“Hush!” I said a little more intensely than I meant. His face crumpled and then contorted in a way that seemed ready for a fight or a protest. So, before he freaked out, I crooked my finger slyly behind my hand in Mom’s direction. “That’s my mom. I’m trying to hear what she’s saying without getting noticed.”
Thompson’s mood shifted, and he seemed intrigued at playing spy.
He checked over his shoulder. “Which one is your mom?”
I’d forgotten he’d never met her. I whispered, “Curly hair. Professor clothes.”
Looking again, Thompson nodded. I expected more questions or a comment on how frumpy my mom looked—because believe me, she did—but instead he just fell silent. I took the opportunity to eavesdrop.
“Gather the others tonight,” Mom finished, and apparently sent Mr. Kirov on his way. I’d clearly missed the meat of the conversation.
At least I had a couple of nuggets to go on.
“Let’s go find Bea,” I suggested. I stood up and headed back to the bandstand. With any luck the music would be so loud that I could ask her about this without being overheard. I should find a way to corner Nikolai too. It sounded as though the big thing Mom and Mr. Kirov had planned wasn’t something Nikolai necessarily approved of. Maybe that meant I could recruit him to help me find a solution for the hunt. His expertise with vampire physiology could be invaluable.
I found Bea talking to Stevie, the drummer from the band. The band must have been on break. The two of them were laughing about something but hushed the instant they noticed my approach.
“Where’s your new attachment?” Bea asked.
“What?” I asked.
Bea rolled her eyes, as if frustrated by my dimness. “Thompson,” she said. “Where’s Thompson?”
I hadn’t realized he wasn’t beside me. “Probably still at the picnic table near the buffet setup. We’ll catch up with him. Can I talk to you for a second?” I gave Stevie an apologetic look. “Alone?”
Stevie shook her long blond hair out of her face. “Sure, no problem. I have to get ready for the next set anyway.”
I tugged Bea aside, away from the milling crowd. “Last night, at the big meeting—what was Mr. Kirov’s take on everything?”
Bea laughed. “You mean, Mr. Kill-Them-Kill-Them-All? You know him.”
I didn’t share her dark chuckle. “What’s his plan? Is Nik involved?”
“Am I involved in what?”
I looked up to see Nik. A slight sheen of sweat covered his face. The heat had made his damp hair extra unruly, and it was all I could do to keep from reaching out and fixing his errant locks.
“Hi,” Bea said simply, though somehow she managed to infuse a ton of flirt into that single syllable.
“Hey,” he responded, sparing her a moment of his attention before turning back to me. “What were you talking about, Ana?”
“I was wondering if you were in on your dad’s plan to kill all the vampires,” I said.
If he was taken aback by my bold truthfulness, he didn’t show it, although he did take a moment to take a sip of whatever he was drinking before saying, “I’m surprised anyone’s bothering to formulate a plan. Last vamp I saw looked ready to gnaw off her own leg.”
Of course, at that very moment my stomach decided to cramp.
The pain hit like a physical blow, and I doubled over. Instantly, Nikolai wrapped his arms around my shoulders. He murmured softly, clearly trying to comfort me and discover the source of my distress. I couldn’t understand his words, though his lips brushed my ears. His nearness made my hunger worse. The scent of his sweat filled my nostrils, blocking out all other sensations. Mingled with the patchouli he always wore, the odor sent shivers of desire down my spine. He smelled so … tasty.
My jaw clicked. My fangs descended. I put my lips against his hand. My tongue tasted sweet salt mixed with the hint of the coppery ambrosia just under the surface. The sharp tip of my teeth must have grazed his skin, because suddenly there was blood in my mouth.
He started to pull away, and I couldn’t let that happen. I grabbed his wrist and sank my teeth deep into the back of his hand.
Somewhere beyond my bliss I had the impression of screaming and pushing and pulling. But all I knew was joy. Magic filled me; I became aware of power moving through me. I felt lighter, brighter—
And then it was gone. I hit the dirt hard. Something heavy hit me hard in the chest, and all the breath went out of my lungs.
