Before we’d made it halfway up the stone walk, my mother yanked open the door. “Blake Edwards Ehlert. What is the meaning of this?” I cringed at the full name. John only raised his eyebrows.
“I’m not in violation of curfew,” I said in my defense as I pointed to my watch, even though my mother didn’t even bother to look at the time.
“That may be well and true,” she said, her voice sharp, “but you’re in violation of my trust.” She pointed her finger at me, apparently just winding up for the whole lecture.
“You told me you would call Zach tonight and work things out with him, but I know for a fact you didn’t. I talked to Helen, and she said Zach is devastated you stood him up. Shame on you for lying.”
Mom paused to take a breath. Then she appeared to notice John for the first time and turned her full attention on him, her face screwing up in apparent disgust. “And who are you?”
“John Kelly,” he said, seemingly unphased by my mom’s lack of manners. “I’m a friend of Blake’s.”
Mom made an ugly sound in the back of her throat and turned her nose up. She’d yet to change out of her party clothes, and something about the perfectly coiffed hair, starched linen pantsuit, and wedge heels gave her an air of superiority that turned my blood cold.
“You expect me to believe you’re just friends with my daughter? I heard all about you from Zach’s mother, John Kelly,” she said, waving her index finger in a small circle near the center of his chest. “You’re an opportunistic poacher, that’s what you are. You’re encroaching on someone else’s girlfriend. You should be ashamed of yourself, too.”
“Mother,” I said, spitting out the word in absolute embarrassment. “You’re being incredibly rude. I happen to like John, and it’s my decision about who I date. Zach and I are over. Why can’t you accept that?”
She turned on me. “Oh! So you admit that you’ve been cheating on Zach with this guy.”
“Mother,” I said, forcing a calm I certainly didn’t feel. But she interrupted before I could finish my thought.
“Zach is a good boy from a very good family, Blake. You two have a future together. Why would you want to jeopardize that?”
“Mother,” I tried again.
“You broke his heart, and Helen says he’s been so depressed lately, and it’s all—”
I stamped my foot. “Mother! Don’t you dare tell me it’s all my fault!”
“And don’t you dare raise your voice to me, young lady. I am your mother.”
“Mrs. Kinsley-Ehlert,” John said. “With all due respect, Zach and Blake are no longer together. I think she should be free to date whomever she wants.”
“I don’t care what you think, Mr. Kelly. I don’t know exactly who you are, but I know I don’t like you. The only reason why Blake broke up with Zach is because of you.”
All was silent as the accusation hung heavy in the air. She was right. All of us knew it.
I looked over at John to see his jaw clench and unclench as he struggled not to lose his patience with my mother. Finally, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth.
“I am the one dating Blake now. Deal with it as promptly as possible, and accept that I am, and will be from now on, a part of her life.”
October 27
Josiah raised his hand and pointed a black-gloved finger at me. He crooked it twice, signaling for me to come. I swallowed hard, the inside of my mouth gone completely dry. And even though my heart beat painfully against the underside of my rib cage, I took the necessary steps and closed the distance between us.
It had been months since I’d last seen him. He peered down at me, dark blue eyes studying me inquisitively from beneath the brim of his Stetson. He leaned in closely and gripped my upper arm in his massive hand. Then he closed his eyes and inhaled, his nostrils flaring.
“You’ve been infected.” His voice came out deeper than I remembered. “I smell the venom in your blood.” Before I could respond, he towed me to a coffee shop across the square.
“The usual,” he said to the girl behind the counter when she looked up.
She reached inside a glass case with a tissue napkin, her eyes never leaving Josiah, and emerged with two glazed doughnuts. She put them on a square plate and passed it to him with a smile that said everything. “On the house.”
I shook my head when she looked at me. “Nothing for me.”
She smiled again, though I suspected it was for Josiah.
He tipped his head to the rear of the shop. “Come with me,” he instructed, leading me to a table where we would have more privacy.
I sat down as Josiah propped open the back door that led into the alleyway beyond. A rush of cool air swept in, all but obliterating the rank smells of the coffee shop. Then he slid into the seat opposite mine, his long black coat trailing the floor on either side. He took off his Stetson and placed it on the table, revealing a head of thick auburn-tinged hair that matched the stubble on his jaw.
He raised the doughnut to his mouth. “Tell me, Blake,” he said, taking a bite of the pastry.
“Tell you what?” I sat as far back in my seat as possible. Josiah didn’t seem dangerous at the moment, but he was a vampire. They couldn’t all be as nice and polite as John.
“I haven’t got all day,” he said around a mouthful of doughnut. “I already told you I can smell the venom in your blood. And by the looks of you, you’re nearing the end of your human life. Tell me who did this to you and how you got away.”
“Why do you care?” I said, feeling him out.
He stopped chewing and stared at me, raising a brow in an expression of formidability that started my heart motoring once again. “Let’s just say it’s my job to care.” He held up a hand before I could respond. “Just don’t mistake that as caring about you.”
“And what if I d-don’t tell you?”
Josiah leaned in and smiled with great deliberation, revealing a set of gleaming white, and very sharp-looking, canines. “There’s no law against killing what’s already dead. I can make you tell me.”
