Sixteen Going on Undead (13 page)

* * * *

Whatever was in that “vitamin” my father gave me must have worked because at one in the morning, I was wide awake, all weakness gone. I began to wonder if I was fully vampire now. But I found my old heart monitor when I was nosing around in my dad’s den, and it confirmed my heart was still beating. I had used that thing constantly when I was on an exercise kick about three months ago. That hadn’t lasted long because Ronnie was skinny as hell, and he was always tempting me with donuts.

Continuing to search my dad’s desk for other items I might have left over here, I booted up the computer. When the computer finally came up, I noticed my dad had installed Yahoo messenger. I knew about it from chatting with my friends online, creating a
Myspace
page and a
Facebook
account, even though I couldn’t think of what to say on them half the time. I did shout outs like once a week, but that was it, and it was always at somebody else’s house or the library.

I double clicked the browser icon and waited. While I did, a message box popped up. I was going to close it since they probably thought it was my dad, but I stopped cold when I saw the name. Nina Knowles.

“What the hell?”

My throat went dry, and weakness shot throughout my body. Not from lack of blood, but from fear. This was big, and I knew it. “What is Mrs. Knowles doing on my dad’s instant messenger friends’ list?”

Shaking from head to toe, I read the message. “Is she there now? Did you get any information out of her?”

She? Was she talking about me? My teeth chattered. I was going to throw up. There was no reason in hell my father should be talking to that old lady that lived next door to me. No reason at all. So what excuse could he give? What were they up to?

I curved my fingers over the keyboard thinking about what I could say to get her talking, get her to tell me more about what information my dad wanted to get out of me, and what they intended to do about it. But I was so shocked and scared, I couldn’t think of what to say.

“What are you doing, Tanesha.”

I screamed and jumped, knocked over my chair, and fell on the floor face down. My dad crossed the room, and instead of helping me up, he first jabbed a finger in the power button to shut off the computer. When he turned to offer me a hand up I shrank away. The man I loved more than anybody, the person I had figured would always take care of me, was all of a sudden someone I didn’t know. I didn’t trust him.

“What’s up, Dad?” I demanded. “That was Mrs. Knowles, my neighbor. What’s she doing
IMing
you?”

He was going to lie. I saw the split second hesitation. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it before this weird junk started happening to me. Now, I seemed to zoom in on eye shifts, muscle twitches, and whatever else was an indicator that the person was about to make up a load of crap.

“There’s more than one Knowles in the world, Tanesha. I know a lot of people, being in my line of work.”

I shook my head. “I’m not buying it. Nina Knowles. That’s what it said. I know that’s Mrs. Knowles’ first name because our dumb behind mailman mixes up the mail all the time, and we get hers. You’re telling me
that’s
a coincidence, that you know someone with the same first and last name?” Before he could get a word out, I continued. “Who also asked you if
she
was here and if you got any information out of
her
? So since it was to you she was talking to and there’s no one else here, I’m guessing she’s referring to me.”

He grinned, crossed his arms, and sat on the edge of his desk. “You’re very clever, Tanesha, but what could I expect being my daughter.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

His eyes narrowed. I swallowed and tried to keep my eyes locked on his, but I couldn’t. When he wanted to, my dad intimidated me, and he knew it. “Let’s just pretend you didn’t see what you saw for your own good.”

All kinds of warning bells went off in my head. Did he really think I was going to let it go? Mrs. Knowles’ weird tail was out in the park in the middle of the night. I started backing away from my dad, trying to make it to the door.

Mrs. Knowles had been talking to someone I couldn’t see in the grocery store the other day, and then the next thing you know my dad shows up when he hadn’t ever come to see me outside of his normal every other weekend thing. And since he’d had a big case, even that had been slack for the last few months. Was he the one she had been talking to? Was Mrs. Knowles encouraging him to take me and question me? Why? What information could I possibly have that they could want?

Or maybe he wanted me dead too? Panic set in. I yanked the door open and ran out of the den.

“Tanesha! Come back here. I want to talk to you,” he called out, but I ignored him and kept going.

I half expected to feel his heavy hand drop on my shoulder to stop me from leaving, but he let me go, and soon I hit the street running. I didn’t stop until I was three blocks away, and the stitch in my side forced me to catch my breath. My throat burning and tears running down my face, I wobbled in the direction of the subway station, which ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in our city. I paid my fare and jumped on the train which rolled in minutes after I got there.

Huddled in my seat with my knees drawn up to my chest and my head resting on them, I let the events of the last couple of weeks run through my mind. I considered calling Ronnie since we talked about everything and everybody, but then I remembered he had been lying too. He had lied about what he and Mrs. Knowles had talked about when he ran into her that night at the park. If he could keep secrets from me, then I could keep them from him. I know that was childish, but so what. I wasn’t grown yet anyway, and I was feeling like a little girl right about then, like I needed my mother’s shoulder to cry on.

