Vamplayers

by Rusty Fischer

  “No biggie.” He’s nonchalant, but I can tell he means it.

  “No,” I say, touching his chest. “It is a biggie. I had a choice tonight. Hang out with some creep or with some really great guy. Obviously, I made the wrong one. I’m sorry.”

  He grins, looking down at me, his back up against the wall (when did that happen?). He blinks, those chocolate eyelashes in slow motion, and says, “Now, which one’s the creep again? ‘Cause I’m confused.”

  “Shut up.”

  Before I know it, he’s scooped me closer, and his fingers are brushing my cheek, moving a lock of my hair out of the way so he can kiss me.

  He is gentle, so gentle.

  Even so, the fire rages inside: the ancient, primal, animal fire that ignites whenever my unnatural endorphins flow.

  Even now, just swapping spit, he is in danger of swallowing part of me. Part of my eternal me.

  And still the blood gurgles deep, bathing me in warm feelings as his hands slip easily around the small of my back to pull me in, closer, closer, as I lose myself against the rapid thumping of his heart.

  He sighs into my throat, feathers my cheek and jawline with soft kisses. It doesn’t feel practiced or smooth, like it does with some guys, but exploratory and genuine, like he really wants to take his time and learn what it’s like to kiss me.

  Little old me.

  The Third Sister, finally first in somebody’s eyes.

  I let him kiss me. I let him explore despite the late hour, the sparse, spooky setting, the former tapping-scratching. I want him to.

  I explore as well, tracing his arm from his hand to his shoulder, caressing his neck as he moans softly, eyes closed, and pulls me to his lips once more.

  The fire is more intense this time, building in cycles, getting dangerously close.

  I can feel the fangs below my gum line quivering now, tingling, eager to dash forth and pluck the life from his jugular. It’s automatic; I almost can’t help it. My fingernails jut into claws, digging at the waistband of his baggy jeans.

  “Yikes.” He yanks his head back, smacking the rough-hewn stone wall behind him. “Ouch,” he says, laughing, licking a drop of blood off his lip.

  “Sorry,” I say, eyes downcast out of shame. I give my fangs—my stupid fangs—time to retract. “I get carried away.” (Well, that’s kind of an understatement.)

  “I like that.” He tries to sound smooth, though I notice he’s not coming back for more. “Just remind me to bring my first-aid kit next time.”

  “Jerk,” I say, slapping his arm as he drags me to my room.

  His long legs outpace mine. His warm hands dwarf mine.

  His smile is as bright as it was before I bit him.

  Too soon we are at the door to my suite. Despite his slightly swollen lower lip, he leans in hesitantly once more.

  I kiss him prudishly, with a peck on the lips, nothing more, denying the hunger, the pain, the shame, the bliss, the heat threatening to rise from my toes, through my belly, and into my jaws. Before it’s too late, I push him away.

  He sighs. “I’m glad you came tonight, Lily.” He strolls away.

  “Me too.” I linger by the door like some lovesick teenager. “I’m glad I picked the good guy.”

  He cups his hand behind his ear like maybe he can’t hear me so well. “What’s that? It sounded like you said you picked the good kisser. I’m glad you think so.”

  As he walks all the way down the hall, he chuckles.

  Oh, wait. That’s just me.

  Chapter 21

  Cara and Alice are waiting up for me when I quietly enter the dorm suite, my lips still warm from Zander’s kiss, my dead heart still racing, my body all aquiver as the cells remember his warm, gentle touch.

  They’re in my bedroom, each leaning against one side of the doorjamb and looking in.

  I breathe a sweet sigh of relief. They are still my Sisters. They haven’t forsaken me after all.

  Standing in the middle of the living room suite, I put my hand over my heart, mock gasp, and say, “You guys do love me.”

  After Zander’s butterfly kisses and praying mantis hands, I’m all atwitter. I’m not usually so cheerful. Especially around two chicks who haven’t missed an opportunity to diss me all week.

  Alice turns around first, almost snapping to attention like I’ve caught her reading my diary or something. Yeah, like I’d ever keep one of those around with a snoop like Alice for a Sister.

