"O, excuse me!" she swears to them out loud, "I was just leaving." Jessica turns, after a last look at the statue, and says,
"Good-bye," returning to the cab with her father.
The cabbie drives off. It is quiet for a minute inside the car, then her father interrupts the silence.
"That was quick, but now that's done with," he says, more to himself than to Jessica.
Jessica, thinking back to the two people she had seen in the gazebo, says, "There was a couple already in there. I felt like I interrupting. They, were just about to kiss... a strange couple, antique, Old English dressed." Her father smiles, and pats her on the knee.
"Ahh," he says sort of high-pitched and adoring, like when she had her first loose incisor, "I wondered when you'd start to see them," he puts his arm around her shoulder and gives it a squeeze.
"Them?" Jessica asks.
"I was your age, though, don't know why, I just thought you'd be older. Surprised I didn't recognize the signs. I really should have known... you did look like you'd seen a ghost, afterall. About the age when I first saw mine -"
"I looked like you'd seen a ghost?" She perks up, realizing that she had - just seen a ghost - and then teases her father about the pun.
"A vampire child milestone and that's all you have to say? And, ugh, what's with the euphemism..."
"What?... bad?" he asks.
"Uh-huh," she says, smiling at the fact that she'd seen her first ghost, and that she was becoming a full-fledged vampire, not to mention, a chance to tease her father.
"As if I hadn't already been sick enough at dinner. What was with you and those 'hints', practically salivating all over Mansta's wife at the table."
She mimics his voice, "You know, blood is thicker than water...You can't get blood from a turnip, you know... Honestly, downright plebeian, hardly subtle, the direct opposite of smooth..."
Her father smiles, "Not smooth?"
"Not at all!" Jessica tells him.
Her father laughs, "Relax. I was merely amusing myself. You know, she was the only mortal at the table. A real drain - huh? I was fed up, looking around for something I could really sink my teeth into? "
"Ugh, again!" she interrupts.
"What? Embarrassing?"
"Worse than embarrassing!" Jessica tells him.
"What about Maydee-Dee, she was mortal-" she stop, they look at each other and both shake their heads, laughing.
"Not mortal?" Jessica manages to ask between giggles.
"No!" he practically yells it out the window. They both laugh and fall back against the seat of the cab.
Her father remarks, "You're growing up."
"I know," she says. She looks out the window of the cab as they drive off into the night. Her father tells her sentimental stories along the drive about his first few ghost encounters as a boy, and when he watched his daughter's fangs grow in as a father.
A cool breeze blows in as the cabbie cracks the window open, and Jessica holds her face into the stream of wind, letting her hair blow. She lifts her chin slightly, the sweet, wild scent of the air, it seems to 'call' her.
Her father notices the slight awareness she has about her, now, and he says, "Won't be long, Jessica, until your first Vampire Night Ride." She turns her head. She looks at him. His face is serious, not silly, and he nods, just slightly, acknowledging that she knows that she is being called by the ancients and the bats out in the night. She knows that one night, though no one can tell her just when, she will be called out for the Night Ride. The honor, Jessica knows, that comes from being who she is, among all other vampires, in the blood-line of the ancients. She turns her head back toward the cool breeze watching the dark sky and the even darker figures of the trees and houses as they drive. She thinks about home, about night rides, about her friendship with Raven; mortals and not mortals - it all seems confusing.
"I just want to go home," she says.
"Me, too," he tells her, "me too."
The End
For more books about Jessica and her immortal clan - and more children’s books by this author - go to
Fae-tality Publishing.
http://amazon.com/author/karaskyesmith
Dear readers, “May you always know a vampire when you see one in the night.”
The Quill Pen Killer (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 1) Page 14
