The Vampire Hunter's Daughter The Complete Collection (33 page)

“Hey!” I waved at them, smiling at Drew and
then Oscar. “How are you feeling, Oscar?”

“A lot better than before, that’s for sure.”
He shrugged. “But I’ve been better.”

He did look much better, except he was still
quite pale. He had a hoodie on, one of Drew’s, so I couldn’t see
his arms where he’d been bitten. The ones on his neck were visible,
however, faintly scarred dots where he’d been punctured by fangs.
It seemed they should only be scabbed rather than scarred already.
Maybe vampire bites healed quickly because they came from a
vampire.

“What about you?” He pulled out a chair at
the table and sat, running one of his hands over his hair. “Are you
doing okay? I heard you were shot.”

I stuck my leg out and pulled up my jeans to
show him the bandage. “Yeah, it’s not so bad, compared to
Gavin.”

Oscar glanced over at Alice. She still hadn’t
touched her sandwich.

“You should eat that,” he told her.

“I’m not hungry.” She scooted it toward him,
and he scooted right back to her.

“You should eat it,” he told her again. “I’m
sure you need to eat something.”

Without any more argument, she picked up the
sandwich and took a bite of it. I ignored the fact he was using his
siren stuff on Alice because it was for her good.

I turned to Luke, deliberately ignoring Drew.
“Will you take me to the hospital?”

Following my lead, Drew ignored me right back
by opening the refrigerator and rummaging around inside.

“Yes, I’ll take you over there.” Luke ate the
last bite of his sandwich and stood to put the plate into the sink.
“You ready?”

“Yeah.” I looked at Oscar and Alice. “You
guys going to be okay here while I’m gone?”

Alice stared down at the table, and Oscar
nodded.

“It’s okay. I’m here,” Drew said, but it was
more to reassure them because neither of us would have left them
alone, anyway.

I nodded. “All right. Let's go then.”

I grabbed my crutches, and Luke picked his
keys off the hook by the door.

I opened the door to Gavin’s room and
expected to see him lying there like before. He was lying there
like I’d left him, but I was surprised to see a blond-haired woman
sitting in the chair beside his bed. She must have heard me
hobbling through the door on my crutches, because she lifted her
head and turned toward me. When she did, I saw Drew’s eyes stare
back at me, and I realized she must be Gavin and Drew’s mother.

“Um… hi.” I wasn’t sure what to say. I was
biased against her already, and I didn’t even know her. “I just
came to see how Gavin was doing today.”

“You must be Chloe.” She didn’t smile or
offer to shake hands with me.

Maybe she was mad at me. The only reason
Gavin got shot was because of me, so it wasn’t completely
unreasonable she might be mad at me. I looked down at the sterile
white floor and fiddled with my hands. I mumbled. “Uh, I’m sorry
Gavin got shot.”

She made a noise that sounded sort of like an
‘uh huh’.

So I continued to babble. “But it was nice of
him to come and help rescue me.”

Gavin’s mother nodded and reached for his
hand. “Yes. Thankfully, he is going to be all right. He'll live to
hunt another day. We take this risk on every mission.” She
eyeballed me and pinched her lips together. “Hopefully, next time,
his head will be in the right place, and he might avoid being
injured. Not to mention the fact that he never should have been on
an unauthorized mission in the first place.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking
about, but I think she blamed me, and maybe Drew, for Gavin being
in the hospital.

It was time to go.

“Well, I gotta go. Will you tell him I
stopped by?”

“Of course,” she told me with a little bit of
snoot coating her voice. She turned back to Gavin, basically
dismissing me.

“Well… bye.” As smoothly as I could, I backed
away from her and out the door. Once I was back in the hallway, I
couldn’t help but mutter, “Nice meeting you, too.”

Man, I really liked that woman less and less,
and I barely knew her at all.

Luke was waiting for me at the nurses’
station. He leaned on the counter and chatted it up with a couple
of the pretty, dark-haired ones and drank coffee out of a little
paper cup. I guess he’d made some friends while he was laid up in
here after the attack.

“I’m ready,” I told him and hobbled on
by.

“What happened?” he asked, hurrying to catch
up with me.

I stopped at the elevator and slammed the
button for the main floor. “Nothing…”

“Doesn’t look like nothing.”

The elevator door opened. “His mom was
there.” We both stepped inside. “She just seemed… rude, I
guess.”

Luke didn’t look surprised. I guess he
probably didn’t like her much either, considering how close he was
with Drew. I couldn’t see him defending her after knowing Drew all
that time.

“Daphne Turner is…,” he paused, trying to
find the right words, “somewhat strange.” He didn't look certain of
his choice of words.

“Well, I didn’t really like her much, just
from what I’d heard about her… and now, her being rude to me, too,
didn’t help her case any.”

The elevator doors swooshed open, and Luke
held them while I hobbled out.

“Drew told you about Gavin?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but he wouldn’t have if I
hadn’t made him.”

“It is a big deal for him to tell you about
all that.”

“I know,” I told him. That was the end of the
conversation.

We crossed the hospital lobby and exited
through the front doors. I felt bad for Drew, but maybe he was
better off without a mother like her in his life. I felt horrible
even thinking something like that. No one should be without a
mother, but I couldn’t imagine who would want one that had the
ability to leave her child as a baby and then live in the same town
with him without ever trying to make contact.

I felt like smacking her.

When we arrived home, Drew paced the living
room again while Alice and Oscar sat on the couch and watched him.
They looked cozy sitting there together. Oscar had his arm thrown
over the back of the couch behind Alice. Well, I couldn’t really
complain. She needed comfort and attention, and Oscar was nice, and
hot, too.

“What’s going on?” I asked when Luke and I
came through the door. “How long has he been doing that?”

I leaned my crutches against the end of the
couch and flopped down next to Alice.

Drew didn’t give either of them a chance to
answer. “We had to drive up to the gate and meet with some guy who
is apparently a courier for Trevor’s lawyer.”

I felt my jaw drop, and a quick glance showed
Luke’s hanging open, too. For a minute, I couldn’t find my voice.
The first of my concerns, before anything else, was the safety of
everyone here. I worried we had unintentionally brought the danger
to them.

“What did he want?” Luke asked.

“Don’t worry.” Alice shifted on the couch,
effectively scooting a little bit closer to Oscar, if that was
possible. “It didn’t seem like he wanted any trouble.” She leaned
forward to pluck a paper off the top of a manila envelope and
handed it to me.

I scanned the first line. “What? We have to
go to a will reading? You have got to be kidding me! I don’t want
anything of his.”

“Read on, Chloe.” Drew pointed at the paper.
“He didn’t leave you anything.”

I stared at the paper and read down the first
paragraph.

“Oh.”

It was Alice they wanted to meet with.

I shrugged and handed the paper back to
Alice. I guess I was a little jealous I didn’t get anything and she
did. I had no idea why I was jealous about it. “So we have to go
there and meet with this guy?”

“Yeah, there is no way we are letting them
through the gates.”

Luke reached for the paper and scanned it.
“When is the meeting?”

Drew went back to his pacing. “In four
days.”

“We will be ready,” I told him, and then
looked at Alice. “Right?”

She nodded in agreement. “I’ll be ready.”