by Gayla Twist
I was just grabbing some toast before school when the phone rang. I snatched it up, hoping it wasn’t something to do with Colette. Our phone number was unlisted, and we had been mercifully spared too many harassing phone calls. “Hello?”
“Is this Aurora?” a woman asked. Her voice was shaky.
I knew it was stupid to give people information over the phone, especially without knowing who they were, so I said, “Who’s calling, please?”
“This is Betty Thurman. Liz’s mom,” was the reply.
“Hi, Mrs. Thurman. This is Aurora,” I said immediately.
“Aurora, sweetie, is your mom home?” She sniffed, and I could tell she was fighting back tears.
“No,” I told her. “I’m sorry. She had to leave early for some big meeting. Can I give her a message, or is there something I can do to help?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t ask you, sweetie. I was really hoping to talk to your mom.”
“Go ahead and ask me,” I told her, glancing at the clock. I still had a few minutes before I positively had to leave for school. “I can always talk to my mom about it when she’s free at work.”
I could hear Mrs. Thurman’s breathing; it sounded choked and heavy. “Well,” she began. “I’m sure you probably know that Liz is missing.” I wanted to tell her that I knew and I was sorry, but I didn’t want to interrupt. I felt like at any moment she would shatter. “And I can’t get the police to take things seriously. They keep saying she probably ran away, but Liz wouldn’t do that to me. She might have been mad at her dad, but she wouldn’t go days and days without calling me.”
“Okay,” was all I could think to say. “I believe you.”
“I know your family hasn’t been having an easy time of it lately, but I was wondering …” She took a ragged breath, trying to keep it together. “Could you or your mom read something in front of the reporters for me? I know you haven’t done any interviews about your grandmother, but this is my only chance to reach people about Liz.”
“Of course, I’ll read something for you,” I told her. “Do you want to email it to me, or do you want me to come by the house?” Screw being late for school; I had to help if I could.
As I was giving Mrs. Thurman my email address, the dam broke for her and she started sobbing. I couldn’t tell if she had it together enough to write down my address correctly, but a few minutes later I got an email with an attachment. Fortunately, we still had enough ink, so I quickly printed it out before heading to school.
There were a couple of news vans outside our house, but I thought there would probably be more prowling around school. When I stopped for red lights, I quickly scanned what Liz’s mom had written. She’d also sent over a photo of Liz. I was grateful we had enough colored ink in the printer for me to print it up.
I pulled into the Tiburon High School lot the same time as Fred. “Hey,” he said, getting out of his car. “Better hustle or we’re going to be late.”
“Yeah, uh … You go ahead,” I told him, eyeballing the horde of reporters standing just off school grounds.
Fred glanced in their direction and made a face. “Just ignore them,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “In another couple of days, they will all be gone.”
“Actually, I’m going to go talk to them,” I said, although I did appreciate his support.
“What?” Fred was a little incredulous. “I thought you were trying to get everyone to leave your grandma alone.”
“I am,” I assured him. “But Liz’s mom called and asked me to read this.” I waved her statement in the air. “She’s hoping if she gets the word out someone might know what happened to Liz.”
“Oh,” Fred said very quietly. He looked down at his shoes for a moment. Then, with his arm still firmly around me, he changed the direction of his steps, heading toward the news piranhas. “Okay, fine. Let’s get this over with.”
I am not a big fan of public speaking. I hate even giving a presentation at school. But that was nothing compared to facing a pack of hungry reporters. I was so grateful for Fred’s help. I felt really unnerved.
