A Girls Guide to Vampires

by Katie MacAlister

  "Hey!" I glared at Roxy. She just grinned back at me.

  "In fact, I've been worried about her for some time. She's got a dead-end job, an ex-boyfriend who could bore an ice cube, and no interests outside the library. If we don't take matters into our own hands, she'll end up single and chaste the rest of her life, living in a small pink house with thirty-seven cats all named Kevin, with no one to talk to but her successful, happy, catless friends."

  "You're delusional," I said with great dignity. "And for the record, you have the same dead-end job I have."

  "So if you don't see her soul mate in the immediate future," Roxy continued, ignoring my interruption, "I for one would appreciate it if you would lie and say you did. She's desperate, if you know what I mean."

  And lonely. I was willing to admit that. Very lonely. I swirled the ice in my glass around and reflected on my loneliness. "I'm not desperate, Rox, I'm just… available."

  "Well, there's always Germany if we can't find nice American men."

  Miranda opened her eyes to shoot a questioning look at Roxy.

  "Germany," I reminded her. "Roxy and I are part of the team going to the Frankfurt Book Festival. I have to admit, I wouldn't mind one of those dishy blond German men. You think some of them might be wearing lederhosen? Hubba hubba!"

  Miranda opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and shook her head. She continued the soft chanting, a prayer, according to the cheat sheet Roxy had given me earlier, to the Goddess for strength and enlightenment.

  I flicked ice chips at Davide for a few minutes until Miranda opened her eyes and pinned me back with a look that could strip the stripes off a tiger. "Now is the time for both of you to focus your attention on envisioning your ideal man. You must open yourself to the image engraved on your heart and your soul. Focus on that image, allowing it to fill your awareness, narrowing your thoughts until they are made up only of him."

  "Oooh, goody, fantasy time!" I rubbed my hands together and thought of the ideal man made up of the better parts of Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, and Oded Fehr, all rolled into one luscious, droolworthy package.

  "Dibs I go first!" Roxy said quickly. I made mean eyes at her. When Miranda sighed and nodded, Roxy sat up as tall as a person who barely tops five feet could, closed her eyes, and started ticking items off her fingers. "OK, here's my order: someone not too tall, that is important point number one. Lord knows I've been on enough dates with tall men. Do you know how disconcerting it is to find yourself staring a man straight in the nipples? I'd like someone of medium height, please. And just to make things easier on you, I won't be picky about hair color or eye color, or even how handsome the man is, as long as he has really nice hands, knows how to cook, and wants lots and lots of children."

  Miranda smiled as she got to her feet and began sprinkling rose petals around the Circle, still chanting, pausing to make gestures of protection to the four compass points.

  "And he's got to have a good sense of humor. I'm afraid that is a must-have; I'll have to return any prospects who turn out to be humorless. Life is simply too short to be stuck with a guy who can't be silly once in a while."

  "I understand. Joy?"

  I glared at my friend. "Geez, Rox, leave something for the rest of us to work with, will you?"

  She smirked at me. Miranda cocked an eyebrow in such a manner that I immediately cleared my mind and tried to picture the perfect man.

  "Um, well, tall, dark, and handsome goes without saying. Roxy was right about one thing, a sense of humor is good, I'd prefer a man who likes to laugh."

  Roxy rolled her eyes.

  "And… um… well… I'd… um… like someone who's nice to animals."

  "Bo-ring!"

  "And one who likes to read."

  "So in other words, you want Beaver Cleaver's dad?"

  I ignored Roxy's comments, deciding if I was going to do this, I might as well do it right. I thought for a long moment about what I wanted in a man, what I really wanted, what secret desires were hidden deep within me. Slowly, out of the everyday confusion of my mind, an image wavered before me, growing solid as the gentle herb-scented night breeze washed over me. With the brightening image came the words, hesitant and charged with a strange emotion, as if it weren't really me speaking. "He will send shivers of delight down my spine with the dark cloak of intrigue wrapped around him. He will captivate me, fascinate me, fold me into the air of mystery and adventure that surrounds him, making my blood sing with desire. He will need me, depend on me, trust me where he has trusted no other. He will light my dark hours, and his love will shine as a beacon that will guide me through the most twisted of paths. He is my strength, my faith, and I will not really begin to live until I know his heart is mine."

