Heart of the Vampire (Vanderlind Castle) (4 page)

“Because you’re a minor in the eyes of the law, so we need to make you over eighteen. Plus you’ll be flying with a corpse, so it’ll help if you’re older. Things might get a bit tricky.”

“I’m going to what?” I exclaimed.

“It’s not that easy for vampires to fly,” he said. “I mean, when we have to do it by plane. Very few flights happen only at night. Plus, there is no direct flight from Tiburon, Ohio
, to Budapest.”

“So... How does this work?” I asked.

“If for some reason we have to take a plane, vampires need a human escort to ferry them through customs and everything. You’ll have to see me through.”

“You mean you’ll be in a...” I could
n’t bring myself to say the word
coffin
. I had accepted that vampires existed, and I knew Jessie was a vampire. But he was so full of life, so beautiful, sitting there talking, holding my hand. It was hard to realize that he was actually the undead. If I was to press my ear against his chest, there would be no heartbeat.

“Normally
, when I visit Budapest, I fly in stages. But without the airplane. And just stay at safe houses during the day,” Jessie explained.

“Well, why don’t you just do that?” I asked. “I can meet you there.” I didn’t want to let on that I was feeling a bit panicked about the flying-with-a-corpse thing.

Jessie shook his head. “I thought about that. It will look better if we travel together.”

“What do you mean, ‘look better.’ Why do we have to worry about that?”

“We have to convince the Bishops that we are close,” he said, his voice dropping in volume.

My heart quickened a beat. “How close?”
I asked, tilting my head to the side and pressing my hand to my cheek.

“V
ery close.” Jessie looked out into the night, then back at me, then into the night again. Finally, he said, “We have to convince the Bishops that we intend to be conjoined.”

“What are you talking about?” I gasped, finding myself barely able to breath
e. “Conjoined?” I wondered what it felt like to hyperventilate and if I should get a paper bag. “You mean, they think... You want them to think...”

“Breath
e, Aurora,” Jessie said, placing his hand on my arm. Physical contact was not helping me to become calm. “I told the Bishops that we intend to wed as vampire and human. They have to believe it. We must make them believe it.”

“But why?” I could see spots behind my eyes. I wondered if I should put my head between my knees.

“Aurora,” he said, his voice cracking. “If they think that I simply killed a vampire to save a human, it’ll be a death sentence for you, and I will be buried alive for a hundred years.”

“
It’ll... what?”

Jessie closed his eyes and sighed. “The Bishops don’t believe a vampire should ever value a human’s life over a fellow vampire. I had to tell them that we were in love and intended to be conjoined.”

“You did?” I gulped.

“It was the only way to spare your life. And everything was going fine. I’m in good standing with the Bishops, so they believed me. But then someone from the party wrote to the Bishops, telling them that we’d
only known each other briefly.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “Why would Ilona hunt you down when she didn’t actually care about Viktor? Vampires are very proud.”

“So, now what?” I asked, feeling the worst was yet to come.

“We have to go to Budapest,” he said. “And we need to convince the Bishops that we are in love and intend to be conjoined because...” Jessie drew a deep breath and then blurted, “Because you’re the reincarnation of Colette Gibson.”

Chapter 6

I wished it was still appropriate for women to swoon because that was what I felt like doing. The spots in front of my eyes got much worse. “But...” I stuttered. “But I’m not the reincarnation of...”

“No, you are,” Jessie said in an urgent voice. “You have to convince yourself that you are.”

“But, I don’t...” The world was spinning slightly to the left, and I braced myself with a hand on each side of the windowsill. “Jessie, I’m not Colette. I don’t want to be Colette. I’m Aurora, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I know,” he insisted. “I know you’re Aurora. Trust me, I know. But for your own sake, you have to convince yourself that you’re her. You have some of Colette’s memories. You’ve even said that you
rself. You dream some of her memories, so you are connected to her in some way.” Jessie leaned forward to grip me by the shoulders, his voice taking on a new intensity. “We have to convince the Bishops that you’re Colette. They have to believe it without reservation. If they have even an ounce of doubt, they could rule against us and then... And then...” Jessie’s eyes were blazing, and he was squeezing my shoulders so hard they began to throb. He was even shaking me just a little in his desperation to get his point through to me.

