Vampire Crush(44)
Author: A.M. Robinson

Marisabel’s eyes snap open. "That."

"That what?"

"That attitude, that tone, is why I’m doing this. You don’t give me the respect I deserve," she says heatedly, and if noiselessness weren’t vital to my well-being, I would clap.

Vlad, however, doesn’t applaud; he rolls his eyes. "Really, Marisabel. Do we have to do this now?"

"Don’t act like we’ve done this before. I’ve kept my mouth shut for sixty years. I’ve done everything for you. I hand-wrote one hundred invitations to this stupid party just so you could find your precious girl, and I didn’t even get a thank-you."

He sniffs in disbelief, but it only makes her speak more loudly.

"I hunt for you when you’re lazy," she continues, "and I clean for you when you’re disgusting. And I’m done. We’re done, Vlad."

The pronouncement hangs in the air. I can tell that Marisabel’s waiting eagerly for his reaction. One of the only joys in ending a bad relationship, I imagine, is seeing if you can make him cry. But if that’s what she wants, she doesn’t get it. Vlad does look shocked – after sixty years of getting away with snide comments, this speech must come as a surprise. He doesn’t, however, get down on his knees and beg.

"I think it’s for the best," he says calmly. If he looks anything, it’s relieved.

Marisabel’s confidence wilts. "I don’t understand," she says, her voice thick with emotion. "Don’t you care?"

"It was going to end soon anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I think that it is better this way," Vlad non-answers. "To make a clean break."

Marisabel turns and stares intently at a far corner of the room, biting her bottom lip as though struggling not to cry while Vlad looks like he could whistle.

"Something’s not right here," James murmurs from beside me, and I jump at the reminder of how close he’s standing.

"What do you mean?"

"I’ve never seen Vlad give up something this easily," he says.

"Why did he drag her all the way out here, then? I mean, if he doesn’t care . . ."

"I don’t know."

I open my mouth to ask another question, but end up sucking in a lungful of dust, sparking a coughing fit. Alarmed, James claps his hands over my mouth, but it’s too late. Vlad’s head snaps toward the pantry, and before I can blink, the door flies open.

Fingers clench around my bicep, and I’m dragged out into the dim light, disoriented and still hacking. Vlad’s hands press down on my shoulders. I try to tear them off, but it only causes him to dig his fingers deeper into the tender flesh of my neck.

"You!" Vlad snaps, angrier now than when he was being broken up with. "Always you! Asking questions, meddling . . . I could go on," he says coldly and drags me up until my toes strain to stay on the ground. "Who invited her?" he growls, and then looks to where Marisabel is hovering. "Did you invite her?"

"Maybe I did," she says with a shaky bravado as her hand curls around the handle of the refrigerator like a vine. "But who cares? I don’t have to listen to you anymore."

"I will deal with you later," Vlad says, not bothering to hide the undercurrent of menace. We have drawn a crowd. Violet stands, saucer-eyed, at the front of the pack, and Neville’s disapproving head towers over the rest of my hushed classmates. For a second Vlad looks shamed. I see him try to shake himself back into the role of benevolent host. His grip on me sags as he adopts a tight smile. "This is a private matter," he says, and a handful of people actually turn around and start to head back to the living room. Relieved, Vlad reminds them cheerily to try the cheese puffs. But then James’s voice calls out from behind us, and curiosity draws them back.

"I don’t know about that, Vlad. Seems like something’s going on. Why don’t you just let her go and we can talk about this?" he suggests, nodding to the audience before stepping forward with a hand out, as though he can gently nudge the irate vampire away from me.

Vlad explodes, removing one hand from my neck to shove him back into the counter.

"You stay out of this!" he hisses as I scramble to keep at least one foot on the ground. "You are as bad as she is! Always lurking about – it’s like you forget what you’re here for!" When James says nothing, he turns back to me. "Tell me why you were in that pantry."

"I was . . . talking with James," I say weakly. Technically it’s not a lie.

"Wrong," Vlad says. "Try again."

I can’t think of a good excuse. "I was talking with James," I repeat.

"Lies!" he snaps, and drops me so fast that I fall to my knees and heave toward the tiled floor. I fully expect a swift kick to the stomach or a karate chop to the back. I don’t expect to feel the back hem of my T-shirt being dragged over my shoulders and torn away while Vlad yells, "And the invitation clearly dictated bathing suits only!"

The shirt catches around my neck and ears, and for a second I am smothered in cotton. When it is finally free and I am allowed to fall back forward, the rush of air feels like the breeze before the storm. I should look at Vlad’s face, prepare myself for the coming violence, but any willpower I might have possessed has abandoned ship. I wait for him to strike. If I contract every muscle in my body it will make my skin into a fortress! I think wildly, but the truth is that I will be lucky to escape this without something breaking. Still, he can’t kill me in front of all these people. He’ll kick me out for spying, but he doesn’t know how much I know. Right? Right. No need to panic.

And then I realize that the warm, flat weight on my back is Vlad’s book, tucked into the waistband of my jeans.

"Vlad," James says, his voice urgent, panicked, but Vlad cuts him off.

"So," Vlad says from above me, "a thief and a spy. Read anything interesting?"

I feel the cool scrabble of fingers on my back as he slides the journal out, not bothering to keep his nails from scraping my spine. The pain is just the shock I need to scramble to my feet and charge toward the door.

"Let me through!" I yell when I hit the wall of chests and elbows that clutter up the main hallway, and to its credit, the front line tries to part. But the crowd is too deep, there’s nowhere for them to go. Whirling around, I see that James is blocking Vlad, arms outstretched. But Vlad is not trying to move forward, and the expression overtaking his face is not one that I’ve seen before. It’s not angry, it’s not even jaded or cynical. Instead, Vlad is blinking in amazement.

"Turn around," he says suddenly.

"What?" I ask, confused. If Vlad thinks that I am going to do the hokey-pokey before he kills me, he is sadly mistaken.