The drummer, who had muscular arms as big as my thighs, blocked the door.
“Hi, Fang,” Skyler said. She gave him a dazed smile.
“Skyler, Travis doesn’t want you to leave,” he replied.
“Too bad,” I said. “We’re gone.” I briefly wondered if I should bust out a spell of some kind, but then I realized I had no idea what might work on vampires—probably best to just hightail it out of there.
“What are you?” the guy asked. There was a strange note of curiosity in his voice.
“I’m going to be your worst nightmare if you don’t open that door,” I said.
I was seconds from screaming, but I tried not to let my fear show. “Let us go.” I stood my ground but avoided staring into his reddened eyes, until he unlocked the door and stepped aside.
I half dragged, half carried Sky. I nearly turned my ankle again in my heels, but our pace didn’t slow until I knew we were out of their sight.
I helped her downstairs to find Vaughn waiting for us. Thank god. The tension in my body relaxed a fraction, but we needed to get out of here. Now.
“We’re leaving,” I said shortly.
“Is she okay?”
“She will be. We just need to get her out of here.”
“Okay.” Vaughn was usually unbelievably chill. Everyone at his dad’s catering company liked working with him. Always calm in a crisis.
That’s when I noticed the red stain on Skyler’s dress. “That’s blood,” I said.
Vaughn knew what that meant—the sight of blood made me pass out. “Breathe, Tansy,” he said as he checked Sky for wounds.
Even a little cut could cause me to get light-headed and weak, and I was realizing there was way more than a little blood all over Skyler’s white dress. I took shallow breaths, one after the other.
I couldn’t faint when Skyler needed me.
“We have to keep her away from The Drainers,” I said. “Especially Travis.”
Skyler stirred when she heard his name. “Travis loves me.”
“She seems okay except for these two marks on her shoulder,” he said as he took Skyler from me and hoisted her into his arms. He grunted. “She’s heavier than she looks.”
“She’s all muscle and unrequited love,” I said. “Which weighs more than you’d think.”
Skyler had been reckless, going out and looking for love in all the wrong places, ever since Con broke her heart and headed off for a study-abroad program in Europe. But tonight was the first time I’d been truly scared for her.
I looked more closely at her shoulder, and sure enough, there were two bite marks. Damn vampires. “We need to get her to the hospital.”
She smiled up at me. “I’m in love with Travis.”
“You barely know the guy.” I rolled my eyes, teasing her even though my heart was pounding in my chest. “Wipe that smile off your face.”
“I can’t help it.” She continued to rhapsodize about Travis, but I tuned her out.
I was gasping when we got to the car, but despite his initial complaint, Vaughn carried Skyler with no problem and didn’t even look winded.
“Where are her keys?” he asked.
I fished them out of Skyler’s tiny cross-body purse, which fortunately, she still had with her.
Vaughn placed Skyler gently in the back seat, and I got in beside her. He put the roof up on the convertible and took off.
“How’re you doing back there?” he said as we started down the narrow, twisting road that led to the freeway.
We’d barely made it onto the main road when Skyler started screaming.
I tried to soothe her, but she snapped her teeth at me when I tried to hug her. I’d never seen Skyler like this, not even at her worst.
“What’s wrong with her?” Vaughn asked. She hissed when he flicked on the overhead light with one hand while keeping his other firmly on the wheel.
She panted like a dog, her tongue hanging out. She opened her mouth to scream again, and I froze. Fuck my life. She had long, pointed fangs.
It was hard to believe what I was seeing, but I’d grown up on Granny Mariotti’s stories of the hidden world.
“Vampire,” I whispered. “The Drainers turned you into a vampire.”
She heard me and laughed. “He’s coming for me. Our love is eternal.”
Her whole body contorted, her limbs moving impossibly fast. She nearly ripped the car door off its hinges trying to escape.
“Skyler, close the door,” I said. “Stay calm. We can help you.”
To my relief, she obeyed me, but she started saying Travis’s name, over and over, like a chant.
“Ignore it,” Vaughn said. Clearly he hadn’t heard my earlier revelation. “She’ll be fine once we get her home.”
Skyler snaked an arm around his neck and tried to pull him into the back seat, nearly causing Vaughn to lose control. He was forced to let go of the steering wheel, and the car swerved wildly as he tried to pry her hands from his neck. I tugged at her hands, too, but she had a death grip on him.
Before we ended up wrapped around a tree, Vaughn grabbed the wheel again and managed to maneuver the car to the side of the road.
“Stop it right now!” I shouted. Skyler released him but began to claw at her own skin. There was the bite mark on her neck and another lower down, near her collarbone. Would this happen to me? I rubbed my neck, at what I hoped was just a scratch and not a bite, then drew my hand away quickly. I’d think about my own scraping from Travis after we helped my best friend.
“What’s the matter with her?” Vaughn asked. “Did she take something at the party?” Drugs might explain some of Skyler’s bizarre behavior, but she never touched anything stronger than booze. This was something much worse.
“Do you have any rope in the trunk?” I asked Vaughn.
His eyebrows shot up, but he got out and popped the trunk open, then returned with the rope he used for rock climbing and handed it to me. “I thought we were taking her home.”
