Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire (14 page)

“Don’t make me, Tarren,” I said.

“I’m not going to offer,” she said.

“Then you put me in the position of asking.” She closed her eyes and looked away as if I was going to slap her. “Tarren,” I said, “can Kayla please stay with you?”

“Yes, of course,” she answered quietly. Then she whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes. “One night. That’s it. I won’t babysit any longer.”

“Thank you for the faerie hospitality,” I said.

Tarren flipped me off then flicked her fingers at Kayla. “Wake!”

Kayla blinked, rubbed her hands across her face and sat up straight. “Sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “I must have dozed off.”

The sleep had done her a lot of good. She looked more like her radiant self, which of course sent Johann into a frenzy. He reached over me to paw at her. “You have awoken!”

Kayla smiled uncertainly at Johann then cut her eyes toward me. I shrugged and tried to knock his hand away, but he had me pinned against the back of the booth as he groped for Kayla.

He leaned across me. “We cannot be friends,” he said to her in a low voice.

“Um,” she said, bewildered. “Okay.”

“Trust me,” he nearly growled. “You must stay away from me for your own good.”

“No problem,” she said and stood.

“Are you frightened of me?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “No, but you’re kind of freaking me out.”

“Jeez, Johann!” I pushed against him. “Would you get off me and stop acting like such a
putz
?”

He was up and around the booth before Kayla took a step. “Where are you going, my sweet?”

She frowned and stepped around him then pointed toward the back of Buffy’s. “To the bathroom.”

“Ah!” He swept aside and bowed deeply. “You always surprise me!” he said with a chuckle.

Kayla looked over her shoulder at him and grimaced then hurried to the ladies’ room, but she stopped short by the love zombies. “Bethany?” she said. “Is that you?” One of the girls, a brunette, stared up at her with hollow, searching eyes.

She looked vaguely familiar to me. I tried to place her. Did she go to my high school or was she on another cheerleading team? Then I realized that I’d seen her staring at me a hundred times. “Isn’t that girl on those Zombie Apparel billboards?” I asked, but no one answered.

Kayla grabbed the girl’s shoulders. “It’s me, Kayla. Don’t you recognize me?”

The girl shook her head and turned back to the others.

“Oh my god,” Kayla wailed. “What did they do to you?”

k
ayla clutched my arm and pointed. “That’s Bethany. From the shelter. The first one who disappeared. Remember I told you about her?”

I stood, dumbfounded. I had no idea what to think.

Kayla squatted beside the girl’s chair and spoke to her quietly. “Bethany, you know who I am. We shared a room. I lent you my clothes. Then you disappeared. Where did you go? What happened? Do you know where Rhonda went? I’ve been so worried.” She reached out and put her arms around the zombie girl’s shoulders to hug her, but the girl grunted and swatted Kayla away with more force than I would have thought given her skinny arms. Kayla stumbled backward and the zombie girl blinked her big haunted eyes then turned away.

“They did this to you!” Kayla said loudly. “Sucked the life out of you and turned you into some kind of monster!” Then she crumpled to the ground and wailed,
“Did they do the same thing to Rhonda and Sadie?” An eerie hush fell over Buffy’s as everyone focused on the freak out. Tarren and I exchanged glances, but before we could come to some decision about what the heck to do, Johann swooped down. He scooped Kayla up in his arms and headed for the door, which shocked Kayla into a gaped-mouth, blinking silence. The whole thing was weird but it verged on romantic until Johann, the dorkiest dancing vampire ever, tripped. A collective gasp hovered in the air as he stumbled forward, tottering to the left then right, knocking chairs and tables to the ground while Kayla flailed in his grip.

“Ouch! Oh!
Acht!
” Johann hopped on one foot, clutching his left shin with his left hand and half-dragging Kayla across the floor with his right. She managed to get one foot down and hopped along with him as if they were in the worst three legged race ever. Avis, Helios, Tarren, and I ran, tripping over the chairs and tables left in Johann’s wake of destruction, trying to reach them before someone ended up in the emergency room. But a spilled soda did them in. Like a clown on a banana peel, Johann’s foot hit the puddle then he was airborne, one leg up like a Rockette in mid-kick, the other searching uselessly for the ground. Kayla flew, her mouth a perfect O. They landed, Johann on his back, Kayla splattered on top of him like a broken egg. Without a word, Tarren and I untangled Kayla’s limbs from Johann’s and slung her arms over our shoulders. Avis and Helios did the same with Johann. We pushed
through the doors, carrying our friends outside, just as everyone in Buffy’s erupted into laughter.

