She tries to grab it off the predictably black tablecloth, but I hold it firmly until she looks at me, her face half-expectant, half-impatient.
“Hey, Countess,” I tease, before finally letting the book go. “Be careful what you wish for.”
She pauses, blinking twice, and in her confusion, I see the sad little seventeen-year-old hiding beneath the vampire costume.
Suddenly I am sad about taunting her, sad about pretending I’m any better than her simply for knowing something no human should ever know.
I feel vaguely bad that I am partly to blame for her ridiculous outfit, for her three layers of makeup, for her frilly name and the vials of fake blood she and the rest of her “coven” spread around freely every Saturday night as they light black candles and sip tomato juice and watch Interview with the Vampire for the four hundredth time, probably.
And I’m even sadder to think how many girls like her will be living and dying in Lake Hammer, Texas, this time next year. At least, according to every other vampire on the planet. For myself, I have finally cracked my own code: a way to help those poor humans in Texas and not alert Reece or the Council or anyone else before conclave. Another code, a human code, was included in my last-minute rewrite of the latest adventures of Scarlet Stain, and as soon as I reveal how to crack it, Hammer, Texas will be a ghost town long before the vampires show up. Of course, timing is everything, and it will take every ounce of patience I’ve had—plus a few acting lessons from Abby, of course—not to let Reece and the others know my dirty little secret. But it’s out there, in every new copy of the book, in every bookstore, on every tablet, in every country, and eventually all will be revealed.
If I live that long, that is.
Countess Alexandra the Eighth smirks, clutching the book to her chest, and the moment is gone.
She disappears into the jostling, late-night bookstore crowd, joining her small “coven” of five identically clad friends as they slurp frozen mochaccinos through green straws and black-painted lips near the Books ’n Beans café.
I sigh, rub my eyes, and start to uncap a fresh Sharpie pen to sign my next book when a familiar face leans in and oozes, “Can you make mine out to Model of the Year, please?”
Wyatt smiles, his hair grown out, his chiseled features flawless, his pale hands outstretched eagerly.
Out of sheer habit, I grab the book. “You sure that won’t jinx anything?” I ask, signing it as per his request.
“You’re still my girl, right?” he asks, causing a scene in his tight, black jeans and white T-shirt, both looking as if they were designed just for him.
“I suppose,” I say coyly, adding a personal postscript.
“Then what do I have to lose?” He grins.
I shove the book back and smirk. “You always know just what to say, don’t you, player?”
He smiles, ignoring the impatient vannabes stamping their feet behind him as he opens the book to read my inscription.
I hazard a glance behind him, hoping for once that Abby has found time to show up.
He seems to know what, or whom, I’m looking for. “Reshoots,” he says, barely looking up from the title page of the book in his long, graceful hands. “She said she’d catch you next time.”
“Next time.” I violently snap the cap back onto my Sharpie even though I know full well I’m just going to have to use it in another couple of seconds. “Next what, Wyatt? Next book signing? Next decade? Next century? She hasn’t been to one of my signing in ages!”
He leans down, smiles, and whispers, “Hey, one out of two of us ain’t bad, right?”
I smirk and look up at him.
The weeks, then months, since Reece turned him have been almost supernaturally good to Wyatt. His skin, once tan, is now a marble, almost fashionable pale. The turning took what baby fat had made him so adorable before and evaporated it, leaving in its stead a lean, nearly fat-free Adonis. He was never a slouch to begin with, trust me, but now it seems his entire musculature has literally transformed into something else altogether. It’s to the point now where I have to force myself not to gasp whenever he shows up like this, unannounced and unabashedly awesome. It seems almost cruel that a boy should look this good and yet still be mine.
His eyes are darker now too, his black hair shoulder length and flowing, his cheekbones even more pronounced. If anything, he’s booked more jobs since becoming a vampire than ever before.
I’m happy for him but bummed for me. Now we spend even less time together, and I crave every moment he can steal away and simply be there by my side.
I watch his thin lips curl into a genuinely inspired smile as he reads his personal message from me:
To my Model of the Year,
I look forward to getting between your covers later.
Your Girl
He turns without a word, exiting the line.
With a collective sigh, the vannabes pause to watch him walk toward—appropriately enough—the romantic literature section.
Even his movements have changed, the way his muscles and bones join and flow together so that he doesn’t so much strut as stride, like a panther stalking his prey.
