Heart of the Vampire (Vanderlind Castle) (5 page)

Chapter 8

I really wasn’t in the mood to visit my great grandmother in the old age home. That sounds a bit harsh, but it was never as simple as dropping by for a nice chat over lemonade. Grandma Gibson was in her nineties and suffered from dementia. She rarely recognized me as Aurora and frequently spoke to me as if I was Colette, her long-lost sister and Jessie’s long-lost love.

It is creepy being mistaken for a dead girl. It’s even creepier when you supposedly look like her and frequently have dreams that are alarmingly close to what were probably Colette’s memories. With all that said, it wasn’t right to leave my poor great grandma to sit by herself day after day just because she freaked me out a little. I knew I’d want company once I got old. If I was lucky enough to grow old and not end up a morality tale for girls
who get involved with vampires.

I agreed to go, of course. I felt bad enough about lying to my mother as it was. The least I could do was spend a little time with her. I got cleaned up and we headed over to the Ashtabula Home for Elder Care. As usual, Grandma Gibson wasn’t in the common area playing bingo with the other residen
ts; she was in her room, seated at a small table with a deck of cards laid out before her in neat rows in a never-ending game of solitaire. It was probably never ending because she rarely touched the cards, just spent a lot of time staring at them, lost in thought.

“Hello, Gram Gram,” Mom said, forcing her voice to sound cheerful as we entered the room. It was always the most tense at that exact moment when visit
ing, when we didn’t know what kind of day Grandma was having but were still hopeful.

“Who is it
?” Grandma Gibson looked up at us, squinting and blinking.

“It’s me, your granddaughter, Helen. And your great granddaughter, Aurora.”

Grandma broke into a wide smile and lifted her arms toward us. “Helen! How nice of you to come see me.” Her eyes shifted in my direction, and she lifted one of her hands toward me in greeting. “Aurora! Come give me a kiss. Oh, you always remind me of my dear Lettie so much.”

I could feel Mom let out a breath of air she had been holding
, and I realized as I crossed the room that I had been unconsciously doing the same. Grandma Gibson was having a good day. It was going to be a good visit.

“What have you been up to, Grams?” Mom asked as we both took a seat, Mom at the table with Grandma, me on the bed because there wasn’t another chair. “Have you made friends with any of the other residents yet?” she asked. Mom always hoped for this, but so far she wasn’t having any luck.

“Oh, you know me,” Grandma Gibson replied. “I like to keep to myself and my cards.” She tapped the cards laid out in front of her. It might have been my imagination, but I thought she shot a look in my direction.

There was a few more minutes of light conversation
, and then Grandma shivered. “It’s chilly in here,” she said. “Helen, would you be a dear and find Gerald? He’s an orderly here, and I believe he has my blue sweater.”

“I can do it,” I said, popping up off the bed, eager to do something useful.

“No, let your mom do it,” Grandma Gibson said to me. “That way we have a few minutes to talk.”

“Sure thing, Grams,” Mom said, getting to her feet and heading out of the room.

As soon as she was gone, Grandma turned to me, her face taking on more of a shrewd expression. “Come sit near me,” she said, indicating the chair Mom had just vacated.

“Okay,” I said, feeling guilty for no obvious reason.

“You’re planning a trip soon?” Grandma asked, but it came out more like a statement than a question.

I glanced over my shoulder in the direction that my mother had just departed. There was no way she’d told about Thanksgiving without me knowing. I’d been in the room with them the entire time.

“Um, yeah,” I stuttered. “Maybe. I might go see my dad over Thanksgiving.”

Grandma clucked her tongue and moved around some of the cards that were in the neat rows laid out before her. “You should always tell me the truth, Aurora. There’s no reason to lie to me.”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure if I’m going yet,” I told her. “I mean, Mom and I have talked about it, but Dad didn’t sound too excited when I called him.”

“Oh?” she said with a sigh. She looked directly into my face, her expression a little sad. Or maybe just disappointed. “I didn’t know you needed a passport to go to Lexington.”

“You don’t,” I said quickly. “I mean, you don’t need one to go anywhere in the United States. I mean, as an American.”

Nodding toward the small stack of cards that hadn’t been laid out on the table yet, she asked, “Will you cut the cards for me?”

“Okay.” I pinched about half the pile between my fingers and put them next to the original stack, adding the rest on top afterward.

Grandma snatched up the top card and gave it a hard look. “People always underestimate the old,” she said, letting her eyes drift over the rest of the cards, trying to decide where to place the one she was holding. “Especially once they think your brain has started to go.” She tapped at her temple with a finger that trembled slightly. “But I see things more clearly now than I ever did in my youth. The staff here,” she waved her hand in the air to indicate the care facility, “they call it dementia. But they don’t understand.” Grandma looked into my face, her eyes steady and the palest of blue. “I can see into the past,” she said. “Not just memories. I can see it. I can access parts of my brain that I never could before.”

