Mirror: Book One of the Valkanas Clan (3 page)

 
“What happened? Why can’t I move?”
And who the hell are you?
I started flipping through faces in my memory, trying to match one to the voice.

 
“You were attacked in the alley behind San Jose grill. I carried you down another alley before the cops could find you.” He said it like this was a tremendous favor, which is perhaps the reason I didn’t begin screaming—well, that, and the fact that I wasn’t actually frightened. I briefly tried to convince myself I probably should be, given that I was paralyzed in an alley and apparently alone with a man whose voice I only vaguely recognized, but nothing changed.

 
“Um, and the cops not finding me is a good thing because…?”

 
“Because you’re a vampire now.
That’s why you can’t move—temporarily, of course.”

 
I laughed nervously.

 
“You find this funny? That’s a new one,” he said, sliding his arms beneath me and lifting me up.

 
“No, I’m sorry, I’m just—I must have hit my head too hard because I thought you just said something about vampires.”

 
“Yes.” His voice grew softer. “That
thing
in the alley was also a vampire, a dying one, and he’d snapped your spine and drank most of your blood before I caught up. I had no choice but to turn you, and I had to do it fast, which is why we’re still outside where the sun can hurt you. I’m sorry. I would have run out sooner if I’d realized he wasn’t already dead. He is now, though—fully—if that’s any consolation.”

 
Before I could decide whether to feel guilty or delighted about that fact, a sudden wash of warmth and comfort eased me back into blackness.

 
The next time I awoke it was dark. I stretched my arms experimentally and discovered, to my delight, that they not only moved but did so pain free. Next I tried my legs. Good on that front, too. Bracing myself, I cautiously opened my eyes, waiting for that lancing pain to begin again.
Nothing.
I was about to yip with joy, always amazed at how good normalcy feels after being in pain—when I suddenly remembered what I’d been told.
A vampire?
What kind of kook had rescued me? And where was I now?

 
Out of habit, I slowly edged my feet over the side of the bed I was laying in and began feeling the nearby table for a lamp, before it occurred to me that I could see everything just fine by the lights coming in through the window. I took in the tidy room: double bed, blue blanket, gray carpet, wood dresser, bookcase, and a small chair with my purse resting on it. No lamps.
Definitely not any kind of hospital room.

 
“I see you’re up again”

 
I spun around. Tom? What the hell was he doing here? Then it clicked—his voice was the same voice from this afternoon.
Damnit
.
He hadn’t seemed like a lunatic in class, not even with that weird stint in the parking lot, but I must have misjudged him. Now I had to figure out how to get out of here without triggering his delusions—and then how to get him out of my class without incurring any disciplinary hearings. I did
not
want to have to explain this one to Dr.
Vente
. I flashed to a picture of him, tapping his pen on his desk and raising his eyebrows as I tried to explain. He’d probably blame my student’s delusions on me. Ugh.

 
“Yes, but I really need to get home,” I said. “Thanks so much for, uh, looking after me.”

 
“You still don’t believe me.”

 
“I’m sorry?”

 
“About being a vamp,” he
said,
his voice cool and mocking. It ticked me off, and an unfamiliar rush of anger washed through me. It felt so good I found myself briefly wondering why I'd always tried so hard never to get angry at anyone.

 
“I’m still your instructor, rescue or no, so I would strongly advise you—”

 
“You’re not actually going to leave; you need to rest.” He said it confidently, like it was a factual statement about the weather, and for a split second I felt myself lean back toward the bed. And then I shook myself, baffled and now even angrier, and glared at him.

“You would be wise to go online and drop my class tonight, Tom, or else I might be more inclined to see this as a kidnapping than a rescue.”

 
I grabbed my bag and stalked out the front door. Outside, I was relieved to find that I was down in lower Clifton, an easy quarter mile walk from my apartment. I glanced back only once, to make sure Tom wasn’t following me, and saw him standing on the curb, watching me with a puzzled look on his face.

 
Despite the humidity that coated me in a damp film, the walk was invigorating. I’d never noticed the soft susurrus of crickets, or the occasional hoot of an owl, when walking along these mostly residential streets before, but I did tonight. By the time I got home, I’d convinced myself I didn’t really need to head to the hospital, and realizing my car was likely still at the restaurant seven miles away only confirmed that I was better off just assessing things tomorrow, and deciding then whether or not to visit a doctor.

 
The next morning, however, my migraine returned, and I found myself grateful for the blackout drapes my sunrise-hating ex-boyfriend had put up in my bedroom. I set up my laptop on my bed, trying to ignore the stabbing pains that had been triggered by just a few seconds in my too-bright living room retrieving it. Fortunately, they faded by the time I’d finished the first email from a student asking whether the homework had changed since I hadn’t shown up for class. Then an entirely different kind of headache overcame me as I read my other emails: a panicky-sounding message from Ava and a chilly inquiry about my well-being from the department secretary, Alma. She’d apparently fielded one too many calls from my confused students and decided to remind me of my appointment with Dr.
Vente
at ten in clipped tones that made her disapproval of me all too clear.

