by D.J. Bodden
CHAPTER 4
“Do you guys really have to follow me to school?”
“Yes,” Bert and Phillip said at the same time.
Jonas had woken to find his mother already shut into her room.
The cleanup crew had come and gone. They’d fixed everything: the tables, the door, the dishes in the cabinet, and the dent in the oven door were all good as new. They’d even replaced the food he’d eaten that night. It was as if they’d rewound the clock to before he got home from school, then cleaned, dusted, and polished it all. He wondered if it was some kind of magic, a creature with O.C.D., or just good maid service.
“How long are you going to follow me to school?”
“Until your mother tells us not to,” Bert answered.
“Or until you can fend for yourself,” Phillip said.
Jonas’ shoulders sagged. No fangs, no powers, no fighting skills. He was officially the worst vampire ever.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, kid,” Bert said.
Jonas stopped and looked at him. “Can werewolves read minds, too?”
“No, just body language,” Phillip said.
“And scents,” said Bert, sniffing. “You’re not wearing deodorant.”
Jonas felt a prickle of heat creep up his neck. He sniffed his armpit. “I’m sorry; do I smell?”
“No,” said Bert, curling his upper lip and looking away. He appeared to be scanning the rooftops. “You don’t smell like anything at all.”
“It’s disorienting,” Phillip explained. “We can see you, but it’s like you’re not really there.”
I’m a vampire, Jonas thought. It made his heart race. Then he frowned. “I have a pulse.”
“And I’m downwind,” muttered Bert.
Phillip scowled at Bert. “Vampires have heartbeats, Jonas.”
“Yeah, how else do you think the blood gets to their evil little heads? Magic?” Bert added.
Phillip made a sound in his throat like a growl, but so deep it made Jonas’ bones hurt.
“Sorry,” Bert said, looking at the ground.
Jonas stood there, watching the two of them, and finally said, “Why are you scared of my mother?”
The two men looked at each other. Phillip shrugged, and said, “Go ahead.”
“When your mother—” Bert began.
“No disrespect intended, of course,” Phillip added, arching an eyebrow.
“Of course,” Bert said, clasping his hands. “When your mother came to America, she brought a few coffins full of soil with her, along with seeds and several live aconite flowers.”
Jonas didn’t recognize the name.
“Wolf’s bane,” Phillip explained.
“Right,” said Bert. “Anyway, as the story goes, she was afraid it didn’t grow here, so she brought it with her.”
“I don’t get it,” said Jonas.
“Wolf’s bane,” said Bert. “You know… for poisoning wolves.” He pointed at himself.
“Your mother was very good at killing us,” Phillip added, then shrugged. “Things were less civilized back then.”
Jonas looked at them with his mouth open.
“No, things were better back then,” said Bert. “We got to fight back.”
Phillip frowned. Bert looked away.
“If you hate vampires so much, why do you work for one?” Jonas said.
“Food,” said Bert.
“Breeding rights,” said Phillip, and Bert threw him an envious look. “Only so many pups born or bitten adoptions per year, legally, and Agency packs get bigger quotas.”
Jonas blushed as Phillip wagged his eyebrows and gave him a big, toothy smile. His teeth looked sharp… very sharp, and Jonas felt the instinctive urge to run again. They walked the rest of the way in silence.
♟
He couldn’t focus at school. His four morning classes just kind of slipped by without him noticing. Sitting alone in the cafeteria, he pulled out Marcus’s business card. It was still blank except for the name. How does he expect me to find him?
His thoughts were interrupted as Amelia sat down in the seat across from him. “What happened to you?”
Put on the spot, his carefully rehearsed story went out the window. “Someone tried to break into our apartment, and the door hit me.”
Amelia gave him a bland look. “What are you talking about, Jonas?”
“My black eye.”
“You don’t have a black eye, though I’m starting to believe you did take a knock on the head.”
He patted the area around his eye. It wasn’t sore anymore. He wondered if the cut on his elbow had healed, too.
“Sorry. I thought I had one. It really hurt.”
“Wait, you really had a break-in? On our street? Oh my God! Why didn’t you call me?”
She believed him now, but Jonas wasn’t sure he liked it better that way. She seemed to be taking it much worse than he had, and he was the one who got hit in the face.
“One of the neighbors scared the guy off,” he said, which wasn’t a complete lie. “There wasn’t any damage to the apartment, and I really just wanted to go to sleep afterward.”
“Are you okay? Did you call the police?”
“No. Like I said, there wasn’t any damage and we don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
Amelia frowned. She didn’t agree, but he didn’t think she’d tell anyone except her family.
Nothing I can do about that, Jonas thought.
“Are we still walking home together?” she asked.
Jonas realized he’d forgotten to wait for her that morning. “I’m sorry; things have been hectic. I forgot about this morning and can’t this afternoon. My mom thinks I should talk to someone about what happened,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Maybe she’s right. You may be more upset about this than you realize,” Amelia said, looking at him skeptically. She reached out and stroked his hand. They spent the rest of their lunch break talking about normal things, like music, movies, and plans for the weekend.
♟
It was toward the end of fifth period and he still had no idea where to go. He’d asked his bodyguards before school, but Bert and Phillip had flat out refused to give him the address.
“Orders. Sorry,” they’d said.
He examined the card for the tenth time, but it was still glossy black with nothing on it but Marcus Fangston’s name in bold white letters.
I have to figure this out, Jonas thought. He needed to find Fangston and sign up for whatever kind of training his mother thought he needed. Bert and Phillip couldn’t walk him to school forever. Aside from the effect on his relationship with Amelia, someone would notice and ask questions he couldn’t answer. It wasn’t as if a couple of werewolves, even in human form, were easy to hide, and he couldn’t depend on his mother to protect him. His pride had already suffered enough.
As he imagined the consequences of living with his mother for the rest of his life — which might be a very long time if he’d inherited a vampire’s longevity — the card flickered, and an address appeared under Marcus Fangston’s name:
845 Third Ave, New York, NY 10022
As the tension in his neck and shoulders disappeared, so did the address. His mouth went dry… it appeared again. It must be triggered by my needing to see it, he thought. He memorized the address and it disappeared again.
The last ten minutes of class seemed to last forever.
♟
Bert and Phillip were waiting for him outside the school.
“Know where you’re going?” Bert asked.
“845 Third Ave,” Jonas said, not bothering to pull out the card.
Phillip grinned. “Good boy.” He turned to Bert. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
Bert mumbled something under his breath that Jonas couldn’t make out.
They walked him to the bus stop on Second Avenue and waited with him. He could tell that Bert and Phillip made the other people at the stop nervous — they subconsciously
moved away from the pair, but kept glancing back in the bodyguards’ direction. Two elderly women decided to just walk away. Jonas fought the urge to laugh. It was like watching a herd of sheep in the presence of two impeccably dressed wolves. Once he was safely on the bus, Bert waved and Phillip gave him a wink before they turned and walked back in the direction of his neighborhood.
Jonas showed his receipt to the bus driver and headed back, finding a seat that faced the center of the bus. It would take about fifteen minutes to get where he was going, so he put in his ear buds. He put on “Host of the Seraphim” by Dead can Dance and tried to zone out, rather than worry. One stop into the trip, he started to feel the same sense of confusion and vertigo he’d felt on the street outside Amelia’s apartment.
The world around him twisted. He was still on the bus, but it was darker and had an eerie, dream-like quality to it. All the passengers looked the same — not just similar, but identical. They looked like Marcus Fangston.