Damon (23 page)

“I do?” I asked.

“A little bit. Around the eyes.”

She stood up, still puffing on her cigarette, and opened the back door for some fresh air. “Cal hit me once, and I packed my bags and left,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “I wish your gram was here because she’d talk sense to you. A cheater will always be a cheater and a beater will always be a beater.”

I knew exactly who she meant, but I felt like being difficult. “Who’s Cal?”

“My ex-husband,” she said, her eyes turning wild. “Don’t you listen at all, anymore?”

I tried to think of another smart-ass remark, but I didn’t have the strength. “I know he seems scary to you,” I told her, “but he tries really hard to be good. He’s always kind to me.” I didn’t think it would hurt to point out Damon’s positive side.

“And he doesn’t hit you?” she asked, as if she could barely believe it might be possible.

“He really isn’t like that.” He’d been known to throw television sets through glass windows, but he’d never raised a hand to me. And I’d made him angry enough to want to. “He’s generous and fun and even sweet sometimes. And he has never once complained about Mama. Imagine that.”

She shook her head. “If he was normal I’d think he was the perfect guy for you.”

That thought made me smile. Lucky for me Damon wasn’t normal. No normal man would have wanted me.

***

Damon didn’t return until after nine. Right about the time I’d decided he was dead and my life was over. He was upset, and frantic.

“We forgot about the cave,” he said, on the verge of tears. “I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find it.”

Aunt Cynthia was watching us, so I took his hand and led him out the back door. “We’ll find it. We just need to rest a little.”

He pulled his hand away and draped his arms over his head, mumbling to himself. “How could I forget? How could I do that? We’ll be stuck here, forever. We’ll go insane.”

I stayed close, but didn’t try to touch him. “You need to eat. I had some soup and I feel better.”

He shook his head. “His thoughts are all inside me. Like bugs all inside me. I can’t find my own thoughts. I can’t… remember!”

I didn’t know what to say.

We strolled around the yard behind the apartments for some privacy. He aimed us toward the dark shadows behind a tree at the edge of the property. The people next door had a privacy fence, which left a nice little dark pocket where we could hide.

He pulled me to him and hugged me against his warm chest. “Help me, Maggie. Use your magic and help me.”

I made up my mind right then. I’d have to take charge. Damon had lost control of his mind. “We’ll go home. I’ll talk to Chester. I’ll get answers.”

He held me tighter. “The old man will know about us. He’ll recognize the signs.”

“So what? If he’s one of us, he can tell us what’s going on. If he’s one of us I really want to talk to him.”

“No. Not yet. We have to know more first.”

I looked at him, wondering why he was so afraid. He didn’t want his quest to end. But it had to. It was killing us.

“Damon, don’t you see, we’ve already found our people. Chester, Bella, Mrs. Jarvis, and Mama. Those are our people. All we have to do is go home.”

“Nooo,” he moaned and buried his face in my neck.

***

A terrible thing happened that night. An event that forever changed my relationship with Aunt Cynthia. She came out of the bedroom and caught me leisurely licking the drops of blood rising from a single puncture in Damon’s chest. We were just lazing about, being close and touching, nothing too shocking, at least. Damon was sucking on a prick in my finger, but she might not have realized what he was doing. It was almost three in the morning and we’d decided we were safe. We couldn’t sleep.

But Aunt Cynthia wouldn’t keep her nose out of our business, and so of course she was bound to catch us.

We had the lamp on and that’s what gave us away. We’d grown careless.

We’d grown so careless that we let ourselves become engrossed, and never heard her walk into the room, never sensed her standing there watching us.

Neither of us looked up until she made a strange sound, like a hiccup and a gasp, and ran back into the bedroom. And we knew she’d seen enough to know why we were both covered in wounds, and why we’d been acting so strange.

I was afraid she might kick us out, like everybody else, but her bedroom door didn’t move again all night.

“Don’t worry about her,” Damon told me. “We rule our world now.”

The next morning she avoided me, unable to meet my eyes. She could barely speak to me. I knew what she was thinking. She thought I was vile and poisoned. She thought I was forever ruined. I sickened her.

