Thicker Than Water (The Briar Creek Vampires Book #2) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (20 page)

“Well, you kind of destroyed their family
anyway, didn’t you?” Lexi snapped. “I mean, you went on a date with
him the night you died. Did you think about how his wife would feel
about that or were you too busy flirting with him to even remember
that he was married?”

Eileen turned to look Lexi in the eyes, a
horrified look on her face. “Is that what Violet told you that
night? That I went on a date with Greg?”

Lexi nodded. “I know he’s married, but that’s
not even the point. We always told each other everything. I thought
that if you had a date, you would have told me about
it.”

Eileen sighed. “It wasn’t a date, and I don’t
know why your aunt lied to you about it. She had to have known that
you would find out that the mayor is married, as you said. The
reason Greg wanted to go out to dinner with me was to ask me for
your blood.”

“My blood?” Lexi squeaked, feeling her stomach
drop to her knees. Even though she had known that Greg was bad, she
didn’t expect him to do something like that. She thought that he
would do everything in private, without drawing any attention to
himself. “What did you tell him?”

“I said no, of course. You really needed to ask
that, Lexi? There was no way I was going to give him your
blood.”

“Why did he want my blood?” Lexi
asked.

“I’m sure you already know by now. His wife is
really sick with Wilkins’ Syndrome. Your blood would cure her. I
don’t know why he wouldn’t let her drink from Mary-Kate before she
turned eighteen, but whatever their reasoning was, I wasn’t going
to let him have yours. I told him that I was going to go get you
and that we were leaving immediately.” Eileen paused. “I can’t tell
you anymore than that right now because then I’ll definitely be
breaking the rules.”

“I hate rules. How long did you know that
Violet and Tommy are vampires?”

“I didn’t know until we got here. I saw all of
the bottles of sunscreen lotion in their bathroom, and that’s when
I knew.”

“What does the sunscreen lotion have to do with
anything?” Lexi asked. She remembered that Dan had asked her to get
him sunscreen one of the times that he had come over, and she had
noticed that there were seven bottles of sunscreen in the cabinet.
When she had gone into the medicine cabinet at the Lawrence’s
house, she had also seen a few bottles of sunscreen. She’d thought
it was weird both times because Pennsylvanian summers weren’t that
hot or that long.

“Vampires wear sunscreen to protect themselves
from the sun,” Eileen replied. “It’s a special type of sunscreen
that Dr. Stevens created, though. When your father’s skin was
exposed to the sun, he would get really bad burns. Before I found
out that he was a vampire, I just assumed that he had sensitive
skin because he was pretty fair, like you. The sunscreen lets a
vampire go out during the day because it deflects the UV rays from
their skin, but they still can’t stay out too long. After awhile,
they will just disintegrate like the way I know you have seen in
movies that you have watched with me.”

Lexi wondered why Gabe hadn’t mentioned
anything about vampire sunscreen to her before. Then again, they
hadn’t spent that much time together during the day or outdoors,
for that matter. She made a mental note to ask him to tell her more
about vampire culture when things got less crazy – if they ever got
less crazy.

“What I didn’t know about your aunt and uncle
was that their intentions were bad,” Eileen went on. “I didn’t
realize that Violet would be willing to sacrifice her own blood for
her selfish reasons.”

Lexi scoffed. “Blood doesn’t mean anything
unless it’s saving their lives. I don’t know what to
do.”

“You have to get out of here,” her mom replied.
“It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it. I have to go now,
Lexi.” Eileen brushed a hand against Lexi’s arm. Although she
wasn’t able to feel her hand the same way she would if her mother
were still human, Lexi could feel a cold, tingly sensation that
gave her goose bumps as she watched her mother’s hand pass through
her arm.

“Bye, mom,” Lexi replied, feeling sad. She
hated not knowing when she would see her mom again, but she was
still happy that she got to see her at all. Now, she just needed to
figure out how to get out of Violet’s house and somewhere people
wouldn’t be able to find her.

*

The party
store
was getting low on
Halloween costumes by the time Lexi got there. She had decided
earlier that day that she had to buy a costume if she wanted to go
to this festival, so she skipped her second period class to go to
the party store.

The only problem
was that
she was going to have
to find a way to keep her costume hidden from Violet. She had
seemed so opposed to Lexi going to the festival, which was probably
because her aunt had other plans for her on Halloween night – plans
that Lexi knew she had to do everything she could to
sabotage.

Even though Lexi had
found quite a few Halloween costumes that she would have loved to
wear, none of them would be able to hide who she was. In a ladybug
costume or a Playboy bunny costume, everyone would notice that it
was her and whoever was plotting against her would probably flock
right over to her. She had to find a Halloween costume that would
make her unrecognizable.

By the time she
had gone through each and every rack
in the in the entire party store a few dozen times,
she found a costume. It was a clown costume, with a big red nose, a
rainbow-colored wig, rainbow pin-striped pants, an embarrassing
collar, and face paint. If this costume didn’t hide her during the
Halloween festival, nothing would.

Lexi went to the cash
register to pay for the costume. The girl working the cashier
raised a pierced eyebrow. “Planning to start a clown business?” she
laughed.

“Umm, yeah,
so
mething like that,” Lexi
giggled uncomfortably, pulling her debit card out of her purse and
handing it to the girl, whose nametag said Jill. The girl ran the
card under her scanner.

Moments later, the
computer beeped loudly. Jill looked up at Lexi. “Your card isn’t
working.”

“What?” Lexi asked,
confused. The debit card she had given to the cashier was the one
that was linked to her bank account in Briar Creek. All of the
money that she made from work went into this checking account. She
wouldn’t get paid for a few weeks, but she knew that there was
enough cash to pay for a costume in her account. Why wouldn’t the
card work? It made no sense.