I swallowed hard, reevaluating my previous estimation of the man sitting before me. He was even more dangerous than I thought. “You said it’s your job to care.” He nodded. “Does that mean you’re what’s called a Watcher?”
The line between his eyes deepened. “How do you know about Watchers?”
Now that I was there, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing by ratting out Ian. A mental image of the way John had looked at me with a stark pleading in his eyes flitted through my head. John loved Ian, whatever his faults, and didn’t want to see him get hurt.
But what about me? Ian had ruined my life. No matter what I felt for John, I didn’t think I could ever forgive Ian.
August 3
Mom turned on her heel and disappeared through the front door without another word, the click-clack of her shoes against the stone path the only sound echoing her departure. My head was reeling, and I stared at John in disbelief.
“How did you do that?” I had never been able to get the last word in with my mom without a massive struggle, and yet she was like putty in John’s hands.
John grinned like it was no big deal and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans like some innocent school boy. “I find that people are extremely susceptible to the direct approach. All you have to do is tell them what you want them to do, and they’ll do it.”
“Good advice. I’ll have to remember that. Whatever it was you did worked. So, thank you. She’s been on my case ever since I broke up with Zach, and the best I’ve been able to do is avoid her.”
John closed the gap between us and opened his arms. “Come here.”
I melted into the broad expanse of his chest and breathed deeply, the scent of the outdoors lingering on his skin. “Maybe you should talk to Olivia, too,” I joked. “She’s been pissed at me ever since Gabe came over and accosted me. I don’t know what the heck she sees in him.”
Tension rippled through John’s
body, vibrating under my cheek, and I lifted my head to look up at his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Gabe accosted you? He’s at least twice your size.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, not really. I mean, it’s not like he did me any bodily harm. Gabe is just a big jerk and gets off on intimidating people. I complained about him to Olivia, and she got a little defensive. That’s all.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I suppose I should have seen that one coming.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Blake. It’s not your fault. He’s the one who should be sorry.” He lifted a handful of curls to his nose and inhaled, his eyes closing in apparent ecstasy. “Your hair smells so good. Like,” he sniffed again and then laughed, “strawberries.”
“Thanks.” My belly rippled with the sudden wanting of him. “For the compliment, I mean, and for saying that it’s not my fault. I guess you can say I’ve been feeling no shortage of guilt lately.”
He put a finger under my chin and lifted my face, his eyes blazing under the soft burn of the overhead light. “Kiss me,” he said. “For right now, kiss me and forget everything except us.”
I closed my eyes, and the entire world disappeared. As John’s lips pressed against mine, it was just him and me floating in space, the firm stone under our feet falling away. My troubles about Zach, Olivia, and Gabe ceased to exist. There was no Mom or Dad. No Ian hanging his head out the car window making rude noises and telling us to get a room. I closed my eyes a little tighter and tried that one again, and Ian magically faded into the night with the rest of my worries.
John’s arms wound tighter around my waist as he pulled me closer to him, molding my body against his. His skin felt cooler than usual, but it was refreshing against the warmth and humidity of the night. I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck, twining my fingers in the soft tufts of hair that brushed his collar. His tongue darted inside my mouth, cold as though he’d been sucking on a cube of ice. But instead of shrinking away, I opened myself up to it, feeling at once that my body had slipped away and I’d lost all sense of myself in the intoxicating sensation of his mouth. I slid my hands up the back of his shirt as he pushed me against the door. Blood pounded in every part of my body, and I hooked my fingers in his belt loops, pulling him closer against me.
The car horn honked, jarring us back to reality, and John nipped my bottom lip with his teeth. “Ow!” I said, my hand going to my mouth.
“Come on, John! I’m not getting any younger,” called Ian, laughing as though he’d made some spectacular joke. “Hurry it up!”
“I’m so sorry,” John said to me. “I got caught up in the moment. I should have been more careful.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It was just an accident. Is my lip bleeding?”
John tilted my face to the light and pulled my lip down gently with the flat part of his thumb. “It’s just a tiny nick,” he said. “Nothing more.”
Our eyes met, and he smiled. “Would you like me to kiss it better?”
The car’s horn blared again from down the drive.
“Quickly,” I said. “And then you’d better go. If Ian keeps up that honking, one or both of my parents will come out here, and I can guarantee you it won’t be pretty.”
John dipped his head to me at once, and his tongue flicked against the spot where his teeth had grazed my lip. The blood in my veins pulsed with a furious need, which only intensified when John whimpered against me, his own need evidently great.
“You taste so good,” he murmured.
I pushed away from him, finding it difficult to catch my breath while standing so close. “You’d better go, and, uh, I’d better get inside. I should go to bed.”
“Come on already, John!” Ian yelled again. “You can devour her later. The night is young yet, and I’ve got needs. Take me out to prowl the town.”
John groaned. “I forgot how much babysitting he requires.” He rested his forehead against mine. “I’ll see you tomorrow. But for tonight . . . dream of me.”