  "Ooooh," Roxy breathed. "That is so romantic. You should write that down."

  I blinked as the image in my mind turned to mist and evaporated. I felt a bit dizzy, like I'd been turning somersaults down a long hill. I was more than a little bit weirded out by the whole thing until I remembered the gin and tonics I'd been sipping on. Although alcohol had never triggered that sort of a vision before, there was a first time for everything.

  "I want all that on my list, too!"

  "Too late, it's mine," I told Roxy with a dazed grin. She punched me in the arm.

  "Is that all?" Miranda asked us both, completing the circle and returning to her spot.

  "It is for me, since old greedy-guts there won't share the good stuff on her list," Roxy said huffily.

  I ran down my mental checklist. Yup, it was all there, all but for one last item…

  "I have one more request," I said.

  Miranda paused in the act of lighting the large candle sitting before her.

  "Big private parts," I told them. "That's important, don't you think? I mean, size does matter, no matter what they say, right? And since we are talking the man for me, my soul mate, he'll be the only one I sleep with for the rest of my life, so I think he should have really nice personal equipment. Something memorable. The phrase 'hung like a horse' comes to mind."

  "Joy Martine Randall!" Roxy choked.

  I made an innocent little moue at her. "What's wrong? Mad you didn't think of it first?"

  Her hazel eyes flashed a warning at me. I cackled. She was mad I had beaten her to big genitals.

  Miranda gave me a look of martyrdom that had me biting back my cackle to a more seemly giggle. "OK, you don't have to include that last item on the official request list. I can live with a man with a regular set of dangly bits as long as the rest of the items are there. If he meets the other requirements, I'll be happy."

  Miranda sighed and shook her head. "You're so flippant, both of you, I don't know how you expect me to help you find the man you are searching for if all you're thinking of is the size of his crotch and whether or not he's likely to laugh at your jokes. This is serious; the power of the Goddess is nothing to be taken lightly. You should be reaching out with your heart and soul to find this man, not parroting the silly ideas you've soaked up from those romances you both read."

  Roxy and I instantly united in a solid front against her condemnation of our beloved romances.

  "They aren't silly or horrible; romances are upbeat and fun to read," my bosom buddy protested.

  "Yeah," I added, flipping another ice chip at Davide. He gave me an open-mouthed silent hiss that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Skeptic I might be, but there was no reason to be stupid and tempt powers I wasn't sure didn't exist.

  Miranda stilled. "What about those vampire books you are both addicted to?"

  Something in the air between us thickened. I wondered if an electrical storm was on its way. "What about them?" I asked.

  "They're dangerous."

  "Dangerous? How can books be dangerous? They're just a series of stories about heroes who happen to be vampires, Miranda. It's not like they advocate the drinking of blood or anything."

  "Some people," she said to me, without taking her gaze o
ff Roxy, "believe them to be a guide to their fate."

  I looked between her and Roxy. The latter was sitting quietly, picking at the leather thong on her sandal, not meeting our eyes.

  "Some people believe every word written in them to be the truth."

  I shook my head. "No one really believes in the Book of Secrets' Dark Ones," I told Miranda. They're just really dark, broody heroes that turn a lot of women on, myself included, I'm not too horribly embarrassed to say. Just because we like the stories doesn't mean we believe that vampires really exist."

  "I do," came a soft voice.

  I stared at my friend of nineteen years.

  "I do," she said louder, with more confidence, an obstinate set to her jaw that I knew well. "I believe they really exist. C. J. Dante, the author of the Book of Secrets series has done extensive research in the Moravian Highlands, the area where the Dark Ones live. He even moved there so he could be closer to them, so he could study them and learn their ways. I believe they exist."

  She must have felt the weight of two sets of disbelieving eyes, because she hiked her chin up even higher. "Well, I do!"

