The Forever Girl

by Immortal Ink Publishing, LLC

  His grin slipped, and he shook his head. “You’re a good person. You deserved to know.”

  “You don’t know what kind of person I am.” Why was I arguing? It’s not like I wanted to convince him I was horrible.

  “Sophia,” he said, leveling his gaze at me. “This is part of who I am. As a Strigoi, I can read auras. You will not leave me quickly fooled.”

  “I don’t have an aura, re-mem-ber?”

  Charles lifted his eyebrows at my immature over-enunciation. “All elementals have their gifts,” he said. “The Strigoi’s ability to read auras was intended as a detection device to hunt the corrupt Cruor. It’s said those who don’t have an aura come from a pure soul.”

  Seriously? I was a liar and a thief, and I used curse words all the time. How was that ‘pure’? “If that’s the case, then why did you think I was following you?”

  “You could have been under Marcus’ influence. You could have been a good person starting down a bad path. I gave you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “So your kind hunts the corrupt Cruor. Does this mean you can get rid of Marcus?”

  “We’re intended to hunt them. We’re not mindless robots. Some of us have chosen not to become hunters.”

  “Can you get rid of him or not?”

  “I understand your concerns, but no, I cannot ‘get rid of him’. While it was inexcusable for him to break into your house—something the Council would have his head for—there are better ways for you to protect yourself. As it stands, the Cruor can’t afford to draw any attention to themselves with menial tampering in humans’ lives. I doubt Marcus will return. If I went after him, it would only make things worse for us both.”

  “I need to do something,” I said. “I can’t risk him returning. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I suppose you can stay with me.” He sighed warily.

  Gee, don’t sound too enthused.

  “I have a spare room,” he continued, “and my location is safe. I’d be right down the hall if you needed me.”

  “I can’t,” I said, partly because I barely knew him and partly because he obviously didn’t want me to stay with him. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Change your doorknobs to silver, and line your doors and windows with Narcissus oil.”

  “Daffodils?”

  “To humans and animals, narcissus is mildly poisonous to ingest, but to the Cruor, even a drop can be debilitating. This was discovered incidentally, back when flowers were put on graves to cover the stench of death. When bodies in some graves began to go missing, it wasn’t long before humans noticed the dead buried beneath the daffodils always remained. At first, the humans believed the daffodils were warning off bad spirits. But once news broke forth of grave-robbers, humans began to think the effect had been only a coincidence. In reality, the daffodils had prevented the Cruor from rising. During that time, however, the Cruor discovered a way to turn others, and the necessity of Cruor being earthborn came to an end. The oil should keep you safe.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s said burning narcissus oil can send enough fumes into the air to clear a city block from their kind, though I’d venture that’s quite the exaggeration. Still, if you’re uncertain, I can guard your house.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’m moving.”

  “If he’s able to track you, that won’t do you any good,” he said. “He’s already found you once. No matter where you go, narcissus oil will be your best defense. Will you explain to whoever you are staying with why you are spraying their siding with daffodil oil?”

  Yeah, that wouldn’t go over so well. Even Lauren would demand an answer, especially since she had that whole ‘floral scents give me a headache’ thing.

  “The daffodil oil and silver will help protect your home,” he continued, “but you still need to be careful at night. Don’t go anywhere alone. You should be fine during the day and anytime you’re in a group.”

  “I’ll power wash my house with the stuff as soon as I get home.”

  An easy smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Why don’t we get out of this diner? You’ve been here all day.”

  Just like that? He wanted to move on with the afternoon, as though my whole world hadn’t changed over the course of our conversation.

  Things had changed. Like a flash flood in the canyons. It would start as a thunderstorm, but the water would rush down from the high plains, quickly turning a three-foot creek into a torrent of rampaging water. That was where I stood now. Right in the path of the oncoming torrent.

  “By all means, don’t jump at my offer,” he said.

  Fresh air would be better than dwelling on supernatural creatures. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  While I slipped into my jacket, Charles paid our bill. I left a couple dollars under my mug before meeting him over by the door. He placed his hand at the small of my back as he held the door open and ushered me outside, and my whole body warmed at his touch. The mixed signals—his as well as my own—were driving me crazy.

  As soon as we were outside, his hand dropped away, and he rubbed his hands together against the cold afternoon air. Cars whooshed past and, in an alley across the street, a garbage truck hoisted a dumpster.

  We walked down a side street. Wind slapped my cheeks with scents of rusted metal and Cantonese takeout. Snow crunched beneath our feet, and the late September sunlight reflected so bright off the white sheet it made the day appear warmer than it was.

  I glanced down the road, to the forest obstructing the mountains on the horizon. “What were you doing in the Belle Meadow woods that night?” I asked.

  “A couple weeks ago?”

  “Was there some other night?”

  He focused on the middle distance as we walked. “I’m there a lot of nights. Hunting.”

  I dug my hands into my coat pockets and looked up at him. “Hunting?”

  “You saw when you were leaving.”

  I shuddered, thinking of the lifeless animals strewn across the forest path. I slowed my steps. “You need blood? Like the Cruor?”