The sunlight was so bright that I had to blink several times before I could tell what was going on. Bea knelt over me in a strange position. I was looking up at her armpit. She was whispering something fiercely. “Clean yourself off. Be quick”—I finally made out her words—“and snap out of it, Ana. Hurry!”
I grabbed the nearest thing, which was the edge of Bea’s hoodie. I wiped my lips and then, horrified, stared at the blood smeared on the fabric.
“Bea, I …” I wanted to apologize, but I was so mortified that no coherent words came out.
Bea looked down at me and shrugged out of her sweatshirt. Quickly, she bundled it up. “She’s fine,” she was telling the crowd pressing around us. “She just fainted.”
Where was Nik? Was he okay? I couldn’t believe my first interaction with him since our breakup was to bite him on the hand. This was horrible. I wanted to stay hidden under Bea, but she helped me sit up. A woman with long brown hair tied into an elaborate braid encircling her head handed me a water bottle. She had at least one ring on every finger and a tattoo of a snake spiraling up her arm. “Thanks,” I said.
Bea was ordering people around. “Give her room to breathe,” she said, and I could feel the glamour in her words. A light magical spell tinged the air with the scent of violets and cucumbers. The crowd stepped back obediently.
I touched Bea lightly on the arm and tried to ask about Nik with my eyes.
She smiled maternally. “Everything is going to be all right,” she said. “You just fainted.”
The smell grew stronger. “That’s not going to work here,” I whispered. There were too many witches in this crowd, many of them far more powerful than either of us. I swore I could already hear the sensitives in the throng grumbling softly about a forget-me spell in the air.
“It’s going to have to,” Bea snapped at me, her voice straining on the edge of a whisper, “or you’re going to be crucified by all these witches, vampire princess. What the hell were you thinking?”
I gave her a guilty shrug. She knew it was the hunger, but neither of us had expected such a strong reaction. “I don’t know,” I murmured. The weirdest part was that I felt full now. I couldn’t understand it. Elias said he couldn’t be satisfied with just a bite; I was completely recharged.
“Is Nik okay?” I handed the empty bottle back to snake-tattoo girl.
She seemed to think I was talking to her, so I got the “official” story. “He cut his hand on the glass bottle pretty bad. They’ve cancelled the rest of the show. He probably needs stitches.” I must have looked as pale as I felt because she added, “Lots of people faint at the sight of blood. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
I cast a your-magic-is-strong glance at Bea, who shook her head slightly. The only thing I could think she might mean by that was that Nik had done some of his own magical misdirection. I really wanted to get away from everyone so I could ask Bea why Nik didn’t use his psychic blade on me. I mean, I was biting him. He’s trained to disengage vampires. Yet, from what I could tell, it was Bea who came between us. And thank the Goddess she had. What if I had drained him dry?
Bea helped me to my feet. She must have seen the question on my lips, because she shook her head again and whispered, “Later.” Malcolm came over and patted me on the back kindly. Malcolm was tall and slender, and very proper looking. You almost expected him to have a British accent like Don Cheadle in Ocean’s Eleven. I could see why he appealed to Bea, with his mahogany skin and closely shaved helmet of curls.
I checked around for a sign of Nikolai, but, if braided snake-tattoo lady was to be believed, he’d been taken off to the urgent care clinic for stitches. I somehow doubted that, though. He might be a powerful magician, but it would take some trick to convince a doctor that he or she wasn’t sewing up bite marks.
I wondered if news of my “accident” would reach Thompson.
When I saw the crowd parting, I hoped it was him. I could really use some strong arms to support me—especially ones that wouldn’t ask any awkward questions.
Unfortunately, the form I saw barreling toward me was none other than my mother.
Chapter Nine
One look at Mom’s face and I knew no amount of magic could deflect her anger. I really missed Thompson’s broad shoulders to hide behind. Instead, I brushed the grass stains off the butt of my jeans and waited for the storm to hit.
“What happened here?” Mom demanded, sweeping everyone, even poor mundane Malcolm, with her laser stare of doom.