“Ow...” I let out a small whimper.

Realizing what he was doing, Jessie gulped and released me. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said
, massaging my shoulders. “And I believe you. But I still don’t see a way I can drop everything and take off for Budapest. Not without freaking my mom out.”

“Having you disappear for a few days is nothing compared to you disappearing forever,” Jessie said in a barely audible voice.

“How long do we have?” I asked. “Can you stall them for a couple of weeks while we try to figure something out?”

Jessie thought about it
, but even as he was doing so, he was shaking his head. “I could try,” he finally said. “But every day we delay, you are in more danger.”

Mentioning my mother had given me an idea. It was probably the best chance we had although we would have to act quickly. Still, I wasn’t ready to share it with Jessie yet. I had to think it over and decide if I was willing to do something that would hurt my mother a great deal but at least give me a few days to jet off to Hungary and try to explain to a bunch of vampires why they should spare my life. “I might have a plan,” I said.

“What is it?” Jessie asked eagerly.

“I don’t want to tell you,” I said. “Not yet. I want to think it through.”

He pinched his lips together, as if to swallow words that were already on his tongue. “I understand,” he said after several moments. “Would tomorrow night be enough time for you to think it through?”

I shrugged, letting out a large sigh. “I guess it’ll have to be.”

“Until tomorrow then. Good night,” he whispered before gathering his legs under him and launching off the porch roof. It was only a second before he had disappeared into the night.

As soon as he was gone, I closed the window and drew the curtains. If Ilona was out there, who knew how many other vampires were skulking around, waiting to taste my blood. The mere thought of it gave me chills
, and I hurriedly got ready for bed.

With the covers pulled up under my chin, I stared at the ceiling, wide awake. My right hand sought my Pools of Light pendant, and I slid the smooth crystal back and forth across my lips, like I always did when I lay awake at night thinking of Jessie.

If Jessie could stall the Bishops for a few days then I could probably swing a lie that would enable me to sneak off to Budapest. The only problem was, the lie would hurt my mother very deeply
, and I just hated to do that to her.

Still, me being killed as retribution because some stupid vampire didn’t understand that no meant no was not a good alternative. I was sure my mother would never know what happened to me
, and that would be a much worse torture than the hurtful betrayal I had in mind. I sighed, feeling the weight of hurting someone I loved creeping over me.

For weeks I had dreamed of seeing Jessie again. Then he return
ed to my life only to tell me that I was in danger and more than likely going to be killed. It wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind when I had thought of seeing him again. My fantasies had drifted more toward passionate kissing and exchanging tender words as we pulled at the openings in each other’s clothing.

I lay awake so long that when I finally fell asleep, I didn’t even realize that I had. My conscious thoughts slipped seamlessly into the unconscious world without me realizing I was dreaming. There was a tap at the window, and I sprang from my bed convinced it was Jessie. I yanked open the curtain expecting to see his handsome face, ruffled hair, and twinkling gray eyes. Instead, it was all the popular kids from high school crowded on the porch roof, their eyes glowing in that same intense way that Ilona’s had. They were all avidly staring at me. Blossom was in the crowd with them. She stepped forward, knocked lightly on the window, and said with a smile, “Hey, Aurora. It’s cold out here. Why don’t you invite us in?”

I automatically reached for the window latch, but when I did so there was some eager giggling amongst the popular kids, a couple of the boys elbowing each other. It made me pause. “I can’t right now,” I told her. “My mom wants me to do a bunch of stuff.”

“Come on, Aurora.” Blossom let a small whine seep into her voice. “Open up. I’ve got to pee.”