I follow him with my eyes (me and every other girl in the joint) and see him turn and hug a girl.
I almost stand from my signing table to launch a twelve-pound, two-hundred-page hardcover book at her until I see a familiar face—
Abby!
She wears an expensive black tracksuit over her Zombie Diaries wardrobe and a ball cap to disguise her appearance, but I’d know that pert nose and familiar smile anywhere.
So she’d made it after all.
About damn time!
She gives me a guilty smile, which is pretty gratifying coming from a girl who hasn’t genuinely apologized—ever, for anything—since we’ve met.
She too has blossomed since becoming one of the undead, her skin a surprisingly appealing slate of clean lines and sharp edges, her eyes once so lively now dark and alluring, her muscles more defined, her movements—like Wyatt’s and like mine—more limber and self-assured.
She’s even started doing her own stunts on the show and no longer complains when the shoot stretches overnight and she’s able to give in to the insomnia all three of us have shared since the fateful events of that torturous, then freeing week that seems so long ago.
I smile, watch my best friends and fellow vamps stand next to each other, and reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re headed.
Life hasn’t been easy since I turned over those three flash drives to my editor at Hemoglobin Press, but it certainly hasn’t been dull; that’s for sure.
We still have our busy schedules: Wyatt with his constant modeling, Abby with her shoots and reshoots, me with the heavy edits my editor demanded—to say nothing of a full course load at Nightshade Academy.
And always, always, the danger from Reece is ever present.
Sure, he let us go after turning us, but then, what choice did he have?
The Council of Ancients decreed his punishment, and he was forced to abide by it, even if it meant his face would remain horribly disfigured for eternity.
And he certainly couldn’t have turned in my book by himself, not without raising questions about why I wasn’t doing it and where I went and what he did with me.
And so he let us go, swearing his oath of revenge that if we did anything to ruin the conclave, he would personally devour our worlds and torture us for the rest of eternity.
We believed him, but with the conclave less than a month away, that doesn’t mean we still don’t have a few tricks up our sleeves.
Now all we have to do is survive the first few days of the winter solstice.
If we can do that, our plan might just prevail.
Well, I’d hardly call it a plan—hunch is more like it, but it’s better than nothing.
And after all, the lives of nearly thirty thousand people depend on us.
Hey, nothing like a little life-or-death pl
easure to put oral reports and pop quizzes in perspective!
I hear a throat clearing, shattering me out of my reverie.
I look up and see another vannabe standing in front of me, book outstretched in pale, black-tipped fingers, toe tapping impatiently, dark lips curled into a permanent scowl that only manages to crease the heavy pancake makeup she has slathered on for my benefit.
“Name?” I ask, stifling a yawn and hoping she won’t notice.
She doesn’t. “Countess Cruella the Second,” she says proudly, daring me to dispute her with dark eyes surrounded by even darker mascara.
I smile and sign per her request.
Around me, though I know the noise level hasn’t changed any, the room grows silent and dark, as if someone has pulled a plug but only I can see the difference.
My cold skin tingles, and my nostrils flare involuntarily, but there is no smell to alert me, no change in the room’s temperature to cause the sudden decrease in skin temp.
My hand begins to tremble around the pen between my fingers. My shoulders tingle as if someone is reading over my shoulder. I force myself to focus on my signature, slowing it down so my writing doesn’t careen off the page and onto the tablecloth.
As I hand the book back, I suddenly realize the reason for my discomfort: a cloaked figure—dark, shadowy, and somehow vaguely familiar—lingers by the Books ’n Beans café. OK, so cloaks aren’t exactly a rarity at these freaky late-night signings, but this cloak looks particularly authentic. Most of the costumes worn by my fans are amateurish at best, like curtains with the rods taken out or leftovers from Halloween rooted out of the clearance aisle in early November. The vannabes dress more authentically, but those are girls, and this cloak is definitely hiding a very male body.
I cut a glance to Wyatt and Abby, hoping they’ve seen, but Wyatt’s showing off my autograph and Abby’s making gag-me faces at it. Neither has seen, nor is likely to spot, the cloaked figure just beyond the line of fans and vannabes.
I strain my eyes, looking for something identifiable to confirm this connection we seem to have, for some distinguishing mark or some reason I should be feeling the way I do, but there are too many people, too many distractions, to focus.
Countess Cruella the Second is blathering on about something book-related, something she obviously feels really inspired about, and I smile and nod, watching desperately as the cloaked figure fights against the crowd of fans to reach the bookstore exit.
