Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire

by Heather Swain

  “Play Wii,” he said drily.

  I punched him on the shoulder. “This will be much more interesting, I promise.”

  “How, exactly, will this be interesting?”

  I grinned at him. “Speeding isn’t the only way to get a thrill. How about sneaking a girl out of a shelter. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” he said. “What if I get caught?”

  “You didn’t get caught speeding,” I pointed out.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. The light turned green and the person behind us honked. “I don’t like putting myself in harm’s way,” he said, and I laughed. “What?” he demanded.

  “Some Greek god you are!” I said.

  That seemed to touch a nerve because he immediately did a U-turn and headed south.

  “So you’ll do it?” I asked.

  He gripped the wheel with both hands and focused on the road. “That depends on what we’re doing exactly.” He glanced at me again. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

  I thought about this. What was I going to do? How could I sneak Kayla out of HAG? And then what? It wasn’t like I could take her home with me. Or even if I could, that didn’t change that other girls at HAG were missing. And of course, there was the problem of how I was going to either get in to HAG or get Kayla out. “Well,” I said, biting my lip. “How good are you at acting?”

  Helios shrugged. “Greeks know their tragedies.”

  “Good,” I said as I texted my plan to Kayla. “Because you’re going to be Kayla’s cousin from southern Indiana.”

  chapter 13

  nothing could be more out of place than Helios’s sparkling gold car parked right in front of sucky old HAG, except, of course, Helios himself striding in through the smudgy front door of the building. I wished I could see what happened inside. I bet Maron did a giant double take then tugged her shirt down to expose yet more cleavage when he walked in. And the girls probably swarmed him like bees to ice cream, but who could blame them? I was hoping Kayla got my text and played along with the story of her “cousin” coming to get her so she could visit her ailing grandmother in the hospital.

  I watched the door from behind Helios’s tinted windows, then looked at the clock on the dashboard, then watched the door, then looked at the clock. Five minutes passed. How could it be taking this long? Had something gone wrong? Should I call Helios? Or text Kayla? Or burst inside wielding a bat then drag my friends out before Maron had them both cleaning toilets for eternity? Ten minutes went by and I was ready to drive the car through the front door, but I knew I had to control myself. Then, just as I was about to explode from impatience and worry, the HAG door swung open. Helios had his arm looped through the crook of Kayla’s elbow as if they’d known each other forever, but both of them looked a little shaky and uncertain as they hurried toward the car.

  As soon as Kayla slid across the backseat, she reached up and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Oh my god! Oh my god!” she moaned. She had me in a death grip. “You’re such a genius and a lifesaver. How did you ever think of having a gorgeous guy pose as my cousin?! It was brilliant.”

  “Kayla,” I croaked and squirmed. “Let go. You’re hurting me!”

  She gave me one final squeeze then she fell back against the seat. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for rescuing me.”

  I rubbed my neck, wondering what had gotten into her. This was more than just freaked out—this was terrified.

  Helios slid into the driver’s side. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face, which was uncharacteristically pale. “Easy as baklava,” he said, but there was the slightest quiver in his voice. As if the Sun God’s hard-as-marble composure had cracked a bit.

  Before I could ask if he’d been nervous, Kayla shot forward, grabbed for me, and began shouting, “Go! Go! Go! Maron and that creepy lady are coming outside!” She banged the back of the seat.

  Helios jammed the car into gear and squealed away from the curb. I turned to see Maron and Atonia under a streetlight, pointing at the car. “Holy crap!” I ducked down, head below the window’s edge. “Do you think they saw me?”

  Helios sped around the corner. “No way,” he said, checking and rechecking the rearview mirror. “Nobody can see through these windows. They’re way too dark.” He looked at me. “Right? They are dark, aren’t they? There’s no way they could have seen us.”

  I inched my way back up again. “I hope to the high heavens not. That creepy lady was my social worker.”