“Yeah, let us in. Please?” Fred was standing next to her, although I hadn’t noticed him before.

“I really can’t,” I told him.

“Come on.” He gave me an encouraging smile. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Yeah, don’t be lame,” a popular jock at Fred’s elbow said. “Just open the window and invite us in. Where’s your sense of hospitality?”

“
My what?” I asked. I knew what hospitality meant, but I was surprised that El Jocko knew the definition.

“Oh, screw this,” said a cheerleader, elbowing her way through the crowd. For some reason
, she was dressed in her uniform like they always are on TV. “Are you going to invite us in or not?” she demanded.

I shook my head, unable to force the word
no
to come out of my mouth. Still, I was able to stop myself from reaching for the window.

The cheerleader bent down, extended one finger
, and began scratching a circle in the glass near where the latch was on the inside. Her nail cut through the glass like a diamond always does in the movies—which is a good way to screw up your diamond in real life. After she was done, she rapped on the glass with her knuckle, causing the little circle she’d cut to fall into my room. Then she snaked her hand through the hole and undid the latch, pushing the window open. “Now,” she said, smiling like she’d just been announced as homecoming queen, “invite us in.”

C
old air whipping through my room shocked me out of my slumber. I sprang from the bed and slammed the window shut. I yanked the curtains closed so fast I almost pulled them off the rod. Parting them a crack, I peeked out into the night. There was nothing. At least nothing that I could see. I slid my hands over the cold glass. The spider web cracks were still there from Ilona, but there was no hole near the latch. Quickly, I pulled the curtains back shut. I couldn’t stop shivering as I wondered how my window had gotten open. There was no doubt in my mind I’d locked it after Jessie left.

A loud rustling somewhere in the backyard startled me
, and I scanned the area with one eye, peeking between the pulled curtains. It was so dark I could barely see anything, but I felt like there were a hundred eyes focusing on me. How many of the undead were concealed in the trees, watching the puny human, waiting for her to make a mistake?

I had to betray my mother. There was no other option. It would hurt her
, and I hated to do it, but the alternative was so much worse.

Chapter 7

I only managed to fall asleep as the sun was starting to rise. I was so grateful that it was Sunday and I had the day off from Cup of Joe’s. I’d spent most of the night clutching a wooden drumstick that some drummer had thrown to me during a concert last summer. It’s not like the band was a big act or anything, but the guy had specifically tossed the drumstick to me, so I kept it. I was glad I did because it was the closest thing I could find in my bedroom to a functioning stake.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Mom said when I finally stumbled downstairs and trudged into the kitchen. “It’s after noon. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” I told her, opening the refrigerator. “I actually went to bed pretty early, but then a bird or something slammed into my window and scared the poop out of me.”

“Really?” My mom looked up from her paperwork which was spread out across the kitchen table.

“Yeah. I’m really sorry, but I checked this morning, and there are some small cracks in the glass. Whatever it was, it hit the window really hard.”

“Oh.” Mom frowned and went to stand up. “That can’t be good. Did you look outside to see if there’s a bird or anything injured out there?”

“I already checked and didn’t see anything,” I assured her, causing her to settle back into her chair. “Whatever it was either flew away or some other animal got it.” My mom was a sucker for wounded animals, and I didn’t want her crawling around on her hands and knees in the backyard trying to see if some poor sparrow was hiding under the shrubbery.

Opening the refrigerator, I grabbed some jelly and the orange juice. Since it was so late, I decided I’d do a breakfast-lunch combo for one big meal. I gathered the rest of what I needed for a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich plus orange juice, a banana
, and a few slices of bacon, which I tossed in a frying pan. Our stove was pretty old, so it didn’t ignite on its own anymore. Every day was an adventure of trying to get a match close enough to light the gas while staying far enough away to avoid getting singed.

While the bacon sizzled, I sat down at the far end of the table to construct my sandwich and talk to my mom. “What are the plans for Thanksgiving this year?” I asked in as casual a voice as I could muster.