  "Roxy…" I shook my head. "Honey, I know it's a tempting thought to believe that such things really exist, but come on! Vampires? Men who drink blood and burn up in the sun and wander around all tormented and angsting because they haven't found the right woman to save their soul? I'll admit some of the guys you've dated might meet a few of those qualifications, but we're going to have to have a long, long talk if you're going to start believing in ghosties and goulies and things that go bump in the night."

  I had forgotten in whose house I was sitting.

  " 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'," Miranda said quietly.

  "Yeah, but I don't think Shakespeare had Moravian Dark Ones in mind when he wrote that," I argued.

  She just looked at me with light gray eyes that reminded me of a full moon at its brightest. Her belief in things that I doubted made me uncomfortably aware of just what I was doing sitting in a circle of candles. "Look, why don't we get on with this? Dr. Miller wants me to re-catalog the entire biology collection before we leave for Germany, and I'd like to get some sleep before I face a bunch of books on fungi and spores and mildew in the morning."

  "No," Roxy said stubbornly. "I want to hear why Miranda believes in the good powers she uses, but won't admit the possibility of a darker side of the same power."

  Miranda shook her head, her red curls a riot of crimson and gold in the candlelight. "I never said I don't believe in a dark power, Roxanne. I do, most profoundly. There are things I have seen that I hope I never see again, but that type of danger is not what I'm speaking about. I'm talking about the power of persuasion, the intent of the author who includes in his fiction ideas dangerous to your soul."

  "Dante writes them as fiction, true," Roxy argued, "but all of his followers know the stories are based on truths he has uncovered during his research. You should see the websites devoted to the genealogies of the people Dante has written about—"

  "They're romances for the masses, glorifying the cult of bloodsucking killers."

  "Oh!" Roxy stormed, leaping up. I reached out to grab the back of her leg, but she sidestepped quickly until she was almost out of the circle. "Bloodsucking killers? I'll have you know that every single Dark One is tormented, very, very tormented by the horrible truth of his life, and none of them kill people. They just borrow a little blood now and again. I don't see what's so wrong about that!"

  "Roxanne, if you don't sit back down, you will break the Circle of Truth, and the Invocation will be useless."

  She sat down with a hrmph. "Take it back, Miranda."

  "This Dante is guilty of brainwashing you, of seducing innocents like yourself into thinking the darkness found in men's souls is something to be tampered with…"

  "Luke, beware the dark side," I intoned in my best Obi Wan Kenobi voice.

  Both women turned astonished faces at me. I gave them a weak smile and held up my hands. "Sorry, I thought it was funny. You know, Miranda, I don't mean to be picky, but some of what you believe could be thought to be a bit… well, out there."

  She raised an eyebrow. "My beliefs are not the point—it is the silliness of these books, these novels that you and others insist on believing are real that I'm concerned about."

  "I don't believe they're real," I said at the same time Roxy muttered, "They're a lot more real than some things I can name."

  "Only the foolish meddle in the darkness in men's souls," Miranda warned.

  "Dark Ones are not evil, they just appear that way at first!" Roxy snapped back.

  They glared at each other until I decided to mellow them both out.

  "Would you two lighten up a bit? You're giving me the creeps with all this talk about the dark power of men's souls and stuff."

  Miranda was shaking her head again, even before I stopped speaking. "The dark power within each of us is nothing to joke about, Joy."

  "Right. Sorry. So why don't we agree to disagree?" I asked, gesturing between the two of them. "Roxy will continue to believe that there are actual Moravian Dark Ones wandering around looking for women to save their souls, and you'll continue to believe that famed author C. J. Dante is a nutball bent on world domination by brainwashing millions of frustrated housewives. K? Are we all happy now?"

  "I won't be until she takes back what she said about the Dark Ones!"

  Miranda sighed as she made sweeping gestures with her hands to reinforce the bounds of the circle. "Very well, I take it back. They're harmless little books that give you and millions of others pleasure, and as long as you realize they are fiction, complete fiction, and not a guidebook to exploring the dark forces within, I will withdraw my objections."