  We hit the highway and Helios floored it. Once we were moving, he took a deep breath and wiped a hand across his brow. “Whew! Glad that’s over.” He reached over to pat my knee. “Don’t worry. I’m sure she didn’t see you.” He seemed almost as shaken up as I was and let his hand linger on my thigh as if to comfort both of us.

  My heart was still racing and I wanted to intertwine my fingers with his while I took deep breaths to calm down, but Kayla stuck her head between us. “Wow, you two are criminal masterminds. Helios just strode in there like he owned the place and told Maron that I had to leave with him right away. Like it was a matter of life and death because our poor sick granny was going to croak any second. I didn’t even have time to get my stuff together,” she said. “I just grabbed his arm and headed for the door.”

  “But what happened earlier today?” I asked. “Where did Sadie go? Who’s coming after you? And why were you so freaked out when you texted me?”

  Kayla slumped in the backseat, thin and pale. “Oh, Josie,” she said with tears rimming her tired eyes. “You’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you.”

  I glanced at Helios who lifted one eyebrow. “Believe me, Kayla,” I said. “I’ve heard all kinds of weird stuff lately that you couldn’t even hope to top. Just tell me what happened.”

  She took a deep breath. “Sadie was really freaked out. Something spooked her after Rhonda left. She kept saying that the devil was after her, but she’s from a really religious family down in southern Indiana so I thought she was one of those crazy Bible kids, you know, who take all that stuff way too seriously. She stopped eating, though, and she was getting real, real skinny. I kept telling her that she had to eat, but she said she couldn’t.”

  “Maybe she was anorexic,” I said.

  Kayla bit her lip. “I don’t think so. At least she wasn’t a week ago. That girl could put down mad ice cream.”

  “Bulimic?” I guessed.

  “I think she was just too scared to eat,” Kayla said. “She told me it was going to happen. She warned me. She said, ‘The evil one is coming for me.’ She begged me to sleep in the bunk with her, but of course I didn’t.” She buried her face in her hands.

  Helios glanced at me and asked quietly, “Did you know any of this?”

  I shook my head. It was all news to me.

  Kayal continued to moan, “I should have done what she asked, because this morning…” She looked up, horrified. “She was gone.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” I asked.

  Kayla fought back tears. “I just met you and I wanted to be friends. I was afraid if I laid all of that on you, you would think I was insane and wouldn’t want to hang out. But when Sadie went missing, I didn’t know who else to call. You’re the only person who’s been nice to me in so long.”

  “It’s okay.” I reached over the back of the seat and held her hand. “I’m going to help you.”

  “Thank you.” She squeezed my fingers. “It’s been the same with the other girls who disappeared, Bethany and Rhonda. Every one of them got scared and skinny then they were gone but they left all their stuff behind.”

  “That part doesn’t make any sense,” I said, half to myself and half to Helios.

  “It’s after me now,” Kayla announced.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “It’s like I’m dreaming, or at least, at first I thought I was. I mean, what else could it be?” She looked lost as she tried to explain. “Whenever I fall asleep. Like today when I was r
eading on my bunk. It came into the room. I could feel it. Smell it. Hear it creeping. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t wake up. It was there, though. I know it. And I felt it. It climbed on top of me.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and Helios shot me a worried look. Oh crap, I thought. Was there a perv on the loose? Was someone abusing the girls?

  “It weighed a million pounds and just sat there, perched like a giant evil cat.” Kayla pressed her hands into her chest. Her eyes were wide and haunted. “And I could feel it, draining me. Taking something from me. Sucking the life out of me.”

  I let a long, slow breath go. Maybe Helios was right. Maybe I didn’t know Kayla very well and she was a kook. Then again, that’s what I thought about the paras at first.

  “Sounds like a Vrachnas,” Helios said under his breath.

  “A what?” I asked.

  “That’s what we call them in Greece, anyway. It’s a kind of demon who comes when people are sleeping.” He was very matter-of-fact and hardly bothered by what he was saying. “She sits on your chest and smothers you.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you making this up?”

  He looked at me like he was annoyed. “Why would I do that?”

  I leaned in close to him and whispered, “You mean you believe this?”

