by Amira Rain
I didn’t remember that, but then again, maybe I’d been told but just had my nose buried in a book at the time.
Not even waiting for me to respond to what she’d asked me, Jen continued. “Well, anyway…so, your dad was thinking that with all these new vampires joining the Warrens lately, we should probably beef up our ranks, too. And also, your dad’s been thinking that we need some ‘fresh blood,’ pun definitely intended, here on the farm anyway. Just with there being a bunch of single people around, and just with it being hard for vampires to meet other vampires, and all that other junk.”
Over the years, we had had a slow but steady trickle of single vampires coming to live on the farm. Some of these single vampires were “transfers” from other Watcher communities around the country, and some of them were vampires who simply wanted to become Watchers. However, with such a shallow dating pool on the farm, and with the difficulties of dating humans in Sweetwater, not many of these single vampires had found partners for life, and some of them were unhappy about this and hoped for an influx of new people at some point in time.
I asked Jen where all the “new vampires” were coming from, and she said, “all over.”
“I heard some are coming from California, some from Colorado, and some from Indiana…and some even from all these other different places that I can’t even remember.”
“Okay…and what’s the age range of all these new vampires? Or, well, I know vampires can look twenty but actually be six hundred years old and all that; so, I guess I mean, what’s the age range of these vampires in terms of looks? Do you know?”
Jen shrugged. “No clue, but for my sake, I’m hoping there will be some mid-or-older-twenty-something-looking vampires in the bunch, and for your sake, I hope there’ll be some older teenager or early twenty-something-looking vampires. Whether we both get lucky on this or not, I guess we’ll find out soon.”
Just then, a large truck began rumbling up the long dirt driveway. When it began rounding the circle part of the drive, I could see that it was a moving truck, with the words U Move It printed in orange lettering on the side.
More than a little confused, I looked at Jen. “My dad thought a moving truck was an appropriate vehicle to transport the new vampires to the farm in?”
Jen burst out laughing. “No, silly. That’s the truck Mel and Matt rented to move all their stuff to the new house.”
Despite all my reading and “book learning,” as Jen liked to call it, I could sometimes be a little slow to “get” things, especially right after being pulled out of an engrossing reading session, like I just had been. This was obviously one of those “slow” times, and now I felt absolutely stupid for having thought even for a second that my dad would have moved the new vampires to the farm by way of a moving truck. I also felt absolutely stupid that the more obvious thought, that the moving truck was carrying some of the new vampires’ possessions, hadn’t been my first thought.
After laughing a little more, Jen asked me if I’d forgotten about Mel and Matt’s big move. “They’re doing part of it tonight, and the rest tomorrow. Remember?”
I remembered hearing something recently about Mel and her vampire husband Matt making a move from the “main house” to their very own new house on the property, but if I’d been told exactly when they were going to move, I’d long since forgotten.
The move was taking place because three months earlier, after being married for only six months, Mel and Matt had suddenly become new parents of three little boys, all biological brothers, ages one, two, and three. Mel and Matt had both always wanted to adopt, and this was part of the reason that Mel had chosen to become a vampire before ever having any biological children of her own. However, she’d only planned on adopting “one, maybe two” kids, and Matt had always thought along the same lines. So, when they’d gotten a call that three brothers were available for adoption and would likely be separated if a home for them couldn’t be found soon, they’d had some thinking to do. They hadn’t ended up thinking very long, though, and had traveled to Moxon to adopt the boys the very next day.
Since then, although everything with the adoption had went smoothly and Matt and Mel’s new family was thriving, they’d been having thoughts that maybe they wanted their very own house on the farm, despite the fact that the main family house was absolutely massive, more like a “log cabin mansion” than anything. “It’s not even so much that space is an issue,” Mel had told me. “It’s just that Matt and I want our own space.”
I could definitely understand that, especially since even as large as it was, the main house could feel simply overfilled with young kids sometimes with Matt and Mel’s three boys added to my parents’ own two boys. “The greatest hazard in this house has officially become wiping out on little metal cars,” Carol had said to me one day, and she wasn’t wrong.