I wandered into a garden teeming with the ripe fruits of summer—full-headed dahlias with colorful blossoms as big as my fist; the slender forms of bell-shaped foxglove dangling from long, dainty stalks; clusters of vibrant blue and pink hydrangea; purple lilacs with their pungent fragrance.
But then I came upon a single thistle flower—a tuft of dense purple adorning a bulb of thorns in regal splendor; its spiky spindles, like the pointed canines of some ferocious beast, protruding along its stiff spine.
“Don’t touch it!”
I had bent down, intending to pluck the offending weed from where it had nestled itself among the roses. My fingers hovered mere inches from the spiny stalk. I whirled on my haunches to find John staring down at me, a look of worry clouding his face.
“Leave it,” he said, his voice calm yet commanding. I drew my hand back at once.
But when I turned to the thistle once more, there stood Ian in its place. His full lips parted in a smile, revealing a set of elongated canines that tapered at the ends into razor-sharp points.
My eyes flew open, a scream caught in my throat. I stared at the sphere of light on my ceiling, cast upward by the dim glow of the nightlight stuck in the corner outlet. I had been afraid of the dark for as long as I could remember, never growing out of the fear that there were monsters hiding under the bed or lurking in the shadows of my room.
My heart beat in my chest like the wings of a hummingbird, and for a moment I couldn’t recall what my dream had even been about. But then the memory of it slowly came back to me, a trickle of seemingly incongruent images that fit together to create one disturbing picture.
I got out of bed and padded across the darkened room to the set of double doors leading to the balcony. I pulled them open and slipped out into the night, not knowing what time it was, but feeling in the relative quiet and stillness of the surrounding houses that it was much too early to be up for the day. I couldn’t sleep, though; not with the vision of Ian’s dagger-like teeth so fresh in my mind. I sat down with my back pressed against the wall and pulled my knees to my chest, hugging my arms around them.
Dreaming of Ian as a vampire was both completely irrational and silly, and yet so very creepy. I tried to come up with some logical explanation for why I had dreamed him a monster, but I couldn’t. He’d been nothing but nice, if not a little obnoxious, during the few hours we’d spent together.
And yet my subconscious mind had turned him into a predator. Was it my gut warning me of inherent danger? I didn’t think so. Ian acted odd, but no more so than some of the people who wandered the streets of downtown.
I shivered as the chill of the night swept against my naked arms. I rose to my feet and headed back to bed, laughing at myself for acting like such a moron. There were no such things as vampires.
But then Ian’s parting words as John and I were saying goodnight rang loud in my ears: The night is young yet, and I’ve got needs. Take me out to prowl the town.
“You’re being ridiculous, Ehlert,” I muttered under my breath. And yet my blood turned to ice at the thought of Ian sinking his teeth into that waitress’s neck from the restaurant.
Nevertheless, I hurried back to the safety of my room, closing and locking the door against the shadows of the night. I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head and down around my ears so that only my face peeked out.
“Vampires sleep in coffins during the day. They burn if they go into the sun. They can’t enter a house uninvited. They’re immortal. They can turn into bats or wolves at will. They have pointy teeth and drink blood.”
I whispered a litany of what I knew, or thought I knew, about vampires—a hodge-podge of Hollywood stereotypes portrayed over the years in movies.
“They’re ugly and scary. Okay, so maybe not all of them are ugly and scary. Some of them are actually pretty hot.” I laughed, the sound of it shrill and loud in my otherwise dark and silent room.
Having successfully freaked myself out, I pulled the covers completely
over my head and scrunched my knees to my chest, wondering when morning would come.
Ian obviously wasn’t a vampire. I’d seen him awake during the day and standing in the full light of the sun. His teeth might be the tiniest bit crooked, but they definitely weren’t pointed. And he drank wine, not blood.
But my pulse quickened as it occurred to me that the wine had been red. Who’s to say it wasn’t blood that he’d been drinking? Then again, what vampire ate Indian cuisine? Surely there’d been garlic in the dish, and didn’t garlic repel vampires?
I sucked in my breath, recalling that I hadn’t actually seen him eating the food. He’d spent the entire time pushing it around his plate as I scarfed mine down. And then he’d made that comment about not being picky about who he hooked up with as long as they were warm-blooded.
“Stop it. Just stop it right now!”
I stuck out my hand from underneath the covers and fumbled for my cell where I’d left it sitting on the nightstand. Arguing or not, I needed to talk to my best friend.
Sorry about the fight. Need to talk. 911.
I hadn’t been expecting a response until morning, but Olivia’s reply came almost immediately.
I’m sorry 2. What’s wrong?!
Why r u up?
Why r U up?
I think Ian is a vampire.
Who’s Ian?
John’s brother.
He has a brother?
Not really his brother. More like best friend. I think he’s a vampire.
LOL!!! U R CRAZY!
I know.
Call me.
I dialed Olivia’s cell, and she answered on the first ring. “Holy crap, Blake. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve missed you. Remind me never to get mad at you again.”
“Don’t ever get mad at me again,” I said. “I’ve missed you, too. Let’s make a pact to never fight.”
“Deal. Now what is all this nonsense about this Ian dude being a vampire? First of all, I didn’t even know you were actually seeing him. John, not the other guy. Is it getting serious?”
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