  She is followed shortly by Cara, who moves so quickly it looks like it must hurt.

  They share another one of those sneaky looks they’ve perfected recently. “Lily?” they say, as if I’m their mom getting home a day early from vacation. It’s not a happy-to-see-me sound.

  “Yeah, I’m Lily. Remember me? I live here. Right here, actually.”

  I walk toward my room, tired after the long night, exhausted really. They move closer together so I can barely see through their sleek, muscular shoulders. I imagine it’s a move they train the president’s bodyguards in. You know, the Filling the Door tactic or something wicked cool like that. It’s like they squeeze out all the light in the room. Even their heads inch toward one another’s, making them seem impenetrable.

  What, are they taking night classes at the Academy or something? I’ll have to look into those when we get back.

  The already surreal night has taken on cartoonish dimensions.

  “What gives, you guys?” I chuckle.

  I try to budge through them and fail. “I need to change and get some sleep. Come on, scram.”

  “Well—” Alice begins hesitantly, avoiding my eyes.

  Cara cuts her off. “We thought you’d be bunking with the boys tonight.” Her voice is a little firm, a lot decisive, and almost defensive.

  “What? I’m not shacking up with some guy I just met,” I say good-naturedly, as if we’re in our own dorm back at the Academy, playing the fools after another Stake Training class. “You must have me confused with Alice or something.”

  Not a laugh, not a chortle, not a guffaw. I practically hear crickets chirping in the audience.

  Out of nowhere, their words begin tripping and whirring into one unbelievable development that, in a million years, I’d never see coming.

  “Well, Bianca was so upset when she saw you wearing Tristan’s jacket earlier tonight and—”

  “Where is Tristan’s jacket, by the way?”

  “We kind of invited her to stay over.”

  “Did he come back and get it? Because, I mean, you had it earlier.”

  ”And we felt so bad for the girl—”

  “It looked expensive. I hope you didn’t lose it.”

  “That we kind of gave her your room—”

  “And she’s kind of in there—”

  “Right now!”

  Oh.

  No.

  They.

  Didn’t.

  I shove them aside.

  They’re not bluffing. This is not a joke.

  Bianca Ridley isn’t just in my dorm suite in the middle of the night. She’s not just in my room at two in the morning.

  Bianca.

  Ridley.

  Is.

  In.

  My.

  Frickin’.

  Bed!

  Touching my sheets.

  Fluffing my pillows.

  Invading my most personal of personal spaces.

  “Are you guys out of your flipping minds?’”

  They don’t answer, don’t even flinch.

  “You’ve got to be joking. Seriously? Guys? Can someone explain to me why Bianca Ridley is in my bed wearing my favorite nightgown?”

  “We just did,” Alice says, as if their incoherent rambling about Bianca and Tristan and the almighty jacket could possibly explain, let alone excuse, the social indignity of these proportions.

  “I didn’t want it.” Bianca sits up against my fluffy white pillows. All three of them. Even the sham I use just for show! She picks at one of the sp
aghetti straps on my favorite nightgown, the black one, the one that hugs my curves and drapes to the floor and scoops at the neck and doesn’t bunch up at my waist. The one I was hoping to wear, you know, when I was finally First Sister and invited to seduce the Vamplayer one of these days.

  It’s defiled, wrecked, ruined.

  What, they couldn’t have given her the ratty old XL T-shirt I sleep in when I haven’t done my laundry for a few days?

  “I told them it was too big, Lily, but you know these two. So generous. They wouldn’t let me say no.”

  “Oh, they’re generous, all right.” I grab my robe off the door and pick up a throw pillow Bianca obviously tossed on the floor. “And if my hands weren’t full, I’d give them something too.”

  I huff past my Sisters and flop on the couch, burrowing my face deep in the cushions to choke back the tears. I grab the purely decorative throw as my blanket against the chill October air seeping through the windowsills.

  I hear muffled conversation behind me, and it takes every ounce of my considerable willpower to not turn around and stare daggers at my room or launch an errant pillow at the girls’ heads.

