5: His eyes turn red sometimes.
6: He couldn't attend graduation (a daytime event).
7: I saw him twice today, but only after the sky turned dark.
8: Someone invisible (or super fast) caught me when I fell.
When I finished typing, I stared down at my list with excitement. So much for being logical and level headed! If I truly believed everything I'd typed, my conclusion could be nothing short of extraordinary: Stellan was something more than human. I was dating a . . . what? An alien, magician, or genetically altered cyborg with super speed? I'd always been a sucker for fantasy books, shows, and movies. I muffled a snicker by biting down a little harder on my lower lip.
"What's so funny over there?" Bax cast a sideways glance at me.
"It's nothing." I hastily tucked away my cell phone. "Just a silly text from Antjie." I would re-read my list later and do some online poking and digging. I was Bax's daughter after all and no stranger to a bit of gray-hat hacking if the occasion called for it. Stellan's university application should contain a home address, a school and work history, financial information, and more. Not exactly ethical or legal of me to snoop through his college file, but extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary measures.
Instead of pulling into our driveway, Bax passed our house and drove further down the street.
"Um . . . you missed our driveway." Not that passing up our driveway was near as crazy as my tumble off the stage, but it was unlike Bax to do something so absentminded. He was always self-aware, always clear-headed.
"Nothing gets past you, slick." Instead of turning the car around, he drove to our community center located several streets over. A crowd of cars was gathered in the parking lot. He pulled to the front entrance and handed me an umbrella.
"Fine. I'll bite." I accepted the umbrella. "What's this about?"
"Aw, Gracie." He sounded awkward. "This is something all the mamas in our neighborhood have been planning for months. I know I may never earn an Emmy for best dad, but there was no way in tarnation I was letting you get by without a graduation party."
My mouth fell open. "You're throwing me a graduation party?"
"Well, it's more of a joint one. It's for you, Antjie, Matt, Rayland, and a few others. All the graduating seniors who live in our part of the woods."
"Um, wow!" I could think of nothing else to say. A party. It was the last thing I'd been expecting. It turned out to be a crazy good one, too. Our parents had gone all out with a catered lunch, a four-layer cake topped with a royal blue candied graduation cap, a DJ, and everything. Plus there was a mountain of cards and gifts, including several for me.
When Bax spun me onto the dance floor, it was truly one of the happiest moments of my life. I almost forgave him on the spot for his many long absences. He was a great dancer, too. I guess I'd inherited my dancing gene from him. I'd certainly always treasured the few dances we'd shared at his holiday balls.
This afternoon, we totally rocked it for our audience. Several people whipped out cell phones and started filming us. At the end of the song, we bowed mockingly to them amidst a round of clapping and whistling. Someone called for an encore, a cry that was quickly repeated across the room. Antjie huddled with the DJ for a few seconds, and he switched the tune to an old classic with a swing beat.
Bax chuckled as he recognized the movie soundtrack. He crooked an arm at me. "Come on, baby girl! We've got this." We executed the dance flawlessly, right down to the jumping part where he held me high overhead with my arms outstretched like a bird. Our neighbors went completely nutso.
A surge of euphoric pride made my eyes mist. Bax slowly lowered me to my feet. He beaming smile told me he shared the emotion.
"You're the best part of me, Gracie," he said softly. He hooked an arm around my neck and tugged me against his side as he led me off the dance floor to our friends and guests.
Antjie watched us with a strange, longing look on her face. I waved, and her expression quickly returned to normal. She ran to me, and we hugged. "That was priceless," she gushed. "You two are amazing." She darted a warm glance at Bax, but he was laughing over our heads at something one of the father's said.
We partied until dark. By then the rain had stopped. Bax helped me gather and carry my gifts to the car, and several mothers sent younger children racing after us with covered plates of leftovers. I could have sworn one of their biggest mantras after my mother's death was, "Feed the Livingstons!"
We thanked them for the food and gifts, made our last round of hugs and handshakes, and finally headed home.