I feel trapped and smothered and eager to get up and follow.
But I can’t just stand up and desert my post, not with a line of a hundred or more fans still waiting for my autograph.
Besides, that would alert people, make them wonder why I’m acting so strangely, and as surely as I’d be following the cloaked figure, they’d be following me.
And where would I lead them? What if the man in the cloak is dangerous? Am I willing to lure innocent victims to their deaths just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity? No, there’s still too much of the human in me to become that cruel that fast.
I do my best to ignore Countess, fan though she is, and watch the cloaked figure carefully. It’s not easy. He’s chosen his wardrobe well, black being the predominant color at a vampire book signing. But he is taller than most of the girls and more solid. Evil wafts off him, turning my stomach as if I suddenly opened a Dumpster full of decaying bodies.
I can’t believe how revolted I am, how alert and reviled I feel simply at his mere presence.
Am I overreacting?
Or reacting appropriately to a threat?
To a very real, very present danger?
I’m still getting used to the vamp in me, still uncovering hidden meanings and physical reactions I find hard to master with so much else going on in my life.
The shape pivots and sidesteps a random coven. He zigs, he zags through the boisterous, young, hormonal crowd, always careful to avoid showing his face.
I admit, I almost miss it myself. But then, just before he flees the store altogether and blends into the darkness outside, he can’t resist glancing over his shoulder for one last look at the guest of honor.
I am waiting for him, purposefully, relentlessly . . . patiently.
I catch his glance. He turns away quickly, unsure of what to do, then stops, the door half open, letting in the chilly air of another October evening in Beverly Hills, and turns back.
Our eyes meet, or should I say, my eyes meet his eye. Singular.
The scar tissue looks even worse now, dead and decaying, like a gray stain across his permanently shut eyelid. I can’t help but smile to see the damage I inflicted, little old me, with the very laptop he forced me to write his book on. If I thought he looked ugly before, it’s only gotten worse. His skin is twisted and sallow, a cross between gray and yellow, the scars running like melted rivulets down his once-handsome face. It’s like a mask, so rubbery and awful. Others must think it’s fake. Only those who know better realize it’s the real thing.
Somehow that makes it even worse.
The smile of satisfaction tugging at the corners of my lips infuriates him, and he exits roughly, nearly knocking down a trio of young Goths just showing up late for the signing.
They grumble but make way, the intensity of his scowl—to say nothing of the burnt side of his face—shocking the fake gaiety right out of them.
I watch him for as long as I can and then turn back to Cruella.
She is still talking, smiling, clueless to my anxiety and suffering, and I nod, hoping she can’t see the goose bumps on my forearms or the hair on the back of my neck standing up or the bleak hopelessness splashed across my pale face.
She turns to exit the line, and I frown, unable to conceal my powerful emotions any longer.
Wyatt sees it, gives me a What’s up? look from across the room as Abby, too, shows concern.
I think briefly of alerting them somehow to Reece’s presence, but then I stop and remind myself: It’s not them he’s after, is it, Nora?
Instead I rub my eyes and put my clasped hands to the side of my head in the universal sign for sleepy and watch them smile with relief.
They turn to each other, whispering in their own intimate, before-we-knew-Nora secret language as I grab a fresh Sharpie to sign another hundred or so books before I can finally call it quits and collapse into bed for another few quick hours of sleep before the day begins anew.
As I greet another fan, sign another book, and begin the process all over again, I can’t help but think how alone—how utterly and completely isolated—I am in this crowded room.
How alone I’ll always be, singled out for destruction by an evil force more powerful than I can ever hope to be. How alone I’ll always be until I can snuff Reece out for good and accept the fact that I will live forever.
As I look at the cover art while preparing to sign yet another copy of Better off Bled #5: Scarlet’s Sacrifice, I suddenly realize the similarities between myself and my fictional heroine.
Now I too have a nemesis, though he is half as charming and twice as deadly as poor fictional Count Victus.
And, alas, I’m not alone in writing my own ending.
For Reece will surely play a part in whether I live or die—and how painful an experience each might be.
I open the book to the title page, look up, and smile at the next vannabe in line.
“Let me guess,” I say, Sharpie poised for another autograph. “Countess Esmeralda the Fifth?”
“Close,” says the pancake-faced teen. “Esmeralda the Sixth!”
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The Vampire Book of the Month Club Page 18