Mom looked up from her work. “I don’t know, honey. Probably your Aunt Sue’s, like usual.” Aunt Sue wasn’t really my aunt. She was my mom’s best friend since college. She and her husband didn’t have any kids. After my dad left, we started driving up to Cleveland to make kind of an orphan’s Thanksgiving. We used to take Grandma Gibson with us before we had to put her in the nursing home. The last two years, we just stopped to see her on the way out of town. It’s not a super long drive. A little over an hour, but Grandma gets a little fretful if she’s in the car too long.

“If I wasn’t here for Thanksgiving, would you still do the same thing?”

Mom frowned slightly. “I guess. Why do you ask?”

“Well...” I spread a little peanut butter on a slice of bread, finding it difficult to meet her eye. “Woul
d it totally freak you out if maybe I wanted to do Thanksgiving with Dad this year?”

I saw several emotions flicker over my mom’s face: shock, hurt, anger
, and then finally concern. “Sweetie, Thanksgiving’s Thursday. That’s kind of short notice.”

“I know, but all I’d have to do is drive down there.” My dad lived in Lexington, Kentucky
, which was a little under five hours by car. “I could take off school on Wednesday and help cook the turkey and everything.”

“Have you spoken to your father lately? Did he invite you for a visit?” Mom wanted to know. I could tell she was trying to be cool about the whole thing, but it was a challenge.

“Not exactly,” I told her. “It was just something I was thinking about doing, but I wanted to run it by you first.”

“I’m not quite sure what to say, Aurora,” she said, spreading her hands in the air, palms up. “I think it’s natural for you to want to have a relationship with your father
, and I think it’s healthy for a girl to have a positive male role model in her life.” She chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “I’m just not sure your father is it.”

“I’m not sure I was thinking of him as a role model,” I quickly assured her. “I was just wondering what he’s like. I mean, I was just a little kid when he left. I only have these little kid memories of him. Maybe it’s time I get to know him as a grownup. I mean, not that I’m exactly grown
up, but you know what I mean.”

Mom got up from her chair and came around the table to where I was seated. She bent down and gave me a squeeze. “I think you should give him a call,” she said, her voice sounding a bit thicker than usual. “As long as you don’t get your hopes up. I mean, he hasn’t bothered to reach out to you in a long time and might not want to now. I just don’t want you to get hurt if he blows you off or flat out says no.”

“I understand,” I told her, wrapping my arms over hers. “And hell, even if he does invite me for Thanksgiving, he might act like a total jerk when I get there. Who knows?”

Mom kissed me on the crown of my head. “Have you thought about the Tammy factor?”

Tammy was the woman my dad left us for ten years ago. I say woman, but she was barely twenty when the affair was discovered. Mom found out Dad had a secret cell phone. A little research revealed that he had been slutting around on her for more than a year. To make matters a million times worse, Tammy had been barely legal when the affair started. My dad had been cheating on my mom with a girl who was literally two years older than I was at that exact moment. Bluck!

Tammy had been extra nasty when my mom finally confronted my dad and everything fell apart. The one time I met her
, she actually said to me, “Your mom is a real bitch. You know that?” As if it was Mom’s fault for getting upset that she caught her husband cheating. And besides, who says that to a seven-year-old? Even being so little, I knew it was wrong.

I had been eating butterscotch pudding at the time and threw it at her. Right at her head. After that
, she refused to be in the same room with me and made damn sure my dad never was, either. It was hard to imagine what she would say if I actually intended to visit my dad for Thanksgiving. She would probably be worried that I planned on dumping a bowl of stuffing on her head. It was almost worth getting my dad to say yes just to provoke her for a few days before I cancelled. Although I would never actually go to see the two of them in a million years. Not on a bet. Not even for a large sum of money. There are some betrayals that should never be forgiven.