Kayla curled up on a love seat on Tarren’s porch with Johann hovering behind her protectively. Despite his fall, only his ego seemed bruised. “Bethany was at HAG when I first got there,” Kayla said. “She went missing a few days later, but I just figured she wanted out of there.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I said as I settled into a big wicker rocker across from her.

She clicked through pictures on her phone until she landed on one of a cute, perky brunette. “That’s her.”

I stared at it and frowned. The girl in Buffy’s looked like a shadow of the girl on the screen. “Doesn’t look like her,” I told Kayla. “The girl at Buffy’s looks like that model on those billboards.”

“It’s her for sure,” Kayla said. “See that birthmark?” She zoomed in on the girl’s face to a half-moon shaped brown splotch on her right cheek.

“I didn’t see a birthmark on the girl in Buffy’s.” Once again I wondered if maybe Kayla was a little bit crazy after all.

“I did,” she said. Then she clicked through more pictures. “Here’s Rhonda.” She showed me a gorgeous girl with dark skin and cornrows ending in bright beads. “And here’s Sadie.”

“God, she’s a baby,” I said as I worried over the picture of the petite girl with straight dark hair, olive skin, and two eyebrow rings.

“She’s fifteen,” Kayla said.

Tarren came out of the house carrying a tray with a pitcher and six glasses. She set them on the coffee table and poured everyone a big drink of butterfly milk. I accepted my cup and graciously took a huge swig. Immediately my arms and legs relaxed and nothing seemed quite as bad as it did two minutes ago.

“We could use the pictures to make missing-person flyers,” I said. “I could also post the pix on Facebook and my blog, too.”

“You have a blog?” Tarren asked, drawing out the last word so it sounded like she was retching.

A flush crawled up my neck as I realized that I had never rewritten what I posted about the paras after I first met them. “Hardly anybody reads it,” I mumbled.

“That’s not true!” Kayla said. “Josie’s blog is awesome. Everyone at HAG reads it religiously.” Then her face clouded over as if she might be putting something together.

Tarren scoffed. “So you’re a goddess now, Josephine? Helios’s parents will be thrilled.”

Avis cackled from his perch on the porch railing. The overhead light flickered. We all gawked at Helios who glowered at Tarren and Avis from the steps.

“I’m just playing,” Tarren said to Helios. “You really should get a sense of humor one of these days.”

“Some things aren’t funny.” Helios stood and began to walk toward the front gate.

“You’re leaving?” I called after him.

“Would you like a ride home?” he said over his shoulder.

I wasn’t sure if that was Greek god hospitality or if he really wanted to give me a ride, but I wasn’t waiting to find out. I grabbed my stuff then I took Kayla’s hand. “Will you be okay?”

She looked at me, then turned to look at Johann. She hesitated but then she smiled. “I think I’ll be just fine.”

Johann announced, “I will not leave her side.”

“Coming on a little strong there, Yo,” I told him. “You might want to back it up.”

“You should definitely take that ride,” Kayla said, and I ran after Helios.

Helios and I rode in comfortable silence to my house, which was nice. I never had that with Kevin. Either he blared the music or we had a billion other people in the car with us or he would yammer about whatever was most interesting to him, which was usually himself. Sometimes I wondered why I was so into that guy. He probably liked me because I liked him, but why I liked him was still a mystery to me. I always thought we were having fun, but maybe we were just distracting ourselves from the fact that we didn’t have much in common beyond hanging out in the same circle of idiots at school.

As we neared my house, images of almost kissing Helios at the stoplight floated through my mind and I
wondered whether that was a just passing moment, or if it could happen again…and if I wanted it to.

“Crazy night,” he said as he pulled into my driveway.

“Yeah, I guess so.” We sat quietly for a minute then I said, “Are you really not going to help me figure out what’s happening to those girls?”

He turned toward me and laid his hand on top of mine, which made my heart rev. “We’re not superheroes, Josie. We’re just a bunch of wussies with weird powers we’re not allowed to use. It might seem cool, but it’s not.”