  He chuckled. “Oh right, sorry. Forgot. Human on board.” He turned to Kayla and gave her a sympathetic smile. Then he spoke to her in a loud, slow voice as if she were a small child or a dotty foreigner. “It was probably just a common condition called sleep paralysis. It happens to some people when they’re under a lot of stress. You can’t breathe, you can’t move, you imagine or dream something is trying to kill you. It’s a part of REM sleep. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He glanced at me and winked like we were both pulling one over on the dumb humans to keep them from flipping out.

  “No,” Kayla said. She looked up with those haunted eyes. “It was real. That’s how it started with Rhonda and Sadie. They thought they dreamed it. Then they got weaker and weaker every time they went to sleep until they were gone. And I was next.”

  All right, I thought to myself. You’ve got your vampires. You’ve got your werewolves. You’ve got your faeries and Greek gods. So why wouldn’t there be soul-sucking demons running a shelter for runaway girls? And how unjust would that be? At that moment, I didn’t know what to think but I decided that I believed Kayla and that I had to help her no matter how scary the whole thing might be. “What are we going to do?” I asked Helios.

  “We?” he said.

  “Yes!” I said, and it hit me. “We! The paras. We have to help the girls. Let’s go to Buffy’s and find the others.”

  Helios looked over his shoulder. “She can’t go to Buffy’s,” he whispered.

  “You guys took me there,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you’re a…you know.”

  “Right.” I sat back and tried to think of another plan.

  “Then again,” he said with a shrug, “southwestern cheddar poppers sound pretty good right now.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said.

  He leaned in close and whispered, “Anyway if she sees or hears anything she shouldn’t, Tarren can just zap her.”

  Avis and Tarren pushed me into a corner of Buffy’s and let it rip.

  “Are you out of your frickin’ frackin’ freakin’ skull?” Tarren was up in my face, almost spitting. “What the hell were you thinking bringing a human here?”

  “And where did you find her?” Avis asked, his head bobbing and arms flapping. “What if she tells other people? Do you know how much danger you’re putting us all in?”

  “First off,” I said, pressing my hands against their shoulders to back them up a little. “There are other non-paras here.” I pointed to the love zombies huddled around a table like junkies over a trash can fire. “And secondly, Kayla needs our help.” I looked over at our table where Helios chowed on a big basket of cheddar poppers and chicken wings while Johann loomed over Kayla, salivating. “Oh crap,” I muttered. “That’s not good.”

  Tarren glanced over at them then rolled her eyes. “What did you expect? You brought him fresh meat. Muman heat, I mean, human meat! Blonde female human meat, you idiot.”

  “Something about that girl’s got him all revved up,” Avis said.

  Tarren turned back to me and balled up her fist. “I should hex you into…”

  “Just wait!” I pleaded.

  Helios sauntered over gnawing on a half-eaten Buffalo wing. “I’ve never seen Johann this bad over a chick before.” Then he gave a little half-amused snort.

  Tarren exploded. “You think this is funny?”

  Helios shrugged. “Yeah, kind of. He’s talking like some Gothic romance dude about fate and destiny and lost love and how she smells just like Wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut and how he wants to take her dancing in East Berlin. He’s totally into her.”

  “Seriously?” Tarren said, hands on hips as if she was slightly offended by the idea of Kayla getting this much male attention. “I’ve seen mannequins with more personality than that girl.”

  “She’s not usually like that,” I said. “Something happened to her at HAG. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  We all looked over in time to see Johann run his fingers through Kayla’s long blonde hair. He almost trembled as the strands fell behind her shoulder. Then he trailed his finger down the side of her pale neck where a faint blue vein pulsed. “Oh crap!” Avis said and we all ran for the table.

  I climbed over the back of the booth and pushed my way between Johann and Kayla, which wasn’t easy because Johann wouldn’t budge, but Kayla crumpled to the side like a Victorian woman on a fainting couch. “What the frig!” I said to Johann. “Back off.”

  His eyes were black disks. “This is too much. You bring this exquisite flower here and expect me not to pluck her?”

