Vampire Crush(20)
Author: A.M. Robinson

"Think. This will jeopardize your search. Two missing girls will draw a lot of attention. People will be scared, panicked."

"I do not care about people," Vlad scoffs.

"You should. They will be looking for you while you’re looking for her. And then you will never find her. And then there will be no Danae."

This gives Vlad pause. Folding his arms across his chest, he tilts his head to the side and wipes at the corners of his mouth in a way that I might have called fastidious if he hadn’t just been chewing on my neck.

"Perhaps you are right," he says cautiously, studying his fingers, which glisten with blood in the low evening light. He waves a hand toward where Lindsay and I huddle on the ground. "But how do you propose I clean up this . . . misunderstanding? I suppose I can wipe their minds, but that will make me even more drained, which is the reason I was going to risk eating them in the first place!" he finishes, shaking his head as if to say, "What conundrums I get myself into!"

"I’ll do it," James says quickly. "I’ll take care of it."

Vlad’s eyebrows arch in surprise. "Really? You had given me the impression that you felt yourself above this . . . How did you say it? Ah yes, ‘vampire stuff.’"

Even though I’ve seen the fangs, I still gasp. Or more appropriately, I suck in a large amount of air that leaves me coughing and sputtering. When I raise my eyes, James is looking at me with an emotion I can’t place.

He turns back to Vlad. "I said I’ll take care of it."

For a second Vlad seems appeased, like we’re a set of problems he’s just been told won’t be on the pop quiz. But then his eyes narrow. "You like that one."

"Which one?"

"Sophie. The black-haired one."

James’s expression is unreadable. "Are you kidding? She’s a pain in the neck. I just want to make sure nothing gets in the way of you finding your girl," he says. "Then I stay here, and you go, just like we said."

"We also said that you would help search if I allowed you to wander off and live on your own," Vlad says, "and yet I believe this is the first day you’ve appeared."

"I’m here now," he insists. "Let me prove that I want to help."

Vlad purses his lips, debating the merits of letting us go. "Very well, then," he says finally. "You may have another chance to prove yourself. But when I reintroduce myself, I expect them not to know who I am."

"Understood," James says, walking over to yank us onto our feet. We might as well be made out of Styrofoam for the amount of effort it costs him. He pushes us in front of him and tells us to march forward.

It takes forever for us to reach my Jeep, or at least it feels like it does. No one speaks for several seconds until Lindsay says, weakly, that she doesn’t think she should drive. The whole time we’ve been standing here, she hasn’t moved her eyes from James.

James turns to me. "Can you drive?" he asks, eyeing my neck, which is still bleeding. Is it my imagination or do I see a flicker of interest in his gaze? With every second I don’t respond, James’s face grows more concerned. "Sophie – "

"I can drive," I say.

He gives a sharp nod. "Then take Lindsay and go home, lock your doors, and stay inside. I’m going to stay here until Vlad leaves."

"But – "

"Please. He doesn’t always keep his word. I want to tell him that I’ve already done it, so he doesn’t think about it tonight."

I know I’ve been dismissed, but there’s something that I need to say. "Thank you."

For a second I think he looks hopeful, like he’s relieved that things haven’t changed that much, before his expression becomes inscrutable once again. "We’ll talk later," he says before turning to face the wall of trees.

Chapter Eight

I drive like a maniac. Any cops unlucky enough to be caught in my path would be justified in thinking that I had a blood alcohol level in the "legally dead" range. But even as I race through yellow lights and tear through the suburbs, Lindsay says nothing besides a few curt directions that bring us to a white ranch with red shutters and a mailbox shaped like a rooster.

I unlock the passenger-side door, and the click echoes in the silence. She doesn’t get out, just sits, staring straight ahead with her hands clenched in her lap as the front porch light throws her profile into stark relief. Her mouth twitches like she’s trying to figure out where to start.

"That was a mean thing you did," she says. The car is warm, but she’s shivering.

Whatever I was expecting – and it was something along the lines of "Vampires are real and they want our braiiinnns, omigod, omigod, omigod" – it wasn’t this.

"I know. You have every reason to hate me," I say, undoing my seat belt and twisting to face her. "But right now there are more important things to – "

"Stop!" she yells, close to tears. "I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about this. I know you view me as your competition, okay? I view you as mine, too. But not in a way that would ever make me sabotage you by manipulating a guy who likes me to not give you an interview. By the way, your boyfriend’s a vampire, so . . . nice going there."

I swallow a snotty response about James not being my boyfriend. "Really, Lindsay, we need to talk about what we’re going to do."

"He almost killed me," she blurts. "I was almost murdered by a vampire. I can’t . . . I can’t understand that. I don’t want to understand that." She takes a ragged breath. "I thought we were friends."

It takes me a second to realize that she means her and me. "We are friends," I say weakly.

"No," she says, hard enough to make me flinch. "I mean, I’ve tried to be yours. And since you didn’t seem to show as much disdain for me as you do for everyone else, I thought you were trying to be mine, too." She reaches down to wrestle with the buckle of her seat belt, but it doesn’t stop her tirade. "I mean, do you ever wonder why you have no friends?"

"I have friends."

"Not people you talk to sometimes," she insists. "Friends. Like, come-over-and-do-something-with-me-on-Friday friends. It’s not that people don’t like you, there’s just a wall. A know-it-all, too-good-for-everything wall that keeps people from getting close. Although, after today, who knows if they should." She wipes at her mottled cheeks and then pushes open her door. "Anyway, thanks so much for the ride home, and give James my gratitude. Then tell him that I’m making up everything about him for the article, because I want him to stay away from me. You too," she says and then runs inside without a backward glance.