“Kooks?” Vlad echoes.
“Yes. Like that man who wrote that book? What was it? The Lost Daughter? Or one of those humans who believe in Largefoot.” He chuckles nervously. “I mean, you have to admit, it all sounds a bit unbelievable, all these long-lost human vampire children running around with star birthmarks. And besides,” Neville continues, “the Danae would never let in an Unnamed. They only select their members from the original nine families.”
For a moment there is complete silence. Then Vlad rips the microwave off the wall and hurls it at Neville, who barely has time to duck before Vlad advances, roaring death threats about how he will twist Neville’s head from his neck using his bare hands. James nudges me toward the kitchen’s side exit.
“He’s distracted,” James says, taking my hand and pulling me through the dark hallway. When we reach the end, he peeks around the corner. “Devon and Ashley are still at the front, but there’s a back door through that room. Try to avoid them on your way to the car.”
His face is turned away, all I can see is the tic of his jaw working. “But—”
“Sophie, it’s too dangerous for you to be here.”
“I can’t just leave!”
“Yes, you can.”
“But what if—” There’s a loud crack as Vlad tears the pantry door off its hinges. After smashing it against the floor and picking up one of the fragments, he chases Neville into the living room. Violet and Marisabel follow, yelling at him to drop it. Three years of karate or not, vampire fights are probably out of my league.
“They are,” James says and then looks at me with a new intensity. “I’m asking you to go. Please. We’re working together now, right? I can’t do this if I’m worried about you.”
With a sinking feeling, I realize that I have no other choice. When I say okay, I’m met with James’s overwhelming relief. Before I can regret it, I grab his cheeks and kiss him on the mouth, hard. “It’s the adrenaline,” I blurt, and then leave him to fight alone.
Chapter Fourteen
“That adrenaline, which got me down the hill and into my car, abandons me as soon as I reach my house. Vlad’s plan is in shambles—I should be ecstatic. Instead I’m sitting with my head on the steering wheel, wondering how to combat the worry that is threatening to choke me. No matter what James said, I shouldn’t have left. I could have at least sat on the sidelines and thrown cheese doodles at Vlad or offered an appropriately timed “Watch out!”
Caroline’s VW Bug pulls up behind me, and she slams the door closed, not minding the late hour. She hums as she rifles through her bag, throwing out gum wrappers whenever she finds them—and here my dad has pinned the rampant littering on the paperboy. She stops mid-hum when she reaches my rearview mirror.
“Omigod,” she says, bending forward to talk to me through the window. “Marta texted me and said that Vlad had some sort of meltdown at the party and kicked everyone out. You have to tell me what happened.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I say, forcing myself to get out of the car. What didn’t happen would be the more accurate question. Caroline’s heels make eager clicks as she follows me up the porch stairs.
“But she said that you and he got in a fight and—” She stops when she catches sight of my face. “What’s wrong? If Vlad was a jerk, I will totally mace him on Monday. Or was it James? I don’t know him as well, but whatever, I’ll mace him too.”
“No macing necessary.”
She puts her hand on my wrist. “I mean it, Sophie. You’re worrying me. You never look this sad. You’re usually just kind of . . . intense.”
“Gee thanks,” I say as we push into the dark foyer, but I am stunned to realize that at the moment I would give anything to sit down on the couch with Caroline and confess everything while strangling one of her stuffed animals. But I can’t, so I just tell her not to worry and that I just want to go to bed and sleep forever.
“Well, okay,” she says, hopping onto the first step. “But anyone who wants to wake you up tomorrow has to go through me. I mean, after I’m up, which probably won’t be until, like, eleven. But after eleven? No way is anyone knocking on your door.”
“Much appreciated,” I say, and then smile at her back as she disappears up the stairs. I have no intention of going to sleep. I walk into the living room, grab a blanket out of the trunk that serves as a coffee table, and head for the uncomfortable chair by the window that nobody likes to sit in, but which has a direct view to James’s front yard. But before I sit down I catch a glimpse of myself in the long mirror above the entertainment cabinet.
My black hair is falling out of the bun I twisted it into at the beginning of the evening. I look paler than normal, I note, and the fact that residual stress is making it hard to unclench my jaw isn’t doing any favors for what I’ve always thought is a chin that leans toward the pointy side. Somehow in all the drama, I forgot that all I’m wearing is a red bikini top. Curious, I contort myself as much as possible to study the freckles on my back, which have always been too many to count. It’s true that some of them are darker than others, but I certainly don’t see any kind of a star. To be fair, I don’t see a pineapple, either.
Feeling stupid for even looking, I curl up in the chair as best as I can and watch James’s driveway. I don’t know when my eyes betray me and I fall asleep, but I wake up to groggy light pouring through the window and a Post-it note stuck to my head.
Told you I wouldn’t let anyone wake you—didn’t know you’d be sleeping in THE CHAIR, still wearing MY BIKINI. Seriously, something’s up. Anyway, Dad went in to work and Mom and I went to the mall so I could take back that pink dress I bought when I was dating Vlad. ’Nuff said. —Caroline
The mention of Vlad brings the events of last night rushing back. My eyes fly to James’s dark house, but considering his no-lights-ever policy, that means nothing. Tossing the blanket aside, I stagger to the front door on legs that are cramped and half-asleep, telling myself that of course he’ll be there. Because I don’t want to face what it might mean if he is not.
