Never Bite a Boy on the First Date (6 page)

I
f I’d
had
a heartbeat, it would have skidded to a stop.

He was standing in the doorway of a classroom, his hands clasped behind his back. The moonlight dappled the floor behind him, hiding his face in shadow. All I could see was his long, lean outline.

I was pretty sure he was staring at me.

A long moment passed. He didn’t move. I didn’t move. Oh, I
thought
about moving. I thought about leaping right out that broken window. I figured the fall wouldn’t hurt me too badly, and then I could run all the way home.

But he probably had seen my face already, so it would be a bad idea to do anything vampire-y right now—like, say, survive a three-story fall.

Anyway, I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I was way too freaking scared. He just
stood
there. He had this eerie stillness about him that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t even hear him breathing or fidgeting or anything. The hallway was completely silent. Just me and a sinister figure in the dark.

Kira, you’re a vampire,
I told myself.
He should be scared of
you.
What’s he going to do to you? Is it worse than being locked in a coffin and fed through a feeding tube for a hundred years?

But the other half of my brain was merrily reminding me that criminals often return to the scene of the crime, while gory pictures of Tex’s bleeding corpse flashed across my mental movie screen. Tex, who had been killed by a
vampire
.

My mind started racing again.
Do vampires kill other vampires? How would he do it? IS HE HIDING A STAKE BEHIND HIS BACK?

When he finally did move, I nearly leaped out of my skin. All he did was take a tiny step forward, but it startled me enough that I jumped backward, crashed into the lockers behind me, slipped on the floor, and fell over.

So much for the preternatural grace of vampires. I’d love to know when
that’s
finally going to kick in.

And then, all at once, he was right beside me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling next to me as I sat up. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Really?”
I said. “You’re just
naturally
that terrifying?”

Now that he was out in the hall, I could see his face, but that didn’t help because I’d never seen him before. He looked like he was my age, with coffee-colored skin and close-cropped, curly black hair and a dancer’s body, which I mention only because his shirt was open and I could see his abs above his jeans, and these were
definitely
abs worth mentioning.

I found myself thinking,
Wow, I
hope
he’s a vampire!
I mean, not that I knew anything about vampire-vampire dating, but it had to be less complicated than dating a human, right? Unless he was the killer vampire. Hot or not, I don’t date murderers.

“You startled me,” he said, with a hint of a smile. His voice matched his scent, sort of moody and layered, like he would have fit in perfectly
as a saxophone player in an underground 1920s jazz club.

“Uh, no,” I said. “
You
startled
me
.”

“I did,” he said. “I apologize.” The unspoken question hung in the air between us.
What the hell are you doing here?
I would have asked, but I was trying to come up with a good answer myself. Plus I was a little distracted by how perfectly shaped his eyes were. If Michelangelo and Rembrandt and the top casting directors in Hollywood all got together to design the perfect face, they’d probably start with this guy’s eyes. It was kind of impossible not to gaze dreamily into them.

“I’m Daniel,” he said.

“I’m Kira,” I said, although in my daze I nearly slipped and told him my real name, from back when I was a human. “Do you go to school here?”

And then he took my hands in his and helped me to my feet.

Wait, let me go over that one more time.

His long, elegant hands slid over mine, gripped my fingers gently, and lifted me up in such a smooth motion that I was standing before
I’d even had time to recover from the softness and strength of his hands.

Which is why I nearly missed his answer—but seriously, right then his hands seemed a lot more important than anything he could possibly say.

“I’m new. Tomorrow’s my first day,” he said, and he let go of my hands. Which was disappointing, but it sure seemed like he’d held them a moment longer than necessary…hadn’t he?

“Oh,” I said. “Tomorrow. Wow.” Yeah. There were many things about this situation that were short-circuiting my ability to form sentences.

“Yes,” he said. “Not quite the welcome I was expecting.” He made a small gesture toward the window, which reminded us both that we were standing in the midst of a murder scene in the middle of the night. We stared at each other again for a long moment.

I broke first. “Oh,” I said, like it had just occurred to me, “you must think it’s so weird that I’m here, don’t you?” Implied:
Because
I
think it’s pretty weird that
you’re
here
. I laughed nervously. “Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but I…needed a book from my locker.”

He cocked one elegant eyebrow at me. “A book?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Shakespeare.
Macbeth
. Very gloomy. Lots of mu—”
Don’t say murder!
“—umbling. Mumbling about…witches…and stuff. Have you read it?”
Oh, that was suave. Clever
and
romantic, all in one fell swoop
.