Suddenly there was a loud mechanical shrieking sound
, and I jumped out of my chair. It was the kitchen smoke detector. “Oh, crud!” I had let the bacon burn. I dashed for the stove as Mom hurriedly opened the kitchen windows.

Once I’d cleaned up from my half-burnt meal, I headed upstairs to make the phone call I really didn’t want to make. I’d given up trying to have a relationship with my dad years ago, but if I was going to follow through with sneaking off to Budapest, I had to make my lie look as real as possible. This included phone records. It occurred to me as I dialed that if I was killed as retribution for Viktor’s death then my dad and Tammy would end up being the prime suspects in my disappearance. I was pretty sure the Bishops wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave a corpse behind. It was gallows humor, but it made me smirk a little bit thinking about the police knocking on my dad’s door.

“Hello?”
A snippy female voice caught the phone on the second ring.

“Hi, Tammy. Is my dad around?” I asked, trying to sound as pleasant as I could muster.

“Who is this?” she demanded, her voice carrying the growl of mistrust. I guess when you get a guy by stealing him from his wife, you’re always a little suspicious that someone else might be trying to do the same thing.

“It’s Aurora,” I told her. How many people called up and asked to speak to Dad? There was just me, as far as I knew.

“Hold on.” There was a muffled conversation that I couldn’t hear clearly, but a few words leaked through including “why” plus “she” and “not.” When Tammy got back on the phone, she said, “He’s not here right now.”

I didn’t know if he was refusing to talk to me or if she was refusing to let him talk to me. It really didn’t matter. I pushed forward with, “Tammy, I
could hear him talking. Just put my dad on the phone, please.”

There was a bit of rustling and then, “Hello, sweetheart, it’s your father,” in a very forced voice.

I wanted to say, “No duh. I’m the one that called you,” or something like that, but instead I said, “Hi, Dad.”

“How are you?” he asked, but before I could reply he added, “Is everything al
l right? Why are you calling?”

“Everything’s fine,” I assured him. I couldn’t blame him for being a little alarmed. I couldn’t remember the last time we spoke. “I just wanted to see how you are doing.”

To be honest, I really didn’t care how he was doing. I was just trying to fill up time on the phone so that the call would last a few minutes. He yammered something about his work and his wife and some vacation they went on to the Bahamas. I found it very interesting that he constantly fought paying child support because he claimed he was too poor, but a trip to some tropical island was not a problem.

After he’d talk
ed at me for a few minutes, I interrupted him with, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving this year?”

“Not much. Probably the same as last year,” he said, not yet suspicious of what I had planned. “Tammy doesn’t really like touching dead meat.”

I decided not to ask what he meant by
dead meat
and just forged ahead with, “So I know it’s last minute, but I was thinking maybe I could drive down and spend Thanksgiving with you this year.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. I knew I’d blindsided him
, so I gave him a few seconds to absorb my proposal. I could hear Tammy’s sharp voice in the background demanding, “What does she want?”

My dad’s voice became muffled. I assumed because he was clamping a hand over the receiver. “She wants to come in for Thanksgiving.”

“What?” I could hear the outrage in Tammy’s voice. Even though they had been together for ten years, she obviously still felt threatened by me and my mom.

“Um. Sweetie?” My dad came back on the line. “Thanksgiving’s Thursday.”

“Why don’t I give you a little time to think about it,” I said hurriedly. “I mean, I did just spring the idea on you.” I wanted a reason to call back so phone records would show that we’d had more than one conversation if things didn’t go my way in Budapest. “Bye, Dad.” I hung up before he could say anything else.

For some reason
, my hands were trembling. I couldn’t decide if it was from realizing how very little my dad loved me or from lying so that I could sneak off to Europe to face some crazed vampire inquest. Probably a little bit of both.

There was a gentle tapping at my door. “Aurora?” Mom poked her head in. “I was thinking about going to visit your Grandma Gibson. If you want to go with me
, we can grab some dinner afterward.”