After some deliberation, a few weeks earlier, Mel and Matt had finally decided to move into one of the thirty or so other houses on the vast property, and I remembered being filled in about this. However, the fact that it was moving day was coming as news to me.
Matt soon parked the moving truck in front of the house and got out, giving Jen and me a wave. From where we still stood in the side yard, we waved back, and then glanced at the time displayed on her phone screen again.
“Okay, I’ve really got to run if I want my shower. ‘First impressions last,’ you know. Have you ever heard that expression? ‘First impressions last.’ My Grandma Phyllis told me that once. And when it comes to first impressions with possibly-hot new vampires coming to live on our farm…well, let’s just say that I want to be fresh as a daisy, and four thousand times as beautiful.”
I cracked a smile. “Only ‘four thousand’ times? Why so arbitrary a number? Why not ten thousand times as beautiful as a daisy?”
“Well, yes, that, too. I do want to be ten thousand times as beautiful as a daisy. Basically. I just want to be infinitely beautiful. How’s that for a big word? Grandpa Bucky taught it to me. I want to be infinitely beautiful.”
Smiling, I said I’d let her get to it, and off she went, dashing into the house for her shower.
Being that the day had been extremely muggy, stiflingly hot even inside the creamery, I wasn’t exactly fresh as a daisy myself, let alone ten thousand times as beautiful. My long hair, which I’d pulled up into a messy bun that morning, had become overly messy, with several limp strands falling in my face. The bun itself was falling from the top to the back of my head, and I knew for certain that I had a little mint chip ice cream somewhere in my hair, because I’d absentmindedly wiped some from my fingers against the side of my head while tucking a stray strand behind one ear that day. As far as my face, I felt a little greasy, and as far as what I was wearing, I was definitely a mess. My denim Capri pants were streaked with white paint from when I’d helped paint an outdoor fence a few weeks earlier, and the side of my t-shirt was smudged with grease from when I’d accidentally brushed against the hinges of one of the coolers in the creamery that afternoon. To top it all off, I hadn’t even yet bothered to remove my maroon creamery apron after work, and the front of it was smudged with probably no fewer than a dozen different flavors of ice cream.
Because of all this, I contemplated running in the house after Jen to take a shower myself in my master bathroom, wanting to at least look presentable just on the chance that any of the new vampires were attractive. However, Matt was pulling empty cardboard boxes from the truck, and I felt compelled to ask if I could help by bringing some of them inside.
He thanked me but said no, he had it covered. “You could watch the boys for Mel and me for a few minutes, though. That would help us a lot.”
Right then, Mel’s car began coming up the driveway, and I said sure.
“I might need to head inside and grab a shower in ten minutes or so, though. Is that okay?”
Matt said that was perfectly fine. “That’ll be plenty of time for Mel and me to get all the boxes upstairs without tripping over
the boys. After that, they can be part of helping to pack up.”
After parking behind the moving truck, Mel freed the boys from their car seats one by one, and they began speeding over to me one by one, with the littlest of them more toddling than running. Smiling, I knelt with my arms open to catch them, and was soon nearly tipped over by an avalanche of three little nephews hugging me at once.
All of them had hazel eyes and dark golden blonde hair that just happened to match Matt’s eyes and hair exactly; and, making them look almost like triplets just separated by age, all three boys had dimples that came out when they smiled, which they’d been doing more and more recently. When they’d first arrived at the house, thin and pale, they hadn’t smiled at all, and had instead just cried near-continuously for a few days, with the oldest boy asking for his mommy. Heartbreakingly, she’d been murdered by the boys’ biological father several months earlier, and after that, the boys had been placed with some distant relatives who’d turned out to be horribly negligent, often not feeding the boys all day. As for the boys’ father, wanting to avoid the death penalty, he had pleaded guilty to the murder and was now serving a life sentence somewhere out of state.