The doorbell rings when my fingertips are only inches from the knob. Relieved, I yank it open without thinking. “About time. I was starting to get—”
The words die on my tongue. Vlad is standing on my porch, the black T-shirt I wore last night dangling from one finger.
“I have come to return your blouse,” he says congenially, but wedges a black boot in the door when I try to slam it closed. With practiced ease, he grips the knob and pushes it forward forcefully enough that I stumble backward. After he walks inside, he surveys the foyer with curiosity. I should run, bolt through the kitchen and tear outside, but then to . . . where?
“You can keep it,” I croak, gripping the wall in a futile attempt to feel secure. “Get out of my house.”
He ignores me, tilting his head to the side and examining the shirt with what I can only call brave affection. “Perhaps I should start calling you Cinderella,” he jokes. “Although next time I might prefer a glass slipper instead of such a . . . well . . . a well-loved blouse.”
It strikes me that Vlad alive, quipping in my house means . . . “Where are the other vampires?”
Vlad says nothing, just continues to do his best impression of an evil coat rack. I realize that I will get no answers unless I play along. Darting forward as quickly as possible, I rip the shirt from his hands and wiggle into it. The thin barrier of cotton does nothing to make me feel safer.
Vlad pulls out his little black book. “I hope that you will take this as a gesture of goodwill, dorogaya.”
“I don’t want your feelings journal, thanks.”
“Then why did you rifle through my belongings? You have followed me around since the very beginning, interfering, asking questions about my history and my vehicle preference.”
“That was back when I thought you weren’t just someone who’s spent too much time with the books in the back of the library.”
Anger, dark and ugly, washes over
his face, and I think that I’ve gone too far. There is no reason now for him not to kill me and get a blood boost as a consolation prize on the way out of town. I am going to run; at least I won’t die without a fight. I dash for the living room, planning to head for the back door, but he’s in front of me before I can even make it to the couch. When I look up, he’s peering down at me with a brittle smile.
“Wonderful idea, Sophochka,” he says from between gritted teeth. “Sit and I will explain the reason for my visit,” he says and unfurls a hand toward the sofa.
“How did you find me?” I ask, cautiously sitting.
He gives me a withering look. “I did endure your sister for a very lengthy week. But even if that were not the case, Violet always chattered on about how she would call on her good friend Sophie, but she had used her last card.” He pulls a ragged square of paper from his pocket and flicks it across the coffee table. “I found this in her possessions.”
I open it to find the address I scrawled down for her that first day in English class. What must have happened to give Vlad the opportunity to prowl through Violet’s belongings? My fingers tremble. I never should have left.
“Where are the other vampires?” I ask again, but Vlad has already sauntered over to the far wall that Marcie has transformed into a shrine of family photographs. It runs chronologically from left to right, from pudgy snowsuits to Caroline and me trying to be ironic while standing next to Minnie Mouse and failing because we both still secretly loved her.
“Where is your mother?” he asks as he examines our early years.
“The mall.”
He gives a strained chuckle. “Your real mother. Because here you are with cake on your face at what I hope is an early birth celebration,” he says, pointing at a red-framed photo, “and there Caroline is at hers, but you do not appear in the same photographs until . . . here.” He points at the photo of all of us standing in front of this house; I was five and Caroline was six, and we had all just moved in together.
“That’s none of your business,” I say. The truth was that my mother left when I was two, and no matter what tricks I pulled, my father wouldn’t talk about it. As I got older, I realized that someone who didn’t bother to stick around to take care of her two-year-old wasn’t worth the fascination. Child psychologists may call me a liar, but I honestly don’t think about her much, other than to curse the genetics that turn me into a lobster after one hour in the sun while everyone else gets to look like a sexy peanut. And now I can add giving a conspiracy-theorist vampire more fuel for his theory.
“You still think that it’s me,” I say. “After everything Neville told you, you think that it’s me because I have a stepmother and you can play connect the dots on my back.”
He turns to look at me. “I have other reasons.”
“Mental illness?”
His nostrils flare. “Neville’s betrayal was a blow, to be sure, but perhaps they kicked him out because he is not to be trusted. And then there is my recent realization,” he says, and then pauses as though waiting for a drumroll. I refuse to give it to him.
“Where are my friends?” I ask again.
“They are gone!” Vlad explodes. “They have left! I told them if I ever saw them again I would burn them all alive myself.”
I don’t move. He is not boasting of killing them, and knowing Vlad, he would if he could. But James wouldn’t have just left without saying good-bye; he couldn’t. When I continue not to say anything, Vlad throws his journal at me hard enough that it thwaps against the couch cushion. After a few moments he clears his throat and pretends that handing it to me was his intention all along.
“Please, Sophochka, turn to the marked page and read the underlined section aloud.”