We were leaving in a convoy for home after lunch and were able to muddle through by working. When Aunt Cynthia had everything she wanted packed into the cars, we prepared to leave. That was when she caught my arm and decided to speak to me like a person instead of hired help. “I want you to ride with me, Maggie,” she said.

She left me standing on the front walk holding a potted plant. I didn’t really want to ride with her, I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. And I was fairly certain Damon would rather ride with me than Mama.

With both backseats packed full of Aunt Cynthia’s things, there was only room for two people in each car. I carried the plant to Damon’s car and handed it to him. He moved things around and found a good, steady spot on the backseat.

“
She
wants me to ride with her,” I told him.

He straightened out of the car and looked at me. “You’re with me. Always.”

Aunt Cynthia sensed our conversation and came up to get involved. “Just till we get to the first town,” she told Damon – not me. I guessed she’d decided he was her biggest obstacle. “Then you can have her back.”

Or did she think I was Damon’s slave now?

“There’s nothing you need to talk to her about,” Damon said, quick to be suspicious.

She held her ground. “We need to talk about the house. Family business. I’ve got a new life to organize.”

What a lie. But I thought it might be best to get this out of the way. And now might be the time to keep it short. Once we got to the first town she would have to stop and let me out.

“I’ll go,” I said. “Just to the first town.”

Damon frowned at me but didn’t verbally object. He went inside to get Mama, but slowed to point at Aunt Cynthia and give her a warning. “First town, or rest stop or truck stop. I’ll be right behind you.”

Aunt Cynthia didn’t waste any time. As soon as we were on the road she started in on me.

“Have you ever heard of shared psychotic disorder, Maggie?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I know you never liked to read about it,” Cynthia said, “but I still have my books and I sat down with them last night and did some research.”

I sat slouched down in my seat with my arms crossed like a little kid while she droned on, refusing to let me express myself.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” I told her. “But read all you want.”

“I’ve marked a section for you. They say this shared psychotic disorder can occur when a non-delusional person becomes emotionally involved with a delusional person. The delusional person is able to convince the normal person that their delusions are real. What I’m saying, Maggie, is that he’s trying to make you behave like him.”

“No, he’s not.”

“And I know how hard it was growing up with a mother like Sonya, and maybe you don’t really realize that his behavior is abnormal. Maybe you’d like a little of the attention your mother wasn’t able to give you. He certainly is very protective of you.”

“We’re vampires,” I finally said, just to make her shut up.

“What did you say?”

“We’re vampires. We’re not human.”

She swerved back to her lane, almost hitting the car beside us. Damon honked behind us, not the people she’d almost hit. I turned to get a glimpse of his face.

“God, Maggie. Listen to yourself.”

“It’s true. Damon has fangs.”

“I knew it was something like that. You have to go see a doctor as soon as we get back. Stop this now before it gets so bad something terrible happens.”

“Gram was one, too.”

She whipped her head around, giving me a threatening glance. But she caught herself before she lashed out. She licked her lips and swallowed. “You think because your mother’s sick that it must have come from Grammy?”

“I think Mama’s one, too.”

I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to shout it in her face and make her hear me. “You’re only human.”

“Please, Maggie, try to listen to what you’re saying. I can barely believe you’re serious. This has taken me so off-guard. You were always the most reasonable person I knew. That’s why I know what I’m hearing is Damon’s influence.”

“It’s the truth.”

“And you need to get to a doctor and have those cuts looked at. They might get infected. You’d better have some tests run--”

“We can’t become infected by human germs.” I’d just made that up, but it made me smile.

“He might be carrying something,” she said seriously. “And I saw you….”

She shuddered visibly and couldn’t finish her sentence. I had enough wounds on me to recognize her sore spot. So I pushed it.

“Drinking his blood.”

“Oh, god,” she whispered, turning her head away.

“It’s better than wine.”

“Maggie!” She turned her head to glare at me. “Just stop it! You’re scaring me. I really can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got everything I own in this car and barely enough gas money to get home. Stop acting like a child. Grow up.”