  “Cruor can never eat human food. While the Strigoi can, we still need blood to survive.”

  My hands, hidden inside my coat pockets, trembled. Outwardly, I maintained my calm. “Gross.”

  “Without blood, we can’t read auras to tell good from evil.” He reached over and grazed the scar I’d gotten the night I found the animals in the woods. “It’s a necessity,” he said, dropping his hand away again.

  Something about the way his fingertips grazed my wrist sent a pulsing heat through my body, and before I realized what I’d done, I’d slipped my hand from my pocket. Part of me feared getting involved with him on any level, but another part of me craved the connection.

  The back of my wrist brushed his, and he gently grasped my hand. We walked in silence for a moment, his hand loosely wrapped around mine. I could feel my hand slowly slipping away, and, when it did, he made no effort to take it again.

  Tentatively, I grazed his knuckle with my pinky, and he smirked as he slipped his hand around mine once more.

  “Don’t get attached.” He whispered the words so quietly, I didn’t know if the words were meant for me or for himself.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice more rigid than usual. “I can hold your hand, if you like. Just don’t expect anything from me.”

  Wow. Talk about blunt. “Don’t do it for my sake,” I said, taking my hand back. “I didn’t ask you to hold my hand.”

  “Of course not.”

  More than anything, I wanted to disappear. I told myself his words had only hurt my pride, but it was more than that. “I don’t expect anything from you.”

  “Good.”

  I wasn’t sure why I cared, but I did. Why did he keep leading me on if he didn’t want anything to do with me? “I better get going.”

  Observing me like one might observe the clouds to determine if it might rain, he let o
ut a sigh. “I hurt your feelings.”

  “No,” I lied.

  He frowned. “Hurting your feelings is exactly what I’m trying not to do.”

  Sure had me fooled. I shrugged one shoulder.

  “You haven’t even decided what you think of all this yet, or what you think of me,” he said, eyes searching mine. “There’s still a lot you don’t know.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Look,” he said gently, “I will make sure you’re safe, but I can offer no more. I can’t risk telling you everything.”

  “Forget it,” I said, starting to walk away. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  He stepped up behind me, settling his hands on my hips and leaning over my shoulder, his steps shadowing my own. I froze, and his voice deepened to a low vibration in my ear. “Then promise me one thing.”

  My breath caught in my chest.

  “Stay away from my world.” He released me, giving a little shove, and I gasped. I stood frozen, fiercely angry and unable to speak. When he spoke again, he sounded further away. “However, if you must know something, come to me. Don’t go looking on your own. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Like you even care.”

  “Of course I do,” he said, a frown in his voice. “I would never wish anyone subjected to the chaos of my world. Especially not you.”

  “Yeah,” I replied flippantly, not turning around to look at him. “Otherwise who else would you have to intrigue you, right?”

  Irritated, I chewed at my lip. Stay away from his world but come to him if I had questions? Talk about contradictory. I didn’t bother to wait for his response before walking away. I’d had enough double-talk for one day.

  {chapter twelve}

  I PICKED UP SOME silver doorknobs from the local hardware store before stopping by Sparrow’s Grotto.

  “Quite a bit of daffodil oil,” Paloma said after I cleared the shelves of all her stock.

  “Do you have more?” I asked.

  She placed her hand on mine, a pensive shimmer in her eyes. “Sophia, is everything okay?”

  She must have thought I was crazy, but I couldn’t tell her why I needed the oil. “How much do I owe?”

  When she announced the embarrassingly large amount, I gritted my teeth in a smile. I’d turned into Mother, spending copious amounts of money on seemingly insignificant items, but, as Charles had pointed out, a hotel room alone wouldn’t be enough. The sooner the Cruor realized my house was off-limits, the better.

  I rushed home, wanting to be sure I had a few hours of daylight left to finish the job. I carried my bag of supplies up the steps and froze when I spotted a wrinkled note taped to my front door. My heart sped. The note couldn’t be from Marcus. Not during daylight.

  There are those who rebel against the light, who do not know its way or stay in its paths. Job 24:13.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Mrs. Franklin’s familiar warning left me almost at peace, considering the alternative. I tucked the note into my pocket. Daffodil oil probably wouldn’t work on religious nut-jobs, but if I saved the notes—if I had enough of them—maybe the cops would stop the harassment.

  After I switched the doorknobs to ones plated with silver, I stopped off in the garage. Grandpa Parsons’ old power washer was finally coming in handy. Charles had said to do the doors and window frames, but I had bigger plans.

  For the next hour, I sprayed a heavy mist of daffodil oil over the doors and windowsills then diluted the rest to spray as much of the house as I could.

  What if it rained? I couldn’t afford to keep doing this. The daffodil oil was most certainly a temporary solution.

  Once I finished, I headed back inside, not feeling any safer than before. I stuck the note from Mrs. Franklin in a small tin can in my kitchen curio cabinet, had a quick chat with Red, then headed to my room.

  Darkness fell over Belle Meadow too soon. I sat up in bed with my knees tucked to my chest, too on edge to fall asleep. The neighborhood dogs wouldn’t stop barking, and shadows shifted through my window as people strolled the sidewalks outside.