“I believe you,” was all I could think to say. She was looking at me so intensely it was impossible to say anything else.

“And that’s not all. At least not for me.” Grandma placed the card, the king of hearts, down on the longest stack, completing a run of ace through king. “Some people here are happy to just live inside their memories. To relive a few good days over and over again. But for me
, it isn’t that easy.” She slid the suit of cards into a pile and squared them off on the top of the table. “Because you can live the bad days over and over again, too,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice. I knew right away she was thinking of the day her sister disappeared.

“Well, I wasn’t going to go along with that nonsense,” Grandma Gibson said, clearing her throat. “I decided if I could see into the past then I could probably see into the future if I tried hard enough.” She raised her chin, giving me a triumphant look. “And I can.”

This statement caught me off guard. “You can what?” I asked.

“I can see into the future.”

“Um. Okay, Grandma.” I had thought she was having a good day but obviously not.

“You don’t believe me?” She gave me sharp look. “Then how did I know you were planning a trip?”

“I uh... I’m not sure. Maybe my mom told you, and you just don’t remember.”

“When did she tell me?” Grandma was not backing down.

“I don’t know,” I had to admit.

“Aurora, you might think I’m crazy, but I’m asking you, as your great grandmother, don’t go,” she said in a hushed voice, reaching out and clutching my hand. “You don’t have to go.”

“Come on, Grams. It’s just Lexington. I’ll be all right.”

Grandma shook her head. “That’s what you told your mother, but I know the truth.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to pull my hand away from her grasp.

“I’ve seen it,” she said, her eyes wide as saucers. She rose slightly from her chair, but it wasn’t like she was trying to stand. It was almost like she was levitating. All the while staring at the tabletop, but staring at nothing. It was like she was looking into a giant void. “You go where tongueless lions guard the water. And you plan to go with that creature. The one that killed Colette!”

“He did not!” The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them.

“A-ha!” she exclaimed, dropping back into her chair. By breaking
out of her trance she released my hand so abruptly that I almost toppled over. “So, you do know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t
,” I insisted. “I don’t know anything about tongueless lions.”

“Hey. What’s going on?” Mom asked as she entered the room.

“Aurora told me she was thinking of visiting her dad for Thanksgiving,” Grandma Gibson said, shooting me a dark look. “And I was telling her that I thought it was a bad idea.”

Well, I’m sorry it upset you,” Mom said, walking over and placing a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder to calm her. “But it is her choice. I mean, Barry is her dad.”

“I just think someone might get hurt,” Grandma said in a sulky voice.

“I love you
, Grams, but I won’t get hurt,” Mom said. “You can’t think that Barry can hurt me now.”

Grandma Gibson reached up and squeezed Mom’s hand. “I know you’re strong, dear,” she said. “I’m more worried about Aurora.”

Chapter 9

It was amazing how frequently my great grandmother freaked me out. You wouldn’t think a woman in her nineties would be so good at it, but she definitely had a talent. Mom knew something was wrong when we went to dinner, but she held back from grilling me, which I appreciated. About halfway through our meal at Minerva’s Family Restaurant, she did finally crack a little with, “Aurora, I’m trying not to pry, but did your father give you any kind of answer about Thanksgiving?”

“He’s thinking about it,” I told her, which was almost the truth. “He needs to talk to Tammy, but it sounds like he might say yes.” Mom nodded and went back to her steak.

While Mom was getting the check, I pulled out my phone, something that I hadn’t bothered to do all day. There were two calls from Fred, which I hadn’t known about because I had the ringer turned off. No messages, but he had sent a text. “Hey, beautiful. Where are you?”

I felt my stomach drop. I hadn’t thought of Fred once in the last twenty-four hours. That was not the mark of a good girlfriend. This thought made me feel even worse. I was Fred’s girlfriend. And I had been kissing another boy.

The fact that the boy was actually an almost
-hundred-year-old vampire that I might have been in love with in a past life was beside the point. Cheating was cheating. And I wasn’t the kind of girl who cheated, not even on a guy I wasn’t crazy about. I quickly wrote him back, “Visiting Grandma Gibson in the old folks home. Fun.” Then, after a few seconds hesitation, I added, “I think we need to talk,” before hitting send. A few more seconds after that I regretted having included the word
Fun
in my text. I didn’t want to sound callous.