I stared at her, unable to believe she’d said that. I hated her, because I feared she might be right. Maybe I was imagining all these things, because Damon believed them so absolutely. Maybe I was acting like a stubborn brat. I’d missed a week of work without even calling Chester and speaking to him directly, like an adult. That was very unlike me.

We rode in silence. Aunt Cynthia drove resting her elbow on the doorframe, rubbing her forehead. I sat staring out my window.

I missed Damon. I couldn’t stand to be apart from him for half an hour. I was obsessed with him and I knew, from a mental health perspective, that obsessions weren’t a good sign.

But where was the difference between obsession and being in love? I didn’t know. I only knew that I had to be with him.

I turned in the seat and waved to him through the back window. He saw and pointed at me as if I were the only one in the world.

What was I thinking? We were vampires. We didn’t have to live by silly human rules.

My husband had glowing eyes and fangs.

My life really was perfect. Aunt Cynthia just didn’t know what she was talking about.

***

It was so good to be home. The first thing I did, once we had Mama inside, was to go land back on my bed and just lie there, reveling in the familiarity. The wonderful, good ‘ol feelings of home.

Damon followed and stood looking down at me. After a few minutes he asked, “Are you done?”

“With what?”

“We need to start moving your stuff in the other room, before
she
claims it.”

“What’s wrong with my room?”

He looked around, grimacing. “It’s too small. It’s suffocating. It’s like a closet.”

It was small, but cozy, I thought. “I love this room. It’s my own private place.”

He cracked his neck then spoke in a tense voice. “Come be in my room. Move in with me.”

Finally, I understood. This was a macho thing. He wanted me to give up my place to come live in his. He didn’t want to sleep in a girly bed with frilly bed-ruffles and old stuffed animals. He wanted the biggest room in the house.

I wasn’t a particular type of person. “Well, go talk to her and see what she says. Just remember, this is her house and if we get kicked out, Mama gets kicked out, too. We’ll have to take her wherever we go.”

He gave me a raised-eyebrows look and strode from the room. I turned onto my stomach and let my arms and head dangle over the side. I needed to call Bella and Chester to tell them I’d be in for work in the morning. If I still had a job. But I didn’t feel like moving.

I had changed since Damon came along. Cynthia was right about that. He’d made me lazy, and a liar, and completely blasé about things I used to consider vital.

The phone rang and I guessed it was Chester or Bella, calling to check on me. They’d probably been calling all day, worried.

In a minute, Cynthia came to the door to confirm my suspicions. Chester was on the phone. “Tell him I’ll be in tomorrow,” I said without lifting my head.

She went away and a few minutes later Damon came in and sat on my rump, and rubbed my back. “We’ve gotta get your stuff out of here.”

“You talked her into it?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

“I told her I’d jump on her in the middle of the night and drink her blood if she didn’t.”

I tried to turn, but he held my shoulder down and kept kneading the knotted muscles. “You did not. Did you?”

“I told her we’d pay rent for it.”

I tried to turn again and this time he let me. “An offer she couldn’t refuse, huh? I told her you were a good person.”

He settled on his side against me, messaging my front. He moved his hand beneath my shirt and found my breast. “Not too good.”

“No, not too good.”

“Real.”

“Really real,” I agreed.

***

The next morning, I spent an extra few minutes in my car before going into the drugstore.

I was nervous and sick to my stomach. Not only would I have to explain my abused body, I had to tell them I’d gotten married. To the weird guy who’d sat out on their porch for a week. To a guy whose name sounded like demon. To a guy I’d known only two weeks.

When I ran the numbers through my head, it seemed impossible. How could fourteen days seem like a year? They wouldn’t understand.

They would think I’d made a stupid mistake. I couldn’t stand to see disapproval in their eyes.

I also had Damon pestering me to lie to them about what we’d discovered of our heritage, to steal their house key and make a copy for him, and to tell them I’d have to quit at the end of the week. It had taken me ten minutes to get his hands off me so I could leave the house.