Damon (8 page)

“I found it upstairs, in the back of a cabinet.”

“In the storeroom? When?” I wanted to see this box. I’d been in the storeroom a thousand times and hadn’t noticed anything special.

“Today,” he said. “After I saw the drugstore owner was in the picture.”

“Wait. You came back after lunch? Why didn’t I see you?”

“I came in the back when nobody was looking.”

Before he could finish speaking, I gasped in surprise. “That’s what was in the locked cabinet. You picked the lock.”

“How else could I get in?” he said.

“You’re unbelievable. That’s why you broke into my house, and wanted to see Corky’s house. To find the box. Not to remember your childhood.”

Not because you were interested in me.

“I’m not a machine, Maggie,” he said, passion growing in his tone. “I wanted to find the box, but I also wanted to remember my past, and I wanted to get to know you. I also wanted to leave home and do something new.” He tapped his head. “I’ve got all sorts of things going on in here.”

“I can see that,” I said dryly.

He licked his lips and stared at me intently. “So what’s the verdict?”

“About what?”

“Are you going to relax or kick me out?”

“Well… I don’t know. I don’t know what any of this means. So you came here to find a box. How does that make me trust you?”

“Because I told you the truth. Now I’m not hiding any secrets.”

“Really?” I could overlook the secrets about his murdered mother and murdering father. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about that. Especially to someone I’d just met. But, he still hadn’t told me his real name. Then again, I hadn’t been exactly honest about my real name, either. “So what was in the box?”

“Wait,” he said. He reached for the wine bottle and the two juice glasses he’d brought from the kitchen. “This first.”

“
Maaagggic
,” my mother wailed from the living room.

I jumped up automatically and pressed my lips together. “Be right back.”

Mama had lost the remote control and while I searched for it, Damon was up to something. He walked through the living room, wiggling eyebrows at me over a serious face, and went out the backdoor. When he returned barely a minute later, he kept his hand behind his back and wouldn’t look at me.

I found the remote under Mama’s chair, brought her another cup of raspberry tea and a shortbread cookie, then hurried back to Damon’s room.

“What are you up to?” I immediately asked. But he wasn’t in the room. His front door to the porch was open, leaving only the warped screen door protecting my grandmother’s quilt from the moths dancing around the porch light.

I followed him outside.

“Kick off the light,” he said.

I turned off the light and shut the wood door.

Damon sat in one of my white wicker rocking chairs. I sat in the other. It was the perfect night to sit outside. Unseasonably warm with a light, fragrant breeze. The birds weren’t ready for bed yet and continued to sing to one another. I could almost hear the fountain I might afford now that I didn’t have to pay to have the house painted.

The sound was Damon pouring red wine. He held the glass out toward the streetlight as if examining its color, then handed me the glass. He relaxed back to rock and enjoy the evening. Absently, he reached over and held my hand.

I leaned my head back, closed my eyes and let out a long breath, releasing all the tension of the day. If ever a scene should have herded my thoughts toward the frights of marriage, it should have been this scene of the two of us rocking on the porch, listening to the birds and sipping wine like an old married couple. Yet, somehow, on a night such as this I couldn’t imagine anything unpleasant.

“What happened to your dad?” he asked after a while.

Even such an intruding question didn’t disturb the peace of the evening. I’d given up being sensitive on that issue long ago. And I’d planned to ask him about his own father, eventually. “He never existed.”

“No?”

“Mama doesn’t have a clue.”

“No idea?”

I thought back to my early teenage years when I’d grown curious, and had realized I’d have to give up on the idea of a father, forever. It only hurt a little bit anymore. “Not even a first name. Her memory is really warped. By the time they noticed she was pregnant, she’d forgotten the event. But she used to go out to bars.”

“I don’t know which is worse,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

He imitated me, sliding down in the chair to lean his head back. “My dad’s mind is so fried he doesn’t know where he is. No sense of reality. He’s gone for good.”

I realized then why Damon was so comfortable around my mother. He’d grown up the same way I had. Except, thankfully, my mother had never killed anyone. That I knew of. Not that she hadn’t tried a couple of times.