“Yeah right. I can’t tell her about this. She’d never believe me.” I moaned and complained to my dad even though he wasn’t there, and I laid out Ronnie too. It took me some time to realize I wasn’t alone in the car and that anybody hearing me would think I was psycho.

I looked up at the person across from me and shrieked. “Lorcan! When did you get here? Were you already on the train when I got on? I didn’t see you.”

He smirked, slouched down with his legs wide like guys always did, and peered at me with those beautiful blue-green eyes that made my insides turn to jelly. “I followed you to your dad’s apartment.”

My eyes widened. “You did? Why didn’t you come into my room like you did at my mother’s house? I have my own room at his place too.”

His blink seemed like slow motion. “Your protection was up.”

“My
protec
—” He had said something about that before, but I didn’t get it.

“Tell me why you ran away, risking your life out here so late.” He moved across to sit beside me and ran a thumb over the wet streaks on my face. “Why are you crying?”

Lorcan looked at the tears like they were a weird phenomenon that he’d never seen. His stare started to make me feel uncomfortable. I shoved his hand away. “Take a picture, why don’t you? Dang. You act like you’ve never seen tears.”

“Vampires can’t cry water.”

That surprised me. “What?”

“We cry blood.”

“Weird.”

He shrugged and glanced away. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Not.” I stood up and moved to the door for the next stop. Lorcan followed me and stopped directly behind me, close enough for me to feel the energy rolling off his body in place of actual human warmth. He rested his hands on my shoulders and waited with me. When he whispered in my ear, I shivered.

“We should go out.”

I swallowed. “Go out?”

“Go steady.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him, glancing up over my shoulder. “You did not just say going steady.” I laughed. “What era are you from?”

“I’m not that old,” he grumbled.

“If you say so, Grandpa.” The doors slid open, and I broke free from him and sprinted along the platform. A guard looked like he was about to say something to me, but I was up the stairs and out through the turnstile before he could form the words. While I ran, the night air whipped at my face, cooling it.

Lorcan zipped up from behind, grabbed me around the waist, and increased his speed. Before I knew what was happening we were streaking along the road, passing people and cars. From the blur and the darkness around us, I knew no one could pick up on what had just passed them. I tried to remember if ever in my life, I’d felt something move by in a blur like that, but I didn’t think so.

We didn’t slow down until we were near the lake, and then Lorcan let me walk on my own while he held my hand. Tingles ran through my hand to my arm and all over my body. This was unreal. I didn’t know how long it would last, if it would go past September when school started up, but I knew Lorcan was special. I wanted to know everything about him.

At a small pier, we stopped and sat down to remove our shoes before dipping our toes in the water. Lorcan laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“The myths about us.” He pointed to the water. “One of them talks about us being afraid of moving water or not being able to cross it. We are not that lame.” He threw his head back and looked up at the moon. “I like to think a group of bored nerds got together and thought up the ‘rules’ just to screw with everybody. Wherever we go, we get slapped with stereotypes.”

I snorted. “Stereotypes, huh? Dang, guess it’s not just a skin color thing.”

He lightly flicked my nose. I would have punched him, but he pulled me up on his lap and kissed me so hard and fast, I forgot what I was doing. My head was spinning it was so nice, but I was scared to let myself go. I pulled back and crawled off his lap.

“What’s wrong?”

I shrugged, not looking at him. “I don’t know you that well. I’m learning bits and pieces, but I’m not the kind of girl that’s going to jump on any boy that comes along. Got it?”

He raised his hands in defense and smiled, but I was sure there was something dark and dangerous in his eyes. Lorcan chose to be sweet to me. I had to remember what he was, even if his face did make me weak.

“Got it. What would you like to know?”

I caught a fingernail between my teeth and thought for a minute. “Well, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Not a one.”

“What did you do after you became a vampire? And what do you do now? I mean do you have a job, or do you do regular stuff like other teens do? Go to the mall, the movies, or just hang out?”

“I don’t know the last time I went to a movie. They don’t interest me that much. Real life is more exciting, especially when Blake, Adrianne, me, and a few others in our coven go grunt-hunting.”

Okay, that didn’t sound good. “Grunt-hunting?”

His eyes grew dark with his excitement. “Yeah, they’re what we call lower life beings. They can shape shift to look like regular people. They live probably as long as we do, but I don’t know how they’re made, whether they’re born into this word like humans or are turned like vampires. Most of them are evil, but some can be made into slaves if you know what to do to make them that way. When you hunt them, you have to be careful because they can use magic.”

“Are you for real?” I didn’t see any sign that he was lying, but how could he not be? Lower life shape shifters that could do magic. Come on, that had to be TV. “You’re kidding, right? What do they look like in their regular form?”