In the present, boisterous and rosy-cheeked, the boys were a picture of happiness and health, thanks to Mel and Matt’s attention and love over the previous few months. They’d even started calling Mel and Matt Mommy and Daddy, and they called Jen Aunt Jen. However, being that they were still so young and couldn’t always pronounce things properly, Aunt Jen usually came out sounding more like Ah-Zhen, which was how I’d used to say it as a baby, I’d been told. As for me, I was called Sissy, which was as close to Chrissy as the boys were able to get. This pronunciation of my name never failed to melt my heart every time I heard it.
Soon when the boys had grown tired of trying to tip me over by way of hugging me, they began playing with Wanted, who’d been sleeping on the front porch before they’d arrived. Being that he was an older dog with severe arthritis in both hips, sleeping was how he spent most of his time. However, when the boys were around, he usually perked up a little. When my mom arrived home from work with my two little brothers every day, Wanted usually even got up to greet them with his tail wagging.
Once Mel and Matt had gotten all the empty cardboard boxes inside the house, they took the boys in with them. I went to follow, intending to head upstairs for my shower, but then remembered that I’d left my book on the bench in the side yard, along with my phone. After going over to grab them, I turned to head back to the house, just in time to see some kind of an old-fashioned muscle car, windows down, heading up the driveway. The driver had a strong, square jaw and was wearing dark sunglasses, and even from a pretty fair distance, I could see that he wasn’t just hot, but knock-me-over-with-a-feather-level hot.
CHAPTER THREE
The insanely hot visitor gave me a little smile while he got out of his car, which was a mint condition blue Mustang that I guessed was from the eighties or nineties. “Is this the MacGregor house?”
I found that I couldn’t speak to answer his question. His attractiveness level seemed to have robbed me of this ability. Now that he had come to a stop mere feet away from me, I could see that my initial assessment had been correct. He was indeed knock-me-over-with-a-feather-level hot. It wasn’t just his face that was incredibly attractive, though; his body, all probably six-foot-two of it from head-to-toe, was a thing of masculine beauty, too, all long, muscular limbs and chiseled contours. I could even see the outline of a six-pack beneath the visitor’s fitted gray t-shirt.
He looked to be in his early twenties, maybe twenty-two if I’d had to guess, although I knew when it came to vampires, looks were no indicator of “real” age. Still, I found myself not even caring about his “real” age. He looked like someone I might really want to spend some time with. If I could manage to speak to him, anyway.
I finally did after a long moment or two, although my voice came out in some sort of a weird squeak.
“Yes.” Deeply embarrassed about my weird squeak, I cleared my throat before trying again. “This is the MacGregor house.”
“The MacGregor house where Hayden MacGregor lives? I know there’s supposed to be quite a few different houses on this property.”
Clearing my throat again, I nodded. “Yes…and yes. Yes, there are quite a few different houses on this property. There’s acres and acres of property…and houses and houses. Many, many houses. Thirty-something, maybe, to the east of the berry patches…or maybe west. I mean...the houses are definitely west. I just couldn’t think straight for a second.”
It seemed that now that I was finally talking, I was unable to shut up.
Realizing that I was babbling and saying stupid things, I made myself pause by doing yet another throat clear, then continued in a way that I hoped was less babbly and more normal. “Anyway, yes. This is the MacGregor house where Hayden MacGregor lives. He’s my dad.”
The thought occurred to me that I was actually talking to a guy I was attracted to for the very first time. Silently, I cursed the homeschooling that had surely helped to make me so socially awkward with guys. Or maybe men was the right word, I mused. The male standing across from me was maybe somewhere between guy and man. At any rate, he was a young man, and a devastatingly attractive one at that.
With his hands in the pockets of his battered jeans, he grinned in response to what I’d said, revealing perfectly straight white teeth. “Great. I’ve come to the right place, then. Your dad is supposed to be my new boss, so to speak. I’m here to train to be a Watcher.”
Willing myself not to grin like an idiot, I gave my visitor a small smile. “Well, good.”
Still grinning, he suddenly took a step closer and extended a hand. “I’m Jake Warren…no relation to the Warrens. Total unfortunate coincidence.”