“It could be,” I said.

He let go of my hand and shook his head. “You don’t get it.”

“Then explain it to me,” I said.

“I don’t know if I can.” Helios killed the engine and settled into his seat. The motion sensor light on our garage timed out and we were left sitting in the moonlight filtering through the oak tree in my front yard. He peered out the windshield toward my house. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Nope, just me,” I said.

“Must be very calm at your house.”

“Like a funeral parlor.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Seriously?” I looked over at our little yellow house with its neatly trimmed yard and begonia-filled window boxes. “I’ve always thought it was the most boring place on the planet.”

“Do you know how many brothers and sisters I have?” he asked. I shook my head. “Literally hundreds.”

My mouth dropped open.

“That’s what happens when your father is a) immortal and b) an a-hole. And he expects me to be just like him. Carry on the endless family tradition of Helioses. Go back to Greece, find a nice pure-bred goddess…”

“Aha,” I said. “That’s why Tarren and Avis irritated you so much with their stupid joke.”

“Tarren of all people should understand the pressure a family can put on one. Anyway I don’t want to marry a goddess and have kids then go fool around fathering more children with dozens of different women. He’s such a freakin’ hypocrite.” The night sky flickered with heat lightning. “Shove it!” Helios yelled. “He’s the one who outed Aphrodite and Ares for sleeping together while he was messing around with anything he could screw, both mortal and immortal.”

“Sheesh, I wish someone like him had been around when my ex was screwing my best friend. If I had just asked Chloe the right questions…” I trailed off as I relived Kevin coming out of the car, pulling up his pants. Madison in the backseat staring at me. Me with a bat in my hands. It all seemed so stupid.

“I would have told you,” Helios said.

“I might have avoided the whole anger management thing then.”

“But you wouldn’t have met me,” Helios said with a sly grin.

“That’s true.” I cracked a smile. “Maybe it was worth it.”

Helios reached out and touched my hand again. “I’m not like them, you know. I don’t play around like they do.”

“Like Kevin?”

“Your ex. My father and my half brothers and cousins. All them going way back to the first. They’re all the same guy. But I’m not one of them.”

I leaned on the console between us and stared at his dreamy profile. “I can see that.” Before I knew what I was doing, I reached out and touched the side of his perfect face. “You’re amazing.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said with a sigh, but I cut him off.

“It’s not just how you look, it’s who you are,” I said. “With your friends, you’re kind and thoughtful. And you can be passionate. You stick up for what you believe.”

He looked at me. “Are you trying to sweet-talk me into helping you again?”

I laughed. “Maybe a little bit, but only because I believe that everything I’m saying is true.”

Helios laid his hand on my shoulder. It was warm like the sun. “You’re pretty amazing yourself, Josie Griffin.”

I shook my head. “Merely mortal.”

“You don’t know how hot that is.”

I leaned one way. He leaned the other. We both closed our eyes and then we kissed. As soon as my
tongue found his, the world illuminated. Literally. The overhead light in the car popped on, the dashboard lit up, and the garage light blazed through the windshield.

“Sorry,” Helios said, pulling away. The lights dimmed but I could see that he was embarrassed by the display.

I laughed. “I’ve never had that effect on a guy before.”

He shifted in the seat. “It’s late. I should get going.”

I pecked him on the cheek one last time. “Thanks again for your help today. And if you change your mind…” I opened the door and stepped halfway out, then I turned back to him. “You know where to find me.”

I KISSED A GREEK GOD!

That was what I wrote for my blog post when I got inside. I reread the words then fell back into the pillows on my bed. In the past, I would have been on the phone with Madison or Chloe parsing every detail of the kiss, what we said, how it felt, what my next move should be. We did that endlessly whenever one of us started dating a new guy. When I hooked up with Kevin, I confided all of my feelings to them and told them every detail of our relationship. But at some point, Madison must have been doing the same thing. And Chloe would have been listening to Madison and me gush over the same guy. I grabbed a pillow and squeezed it against my aching chest. I thought Madison was listening to me, advising me, rooting for me, but really she was gathering info to
betray me. And Chloe chose the cheaters over me. If only I lived in a Greek tragedy, I could have gotten justice!