  Two sets of footsteps move along my bedroom floor, the pitter-pattering kind you hear on Christmas morning. Several sets of cheek kisses. (What? Those witches never kissed me to sleep before.) The door shuts.

  Cara and Alice stomp to my side. No pittering and pattering or cheek kisses for me.

  “What is wrong with you?” Alice hisses inches away from my face.

  “I can’t believe how rude you were just now,” Cara says.

  “Me? Rude?” I turn around to face them, hardly believing what I’m hearing. “What about you guys? Bianca? In my bed? I’ve heard of switch-hitting before, but don’t you guys think you’re taking it to the next level with this chick?”

  I’m whispering so low they can barely hear, but of course we can hear a fly buzz at the window, so it’s no great feat for them to lean closer and continue telling me how wrong, stupid, and pig-headed I am, have been, and probably always will be.

  “Hey,” Alice says, “we’re doing what we’re supposed to, remember? This is our job. Your job too if you weren’t so busy hanging around with your fan boys.”

  “How can I join you when half the time I don’t even know where you are?”

  Cara shakes her head. “You know how it gets on assignment. This isn’t your first time at the rodeo. An opportunity presents itself, you take it.”

  “Fine, yeah, I get that, but would a heads-up be too much to ask? Like tonight. I sat there like a fool all dinner wondering where you two were.”

  They stand there, tapping their feet, ignoring my question.

  “And what was with that crap out in the woods earlier?”

  “What crap?”

  “What woods?”

  “Don’t play me. Out by the picnic area when you were with Bianca.”

  They smile at each other, frown at me.

  “We were just playing,” Cara says.

  Alice looks right at me. “Yeah, can’t you even take a joke anymore?”

  “It didn’t look like a joke, you two. It looked creepy is what it looked like. And what about the whole spitballs-in-the-hair incident?”

  They lean together, check to see if my bedroom door is closed. It is.

  Alice says, “That was Bianca’s idea.”

  “No duh. So why did you join her?”

  “We had to,” Cara says. “How would it look if we didn’t?”

  “I dunno, like maybe you were my Sisters?”

  They share another side eye.

  “And quit doing that.”

  “Doing what?” they ask oh-so-innocently.

  “Giving each other the googly eyes all the time. We’re Sisters, dammit! You include me. I asked you a question. Where were you tonight?”

  They avoid the side eye, although I know it’s tempting.

  “Bianca asked us into town,” Cara says. “We figured it would be a good idea to accept. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”

  “Okay, yeah, but isn’t the goal to get all three of us accepted into her fold? How is she supposed to warm up to me when you guys keep shutting me down?”

  “Hey,” Alice says, “it’s not our fault you took a detour to a galaxy far, far away our first day here. How were we supposed to explain that?”

  “All right, I get it, but we need to regroup, get our heads in the game. You’re right. You’re doing what you’re supposed to, but I’m sorry. I feel left out.”

  There is another awkward silence.

  I shake my head. “Has she at least said anything about Tristan yet? I know you’re having fun with your new girlfriend and all, but you do remember Tristan, don’t you? Our potential Vamplayer?”

  They share another look. I let it go this time.

  “Bianca’s being coy,” Cara says, “but give us a few days and she’ll spill.”

  “Forget her,” Alice says. “What about you? Why were you in Tristan’s jacket tonight anyway? Looks like we’re not the only ones keeping secrets.”

  “Well, if either of you had bothered to speak to me when you were playing hide-and-go-creep in the forest, I could have told you that, yes, he asked me to dinner and, yes, he is definitely Prime Suspect Number One on my Probably Is a Vamplayer list.”

  They look a little skeptical.

  Alice says, “Like why?”

  Now they look a lot skeptical.

  “Like, he can keep up with me when we run on the track in the morning. Like—”

  “Whoa, whoa, back up, girl,” Cara says, some of the old lifeblood running through her veins. “What track? What run?”

  I tell her, and she smiles, looking vaguely impressed.

  “Go on,” Alice says, looking unimpressed. (Remind me: why is she First Sister again?)

  “At dinner tonight, he only ate stuff with blood in it.