Mom suggested a movie after our meal, but I told her I had homework to do so that I would be at my bedroom window by nine o’clock, the time Jessie would more than likely make his appearance. As it was
, I barely had time to get cleaned up for his arrival. I hadn’t showered earlier in the day. I was very jittery as I fixed my hair. Some girls try to fluff their hair to make it fuller as they blow it dry. If I tried that, it would look like I was wearing a cone of cotton candy on my head. All my hairstyling attempts were directed toward de-volumizing my bumper crop of dark curls.

Grandma Gibson’s words plagued me. She’d said a lot of scary things to me in the past while hallucinating that I was her sister, Colette, but this was different. This was some freaky, fortune-telling stuff. Could she really see into the future? My first instinct was
no, of course not
. But if you’d asked me three months ago if vampires existed, I would have said the same thing.

I was pretty spun that Grandma said Jessie had killed Colette. He didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have. Sure, he was a vampire
, and they drank human blood to stay alive, but he loved her. There was no doubt in my mind that he loved her. I could more see him taking his own life rather than harming someone he loved so dearly.

But
, a small part of my mind whispered,
there are the dreams
. How could I explain those? I’d had some recurring nightmares from childhood, the potential past-life memories kind. There was one terrifying dream where I was running through the woods, being pursued by a hungry creature that wasn’t completely human. Usually I never saw the creature, not clearly. But lately I saw it, right before it lunged to tear out my throat, and in those dreams, it was Jessie.

Nine o’clock on the dot, Jessie came floating out of the sky—falling like a snowflake, drifting onto the roof of our porch, his long coat billowing around him. I was already at the window, fully realizing I looked too eager, but I loved watching him fly.

“Hello,” he said, his perfect lips parting into a smile that always caused my heart to hammer wildly in my chest. He closed the gap between us in three steps and settled himself on the roof so we could speak eye to eye. “Did you have a good day? Did the sun shine?”

“Not really,” I told him. “Well, I mean, there was a little sun in the afternoon, but I didn’t exactly have a good day.” After a moment, I added, “It wasn’t exactly a terrible day or anything, but... I don’t know. We went to see Grandma Gibson, and it was just weird.”

“Ah, Lily,” Jessie nodded. He knew both Colette and Lily from a brief time when, as girls, they were
both maids at the Vanderlind Castle, back when the Vanderlind family first moved to the United States. That’s how Colette and Jessie met. “She still struggles with...?” he fumbled for the right words, but settled for touching his temple with his fingertips.

“You could say that.” I nodded
then took a deep breath before adding, “It’s taken kind of a new twist from mistaking me for Colette.”

“What kind of twist?” Jessie looked intensely interested. I could have easily gotten lost staring into his beautiful gray eyes and just forgot
ten all about my crazy great grandmother.

“She thinks she can see the future. She told me not to go to Budapest,” I blurted.

“You told her about Budapest?” Jessie jerked back, a little in surprise.

“No,” I assured him. “That’s the really weird thing. I didn’t tell her anything at all. She somehow already knew. I tried to play it off like I was going to see my father, but she saw through that. She didn’t exactly know where I was going, but she knew I was planning to go somewhere with you.”

“Hmmm...” Jessie’s perfect lips made a straight line. “What else did she say?”

I looked down. “Nothing.”

“Aurora?” Jessie said in a voice that let me know he also saw through me.

“She said you killed Colette,” I said in a small voice.

Jessie nodded grimly. “She’s right, you know.”

“What?” I gasped, my heart immediately in my throat.

“In a way, I did. Not directly, but it’s never a good thing for a human to become involved with a vampire. Humans are too fragile. It never ends well.”

Shivers ran straight up my spine. “Don’t say that.”

He shrugged morosely. “It’s true.”

We sat there for a few minutes, Jessie lost in his thoughts, me wondering about his thoughts. Finally
, I broke the silence with, “Do you want to hear about my plan for getting to Budapest?”

“Yes,” he said, looking up, his mood brightening.

“It’s pretty simple. I just tell my mom that I’m spending Thanksgiving with my dad in Lexington.”

Jessie frowned. “Isn’t your American Thanksgiving on Thursday?”

“Yeah, but it’s either that or wait until Christmas vacation,” I told him. “Do you think the Bishops will wait that long?”

“No.” Jessie was adamant. “They would take that long of a delay as an insult.”

“Then I guess we don’t have a choice. I mean, if there are still flights available.” I knew last minute fares were going to be outrageous, but there might actually just not be any empty seats.

“Won’
t your mom figure out that you’re lying about visiting your dad? I mean, how is that going to work?” Jessie wanted to know.

“It’ll work,” I assured him. “My mom won’t speak to my dad unless it’s through a lawyer. As long as I play it right, she’ll trust me to arrange everything. If she wants to talk to me while I’m away, she’ll call me on my cell. The only reason she’d call him is if...” I ran out of words.

“If you don’t ever come home,” Jessie filled in for me.