“Nope,” I said. “We need to crash Granny’s book club.”
Skyler’s eyes went bloodred, and she lunged for Vaughn’s throat before I could stop her. He jumped back. “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with her?”
Maybe most people would think they were hallucinating or being pranked if their best friend suddenly sprouted fangs and a bad attitude, but I was a Mariotti.
“Fucking vampires,” I muttered under my breath again, but Vaughn heard me.
“Vampires? Sky is dating a vampire? Are you high?”
“I know it sounds preposterous, but it adds up,” I explained. “The Drainers had fangs. Fangs mean vampires. And I got a look at them—they weren’t fake. Plus, Sky has bite marks.”
I was sure it sounded far-fetched to Vaughn, but I knew what I saw.
“I think you’re right,” Vaughn said after a very long pause. “Skyler doesn’t do drugs, and you saw something. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one.”
Vaughn had never doubted my family history, but I was grateful that he also believed me about the vampires.
Our popular culture was inundated with stories of vampires. There was even a non-scary vampire on a beloved kids’ show. Maybe there was more to it than just stories to make you shiver.
Skyler thrashed wildly as we wound the rope around her. “Not too tight,” I said. “But make sure she can’t get loose.”
Her dress rode up, and I noticed a bite on her thigh. It was an old mark, faded, but the skin looked ripped and swollen.
I sucked in my breath. “Those jerks.”
“What are we going to do at the book club?”
“Find out how to kill a bunch of asshole vampires.” I stared at the night sky. The moon was full and bright, a typical romantic setting, but there was a dark blot in the sky, and it was coming towa
rd us. I stood frozen, my heartbeat loud and fast.
Vaughn came up next to me. “Get in the car, Tansy,” he said. He repeated it a couple of times before my brain, which had been locked down in terror, finally started working again.
“Help me with Sky,” I said.
He bent and, in one swift motion, picked up Skyler and carried her in a bridal hold to the car. She tried to bite his ear.
“Sky, stop it,” he said. “Or I swear I’m going to drop you on your ass.”
She growled at him like a feral cat, her teeth snapping, but he managed to dodge her.
I opened the door, and he shoved her into the back seat. I jumped in after her, and then Vaughn got in the driver’s seat and we sped home.
“I can hear you being all judgy over there,” I said. “Cut it out.”
“I’m not being judgy,” Vaughn said. “It’s just that—”
I cut him off. “Your best friend broke her.”
“Con didn’t break her,” Vaughn said. “He broke up with her.”
“Same difference,” I said, a hot feeling in my stomach all over again at the way Connor had dropped Sky so suddenly.
“Not always,” he replied carefully. “Sometimes, a breakup is a good thing—especially if one of the people is in love with someone else.”
My mouth fell open. “Connor’s in love with someone else?”
“No, I’m not talking about Connor,” he said.
“Who, then?”
He took his eyes off the road for a brief second, and something in his gaze made my heart pound in my ears. “Can we talk later?” he asked.
I nodded, barely restraining myself from asking more questions. From hoping.
He returned his attention to driving. “Good,” he murmured.
We’d reached PCH when a heavy fog rolled in, obscuring the road. Vaughn slowed down but kept a steady pace as the fog grew thicker.
“I’ve never seen a marine layer like this,” he muttered.
There was a sound like hail falling on the roof. Then something hit the windshield and clung there—a skeletal creature with wings like a bat but the face of a man. Its cheek pressed to the driver’s side, its mouth in a silent scream. Vaughn and I were both screaming now.
“What is that thing?” I yelled. The creature raised its bony hand and tried to punch through the glass to get to Vaughn.
“What the hell?” Vaughn swore but kept driving.
This night had been a freak show from beginning to end, and I’d had enough of things that go bump in the night.
“Leave him alone!” I screamed. The car swerved…
And then the creature was gone.
Chapter Three
It was a miracle, but Vaughn managed to turn onto PCH without crashing the car. In the back seat, I was shaking. “What was that thing?”
My question made Skyler laugh, but the wild and screechy sound wasn’t like anything I’d heard from her before. Her warm brown eyes had turned a violent red. “He’s coming for me.” She cackled again.
I flinched, which made her cackle louder. I started to tremble, which made her dissolve into another bout of malicious mirth.
When we reached Granny’s, Vaughn scooped Skyler up, and we dashed from the driveway into the house.
Our bungalow had been in our family for generations. Granny said all the houses in the neighborhood used to look like ours, but now it was the house the neighbors called a “tear-down.”
It was a block from the beach with a killer view, but it had seen better days. Still, I loved the small Craftsman with its wide front porch, dark wood bookcases and floors, and the backyard with Granny’s herb garden, avocado trees ripe with fruit, and the eucalyptus tree that Skyler said smelled like pee.
“Mariotti witches have always lived by the sea,” Granny had often said. “That’s why I’ll never sell this place.”
After the night we’d had, it felt like a refuge.
“Granny, I need you!” I shouted the second the door swung open.