“Yeah, I can try
to put it through again,”
Jill
said, pressing a few buttons on the cash register. She stared at
the screen and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. The card still isn’t
working.”

“Dammit,” Lexi
muttered under her breath. What was she going to do now? This was
her one opportunity to get a Halloween costume. If her debit card
wasn’t working here, it probably wouldn’t let her
withdra
wal money from the ATM
either.

“Do
you still want the costume?” Jill
asked, snapping her gum.

Lexi took her card
back. “No, I guess not.” She unzipped her wallet and as she went to
put the card inside, she noticed a thick wad of cash that she was
sure hadn’t been there before. “Actually, never mind, I do want it,
after all.”

After she
pai
d for the costume, Lexi
stood on the sidewalk in front of the party store and looked in her
wallet again. She pulled out the cash, which was mostly twenty and
fifty dollar bills, and began counting it again.

There was over two
thousand dollars in her wallet. Lexi was pretty sure that the same
person who had been sending her anonymous notes was the one who had
put the cash in her wallet. She just wished she knew who it was so
that she could thank them. Now that she knew that her anonymous
friend was helping her, the nagging feeling that she had in the pit
of her stomach whenever she thought about the Halloween festival,
was gone. This person was obviously on her side. She just wondered
if she would ever find out who they were.

When Lexi got home, she
stuffed her Halloween costume inside of her duffle bag and set it
inside of her closet. She figured that if she left it in her duffle
bag, her aunt and uncle wouldn’t see it. Lexi thought they were
snoops, but there was nothing suspicious about her duffle bag so
they shouldn’t be tempted to look through it.

*

Lexi was lying in bed when she got a text
message from Gabe.
hey, lets go out
. Lexi stared at the text
message. How could Gabe expect her to go out this late at night
with him? There were people out to get her and, even though most of
them were anxiously awaiting Halloween, he had even admitted that
some might try sooner than that. Going out at night didn’t seem
like the best way to keep her safe. Besides that, how did he expect
her to get past Violet and Tommy while she was grounded? If they
knew she was going out, they’d probably suspect that it would be
with Gabe because she didn’t make that much effort for anyone else.
Hopefully, neither of them would caught.

Instead of going with her gut feeling, Lexi
texted back:
OK, I’ll be outside in 10 mins
. Jumping up from
her bed, she opened her closet door and quickly searched for
something to wear. She settled on a forest green three-quarter
sleeve sweater over a lacy white camisole. As she was changing into
it, she noticed that her duffle bag was unzipped. Glancing inside,
Lexi realized that the costume was gone.

Panicking, she searched the rest of the room.
It wasn’t on her dresser or under her bed. She lifted up the pile
of her dirty clothes that she had left balled up on the floor in
the corner of her room. It wasn’t there either.

The duffle bag was gone. Someone had definitely
moved it, and she was pretty sure that this had to be the doing of
Violet. She was the only one who would want to sabotage her
Halloween outing.

Sliding the window open, Lexi pulled herself
out of her room and began climbing down the lattice. When she got
to the kitchen window, she paused to make sure that her aunt and
uncle couldn’t see her. They were both drinking a red liquid from
wine glasses. From a mile away, it could easily be mistaken for red
wine, but Lexi knew now that the dark red liquid that sat in their
glasses was blood. It was too dark and thick to be red wine. She
felt somewhat annoyed with herself for not realizing months ago
that the liquid in their wine glasses and beer bottles was blood.
It seemed funny now to her that only a few months ago, Lexi had
been so busy ‘investigating’ Austin’s murder that she hadn’t even
noticed any signs from her aunt and uncle, Dan, or even Gabe,
indicating that they were vampires (not that she would have allowed
herself to believe such a thing on her own). “How things have
changed,” Lexi whispered to herself.

As she finished climbing down the lattice, she
nearly collided with Gabe.

“Hello, my lady,” Gabe said, handing her a
single red rose.

“Aww, Gabe. You’re so sweet.” Lexi brought the
rose up to her nose. She wasn’t sure why – she had never thought
that they had much of a scent, but he had never given her a flower
before and she didn’t know how to react to it. “Thank you,” she
whispered, kissing him.

After a long moment, they pulled apart. “You’re
welcome. We have to be careful so that your aunt and uncle don’t
see that I’m here. So, here’s what we’re going to do,” Gabe began.
“My car is parked at the end of the street. Stay close to the house
and stay low while you’re still in the yard so that they can’t see
you. I’ll meet you at my car in five minutes.”

“Okay,” Lexi replied. “Umm, what type of car do
you have now, so I know how to find you? I assume that you totaled
your first one when you tried to kill me,” Lexi said without a
single hint of sarcasm in her voice. She actually scared herself
when she realized that they had more important things to think
about than what he had done to her in the past.

To her relief, Gabe understood what she meant
and shrugged it off. Grinning, he said, “I have a Porsche. Now
go.”

She watched as Gabe’s body seemed to contort.
His skin turned a deep shade of brown and she could hear his bones
twisting and cracking as he got smaller. Moments later, he was
flapping his wings as he flew ahead of her in his bat
form.

Lexi crouched down along the side of the house.
She knew that Violet and Tommy weren’t going to see her because
they were facing the back of the house, not the front. She darted
across the street and ran until she reached the black Porsche,
which was idling at the end of the street.

Gabe fell down on the black pavement next to
her as he changed back to his human form. Oddly, there wasn’t any
noise when he got bigger.

“I knew there was a reason I always loved
bats,” Lexi commented. Bats had been her favorite childhood animal,
but she never thought that she would end up falling in love with
one when she got older. “Is it like that every time, though? With
all of the cracking noises?”