I nodded. “Things are pretty bad between them, so it kind of sucked telling her I wanted to do Thanksgiving with Dad. I know I probably really hurt her, but it’s the best cover story I could think of with so little time.”

Jessie cocked his head to one side, listening. “She’s crying,” he said. “In her bedroom. Not too loudly, but there are a few sobs.”

“Oh
, God.” My heart clenched in my chest. “My mom is so the last person on this planet I would ever want to hurt.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jessie said, reaching out and squeezing me on the arm. “If there was any other way to make this go away, I would. But Ilona showing up last night made it abundantly clear that we have to get a favorable ruling from the Bishops.”

“And what if we don’t?” I asked. It was, after all, a strong possibility.

Jessie filled his lungs with air and then let it out slowly. “Then we run
, and I spend the rest of my life protecting you.”

I couldn’t suppress the words that sprang to my lips. “You mean the rest of my life.”

Jessie looked at me, his gray eyes deep as the night. “Aurora, if a vampire gets to you, it’s only because he’s already killed me.”

Gulping, I whispered, “Do you really think it’s that bad?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a heavy shrug. “But until we get to Budapest, you need to be very careful at night. I don’t want you going out after sundown unless you’re with a large group of people or I am at your side.”

“Okay
.” I nodded. It wasn’t that difficult of a promise to keep. After Ilona, I pretty much didn’t want to go out at night ever again.

“And what about your father?” Jessie asked. “What if he agrees to have you for a visit? How will you get out of it?”

“No,” I assured him. “He’d never go for it. He doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t even want to pay for child support. Whenever I do speak to him, he always manages to work into the conversation how he’s broke and can’t afford it.”

My words made Jessie flinch a little. “I’m sorry your father’s priorities are so screwed up,” he said, giving my arm a squeeze.

“Yeah, me, too,” I told him. “But to be honest with you, I’m pretty used to it.”

We sat in silence for a moment, but I could tell Jessie’s brain was running a mile a minute. “I’ll contact the Bishops and tell them
that we’ll be there as soon as humanly possible,” Jessie said. “They know you must take a plane. I’ll also book the tickets and get you a passport. Do you think things will work out with your father? I mean, as far as your mom believing you’re going to visit him?”

“I think so,” I said, feeling a twinge in my heart knowing I’d made my mother cry. She would never say anything to stop me, of course.
Not in a million years. She wasn’t the type of parent to prioritize her own feelings over what she thought was healthy for me, but still... I felt like a jerk. “I’ll call my dad again tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll say no, but at least there will be the phone records if anyone checks. I’ll have to take my car. My mom’s expecting me to drive down there, so I guess I can just park it at the airport. I’ve already asked to take Wednesday off of school to buy us some extra time, and I think my mom will go for it.”

“That’s good.” Jessie nodded his approval. “I’ll get you a flight out of Cleveland. That’s the closest
big airport. How early do you think you can get there on Wednesday?”

“I don’t know.” I hadn’t really thought about it. “Not super early
. My mom will find it suspicious if I’m too eager to see my dad,” I told him. “But, Jessie. Last minute flights are going to cost a fortune.”

“Don’t worry about paying for anything,” Jessie assured me. “I’ll handle it, of course.”

“You don’t have to,” I told him. Although I really couldn’t think of any way I could afford a flight to Europe on the wages I earned at Cup of Joe’s.

“I insist.” His voice was so firm that I didn’t resist any further.

“Thank you,” I said very softly, leaning a little closer. He was just so generous and kind.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” Jessie asked after clearing his throat.

“School, I guess. Why?”

“Can you skip Monday and Tuesday?” he wanted to know.

“Absolutely not.” Tiburon high was not very lenient on truancy. I would be caught almost immediately. I was already pushing my luck to take Wednesday off even with my mom’s permission.

“Do you have to work in the evening?”

“No.” I shook my head, wondering if I’d ever told Jessie about my part-time job. “But I’ll have to reschedule the weekend.” Joe was going to be furious.

“Good. Then I need you to come to see me at sunset. But you have to make sure you arrive before the sun goes down
just to be safe.” He put emphasis on the word
before
.

“See you where?” I was confused.

“My home,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “We have a lot to go over before we fly.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, somewhat flabbergasted. “You want me to come see you at the castle?”

He gave me a playful smile. “Precisely.”

Jessie and his family lived in a large European castle that they’d had moved brick by brick to America from Hungary right before Hitler started making serious trouble in Europe. We locals were never invited inside the castle, only to the annual garden party the Vanderlinds hosted to keep curiosity down to a minimum. Except for Blossom and me. We’d snuck into the castle during an exclusive party, which was meant only for vampires and their
human companions. For better or for worse, that’s how I got tangled up with Jessie in the first place.