. Good for me, too. Means I can use the bed instead of the bathtub. Perhaps an ordinary vampire would still want more protection than fabric over the windows, but as an Innocent, I should be fine.
Despite being hours away from sleep, I stretch out on the bed anyway. Damn, I’m undead and hotel beds still feel like stone slabs. Klepto pokes her head out from under the blanket by Sophia’s chin, settling in for the night.
Does this kitten sleep?
For a while, I try to figure out if a tiny cat made from enchanted mushroom powder needs sleep. Not to be grim, but if something cut her open, would mushroom dust leak out? Is she like a stuffed animal or did Sophia somehow make an actual animal? Klepto eats food and uses a litterbox so… I’ll assume she’s more like a real cat than not. Guess my sister’s magic literally changed one substance into another, sort of the way the Washington State Highway Department transmogrifies money into traffic delays.
Only a couple more hours and we can put this madness behind us.
Second to flying, the best part about becoming a vampire is sleep.
Not sleep per se, but how I can no longer lie awake all night while worried or excited. As soon as sunrise happens, bam. I’m out. So damn nice. My parents changed our Christmas policy due to something I did years ago. We used to wait for the morning to open presents, but the anticipation drove me nuts to the point I couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve. For no reason other than desperately wanting to sleep, nine-year-old me snuck downstairs at around one in the morning. I used a knife to surgically slice open all my presents enough to peek under the wrapping paper and see what they were, and re-sealed them all. With the suspense gone, I could sleep.
The next morning when it came time to officially open the gifts, it required a little acting on my part to seem surprised. Seriously, I hadn’t wanted to break the rules or play with any toys early… only sleep. My parents still haven’t admitted to catching me in the act or figuring out what happened, but the next year, they let us open our presents on Christmas Eve.
So yeah, instant sleep is one of the better perks of being a vampire.
One second, my mind is swirling with all the ways everything could go wrong. The next, I’m trying to figure out how it did go wrong. In a seeming instant, the room goes from the washed out mostly black and white view I have in total darkness to ordinary light. My world is strange in the dark. Everything looks to exist in various tones of grey or black, but I somehow still know what color objects are.
The dense curtains allow a small strip of sunlight in at the top, but it’s on the ceiling. To any normal person, the room would appear quite dark, but that scrap of daylight, to me, is like a full size ceiling lamp being on. Back to the reason I’m trying to figure out how my plan failed: Sophia’s not on the bed beside me.
I sit up fast and check my phone for the time: 2:31 p.m. Great. Woke up early. Good sign.
My sister wouldn’t have hesitated to put the TV on, but it’s silent. Simple sound can’t wake me up before my body’s ready to stir. Somehow, the vampire part of me can sense a direct threat. I could literally sack out on a concert stage in front of a sound system the size of a small house and not care, but if a hunter tiptoed into my room wanting to kill me, good chance he’d wake me up.
Or she. I shouldn’t assume all vampire hunters are guys.
Considering the time, it isn’t directly alarming for Sophia not to be in bed. However, her clothes—the new ones I got her the other day—are still draped on the chair by the small writing table. No sign of Klepto either. I crawl out of bed and check the bathroom. She’s not there, so I stick my head out into the hallway and look both directions. Still no sign of her, only one guy in a pilot’s uniform who’s doing a spot-on impression of a zombie. Dude seriously looks like he needs sleep big time. He goes by, not even looking at me, and enters a room three away from ours on the opposite side.
The slam of his door swinging shut makes me jump.
There’s no way Sophia would have left the room alone. She’s far too timid. Maybe if we happened to be in Woodinville, somewhere relatively familiar, she might’ve gone down to the in-hotel restaurant by herself, but in a completely different country? Not happening.
Especially not in a nightgown.
I hurry downstairs to the front desk. Two dark-haired women in black blazers behind the reception counter give me curious looks as I rush toward them. It’s not too bright out, but there’s enough sunlight to stiffen my muscles and make me feel like a department store dummy brought to life. The women likely think I’m a victim of assault, on drugs, or doing an impression of teenage Darth Vader. Despite feeling like I’m made out of wood, I’ve still got more believable facial expressions than him.