“You’re home early,” Granny Mariotti said placidly as she blinked at me from the couch. Granny was nearly as fair-skinned as I was, although her hair had once been black. She had brown eyes, not green like mine, and she was thin and wiry. Sometimes, it seemed impossible that we could be related, but Granny assured me that we were.
She wasn’t alone. Her friends Edna and Evelyn were still there.
“Can I fix you a snack?” Edna asked. “You look tired, Tansy. Doesn’t she look tired, Evelyn?” I’d been the ringbearer at their wedding when I was five, and sometimes they still treated me like I was that age.
They studied me, and I realized that I was standing in the doorway, blocking their view of my friends, and stepped to the side.
“I have a little bit of a problem.” I undersold it, then motioned to Skyler, who snarled.
“My, you must have had an interesting evening,” Evelyn said.
“There’s something wrong with Sky,” I said, stating the obvious. Vaughn placed Skyler on the blue velvet chaise. “I think she’s in thrall to a vampire.”
She just lay there panting until Granny crossed the room to examine her. Granny didn’t even flinch when Skyler, who’d somehow managed to work an arm free, tried to claw her face.
“Tell me what happened tonight,” Granny said. “Quickly, now.”
The story came out in a rush. When I was done, Granny didn’t say anything, just went into the kitchen. The bungalow was small, with no walls between the kitchen and living room, so I watched her as she got out a copper pot and began throwing herbs and other ingredients into it. She turned the stove burner on high and then occasionally stirred it, muttering under her breath as she did.
“Can you help her?” I asked.
Skyler was quiet, busy trying to use her sharp incisors to gnaw through the rope.
“I’ll try,” Granny said. She sniffed the concoction. “This will ease the symptoms. Think you can get her to drink it?”
“Maybe.” I tried to coax Skyler into trying some of the frothy purple liquid, but in the end, Vaughn had to hold her while I pinched her nostrils closed and forced it down. She spit the first bit out, right into my face, but I managed to get the rest into her.
“I will tear out your heart and have it for breakfast,” she said in a low voice I almost didn’t recognize.
“No, you won’t,” I said. “You never eat breakfast.”
Vaughn choked back a laugh while Skyler snarled at me.
I did my best to ignore her, but it didn’t exactly feel great when she started muttering about how she wanted to bathe in my blood.
“That’s probably really unsanitary,” I said calmly.
It took a few minutes, but Skyler eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.
Evelyn studied Skyler critically. “Fascinating,” she said. “I’ve read about it, of course, but I don’t think there’s been this kind of hidden world sighting since the eighties.”
I almost expected her to whip out her lab coat and microscope, but instead, she reached into her purse and took out a spiral notebook and pencil and started scribbling something down.
“Hidden world?” Vaughn asked.
“The first rule of the hidden world is you don’t talk about the hidden world,” I said, knowing he’d get the movie reference.
Vaughn gave a little snort in acknowledgment, which was adorable.
“Vampires, werewolves, ghosts,” Edna said. Her long black hair was tied up in braids, which highlighted the perfect skin of someone twenty years younger. She was a dermatologist, after all.
“Vampires, werewolves, ghosts?” he repeated. “That all?”
“Not even close,” I said. “Maybe if I’d been paying attention, this wouldn’t have happened to Skyler. I’m a witch, and it took me way too long to recognize a vampi
re when he was standing right in front of me.”
Granny frowned. “How do you think vampires have managed to remain hidden? They’re sneaky and secretive, and they manipulate their victims to help themselves stay undetected. Skyler was probably deliberately concealing things from you. Unless this was the first time they’d met?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said. “She mentioned they’d been talking for a few weeks.”
“So the hidden world means vampires and witches?” Vaughn asked.
“The hidden world includes any of the supernatural, really,” Edna said.
“I thought vampires were just legends,” Vaughn said. “Myths. Made up.”
I nudged him. “You believe I’m a witch but don’t believe in vampires?”
The older women were all shaking their heads. “Not made-up. Real. Rare, usually hidden—hence the name—but real enough,” Edna said.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s just a lot to take in.”
“After I get Skyler settled, I want to read up on vampires. Do you have suggestions?” Books were librarian catnip. Granny would have a stack of reading material for me before the end of the night.
I turned to Vaughn. “Can you carry Sky to my room?” Then I turned back to Granny. “We’ll be back. We need to talk.”
Vaughn carried Skyler to my bedroom, and I pulled down the RBG quilt Granny had made for my seventeenth birthday.
“Still a fan, I see?” Vaughn nodded at the quilt. My love for Ruth Bader Ginsburg was well-known. When I was younger, I’d dressed like her for Halloween.
“Always and forever,” I replied. I was nothing if not loyal.
Vaughn set Skyler down gently. I noticed my floor was covered in dirty clothes. Vaughn grinned at me when he caught me kicking my sturdiest bra under the bed.
“Sky’s been acting secretive for weeks,” I said softly.
“She’ll be okay,” he said.
“I need to get her out of those bloody clothes,” I said.
He nodded and then left the room.
I clicked on the bedside lamp. Its soft glow made Skyler look younger somehow. I eased the stained dress over her head and replaced it with a long T-shirt, then tucked her in and tiptoed out of the room.
The Afterlife of the Party Page 3