The reporters started rustling around like excited hens as we approached. All cameras were immediately trained upon us. Fred gave my shoulder a squeeze, and then I stepped forward, clearing my throat. “I’d like to read a statement,” I said, before they could all start shouting questions at me. “I’m Aurora Keys,” I began. “Lillian Gibson is my great grandmother.” I felt I adequately had their attention, so I continued. “Colette Gibson’s body has been anonymously returned to the morgue. It turned out it was just a prank. A sick prank, but what are you going to do? At least whoever took her had the decency to return her, and now we can give her a proper burial.” That first part was mostly me. I knew Mrs. Thurman was tunnel focused on finding her daughter, but I thought I had to give the news people a little of what they wanted so they would keep filming. “Colette Gibson disappeared eighty years ago, and her body was only recently found. For decades, her family had to live with the pain of not knowing what happened to her.” And then I added of my own accord, “I speak for my great grandmother when I say it is a special kind of hell to have a missing loved one.” Returning to the script, I read, “And now another girl from our town is missing.” I held up the photo of Liz. “On Sunday evening, Liz Thurman left her house on foot. She was wearing jeans, a red sweater, and a brown coat with faux fur trim. She said she was heading for the bus station, but that was the last that anyone heard from her. There is a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information that leads to the discovery of Liz Thurman. Please, her family is frantic. If you know anything, please contact the Tiburon, Ohio, police department.” That was the end of what Mrs. Thurman had written, but for some reason I felt compelled to add, “Liz, if you can hear this, your family loves you very much, and they are doing everything they can to find you.” That was all I had to say, but the cameras kept rolling. “Okay, thanks,” I mumbled. “That’s it.”
“Wow,” said Fred as we headed into the school. “You did great,” he told me. “I wasn’t really thinking about it too much before, but I’m really kind of worried for Liz.”
“Yeah, me too,” I had to admit. “It’s not looking good.”
We did not get in trouble for being tardy. I showed the teacher patrolling the hall the statement and explained what I had just done, and we were allowed to simply head to our homerooms. I guess some kids must have seen the reporters filming, or maybe Fred told a few friends because within an hour, everyone in the school knew about it. I was already tired of being the center of weird gossip, but I knew that leveraging the reporters who were there to feast off Grandma Gibson’s pain was the right thing to do. I just had to suck it up for a while.
“Hey,” Don Updike said to me as he passed me in the hall after second period. I steeled myself for something obnoxious, but he actually said, “That was really cool what you did for Liz with those reporters. Maybe it’ll help find her.”
“Thanks. I hope so,” I told him. I didn’t know why I’d thanked him, but I really wasn’t expecting him to be nice to me.
“Sorry about the mummy jokes,” Don said in a much lower voice. “I wasn’t thinking about how there are still people alive that would be upset. It was kind of a tool thing to do.”
“Um, yeah, okay,” I replied. At first I was literally too stunned to string anything coherent together. Forcing myself to focus, I said, “I appreciate you saying that.”
Don shrugged and headed off down the hall.
“What was that all about?” Blossom asked, walking up to me.
“Don just apologized for being a jerk,” I said, still a bit off kilter from the rarity of the whole thing.
“You’re kidding.” Blossom turned to look at the retreating boy. “Wow. I always think of him as such a little worm. Maybe he’s not so bad, after all.”
“Maybe,” I said. My mom was always telling me that people are more complex than you think, and I guess she was right.
; “Any chance you’re free after school to do some Christmas shopping?” Blossom asked as we both started walking to our next classes. “The whole Liz thing is really getting to me. I’m not feeling festive at all, and it’s really getting me down.”
“Let me just double check that Joe doesn’t need me.” I worked at a cafe called Cup of Joe’s, and my boss was being really understanding about my family’s bizarre disaster. For the last couple of days, he actually didn’t want me coming into work because there were too many news people hanging around, warming up, and getting a cup of coffee. He knew that having me trapped behind the counter where anyone could ask me anything under the guise of ordering a latte would be pretty hellish.
It is against school policy to use a cell phone during school hours unless it’s an extreme emergency. It was a really good way to get your phone confiscated. Still, kids did it, and the best way was to either go outside or have a friend cover for you. Blossom acted as my human shield while I quickly pulled up Cup of Joe’s number.
“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” Joe said in a guarded voice, once I got him on the phone.
He sounded so awkward, I felt compelled to ask, “Is there a reporter standing in front of you right now?”