  For them, the world at night was still safe, while I was imprisoned in my grandfather’s house. But this was nothing new. I’d been a prisoner for years—first to the ever-present hiss, now to the knowledge of this new world. Even with the noise gone, the silence pulsing in its absence made me uneasy.

  With all my worries tumbling through my mind, sleep didn’t come until long after the moon stitched itself into the sky.

  * * *

  A SOFT TAPPING jarred me awake. I held my breath. Silence. I rolled over, and the noise sounded again—louder this time. My window? I rubbed my eyes and checked the clock on my dresser.

  2:17 am.

  As I stretched across my bed to pull the curtain aside, the glass pane rattled from the force of another knock. I startled, and the edge of the drapes slipped from my grasp. Probably a branch from the overgrown bushes out front. Shaking my head, I peeked again.

  A shadow filled the window frame. I opened my mouth to scream, but clamped it shut when I made out the lines of Charles’s face. I shot out of bed and opened the casement windows. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Might have been if I wasn’t sleeping.”

  His gaze touched over my body then back up to my face, and my heart thundered in my chest at the idea he was seeing me this way, dressed in nothing but a white tank top and sleep shorts. My face was surely all puffy and I probably had massive bed head, my long blonde curls resembling something of Medusa’s offspring.

  I crossed my arms. “Are you spying on me?”

  “You’re not so interesting that I came to watch you sleep, darlin’,” he said, leaning his hands on the windowsill. He dipped his face to meet my gaze. “I only came to check on you. Now admit it—you’re glad I’m here.”

  I wasn’t about to admit anything.

  “The outside of your house stinks,” he added, grinning.

  “Daffodil oil.”

  “No kidding. You didn’t need that much.”

  What was his problem? Hours ago, he gave the impression I was a burden he’d be happy to be rid of. Now he was knocking on my window in the middle of the night, talking to me like we were old friends.

  The night air kicked inside and chilled my skin, making me suddenly aware I didn’t have a bra on beneath my pajamas. Definitely the night air. The state of my nipples had nothing to do with any level of attraction. It was strictly due to a change in temperature. And the cold had always given me sweaty palms and butterflies in my stomach, too.

  “It’s two in the morning,” I said, partly to break the silence, partly to illuminate the oddity of him standing outside my room in the pitch black of night.

  Charles arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “No.”

  I turned to find something to slip over my tank top, thinking I’d meet him outside, but immediately spun back around. The last thing my already tattered reputation needed was my neighbors spotting a man outside my window at this hour. I looked to the dark windows across the street. If he walked to the front door, that would only further risk drawing attention.

  “Just hurry and climb in before anyone sees you.”

  He obliged, closing the windows behind him, while I grabbed my organic terrycloth robe from the hook behind my door and slipped it on.

  “Most people knock on doors,” I said, turning around as I tied the belt of my robe tight around my waist.

  Charles laughed. “I tried. No one answered.”

  “Because I was sleeping. You know, that thing most people do at two in the morning?”

  He didn’t seem amused. He was too busy standing around with the poise of a male model, dressed in a tidy black shirt and fitted jeans that suggested no one had woke him unexpectedly. Must have been nice to look so put together even at this hour.

  In the dark, his strong jaw, deeply-colored teal eyes, and wide shoulders c
arried the same seductive heaviness as the night we’d danced at the club, and, in that moment, I craved him from my very core. Craved his hands on my hips, his body pressed to mine. The moment made me feel both quieter and bolder at the same time, but I immediately pushed the attraction away.

  “Well, get on with it,” I said. “What’s so important that couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”

  He reached up with one hand and removed my hair tie, letting my loose curls tumble past my shoulders. “I like it better down,” he murmured, his hand lingering on my hair, grazing where my collarbone peeked out from my robe.

  He brushed my cheekbone with his fingertips to move a loose tendril of hair away from my face. His touch rivaled my better judgment, and I wasn’t entirely sure who would win out in the end. The moment was too intimate—especially with a man I barely knew who had shown up at what Mother would call an ‘ungodly’ hour.

  I stepped back. “Why should I care what you like?”

  “I deserve that,” he said, the expression on his face dissolving. “I came to apologize about earlier. If you will allow me to explain….”

  “There’s nothing to explain.”

  He’d been right. Getting attached was a bad idea and certainly not something I would allow to happen willingly.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  I swallowed and gave a nod, though the small movement might not have been perceptible to him. “It’s okay,” I said. “But that’s not the real reason you came here, is it?”

  He shook his head. “I owe it to you to offer protection.”

  “You told me the daffodil oil would be enough.”

  “It is.”

  “So…?”

  He swallowed. “I wanted to check. In case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case you did it wrong.”

  I scoffed, shaking my head in disbelief. “Right, of course. Because I couldn’t possibly know what I’m doing.”

  “Would it be so strange if you didn’t? All this is new to you. Look—I just wanted to be sure. I’ll leave you alone now, since I’m clearly not welcome here.”