  “Nobody’s plucking anybody, Johann!” I smacked his shoulder, which was hard as marble. “Ouch!” I shook the pain out of my fingers. “What’s going on with you?”

  Kayla pushed herself up, her large eyes looming through the blonde locks that had fallen across her face.

  “I cannot help myself,” he announced, his hands pressed over his long-dead heart.

  “Oh, for the love of Jenny Greenteeth,” Tarren muttered. She stomped over, flicked her fingers at Kayla, and commanded, “Sleep!” Kayla immediately slumped with her eyes closed. Then Tarren turned to me. “Look, Josie, you’re obviously a really nice person and you have some kind of helping complex, but this isn’t Scooby-Doo and we aren’t crighting fime.” She looked side to side, trying to figure out what she’d just said. “I mean, fighting crime. You don’t know this girl and if she’s a runaway, she’s not the kind of person we want to get mixed up with. People like that…”

  “People like what?” I huffed. “You don’t even know her!”

  “I’ve known her for eternity,” Johann declared. “I’ve only been waiting to meet her all of my life.”

  “Johann, put a sock in it!” I told him.

  “Tarren’s right,” Avis said. “She’s obviously not in the most stable situation and…”

  “I can’t believe this is coming out of your mouths! You of all people,” I said.

  Tarren reared back. “Why?”

  “You know what it feels like to be different. To be in a situation that you can’t control. To not get along with your family. To be in a place where there are all these rules that you have to follow that don’t make sense. Kayla and the other girls at HAG are no different than that. Except they don’t have any power and they need help!”

  “Join the freakin’ club,” Tarren snapped.

  “There’s a Vrachnas there,” Helios said. He dropped yet another chicken bone into the basket. Johann, Avis, and Tarren stared at him. “You know, sleep demon, wraith, Mora. Some creepy lady demon sucking the souls out of the girls when they sleep. You guys have those?”

  “Succubus,” Tarren said
quietly.

  “You go suck a bus,” I said to Tarren. “Whatever that means. This is serious business.”

  “No, you moron, it’s called a succubus by the faeries. And an incubus if it’s a guy,” Tarren said. “But usually they want to, you know, get it on. Maybe this one goes both ways?”

  “Witch-riding,” said Avis. “That’s what folks down south call it.”

  “Meine schoene damen!” Johann roared. “I will defeat any who try to harm her!” The love zombies jumped at the sound of his voice and began muttering to themselves, but we ignored his histrionics.

  “You think that’s what happening at HAG?” Tarren asked Helios.

  “That’s what she described,” he said.

  For just a moment, I thought Tarren was going to soften. Something about her face relaxing into a half-second of pity. She caught me staring at her and said, “Big freakin’ whoop-de-doo. It ain’t my problem.”

  “It should be!” I almost shouted. “Isn’t that what everyone’s most afraid of? Isn’t that why there are all these stupid rules put on you? Because a para could go rogue and hurt humans?” I felt the old Josie rearing up. The one who liked to fight the good fight. And get other people excited about it, too. Only this time I didn’t try to squash it. I let Old Josie and New Josie meld. “Only paras like you guys, the good ones, have to suffer under all of this BS because a few bad ones, like that crazy woman who runs HAG, ruins it for everyone. You could rectify that.” I stood up and slammed my hands on the table. “You could be the ones who show that paras and humans can help each other and live in peace. This is your chance to prove you aren’t monsters!”

  “Who you calling a monster?” Avis wanted to know.

  Tarren rolled her eyes at me. “Settle down, already. Don’t get your pom-poms in a twist.”

  “Ugh.” I fell back into the seat and glared up at Tarren. “Okay, how about this—you’d get to kick somebody’s butt and you wouldn’t even get in trouble.”

  Tarren whipped around and glared at me as if she wanted to turn me into an ashtray. “First off, werepire-girl, there’s scarier stuff in the world than some random ghoul nibbling on a few runaways and secondly, you have no idea what we’re up against with the Council. They could be in on it for all you know.”