 
I knew I should call Ava immediately, but I wasn’t up to it, so I just sent her an email saying I was fine and would explain later. Then I composed a brief apology to Alma for not following the usual class cancellation procedures yesterday, explaining that tonight’s class would need to be cancelled too and I'd need to have my meeting over the phone. I cringed as I did this, knowing Dr.
Vente
wouldn't be happy at the change, but I simply could not imagine facing anyone in person today, students or colleagues. Especially when going on campus would mean holding a discussion about vampire fiction in a class where one student actually believed he
was
a vampire—and that he’d made me one, too. Maybe I should reassign
Moby Dick
after all.

It took about an hour to finish answering all my Wednesday students' emailed questions and to post the announcement and revised syllabus for my Thursday class. I glanced at my watch: just a few minutes until ten.

One perk of talking to the department chair over the phone would be avoiding his usual appointment procedure. Like all petty dictators, he was inordinately fond of messing with the minds of his underlings. One of his favorite tactics was to leave us sitting out in the anteroom to his office, where the student workers made copies and the various administrative assistants might glare at us for being in their way as they tried to get their work done.

The last time I'd had an appointment with him, I'd sat there smiling awkwardly at them for a few minutes. Eventually I'd given up and simply opted to stare at the notebook I’d pulled onto my lap instead, as if I’d recorded some of the more essential secrets of the universe in my cramped handwriting and needed to study them.

The notebook hadn't been just a prop, either. Dr.
Vente
was the type who expected you to take notes at every meeting, whether it was one-on-one or campus-wide. As a pre-
tenure
professor I didn’t feel comfortable practicing some of the milder revolts my older colleagues engaged in, like suddenly discovering all their pens had run dry simultaneously. They were also more willing to ignore the disdainful looks he gave anyone who dared to address him by his first name, Myron, and I wanted to join them in their resistance.
Just as soon as I got tenure.

At ten sharp I picked up my phone and dialed Alma, to see if Dr.
Vente
was available. She put me on hold for a few minutes. I guess meeting over the phone didn't change things that much after all. I flipped my phone into speaker mode and laid it on my desk, the tinny sound of phone-filtered soft jazz, as played by
UofL’s
music students, filling my room.

“Ah, Dr. Wilson.
Thank you for calling, though I admit I'd hoped to see you in person. Are you all right? Alma said you were too ill to attend class yesterday or today.”

“Yes, um, actually I'm not sick, I just had a rather bad accident,” I said.

“I'm sorry to hear that” he murmured, though his tone clearly said
I could not care less if I tried
. “I wanted to meet so we could discuss the rather unconventional turn your class conversation took Tuesday night.”

“Huh?” It never took long for a conversation with him to make me feel more like I was a freshman in one of his classes than a fellow professor.

“I’m referring to the conversation that was ostensibly about the literary classic
Frankenstein
devolving into a conversation about sexy supernatural creatures, and from there into a lampoon of the literary classics and the offer to have your students read some piece of pop culture junk instead.”

My jaw hung open. Fortunately, my cat ensured there were no flies to catch in my apartment, or I might have gotten a mouthful before I finally realized what I was doing and slowly closed my mouth. How the hell did he end up with such a distorted version of what had actually happened—and how had he heard anything at all so quickly?

“Dr. Wilson,” he continued, “
Moby Dick
is one of our greatest literary treasures, and while I've grown used to hearing it bemoaned by some of our students, I never would have thought a literature professor would deny its splendor.”

His grating arrogance finally returned my ability to speak.

“You're joking, right? Are we talking about the same book—the one that never saw an editor's touch and is filled with whole chapters on whale blubber and knot tying? Because, while it certainly has its merits, I'm not the only one of my colleagues to deny its 'splendor,'” I snapped, and then immediately wondered why I was getting angry at someone who would have a large say in deciding whether or not I kept my job.

I sank back into my seat, mortified. I heard him shift in his chair, as if he were leaning forward. Somehow, I could even tell that a smile had just slipped across his face, as if I could hear his lips widening. It disturbed me, and I tensed involuntarily.

“Alyson,” he said, and then paused. “Do you mind if I call you that?”

I nodded, out of surprise more than anything. He'd never addressed me by my first name before. Then I realized he couldn't see my acquiescence, but he continued anyway.

“I'm not as oblivious to the difficulties of teaching a book like
Moby Dick
as you might think. I wouldn't even mind if you chose another book from that era to teach in its stead—say
Pride and Prejudice
, perhaps?” He paused again, apparently awaiting some kind of reaction from me. “But having our students read stories about supernatural creatures strolling through the modern world—well, surely you, of all our professors, can understand why that might be a bad idea?”

I stared blankly at the phone, still sitting on my table in front of me.

“We wouldn't want to encourage our students in having any, shall we say,
delusions
” he chuckled as if he'd just made a rather clever joke, “about the actual existence of the supernatural, would we?”

I dropped back in my chair, stunned. Could he possibly be referring to Tom, to yesterday? But there was no way for him to know any of that, was there?

“Dr.
Vente
,” I stumbled, brain racing, “I promise you I have never done anything to encourage my students in believing that the supernatural was anything other than fiction, nor would I ever—”