“You could say something like that,” was his reply.
“Okay, well … Just text me when you think I can come back to work,” I told him. I was annoyed, but not with Joe, of course. He was just looking out for me. The truth was that I really needed the money I got from my part-time gig as coffee servant. Especially with Christmas breathing down my neck. I was hoping to have a bit of surplus cash to try to figure out a really good gift for the vampire who had everything.
With my schedule free and clear, we headed for the mall as soon as we were done with classes. I always thinks it’s hilarious that stores will have red and green decorations everywhere and they’ll be blasting Christmas music, but they make sure their employees say “Happy holidays,” like they’re actually trying to be considerate of people who don’t celebrate Christmas. Nobody is fooled.
Even with the fake holiday sincerity, it did make me feel a little more festive seeing little kids lining up with their parents to talk to Santa and everything. I got a down vest for my mom and some tarot cards for Grandma Gibson. If she was going to predict the future, she might as well have the proper equipment. Then Blossom and I bought each other earrings because we each found a pair that we loved, so why not? My dad usually didn’t even bother to call on Christmas, so I didn’t get him anything. That just left Jessie. Blossom suggested hot chocolate at the food court, and I figured as long as I didn’t get any whipped cream, I was doing okay as far as reeling in the calorie consumption. Blossom, of course, got whipped cream, sprinkles, and a peppermint swizzle. What I wouldn’t give to have her metabolism.
“So, not to sound like a dork or anything, but I’m proud of you for making that announcement about Liz,” Blossom said as she made short work of her whipped cream. “I mean, I know you were probably really embarrassed, but maybe it’ll help.”
“Actually, once I started talking, it wasn’t so bad,” I told her.
“What do you think happened to her?” Blossom asked, her eyes a bit wide. “I mean, do you think, like, someone kidnapped her or killed her or something?”
I shrugged, feeling my Christmas cheer quickly draining away. “It’s not looking too good. I mean, there’s still a chance she’s okay, just being an idiot, but probably something bad has happened.”
“It’s so weird that they found the only person to go missing from Tiburon in the last century almost exactly to the day when a new girl disappeared. I wonder if she’ll show up, like fifty years from now, all drained of blood and everything.”
I shivered. “I hope not.”
Blossom warmed to the idea. “Maybe there’s a vampire that lives in Tiburon, and he only has to feed every couple of decades?”
“Blossom, can we please not talk about this?” I said in an overly loud voice. A couple of people sitting at nearby tables glanced in our direction.
“Calm down. I was just kidding,” she told me.
“I know, but you didn’t have to see the body,” I said. “It was horrible. I mean, you could tell when she died she was absolutely terrified.”
“Sorry,” Blossom said. “I wasn’t thinking that it was actually true or anything. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“Forget about it,” I grumbled. Then, to change the subject, I said, “Who do you have left on your list?”
“My grandpa and my dad. If I get them done, then I think that about covers it.”
“What do you think you’re getting your dad for Christmas?”
“A tie.” She thought about it a bit more. “Maybe a sweater vest. Or some type of hat that he would never wear in a million years.”
I wasn’t going to get sucked into a conversation about why Blossom would want to knowingly give her dad a gift he wouldn’t like, so I said, “What about your grandpa?”
Blossom made a face. “I don’t know. He’s impossible to shop for. I mean, what do you buy for a man pushing ninety?”
She had me there. I had to confess, “I have no idea.”
Chapter 9
“What do you usually do for Christmas?” I asked Jessie. We were snuggled on the couch in the living room. His head was in my lap, cradled by a pillow; his eyes were closed.
“A big roast. Most people have turkey, but we always have rack of lamb. Mashed potatoes and freshly baked bread. Cranberry sauce and mulled wine. Every type of pie you can imagine and peppermint sticks decorating the tree.”
Jessie’s eyes were still closed, but a contented smiled crossed his face. I had to wonder if he was talking about what his family did last Christmas. It seemed unlikely. He continued. “Then there’s caroling and bringing baskets of food to the poor. Grandfather is pretty tight fisted, but for Christmas, he usually opens his purse strings and can actually be quite generous.”