Bax delivered the gifts up to my room like the perfect bellboy, while I tucked away the leftovers in the refrigerator. I liked having him in the house. It didn't seem so large and empty with his larger-than-life personality filling it. My heart squeezed at the thought of him leaving again. He rarely stayed more than a week or two at a time but this time I wouldn't have school and homework to fill my life. I could start packing for our next move and college, I supposed.
"Thank you," I said simply when he returned down the stairs. "For everything."
"Welcome, princess." He gave me one of those marshmallow smiles normally reserved for conversations about Mother. "I know you're all grown up now, but you'll always be my little princess. Even when you turn ninety-two."
I smiled at the mental picture, not wanting to point out he probably wouldn't be around when I was ninety-two.
"How's about we both change into something more comfortable and deal a game of cards before we call it a night?"
"Sure! I'd like that." Despite our tears and my splat on the stage stairs, my graduation had turned out to be a pretty incredible day. I don't think either of us was quite ready for it to end.
I donned purple PJs and met him in the great room. He'd thrown on yet another one of his foolish shirts. He slowly twirled a full circle, so I could get the full panoramic effect. This one displayed a cartoon figure of a man holding the hand of little girl, presumably his daughter. In the next series of scenes, the cartoon figures grew older. Eventually, the girl was an old lady holding the hand of a stooped-over man in a wheelchair. In the last frame, she was a sagging old hag herself with a bust drooping to her knees, and she was holding on to an arm reaching down from the heavens.
I know he'd bought the shirt for this occasion and meant it as a heart-warming gesture, but I burst out laughing. I couldn't help myself.
"Now what?" Bax demanded, a comical glare distorting his face.
"You sure that's the direction you're headed?" I jibed. "Or was it just harder to find a shirt with a hand reaching up from the other place?"
He stared at me for a moment then dissolved into laughter. "Boy, you nailed me, Gracie girl," he sputtered, trying to catch his breath. Then he gave up and howled some more.
We sat cross-legged in the middle of our enormous area rug and played one round of cards after another. When the clock struck twelve, Bax jogged into the kitchen and returned with a piece of leftover graduation cake and a beer. "Want some?"
"You have to ask? Gimme, gimme!" I reached for the fork he passed and we dug in. He offered me a sip of his beer to wash it down, but I wrinkled my nose. "No thanks. I'm a budding wine connoisseur."
"No!" His eyes rounded in mock horror. "What's the world coming to? Wait a minute." He waved his fork at me. "This must have something to do with that Stellan you were telling me about, eh?"
I flushed. "Maybe."
"Uh-huh. What's your favorite poison when you're on a date with him?"
"Rose Moscato. Italian import."
"Hmm. . .that was one of your mother's favorites. I might be starting to like this guy. So when do I get to meet him?"
"Depends," I sighed. "How long are you staying this time?"
"Ouch! Another low hit." Bax pretended to take a punch in the gut. "You sure are full of 'em tonight."
"I'm your daughter. What do you expect?"
"Touché." He raised his beer at me. "Would a week be long
enough to plan a cozy little grill-out on the back patio?"
"Absolutely." I was an Army brat. I could pull it off tomorrow in the middle of an overseas move with one arm tied behind my back if I had to.
"Then it's a date. I'm looking forward to meeting your feller, Gracie."
Oddly enough, I was looking forward to it, too. Despite our many differences, I'd always longed for Bax to be a more involved parent. Maybe meeting my boyfriend would be one step of many towards settling into a more normal father-daughter relationship.
Or not.
Bax received a call the next evening about some emergency tasking. He stuffed a few things into a suitcase and knocked on my bedroom door to say goodbye. "I'm sorry, Gracie. I really am." There was a fierce note in his voice I'd never heard before.
I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets. "It's okay, Dad. At least you made it to graduation. That was the most important thing."
We stared at each other in shock after the endearment slipped from my lips. It was the first time I'd called him that since I was a little girl. I guess all the quality father-daughter time we'd squeezed in the past two days had brought it to the surface.