“That’s pretty weird, don’t you think?” I said. “That our grandparents were such good friends and then your dad and my mom both ended up with the same rare condition?”

That still bothered me and I hadn’t been able to get any answers out of Chester and Bella. I thought maybe Damon had a clue.

“Try your wine,” he said instead. “It’s special.”

I took a sip before I thought to wait and see what he meant by ‘special.’ I’d been warned time and again not to drink anything I didn’t open myself. Though, we weren’t in a bar, or at a party, and I didn’t think Damon would try to drug me since he was already getting what he wanted. Unless he wanted something I couldn’t yet imagine.

The wine was sweet, fruity, with some underlying flavor I couldn’t identify, but liked. “It’s good. Why is it special?”

“It’s elderberry wine. Granddad made it. I brought it from home.”

I took another sip and decided the wine was okay. “Where is home?”

“Nashville.”

“You have a house there or something?”

“I did. Granddad’s place. I sold it.”

So that explained his fancy car and ready cash. I should have wondered about that sooner, but I never seemed to focus on normal things.

He lifted my hand and planted a firm kiss on the scar on my wrist, then traced it with his tongue, all the while keeping his eyes on me. I liked when he did things like that. Behaved in an abnormal way. I liked that he didn’t bother questioning me about my scar.

“I asked Chester about the picture.”

He stilled for a moment with his tongue on my wrist, then sat back, but kept hold of my hand. “And?”

“They’d just been to a funeral. My grandparents had a son who died. A baby. That’s why they all look so weird. Grief.”

He sighed and sat back. After a moment, he let go of my hand. “That’s not why.”

“Why then?”

He downed his wine and poured himself some more. Even though I’d only drunk a little of mine, he refilled my glass right to the rim. I had to take a healthy drink to keep from spilling it. A rush immediately went to my head.

“They’re vampires,” he said.

I almost dropped my glass, and barely managed to set it on the porch. I had to fight back a laugh. “Who? Chester and Bella? My grandmother?”

He nodded, staring straight ahead. “And you and me. All of us. Half vampire, half werewolf.”

“So, we’re vampwolves?”

He grinned, nodding. “Funny.”

I chuckled. “Or Werepires? I like that better.”

His smile fell. “We are alien vampires.”

I couldn’t think what to say. I had my moments of weird, no doubt about it, but I wasn’t weird enough to believe in vampires. Or vampwolves. Whatever. “What about sunlight? Why can we all walk in the sunlight?”

He shifted his foot and almost knocked over my glass. I leaned over and picked it up again. “Real vampires aren’t sensitive to sunlight. That was made up by Hollywood.”

I knew that. Or, I’d heard it somewhere. “So, what are real vampires?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I know they like blood. I know you like blood. Haven’t you ever wondered why?”

Again, I almost dropped my glass. He couldn’t possibly know that. Unless he’d seen me almost drink the blood from the hamburger meat and was hyper observant, like a psychic. I had to deny it, though, because I did not, in fact,
like
blood. It was just a crazy old habit I’d picked up from my mother when I was little. She’d told me the blood was magic juice and if I drank it, I’d have magic powers. It was mostly just water, anyway. I’d learned years ago not to let anyone see me do it. And I should have stopped doing it years ago. But I still liked the idea of having magic powers. I still got that giddy feeling every time I did it. Like my name actually meant something. Like long lost happy times only a child can experience. The same reason adults still get a thrill out of Christmas lights. Memories of happiness.

Before I could answer, Damon lined up the scar on my wrist with the scar on his wrist, so the weaving trails became one long road.

“See why we’re perfect?” he said. “People like us have to stick with our own kind. Your mom’s crazy, my dad’s crazy. We’ll both go crazy, someday. You and I. Would you rather be with someone who yells at you because you’re crazy, or someone who says it’s okay to be crazy?”

What he said did have some logic. I knew it was a possibility. I felt Damon was ahead of me on the crazy track, or at least I wanted to believe that, but, every now and then, I saw the signs in myself. If I had to go crazy, I might as well try to find someone who wouldn’t yell at me for it. If the worse happened, we could at least inflict our madness on each other instead of innocent bystanders.