Just call me Mannequin Skywalker.
“Hey…” I crash into the reception desk, grabbing the edge to keep from falling. “Did you see a little girl leave the hotel? Ten, really skinny, blonde? I can’t find my sister.”
The women exchange a glance.
“No,” says the slightly younger one. “I’ve not seen any children at all today, leaving or otherwise.”
Her co-worker’s a few years into her thirties and rocking an ‘actually, I am the manager’ black bob ’do. “We’ve been on shift since five. Had a few check-ins and some people go out, but no children. If you can’t locate her, we can check the cameras. Should we phone the police?”
Eep. “Uhh, not yet. Maybe she’s running around upstairs and got lost.” I push off the counter, trying not to act too obviously like I don’t want police involved.
“Are you okay?” asks the younger woman. “Where’s your mum an’ dad?”
“Mom’s home waiting for us. We’re supposed to be on a plane in like an hour. Thanks!” I force a smile past my worry and hurry back to the elevator, hoping they don’t call the police anyway.
The women murmur back and forth, but without vampiric hearing, I can’t understand them. Screw it. I rush into the stairwell. Dammit. If the cops show up, what do I tell them? In a paradoxical twist, the truth is the last thing they’d believe… and I’m a rotten liar. Crap! The police are probably going to think I’m a trafficking victim going to the US for some sick perv rich guy. I could give them real information about our parents, but we’d still be stuck for an explanation for what we’re doing in London.
Hold up. I’m eighteen. Need to stop thinking like a kid. I don’t need parental supervision—it just comes in handy to let someone else worry about crap. However, there’s still the issue of me not having a passport. A Washington State driver’s license isn’t going to cut it, though it would verify my age. I’m not worried about being deported—going home is what I want, but they’d misinterpret me not wanting to talk about magic as me lying. I’m going to end up stuck at a police station until dark. As soon as my powers are online, I’ll be fine… but that’s a whole day wasted.
And where the hell is Sophia?
I run back and forth down the halls of all three floors, already wasting so much time we’ll never make the flight. Dammit! Wait, did she crawl under the bed to hide? Anything could’ve happened while I lay in deathly repose. However, if someone walked in on us, they’d have freaked the hell out at the sight of me. I’d have come to in a body cooler again, most likely.
Once in our room again, I dive to the floor and peek under the bed. No kid sister. I sit back on my heels and sigh at the clothes left behind—or rather, the empty chair where they’d been a half hour ago.
Her shoe
s are gone, too. Both had definitely been here when I woke up.
Argh!
I bonk my head repeatedly against the mattress.
“Damn mystics.”
18
Big Girls Don’t Scry
It makes no sense for the mystics to magically kidnap my sister again.
Or maybe it does. I bet Asher let us leave because he expected we’d get lost and scared, then turn around and go back, reluctantly agreeing to help him because we had no other choice. Seeing as how we didn’t, he’s most likely decided to try again… this time taking only Sophia. She already wants to help them because she’s too nice for her own self-preservation, and probably feeling guilty for letting the spirit out in the first place.
I can’t leave her alone with them or they’re going to get her killed.
At least I packed light for this abduction. The only reason I remember to bring the phone charger and power converter with me when I run out the door is they’re still connected to my phone. My parents are going to lose their damn minds when they find out I lost Sophia. They’ll lose their minds anyway when they don’t receive a text telling them we’re on the plane, but at least waiting buys me some time.
I hurry downstairs again. The women give me urgent looks, but there’s no sign of cops. They’d have been here by now considering the time spent roaming the corridors looking for her. The ‘manager’ picks up the phone when I go right past the desk and outside, not checking out, not having a little sister with me, and not even looking at them.
Crap.
Bigger problem… I can’t fly at the moment due to an acute case of daylight.
Fortunately, this is London after all, and it’s a touch gloomy. It only feels like I’m microwaving myself on low rather than body-surfing a hibachi table. Best part: no smoke, only mild agony… like being trapped in a stuck elevator flooded with a Justin Bieber cover of Nickelback. Or would Nickelback covering Bieber be more of a crime against humanity?
Vampire Innocent (Book 9): An Introduction To Paranormal Diplomacy Page 16