Smiling a little bigger, I took his hand and shook it, experiencing some sort of internal quake when I felt the firm warmth of his touch. “Oh…well, that is an unfortunate coincidence.”
He stifled a short, sharp laugh. “You’re not kidding. The vetting I had to go through to come here was intense. I had to convince your dad that I’m a Warren from the good-for-nothing-yet-pretty-harmless trailer park Warrens of the outskirts of Indianapolis, Indiana, and not a Warren from the Warrens. In fact, I didn’t even know vampires existed until about a year ago, when I was turned. I think your dad followed my family tree back to the Mayflower anyway.”
I laughed. “Yeah, considering the history we Watchers have had with the Warrens, I bet he did.”
Smiling at each other, we both fell silent, and I thought about the fact that Jake was indeed fairly close to my age, with his “looks” age matching his “real” age. I also thought about the fact that he hadn’t yet released my hand, and was instead still holding it, motionless, between us. With this fact making my face warm for some reason, I nervously cleared my throat for probably about the fiftieth time since we’d met.
A moment or two later, Jake glanced down, seeming to suddenly realize that he was still holding my hand, and he finally let it go. “Sorry. You’ve got me all flustered. It’s not every day that I meet a girl with your looks, and your beautiful smile.”
Now my face went from warm to flamingly hot, with the color probably matching my hair, I guessed, even though that was a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, whenever I was nervous, flustered, or embarrassed, or a combination of all three like how I was currently, I always imagined that my face probably matched my hair, which was a deep brick red that got a little lighter and brighter on top in the summer. “You’re gettin’ your summer flame streaks,” Jen had said to me a few days earlier while playing with my hair. Her own hair was nothing but “flame streaks,” being subtly different shades of vivid flame red all over. My own hair had been nearly identical to hers when I was born, although it had darkened considerably over the years, to my relief. To me, bright red hair said, “Look at me!” which was a look that Jen seemed to thoroughly enjoy, but I defi
nitely didn’t. In fact, I would have been fine with hair that said, “Please look away.”
Right then, while I stood not a foot away from Jake, not knowing how to respond to his compliments, my hair seemed to pull a “Look at me!” stunt of its own accord, or at least the bobby pin holding it in its messy bun did. Apparently overtaxed by having held my thick hair in place all day, the single pin loosely hanging on at the front of the bun suddenly just simply let go, slowly falling to the side. Maybe I’d jarred the pin loose earlier when I’d nodded, or maybe at that very moment the weight of my hair had just been too much; but at any rate, while the pin fell to the grass, my bun quickly uncoiled, spilling my long hair over my shoulder in a loose twisted rope.
Before I could grab it to push it over my shoulder, Jake’s eyes widened, and he spoke in a lower voice than he had been.
“Wow. You have some beautiful hair. It’s gorgeous, actually.”
At this point, if it were possible for a person’s face to burst into actual flames simply by that person being profoundly embarrassed, mine would have. In fact, my face may as well have been a barbeque grill, ready for steaks and hamburgers.
Somehow, I managed to squeak out a thank you to Jake for his compliment, and he smiled, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“You’re welcome. See, I’m never shy about giving out compliments. When they’re genuine, and when you might make someone’s day by saying one, why not, right? Life’s too short to beat around the bush and not be upfront.”
While I murmured agreement, he pulled a lighter from his jeans pocket and a cigarette from the pack and lit it up, taking a deep drag. So, he’s kind of a “bad boy,” I thought. He smokes cigarettes. I’d never smoked cigarettes myself; I’d never even taken a single puff. I’d witnessed people smoking outside various businesses when I went into Sweetwater to shop, and I witnessed a few vampires on the farm smoking cigarettes sometimes, usually outside whenever we had a community barn party and all the adults were drinking. No one had ever lit up so near to me, though; and, in fact, until Jake just had, I’d probably never even seen a cigarette from any closer than fifteen feet away. I’d lived a pretty sheltered life in a lot of ways, I knew. I’d certainly never been exposed to any guys fairly near my age that had felt free to just light up a cigarette around me. And there was something about the act that just seemed a bit thrillingly “bad boy” about it to me.