“A long time ago,” he said with a half smile.

“Well, we have a test tomorrow, and I have to finish reading it, so I thought I’d get it now.” I trailed off lamely, wondering how much he had seen of me climbing through the window and searching the floor.

“Oh,” he said. “Of course. I’d have thought they’d cancel any tests scheduled for tomorrow, but it’s always wise to be prepared.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me! Prepared.” For tests, yes. For strange, hot boys in moonlit hallways, not so much.

There was another pause. Two could play this little game. I lifted an eyebrow at
him
.

He laughed softly. “All right. I have a confession to make.”

Score! Murder solved!
Well, that was much easier than I’d expected. Wilhelm and Olympia
would be so proud. Assuming I made it out of here alive. Well, you know…“alive.”

“I heard about the murder,” Daniel said, gesturing again, “and I’m afraid I was curious. I thought I should know more about my new school. I like figuring things out myself…I guess you could say I’m an amateur detective.” He rubbed his head, looking convincingly sheepish. “Do you think I’m terribly strange now?”

Yes, but don’t worry, the “terribly hot” part makes up for it.
I couldn’t figure out whether he was lying. It sounded about as believable as my story—which is to say, not very.

“No,” I lied. “I bet lots of other students would have done it if they could have figured out how to get in. Um…how did you get in?”

“Through the boys’ locker room,” Daniel said, pointing down. “The lock was already broken, so I just walked in.”

HMMMMMMM.

Possibility one: Daniel was lying, and he’d broken the lock himself to get in, which he could easily do if he were a vampire.

Possibility two: Some other vampire, possibly of the murderous variety, had broken the
lock earlier this evening to come up here and revisit the crime scene, as I hear criminals do all the time.

Possibility three: That’s how Tex got in last night—as did the vampire who killed him.

“Isn’t that how you got in?” Daniel said innocently.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Of course. Lucky break for me.”

He glanced at my hands. “So…where’s the book?”

“I was just going to get it,” I said, trying to look all casual. He followed me down the hall and around the corner to my locker. I laughed awkwardly. “I guess I wanted to look at the crime scene, too.”

“A fellow investigator,” he said with that hint of a smile again.

I rummaged through my messy locker until I found
Macbeth
. The clang of the door closing echoed way too loudly along the empty hall. Daniel and I both went really quiet for a moment, as if he was also listening to be sure we were alone in the school.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. He led
the way to the nearest stairwell, and we padded softly down to the bottom floor. I noticed that he didn’t seem hesitant about where to go—he led the way straight through the last door, turned left, and headed right for the locker room. Either he had a good sense of direction, or he knew this school better than he was letting on.

I’d never been in a boys’ locker room before, not even when I was dating Zach, king of high school athletics back in Georgia. To put it politely, the smell was much…stronger…than in the girls’ locker room. Daniel chivalrously held the door open for me, so I had a chance to glance around when we first went in. I spotted a row of mirrors over the sinks, off in an alcove. Wouldn’t it be useful if I could spot Daniel in one of those…or not spot him, as the case may be—if, say, it turned out he had no reflection? But getting any closer would run the risk that he’d notice
my
lack of reflection, too.

I watched him as he wove through the benches. Was he avoiding the mirrors like I was? If he was, he was pretty casual about it. We made it to the door that led onto the football field, and I checked out the broken lock. It
looked like a super-strength job—as if someone had just grabbed the door and pulled, snapping the lock mechanism in half.

Outside, the clouds were clearing up, and rays of moonlight sliced across the football field in front of us. Daniel paused in an oval of silver light and looked down at me.

“It was nice to meet you, Kira,” he said.

“Yeah, you, too. Welcome to the school,” I added wryly. “It’s usually not quite this exciting. Um—I mean awful. Well, okay, it’s usually awful, but in a different, really boring way. Um, but I’m sure you’ll love it.”
Okay, stop talking now.

“I’m looking forward to it a lot more now that I’ve met you,” he said. A slow smile spread across his face. It was a sexy smile, a candles-and-black-lace smile—the polar opposite of Zach’s dopey
let’s do it in a closet
leer.

“See you tomorrow, then,” I said, smiling back.

He touched his forehead in a little salute and started to walk away across the football field.

“Daniel,” I called after he’d gone a couple of paces. He turned and looked at me, walking backward. “Did you find anything upstairs? I
mean—about the murder?”

He smiled the same smile again, but for some reason, this time it sent chills down my spine.

“Oh,” he said. “I have some theories.”

Then the moon went behind another cloud, and when it emerged again, Daniel was gone.

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