Vampire's Kiss (4 page)

I cleared my throat, focusing on the matter at hand and not the silken feel of his cool finger on my hot skin. “But he’s my decorum teacher.”

“And so the obvious choice to delve deeper into topics of manners, dining, and dance.”

“But I’m in my
gym
clothes.” I squirmed. My shorts were almost dry, but a thin layer of sand was caked to my chilly butt cheeks.

“And so an Acari learns to adjust.”

I’d registered the warning in his tone and tempered my voice. I had yet to figure out who these vampires were and what their goal was. I’d gathered that they were fighting some unnamed foe, which was why they needed to train us Watchers
in the first place. But
dancing
? “I’ll need to know…manners for our mission?”

He brushed a wisp of hair from my eyes. “Yes. Among other skills.”

My heart leapt to my throat. Had he meant to give the word a double meaning, or was I just a hormonally overactive teenager?

“When you blush so, you resemble a cat caught with the cream.” He pressed the backs of his fingers to my cheek as though fascinated. “Such an innocent you are. Yours, such peculiar circumstances. You have been touched by man, yet you remain unsullied. Tempered like steel, with what wisdom you possess hammered into you.”

To call getting smacked around
hammered with wisdom
seemed a stretch, but I had no choice but to play along. Besides, it beat analyzing his other subtext, namely the whole unsullied-virgin thing. “My dad as blacksmith—that’s one way to interpret it.”

He chuckled at that. “Yes, a very pretty reading of an ugly childhood.” Cupping my chin, he added somberly, “Such a pretty creature demands no less.”

His hand migrated to my hair, twirling a lock between his fingers. “It’s a shame, really, what Acari Lilac did to your hair.
Tan rubia.
So very pale and fine. But it shall grow back, no?”

I managed a nod. Always the damned hair attracted attention. “I’m told blondes have more fun, though I’ll believe it when I see it.”

But instead of looking amused, he stared blankly. When he spoke again, his voice was subdued. “Do you know a vampire’s hair does not grow? This notion that our hair, our nails, grow on after death—sadly, it is a myth.”

But then his voice strengthened again, his tone stern, laser focused, and back on topic. “I know you dislike topics in decorum. As I also know, I’ve shown you favor that some might deem unacceptable. And so I tell you now, Acari Drew, you shall dance because
I bid it
.” He still held a swath of my hair between his thumb and finger, and he gave the merest tug, holding it taut from my scalp. “You shall focus on topics in decorum because our mission requires it. And the first of these topics is dance.”

I tried to keep my face stoic but must’ve failed, because he added, “You
can
dance, Alrik has assured me.” He let go of my hair, and with it went the edge from his voice. “The key to elegance on the dance floor is to believe you are beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” I repeated tonelessly, wondering what sort of mantra I’d need to withstand a summer full of
elegance
. With
Dagursson.

“You can say it, you can repeat it”—he paused long enough to make me once again question how many thoughts of mine he knew—“but you must
believe
you are beautiful. You must feel it,
here
.” He grazed a finger just above my left breast.

I held my breath, and my heart thumped to meet his touch, as though beckoned.

Alcántara let his hand linger, his fingertip gently pressing down on the soft swell of my flesh. My skin always felt cool in his presence, but this time flames licked up my legs, dancing into my very core.

I didn’t want him, though. Not in a sexual way. Not precisely.

The yearning I felt was more for the glimpse of something
dark and forbidden. I wanted to go there in my mind, but never could I ever imagine going there in
body
.

The strains of some cloyingly classical tripe drifted through an open window. I fought the urge to grimace. How was it I found myself in this preposterous situation? I had to leave one vampire because another awaited me.

Alcántara took a step back. Without dropping his gaze, he tilted his chin in an elegant nod of farewell. “Until we meet again,
querida
.”

He turned and walked away. Leaving me to wonder at the mess I’d gotten myself into. And how I might get myself back out again.

I
stared at that bizarrely skinny back and steeled myself. Master Alrik Dagursson—the creepiest of the creeps. As far as I could tell, he’d been some sort of Viking in his time—but weren’t Vikings supposed to be all big and brawny? If anything, Dagursson looked like an aging rocker after several hard-lived decades of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Except maybe not the sex part.

He turned in that felt-you-looking sort of way, and I darted my eyes away. A few other students were there, all in their standard uniform—girls in gray leggings and tunics, boys in black denim and wool sweaters. I became acutely aware of the wedgie my damp cotton granny briefs had deposited between my sandy cheeks. I forced myself to stand tall and ignore it, but I felt like a moron.

I scanned the dance studio for a familiar face. And find one I did. I felt my face explode into a smile, because pretty much
one of the only things that could make a special seminar in decorum palatable was my friend Yasuo.

“Yo.” He gave me a huge grin, apparently as happy as I was that we were in this together.

I made a beeline straight for him, and he scanned my clothes, cocking his head in amusement. “What’s with the outfit, Blondie?”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, feeling exposed standing there in my shorts and sweatshirt. “Alcántara pulled me from Tracer Otto’s gym class.”

Yasuo raised a brow.

“Don’t ask.” I stole a surreptitious glance at the other students. “Don’t get me wrong—I am totally thrilled that I’m not in this alone, but what’s everyone doing here?”

“Remedial dance.” He showed off an impromptu—and awkward—box step, and I saw immediately why
he
had to put in extra time on the dance floor.