"No, Gracie. You're the most important thing. Always have been. Always will be. Don't you ever doubt it, okay, princess? No matter how much my job keeps me away from you."
For the first time in my life, I actually believed him. I nodded, unable to say anything else without breaking down. He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. Then he was gone.
With Bax gone, Stellan out of town, high school behind me, and no job other than my volunteer work at the vet on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I suddenly found myself with a whole lot of extra time on my hands. I extended my dancing practices to four hours per day, but even that wasn't enough to fill all the extra hours. On Monday, I woke with the proverbial no-one-to-see and no-place-to-go syndrome. The house was clean and the laundry was done, and I wasn't really in a packing kind of mood either. Not to mention, the military contract movers would complete most of that task for us.
I yawned, pulled out my college acceptance letters, and sat down at the breakfast bistro to mull over them for the thousandth time. However, I really didn't want to make any final decisions about college before talking things over with Stellan. He was mysterious and elusive, but he was the man I loved and therefore the man I would need to plan my life around to an extent if I wanted to keep him in it.
Thoughts of college and Stellan led to thoughts of Stellan attending Heidelberg University. With a sigh, I pulled out my laptop and moved to the leather sectional in the great room to begin the laborious process of hacking his admissions records. It proved more difficult than I expected, given my limited grasp of the German language.
After several hours of working with a translation app and making little progress, my cell rang.
"Gracie!" It was Bax. "I wanted to congratulate you."
"Um, thanks again. For everything." Were we really going to give the graduation whirl another round?
"Not about your graduation, slick. About Stellan."
My senses went on high alert at the mention of my boyfriend's name. "I'm afraid I'm not following you."
"Well played, daughter. Well, played."
"I'm still not following."
"Well, aren't you cute? Keeping up the ruse after I call you out on it."
I truly had no idea what he was talking about, but my gut was to play along and hopefully find out what he was really up to. This was the side of Bax I didn't like — the nosy manipulator. "Yep, that's me. One hundred percent cuteness."
"Since you won't show your cards, I will. There is no one by the name of Stellan enrolled at Heidelberg University."
"What!" I was utterly gob-smacked. Here I was trying to impersonate Bax on the computer, but he'd already raced me to the goal line, made a touchdown, and was running circles around me. Most unfortunately, his discovery about Stellan was less than thrilling. If he wasn't enrolled at Heidelberg, then he'd lied to me. All the energy left my body, rendering me limp and full of questions and uncertainty.
"Again, well played, daughter. You almost sounded convincing there."
I did? "Well, I was raised by the best," I reminded dryly. On the inside, I was choking with fear. Why would Stellan lie to me about something so important? Why would he lie to me at all? And what else might he be lying about?
"That you were, sugar. That you were. Are you actually dating anyone, or were you just messing with me all this time?"
"Can I plead the Fifth on this one?" My brain was reeling.
"Just this once, sugar. He must be really something, since you're working so hard to keep him a secret from me."
You have no idea.
"Alright then. I'm bugging off." He disconnected the line.
I knew better. Bugging off wasn't in Bax's vocabulary. He never gave up. Ever. He just dug deeper until he discovered whatever it was he happened to be looking for. I could only hope the next piece of information he uncovered about Stellan was something I could live with.
I stared blankly at my computer screen for a long time. When I finally collected my thoughts, I carefully erased my search history on Heidelberg University. Then I started a whole new series of searches. "Cold skin," I typed in the search bar. I tried "nocturnal" next followed by "super speed," "super stealth," "super stamina," and "red eyes." I tried all sorts of variations and combinations of my key search terms, and each time I came up with similar results. Stellan possessed supernatural qualities.
At the top of my guess list was vampire.
I closed my laptop, crossed my arms atop it, and leaned my head on them. I knew what I had to do. The next time he and I were together, I needed to test my theory.