I pick up the journal with trembling fingers and begin to read the beginning of the section I didn’t make it to the night before. “And the child of the Mervaux was mortal, immune to the vampire. There were those who thought that it—”
“You can stop,” he says and then leans forward to tear it back out of my hands. “Do you see?”
“See what?”
“I cannot influence you,” he says. “I always assumed that ‘immune’ meant only that the child was mortal in birth, but now I see the evidence was there all along. I can sense your thoughts flickering, but I cannot grasp them.”
I’m relieved that this is his big revelation. Frankly, exceptions to their powers ranks right up there with miracle babies on the list of things that vampires should stop being so surprised about.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but James taught me how to prevent you from butting in.”
For a second, his triumphant expression wavers, but then he doggedly shakes his head. “No. That first night, in the woods, I tried to use my sway over you and it did not work. You wiggled when I bit you.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him that James hears more than enough of my thoughts, but I stop, partly because thoughts of James will make me lose my focus and partly because I make the mistake of meeting Vlad’s eyes. They are steel gray and glittering with single-minded purpose. He’s pursued this for almost half a decade; no matter what I say, he will twist it around to fit his theory. Even if I do manage to convince him that I’m not the one he wants, he will start his search again, and I’ll be back to lurking in locker rooms trying to predict his next target. Or dead.
“Maybe it is me,” I lie, “but like Neville said, you have to be one of the original nine families.”
“Neville underestimates me if he thinks that I was not aware of that,” Vlad snaps, and then just as suddenly, stands and walks to the bookcase. “Do you know how old I am?” he asks, slipping out one of my father’s historical tomes and idly paging through it. “One hundred and eight. I grew up in—”
“Romania,” I say.
“Why does everyone always assume that?” he asks, genuinely perturbed as he shoves the book back onto the shelf. “I am Russian. I have been speaking glorious Russian endearments to you.” He closes his eyes and touches the bridge of his nose, what I’m coming to understand is the vampire equivalent of taking a calming breath. When he opens them, he asks, “Do you want to know why I became a vampire?”
Latent egomaniacal tendencies is my guess, but I just shake my head.
“My family had fallen, along with the czar, during the revolution. Everything, everything we were, was stripped in an instant and we were forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of relatives who we would not even have let in our door a year earlier,” he sneers. “But then . . . then came this creature who offered a chance to be above all that. Power, strength, eternity, all in one bite. Little did I know that in the society of the vampires she was nothing more than a parasite. I started my eternal life even lower than my mortal one,” he says, turning to face me with his eyes lit up with more pure emotion than I have ever seen him show. “But you . . . you are my way back. I have dedicated every day of the past forty-four years to restoring you to them. To restoring me. I will not give up now.”
Suddenly, he is kneeling in front of me, gripping my fingers and holding on tight when I try to pull away.
“I have come to admire many things about you, Sophochka,” he says. “Your unique sense of what should be worn and when. Your eccentric wit. Your relentless curiosity, and your . . .” He blinks as though he’s come up blank. “. . . your pluck. Is that the right word? I do not know the contemporary phrase. Nevertheless, I would be honored if you would become my vampire wife.”
For a second I can only gape, and then I am yelling, all thoughts of diplomacy disappearing in a vortex of shock.
“Are you insane?” I scream, scrambling over the back of the couch in my effort to get away from him. My leg catches on the way over, and I fall, banging my knee against the hardwood floor. The next thing I know he is beside me, extending a gentlemanly hand and chiding me for crawling around on the floor during such an important moment.
“But why?” I ask when I can finally form word
s again.
He does everything but roll his eyes to show his impatience. “You are Mervaux. And since you are of greater rank, once we marry I will be Mervaux as well.” He pauses. “Also because of the previous attributes I mentioned. Well, what is your answer?”
“No,” I say. “No. Never. Nyet.”
My vehemence throws him off for a second, but not much longer. “You are being coy. You should be grateful that I came here to pull you out of obscurity. Not many at your high school even know who you are.”
“I like it that way.”
He chuckles until he sees that I am serious. “No one likes it that way. Come now, you must agree, or it will not be valid,” he insists. “I will wait here and ask your father for your hand. Will he be long?”
The thought of Vlad having any contact with my parents, of edging any further into my world, makes my heart seize in terror. He is playing nice now, but who knows how long it will be before his patience thins. I need to get him out of my house; I need space to plan.
Doing my best not to wobble, I get to my feet. “I need time,” I stall.
“Time? What would you possibly need to consider? I am offering you an eternity of prestige.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“I was not aware of who you were,” he says as though I am being childish, but when he sees that this is not enough to make me swoon, adds, “I understand your surprise and hesitation, dorogaya, I do. I have been remiss in not courting you with more . . . delicacy. I will tell you what—I will make a few circuits around the neighborhood, and when I return you may give me your agreement.”
“A month,” I say, and then immediately wish that I had said a century. Or an eon. Or a googol-eon.
Vlad shakes his head. “This has taken far longer than I expected already. I had assumed that your vampire lineage would raise you above your human peers, which is why I began with your sister. Little did I know you would be a l—” He stops, reevaluating his word choice. “A diamond in the rough. No, I will give you a day to understand that I am not someone to fear.”
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