I smiled. “Yas can fight, but he can’t dance?”

“Oh baby, Yas can dance. He just don’t do…”

“Ballroom?”

“Yeah. That one.” He extended his arms, combining a fluid wave with a little step-step slide. “And they won’t let me pop and lock for extra credit.”

“Go figure.” I shook my head and had to admit he looked pretty awesome—like a chiseled, tall, and taut Japanese pop star. I gave him a playfully snarky smile. “So, do the smooth moves come naturally, or is hip-hop part of the Los Angeles public school curriculum?”

“Oh, Blondie, this is all one hundred percent natural, Yasuo Ito vampire mojo. All the better to wow the ladies.”

“Yasuo Ito vampire
Trainee
mojo,” I corrected him. Like the girls aspiring to become Watchers, a bunch of teenaged guys on this island were training to become vampires. The vampiric process was kept pretty secret from us Acari, but it seemed to me that a lot of the guys didn’t survive it. And though Yas wouldn’t give me any clues, every once in a while I could sense his anxiety about the whole thing. “Seems to me you’re still a long way from vampiredom.”

He raised his hands in surrender.
“Ouch.”

I sensed a shift in the energy around me, as if class was getting ready to start, and I stifled a giggle, whispering, “Yeah, because
you’re
so sensitive.”

“Attention.” Dagursson stood at the front of the studio, clapping his bizarrely long, bony hands. His eyes swept the room, pausing on me for the merest second. If I knew Master Dag, he’d hate the sight of cotton, particularly damp, sandy cotton.

I shuddered, and Yas leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Dude looks like the Crypt Keeper’s ugly cousin.”

I concealed a smile, glad he was there to share my pain. “Sucks that the whole vampire-mirror-reflection thing is a myth.” The mirrored walls at the front of the room made it seem as if there were ten thousand Master Dagurssons standing before us.

“You will each choose a partner,” Dagursson said.

Yas and I simultaneously stepped closer to each other’s side. Make that
beyond glad
he was there.

“Today we shall perfect the Viennese waltz.”

We simultaneously took one step apart, and at the look of horror on my friend’s face, I had to choke back a laugh, which unfortunately ended up sounding more like a snort.

“Viennese waltz?” I glanced up at Yasuo. He was so tall, and I was so
not
. “How, exactly, is that supposed to work? You’re too big.”

He put a hand to his heart. “I never knew you cared.”

I gave him a piercing look. “Shut up. It wasn’t supposed to be a compliment.”

“Get into position.” Dagursson’s voice bounded off the walls.

Yas and I obediently faced each other. He shook his head regretfully, taking my right hand in his left. “D., you slay me.”

“I think I know who slays you, and it ain’t me.” I’d seen how close he and Emma had gotten by the end of last semester, leaning closer than necessary to talk and catching each other’s eyes in little private jokes.

His right hand gripped my waist hard. “Stop right there, baby girl.”

The music cut out, and we shut up in the sudden silence, waiting as Dagursson fiddled with his iPod. The sight was so weird, my mouth smiled, but my brows frowned. Apparently vamps liked cool tech toys, too—though, for all I knew, it was the iPod that’d been confiscated from
me
last semester. They’d never consider letting
us
have any gadgets, and they kept the computer lab under lock and key.

The music started, and some standard-issue Strauss piped into the room.

Ugh.
Not on
my
iPod.

“Listen carefully.” Dagursson began to clap those freaky hands again, beating in time. “One-two-three, one-two-three. Do you hear the triple beat? Gentlemen, you’ll step with your left foot on the first beat. Ready?” He zipped back to the beginning of the song, shouting, “Four, five,
six…
”

Yas stumbled on the very first step, and it took a moment for us to find our rhythm. “I feel like the freaking sugarplum fairy,” he grumbled.

“That’s
ballet
, not ballroom.” Yas took too big a side step and earned a snarly look from me when I tripped on his foot. “That you’re almost a foot taller than me doesn’t help.”

Yas waggled his eyebrows. “Not my fault I’m such a fabulous specimen.”

“Spare me.” I really was losing patience, and it wasn’t just because of Yasuo. I wondered whether I’d be able to dance with
any
partner, or if I was just that lame. Was that why Alcántara insisted I take this class? Not because of our mission, but because he’d somehow found out I sucked so royally?

But then I remembered that last weird exchange of ours. He’d told me to believe I was beautiful. That the key to dancing well was
believing
my own elegance, my own grace.

I concentrated hard, and we danced in silence for a time, Yas mouthing the words
One-two-three
,
one-two-three
as he did a fairly clumsy job of a box step. “So why do we need to know how to dance, anyway?” he finally asked. But talking messed up his rhythm, and we both had to do a quickstep back into time with the music.

I shrugged in answer, which seemed to throw Yasuo off again, and so I snickered. “Maybe we’ll have vampire prom.”

He shot me an appalled look. “What is this,
Twilight
?”

“How should I know? I’m still getting over supposedly needing this for my mission.”

“Maybe you’ll have to dance with Alcántara,” he teased.

The prospect gave me the chills. “Don’t even say it.
Seriously, Yas. Literally, don’t say it. Last time Emma mentioned his name, he appeared.”

“One-two-three,” he whispered, then added distractedly, “Hey, the guy saved you from gym class.”