Grace
Stellan returned to town Tuesday evening. Or so he led me to believe. Who knew what he'd been doing or where he'd really been?
"Missed you! Want to go for a ride?" he texted.
"Love to!" I added a single red heart to my text and pushed send.
"Be there at 9:00," he responded.
At 8:00 p.m., a florist truck arrived with a three-foot-long box. I laid it on the kitchen counter top and used a knife to open the seal. Before me lay two dozen perfect red roses minus the thorns. The card read, Yours, S.
"Oh!" My right hand flew to my heart. They were so beautiful and smelled heavenly. And plentiful. Their scent filled the room like an entire garden. I fetched the stepstool from the laundry room and returned to the kitchen to open one of the top cabinets where Mother kept her vases. I selected a tall crystal vase I'm pretty sure was an anniversary gift from Bax. I carefully followed the enclosed directions for trimming the stems and mixing the plant food with the water. Then I carried the precious arrangement into the entry foyer to display on the marble topped side cabinet. There was no way Stellan could miss it when he rang the door, which he would since I didn't plan to be waiting on the porch like I normally did.
I wore my favorite color. Red. It was a silk halter top with a beaded choker clasp. I paired it with black jeans and a lightweight jacket. Then I grabbed a wad of bandages and a bottle of disinfectant from the medicine cabinet in my bathroom and returned to the kitchen.
It was time to commence step one of my vampire experiment, but it took me a full five minutes to work up the nerve.
"I am completely insane," I muttered and held my hand over my mother's bamboo cutting board. I gritted my teeth and made a shallow cut across the pads of my fingers. There. Hopefully, it would like I'd cut myself while cooking.
The only problem was that the wounds refused to stop bleeding. I tried holding my fingers under cold water, gripping a bag of ice, and wrapping them as tightly as I could in bandages, but nothing seemed to work. I was genuinely woozy by the time Stellan rumbled up to the front of our house. I don't think I'd lost much blood quantity-wise, but the mess on the cabinet and the scent were getting to me.
I peeked at him from the keyhole in the front door while holding my t
ightly wrapped left hand upright. With any luck, it would slow the blood flow to my extremities. "Oh, hurry up, please!"
He waited for a minute or two. Then he pulled out his cell phone.
My cell phone buzzed with his incoming text. It rested next to the vase of roses on the marble cabinet. I glanced at the face of it. I'm here, love. It buzzed with a second message. Are you ready to go?
"Come on, come on," I pleaded. "Come to the door already."
He finally turned off his ignition and swung a leg over the side of his bike. My heartbeat sped as he sauntered up the sidewalk leading to our front porch.
I opened the door before he could ring the bell. "I'm sorry I'm running late." I pretended to fuss over the flowers on the marble table. "These are absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sending them!"
"You're hurt," he accused, staring pointedly at my bandaged hand.
"It's nothing," I lowered my gaze. "Just a bit of klutziness while handling sharp objects in the kitchen."
"You're still bleeding," he insisted.
How did he know? I had a good two inches of gauze wrapped around my stinging fingers. I reached for my phone and purse but pretended to stumble when I tried to head out the door. "Oh my gosh!" The room was starting to spin. Maybe I'd lost more blood than I realized. I leaned against the marble cabinet for support and sucked in a breath, accidentally bumping my cell phone to the floor.
Stellan lunged in my direction but stopped abruptly. Sighing, he rested a clenched fist on the doorjamb. "Invite me in, Grace," he demanded in a tight voice.
Or what? The fact that my suspicions about him were proving true only made the room spin faster. He was a vampire. If my research was correct, he couldn't enter our home unless I invited him in. A hysterical laugh escaped me.
"Please, Grace. You're hurt. I can help you."
I'm sure you can. He was a dangerous creature. Every part of him was designed to seduce and manipulate me into becoming his next victim. I'm not sure why, but his pleading reminded me of a line from the story, Little Red Riding Hood. My, Grandma! What big teeth you have! In his case, they would be fangs. I laughed harder.
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