That’s when I knew he was talking about his memories of Christmas back before he was turned into a vampire. Jessie’s grandfather was the first vampire in his family. He had ruthlessly turned his children and then his grandchildren. Jessie’s mother had tried to protect her children, even after she had been turned, but she’d only managed to spare the youngest—a daughter who had lived to a ripe old age.
The grandfather had been lost at sea, quite literally. As the Vanderlind family was taking a ship to move to America, the old bastard was discovered feasting on a cabin boy. The other passengers threw him overboard in the middle of the Atlantic. He was never heard from again. When Jessie told me the story, I was shocked that the whole family hadn’t been discovered. That’s when Jessie explained that his mother had been the one to send the boy to her father’s cabin. She had planned the whole thing to get rid of her father. The cabin boy had lived and discovered, upon his arrival in America, that a distant relative had died and left him some money. It still probably didn’t erase the trauma the boy suffered from almost being drained by a vampire, but it was nice of the Vanderlinds to compensate him for his unwitting participation in ridding the family of their brutal patriarch.
“That really sounds wonderful,” I said once Jessie had stopped reminiscing about holidays he hadn’t seen in almost a century. “Did any of your traditions survive here in America?”
Sighing, Jessie said, “A few. We still give to the poor. Or at least, I make sure we do. Daniel has inherited Grandfather’s miserly ways when it comes to spending money on others. Not when it comes to himself, of course.”
“What will you do this Christmas?”
“I was hoping to come over here and spend it with you,” he told me. “Isn’t that what modern boyfriends do?”
If I was being honest, I wasn’t sure. Besides Jessie, I’d only ever dated Fred, and that hadn’t been during any significant holidays. I didn’t know what was expected. “I would love it if you came over for Christmas,” I told him. “We don’t do
that much in the evening, so that would be perfect.” We always had Grandma Gibson over for a meal, but we ate early so she would be gone by the time Jessie climbed out of his coffin.
With a little embarrassed grin, Jessie said, “And if you’re free, my mom would like to know if you would join us Christmas Eve.”
“She … what?” I stammered. “I mean, where?”
“At our home, of course,” he said, as if visiting a castle full of vampires on Christmas Eve was the most commonplace thing in the world. The family had literally moved their ancestral home from Hungary to Ohio, so it was a legitimate castle.
“Jessie, not to be rude or anything because I appreciate the invitation, but what exactly would we be doing?”
This gave Jessie pause. “I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “But I think after our trip to Budapest, she’s worried that it’ll look bad if you aren’t part of our holiday in some fashion.”
The invitation made sense. Over Thanksgiving, Jessie and I were forced to fly to Budapest to defend Jessie’s having staked a fellow vampire to protect me. We’d tried to convince the Bishops that I was the reincarnation of Colette Gibson and therefore Jessie had no choice. The Bishops were the world’s oldest vampire family. They functioned as a ruling body for the undead. They didn’t exactly find us not guilty. They’d actually decided that I was to be turned into a vampire. Fortunately, my undead sentence wouldn’t have to be carried out until I was twenty-four. Jessie was thrilled with the ruling but not because he wanted me to be a vampire. He said that the Bishops would probably forget about the ruling for a few decades, and by the time they remembered, I would be in my sixties. Plus, through a fake passport and some role playing, we had led them to believe my name was Colette, so that would help with concealing me.
Spending eternity with Jessie sounded like a dream, but the whole idea of dying and then being brought back and having to drink human blood to live kind of freaked me out. As it was, Jessie’s breath always smelled slightly of pennies. I was pretty good at never allowing my brain to think about why. Plus, Jessie was fearful that if I was changed into a vampire, it would alter who I am. I guess you don’t always wake up the same person after being altered. Supposedly, it can really warp some people. I was willing to believe that. There seemed to be a lot of jerky vampires around.