“I fainted,” I lied easily, because even if she wanted the truth, this was hardly the place to broadcast it. Malcolm wasn’t the only norm within earshot. “Nik cut his hand.”
Mom stood with her hands on her hips, considering us. We hadn’t spoken since this morning, and a lot of unresolved tension hung in the air between us. Her eyes flicked and her mouth twitched. It was obvious to me that she didn’t believe me; yet when her eyes fell on Malcolm, she nodded curtly. “Is Nikolai okay?”
“Yes, Dr. Parker,” Bea said, and they exchanged some kind of meaningful look. Maybe they shared some kind of secret code that only the Elders knew. I couldn’t fathom it, but it seemed to mollify Mom a little. I strained to sense any magical bindings or manacles being manifested, but I could only smell the remains of Bea’s forget-me spell.
Mom gave me one final withering I’ll-deal-with-you-later grimace, and then turned to start addressing the crowd like a police officer shooing people from the scene of a crime. She sent people to help Nik’s band break down the set. Others were assigned cleanup, etc. It was impressive in its own way, especially when I felt Mom’s deep, earthy magic strengthening Bea’s forget-me spell. By tomorrow no one would remember seeing me bite Nik’s hand.
Malcolm leaned close to me and said, “Your mom is scary.”
I let out a little laugh. “Yeah, she can be.”
“What do you want to do now?” Bea asked.
I wanted desperately to talk to her about what I’d overheard Mom say to Mr. Kirov and about what the hell happened when I bit Nik’s hand, but I could see that Malcolm had attached himself to her side. “I lost Thompson over by the food. Maybe we should go find him.”
“I’m starving anyway,” Malcolm agreed.
His choice of words made me choke and laugh all at the same time. When Bea started to giggle, I lost it. We both collapsed in a fit of hysteria.
“What’s so funny?” Malcolm wanted to know.
“Sorry,” I said through tears. “The way you said that just reminded us of something else.”
“Uh-huh. Sure,” he said doubtfully, but he didn’t press us for details.
After fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, I began to suspect that Thompson ditched me. We had wandered over to the man-made waterfall and duck pond close to the zoo entrance. Bea and Malcolm tossed bits of gluten-free rice bread at an unsuspecting mallard, while I sat on the park bench and dialed Thompson’s number.
When he picked up, I asked, “Where are you? We’ve been looking all over the park.”
“I’m in my truck.”
It was a very strange answer, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. “Um, why?”
“I had a power bar in the glove compartment and decent music on the radio.” There was some subtext that I clearly wasn’t getting, because he sounded kind of angry or put out, even though he was the one who ditched me.
“Are you mad at me?”
“I mow your lawn. Not on a regular basis, but, yeah, your mom has hired us.”
Now I really felt like I was missing something critical. I felt like I should be apologizing for something, but I had no idea for what. Instead, I just said, “Okay. Are you coming back? Should we meet you at your truck?”
“I remembered her because she didn’t let us use the bathroom,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken.
“My mom is a world-class jerk to everyone, Thompson. I wouldn’t take it too personally. You should have seen her a minute ago. She scared Malcolm.”
“Matt,” he corrected. “Or, at least Matthew, okay? Why can’t you ever call me by my first name?”
It was habit, really. When I went to watch our high school hockey team play, I got used to the way the announcers always called him out by his last name—Thompson for the score! It was the name emblazoned across the back of his letter jacket. “I’m sorry, Matt. Is that what you’re mad about? Can we talk about this in person?”
“Forget about it,” he said gruffly. “I’m just being stupid. Where are you? I’ll meet you.”
I explained and agreed to stay put until he got there. I clicked the End button but stared at the phone. What was that all about? I had a sinking feeling it had something to do with male pride. The morose way Thompson spoke reminded me of Elias going on about losing his place as my dad’s right-hand man, only it made less sense. Vampires, I could understand; regular boys, not so much.