  That perks them up. “Like what?” Cara says. I tell them.

  “What, you mean not out of bags or anything?” Alice says.

  “Dude, how many high school juniors do you know who consider blood sausage a delicacy?”

  “Yeah,” Cara says, “but you know these prep school dudes. They’re different that way.”

  This is going to be harder than I thought. “Well, he has this oddly, I dunno, European accent. What about that?”

  “Like Transylvanian European?” Alice says, suddenly interested.

  “I can’t tell exactly, but he’s definitely not from Alabama, if you know what I mean.”

  They wait expectantly for more, but I realize that’s all I’ve got. Fast running, a fondness for blood sausage, and talking like a character from a bad (Transylvanian) soap opera.

  “Hmm,” Alice says, “it’s hardly enough to send Dr. Haskins for approval to act.”

  “I know, but at least it’s something. What do you guys have?”

  No answer. Not a thing.

  I yawn, patting my stiff brocade pillow and preparing for a long, uncomfortable night. “Well, okay then, maybe in between skinny-dipping and trips to town, you could come up with a little thing we at the Academy like to call evidence.”

  Cara snaps impatiently, as if she’s on Team Alice for once, “Well, you’re going to have to trust us on this one.”

  “Yeah, there’s a reason you’re still Third Sister, ‘kay? Dr. Haskins trusts us over you because we actually know what we’re doing.”

  I shake my head, still concerned but so tired.

  Without another word, Alice yawns and pads across the hardwood floor to her bedroom and shuts the door.

  “Am I overreacting?” I ask Cara, desperate for answers, feeling unplugged, unglued, and out of whack.

  She shrugs. “A little, but you’re right. We need to regroup. Give us a few days to get Bianca all the way over on Team Sisters, and then we’ll tell her the truth. Until then, ignore what you see, okay?”

  “Why?” I ask of her forehead as she avoids my eyes. I wish s
he’d look at me for once. “What am I going to see?”

  “Well, you know how girls get when they take sides. It could get ugly tomorrow and the next few days, so just don’t take it personal.”

  “What does that mean?”

  But she’s already walking away.

  Could get ugly?

  Uglier than standing me up for dinner tonight?

  Uglier than spooking me out in the woods?

  Uglier than giving Bianca my frickin’ bed?

  Uglier than firing spitballs at my back?

  If that’s not ugly, what does tomorrow bring?

  Chapter 22

  I get my answer at sunrise. It’s not pretty. In fact, the whole next day is a scene straight out of Heathers.

  The unrated version.

  For vampires.

  I wake up late, sore, crooked, my throw blanket on the floor, feet freezing, pillow behind my back, facedown in this hundred-year-old (probably) bedbug-infested (likely) couch.

  The girls giggle in the bathroom.

  I’ve woken up in an episode of The Twilight Zone called “Opposite Day at the Crazy Dorm for Back-Assward Giggly Girls Who Steal Your Bed at Night and Wear Your Makeup the Next Morning.”

  It’s like all of a sudden those three are the Sisters and I’m the bad guy.

  I unfold my bent body off the couch and slink over toward them, a stranger in my own dorm room.

  I clear my throat, indicating I’d like to use the bathroom at some point, and they look at each other, roll their eyes at me—roll their eyes at me—and go back to giggling and mascara swapping.

  I blow my hair out of my face, stomp into my room, notice Bianca hasn’t even had the decency to make my bed, gather my backup makeup kit, some panties, a bra, and some ridiculous outfit, and then stomp out of the suite and all the way to the bathroom down the hall. (Gross.)

  Believe it or not, the day only gets worse from there.

  Nightshade is all abuzz about this new allegiance. It’s like a red carpet opening for some Sex and the City remake, high school edition.

  For one, the trio seem to have acquired a whole new wardrobe, like, overnight.

  Is that what they really went to town for?

  Bianca is in an emerald dress, no bra—and, man, are these halls frigid. The vague outline of some daring porn star panties press against the silky green material, and a slim raven belt is wound twice around her hourglass waist. Her emerald heels clatter so loudly through the marble-tiled halls they must have taps.