  I figured that was as much of an apology as she was going to give. Roxy evidently decided the same, because she nodded.

  "I want to warn you both, though," Miranda added as she shook a long, elegant finger at us, "that those who play with fire should expect to be consumed by it."

  "Consumed by the fire of passion." I grinned at her as I fingered the remaining ice in my glass. "Sounds like something from one of Dante's books! I'm willing to bet there are worse ways to go, huh?"

  Davide gave me another silent hiss.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  « ^ »

  "You think she's mad at us?"

  Roxy rolled her eyes and shifted into third, a quick flip of her wrist sending her ancient MG hurtling into what looked like a four-foot space between two semis. Once I stopped screaming and peeled my hands from my eyes, I turned to glare at her.

  "No, I don't think Miranda is mad at us."

  "Oh, good." If there's one rule I try to live my life by, it's not to make a witch angry.

  "I think she's mad at you."

  "She is not," I said indignantly, trying to adjust my legs. In the tiny car, my knees were pretty much jammed under my chin. It's been my experience that people who are six feet tall and built like a brick house don't fit well into tiny sports cars. "You're the one who had to go babbling on and on about how you believe in the Dark Ones."

  "Well, I do. You do, too."

  "I do not."

  "Ha! Just last week when you finished Book of Secrets XII you said that Xavier was the hunkiest Moravian yet, and that if you had been around, he never would have had to face The Decision by himself because you would have been there to save him before he became that desperate. Go on, tell me you didn't say that. Tell me you didn't call dibs on him before I could."

  "Fwah! I don't believe in any of that hocus-pocus, and you know it."

  "If you don't believe, why do you read rune stones for people, hmmm?"

  I gave her a jaded smile. "Because they're pretty. You know full well it's just a party trick, nothing more."

  "Ha! A party trick doesn't explain—"

  "LOOK OUT! Dammit, Roxy, will you watch where you're going? You
almost gave me a heart attack!"

  She honked and waved at the semi truck driver as we swerved around it, zooming down the long, curving highway so characteristic of the wild, untamed back roads of Oregon. I read her the riot act on trying to kill us through careless driving, which she responded to with injured silence. I took advantage of the quiet to think over the events of the evening. Evidently, Roxy was doing the same.

  "Joy?"

  "What?"

  She said nothing for a minute. "You know, you don't have to go to Czechoslovakia with me."

  "It's the Czech Republic now."

  "Oh." An owl flirted with the car's high beams, a flash of ghostly white wing catching my peripheral vision before it melted into the darkness. "Whatever they're calling it now, I appreciate the offer to come with me, but given what Miranda said…"

  I swallowed hard and gnawed on my lip, trying to remind myself that I didn't believe in any of the things Miranda said she could do, or see, or manifest. Most were coincidences that would have happened regardless of whether or not she was seeking the advice of some greater being. I was a sensible person. I didn't believe in Bigfoot, or ghosts, or vampires, or even the powers held by white witches.

  "… Well, I just want you to know that I won't hold you to your offer. Of keeping me out of trouble after the Book Fair, that is. You can spend your two-week holiday tooling around Europe and seeing Paris like you had originally planned. I'm sure I won't have any trouble getting to the Czech Republic by myself." She offered me a weak grin. I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a semblance of a smile, and returned to staring out the window at the passing night and trying to rub the goose bumps from my arms.

  Roxy's session with Miranda had gone just fine, no surprise to me since everyone liked Roxy. She was petite, had curly black hair and blue eyes that made her look like an elf or pixie or one of those cute little munchkin people. Men generally feel all masculine and protective of her, and erroneously assume she's shy and delicate despite the fact that she has the constitution and willpower of an ox. She was to have it all, the Goddess told her through Miranda. She was to meet her perfect man before the moon rose and set again; she would give her heart and receive one in return; she would fulfill the destiny laid before her feet. I could practically hear the Disney chorus of woodland creatures breaking into song, what with all the sweetness and light that rilled Miranda's living room… until she'd scried my future.