Malcolm and Bea laughed about something, panicking the duck, which fluttered off to the far side of the pool. Malcolm was a normal guy. Maybe he’d have some insight into Thompson’s behavior. I called him over and explained the conversation to both of them.
Nodding sagely, Malcolm considered for a moment after I’d finished. “It’s a class thing,” he pronounced with all the seriousness of a doctor telling me I had months to live.
I suppressed my giggle because I wanted to understand. “Uh, okay. But, what can I do? I’m not even sure I know what that means to us.”
“It means you’re rich and he’s poor,” Malcolm said.
“What? We’re not rich!” Mom only made a decent salary because of her dozen adjunct professor jobs. We’d inherited our Cathedral Hill mansion, but not much else.
“He thinks you are, Professor Higgins,” Bea said, referencing the play Thompson and I were in last year. The reference was a little off, however, since I had played the street urchin, Liza Doolittle, whom the professor transformed into a proper English lady. “Anyway, just treat him with respect,” Bea continued. “Act as though it doesn’t matter.”
“‘Act’?” Malcolm repeated, arching a thin eyebrow at me critically. “Does it? Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. You should see where he lives,” she said.
I didn’t get a chance to consider my own answer, because Thompson strolled up. His shoulders were hunched dejectedly and his hands were stuffed into his pockets, yet he smiled brightly when he saw me. I had a hard time believing things like “class” mattered in America in the twenty-first century, so I brushed it all from my mind.
“I saw that the band was packing up,” Thompson said. “I thought they just started.”
“Nik cut his hand,” Malcolm said.
“I hope he didn’t damage any muscles or has to get stitches. Depending on the hand, that could end his musical career real quick,” Thompson said.
I hadn’t thought about that. OMG. What if I just messed up Ingress’s chance to get a record label!? Nik was never going to talk to me again. He probably wasn’t planning to anyway, but that would be the end of things forever and ever and ever.
The boys huddled together to talk about the music industry and other rock stars who had lost limbs. Bea came over to join me on the park bench.
“It’s just a bite mark, remember,” Bea said. “He’ll be okay.”
I rested my head in my palms. I couldn’t believe I bit Nik of all people, and in his hand!
“He still likes you, you know,” Bea said slyly and quietly with a glance over at Thompson.
I peeked through my fingers. “You mean Matt? I know—I was totally relieved.”
“No. Nikolai.”
“What? Before or after I bit his hand?”
“During.” I stared at her in utter disbelief. She continued. “He kept yelling for us not to hurt you. While you were sucking his blood! I mean, WTF, right? I was screaming at him to use his magic blade, cut you off, you know—but he wouldn’t. I bet he would have let you drain him dry before he lifted a finger against you. Crazy, stupid boy.”
I let my hands drop to my knees. “Really?”
“Really,” she said with a touch of jealousy. Just for good measure, she added, “Oh, and if you ever go vamp on me without my permission”—she made the fingers of both hands into guns—“both barrels, sister.”
I stared at the spot just over my heart where her fingers pointed. It was true that Bea had been more a frenemy than BFF since I became vampire princess, but this little violent gesture was not cool.
“Nice. Glad to know you’ve got my back,” I said through clenched teeth.
Malcolm and Thompson wandered back over. Thompson said to me, “I’ve been deputized to tell you that we’re tired of this party. We want to go somewhere else.”
There wasn’t room for four in Thompson’s truck. We all agreed that the cure for what ailed us was Porky’s hamburgers and onion rings. I buckled myself in and rolled down the window. I stuck my head out the window like a dog and let the wind pull at my hair.
My thoughts were as jumbled as my hair. What was my mom planning with Mr. Kirov? How did it involve Nik? Was Nik okay? Did he really tell everyone not to hurt me? Bea might have pissed me off, but I still wondered if she was right about Nik. Did that mean he still liked me—like, really liked me? And what if he did? What about Thompson?
Thompson drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting lightly on the stick shift. The radio was on. Some band I didn’t know was screaming about a crazy bitch who f—ked so good that it was all worth it or something. I didn’t really care for the message, but the tune was weirdly catchy.
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