And a part of me was drawn to him simply because he
knew.
He knew what my life had been like. He’d lived it, too. His body had more scars than mine. I would never have to hide anything from him. And I was so tired of hiding.

I only needed to know one thing. “What do you want from me?”

“Just to be here,” he said. “Holding your hand.”

I liked that answer. It seemed to fit the night. It seemed easy and uncomplicated. I stood up long enough to move my chair close to his, and then sat down, leaning so our shoulders touched. He was incredibly handsome again, an entirely different man. One I found charming, warm, and familiar.

“My real name is Magic Star,” I told him. Generally, I shuddered at the thought of anyone knowing my real name. The stupid, crazy name my crazy mother gave me because she’d believed a star was growing in her belly. A star put there by magic. But with Damon, it felt like a minor confession.

“I know,” he said.

Of course he did. He’d probably found my birth certificate somewhere. “I guess I’m lucky she thought I was a star and not the spawn of the devil. She’s obsessed with the devil.”

He nodded. “My dad, too.”

“She wears a charm that keeps him away from her.”

“Smart,” he whispered and looked off into the night.

“Your real name is David Jenkins,” I told him, since he didn’t offer to confess. But, I wanted him to know I knew.

“My name is Damon,” he said. “Your name is Maggie. Those are our real names.”

Fine by me. It didn’t really matter. Not really.

He leaned into me and squeezed my hand and we enjoyed our wine and the evening in silence for a while.

He held up his right hand. He had a bandage on his thumb. “I put my blood in the wine.”

I held up my almost empty glass. I wasn’t nearly as surprised as I should have been. I wasn’t as grossed out as I should have been. “What was in the box?”

He sent me a sidelong grin when I didn’t yell at him for doing something so crazy. “Something unbelievable. Something that proves I’m on the right track.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have pieces of the mystery but I haven’t solved the mystery yet.”

“What mystery?”

“C’mon.” He stood up and kept hold of my hand as we went back inside. After shutting and locking the door, he walked around the room checking to make sure the curtains were seamless, never releasing my hand. I liked his slightly odd behavior. It made me feel comfortable and at home.

Finally, he released me to sit on the bed while he went into the walk-in closet.

While he was gone, I noticed a small bouquet of yellow and white daffodils on the nightstand. He’d gone outside earlier, while I was helping Mama, to pick flowers – for me. He had them arranged in my squatty eggshell vase.

I set my glass on the nightstand. I wasn’t going to yell at him for putting his blood in the wine, but I wasn’t going to drink any more of it, either. I wasn’t that far gone, yet.

He returned from the closet carrying a virtually empty pillowcase and sat on the bed. I nodded at the bouquet and smiled. “I knew you were up to something.”

He smiled back and that was all that needed to be expressed on the subject.

“Hold out your hand,” he said.

I did. “Can I keep my eyes open?”

“Yeah.”

He reached into the pillowcase and handed me Gram’s pendant. Which he’d stolen again from my bedroom. “Thank you,” I said with a little scolding tucked into my tone.

“Keep your hand up,” he said.

Next, he placed a man’s square ring in my palm. It was made from the same light purple stone as Gram’s pendant. “That was my granddad’s,” he said.

I looked at it, and held it next to the pendant. He handed me a pair of cufflinks. All the jewelry in my palm had come from the same amethyst. The color and clarity was identical.

“Corky’s cufflinks,” he said. “I found them in a drawer in his bedroom. Have you ever seen Chester Brewer wear this type of stone?”

“Chester? No. I would have noticed.”

“What about his wife?”

“Bella? I don’t think so. She doesn’t wear much jewelry.”

“Okay,” he said with finality. He arranged the jewelry and the picture together. “So we know they were a group of some kind.”

“Or just friends,” I offered.

“No, the matching jewelry means something. They were up to something. They didn’t wear these in public, so they only wore them when they met. They had these pieces made special from a single stone.”

My grandmother had worn the pendant all the time, but I didn’t correct him. “I’ll take these in and show them to Chester and he’ll tell me what they mean.”