But I was starting to get the picture that Bobby wasn’t “most guys,” at least not the ones I’d hung out with. I knew what they wanted when they opened a car door for me—a glimpse of thigh when my skirt rode up. But I didn’t know what to do with a gentleman. I kind of thought they’d gone out with corsets and bustles. It made me feel sort of … wobbly, like Bobby was a pair of heels that didn’t quite fit but were just too adorable to pass up.
“Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly realizing I’d never given him a directive, and yet we were underway.
“The Galleria, I guess. Good place to get a bite this time of night. Should be just about closing.”
I looked at him in horror, then down at the totally dirt-stained atrocity my parents had chosen to bury me in. It was a really good thing I’d saved the bag with all the clothes. I launched into the back seat and dug in.
“I’m changing. Don’t peek,” I ordered.
Bobby swerved. “But—but I’m just talking about grabbing someone on the way to her car.”
“I might see someone I know!” He totally didn’t get it. Oh God, Rick had already seen me looking like a train wreck. By tomorrow it would be all over school—not that anyone would believe him, of course, or that I’d be there to take the ribbing. “You got any, like, wet wipes and maybe a brush?”
5
I woke the next night like someone had goosed me with a taser, flailing and fighting and totally trapped! There was a weight, an arm bearing me down, and then someone shouting in my ear. “Calm down, Gina. Calm. It’s just me. Full dark will hit you like that at first. Shhh!”
It took me a minute to make out the words and even longer for the streetlight bleeding through my shades to put things into focus. I was in my own room—my parents having flown as predicted to some exotic location to wash away the discomfort of my death. Bobby’d wanted to go to his Greg Brady–style bachelor pad, conveniently located over his parents’ garage, but his parents, not knowing he was dead, had been lurking around to do an intervention and get him back on track, which meant classes and sunlight and other unhealthy things.
My house was silent as a grave except for Bobby talking to me like he was some horse whisperer and I was a spooked filly. I forced my eyes to stop rolling in panic, and focused on the familiar—the lavender sheets twisted around me, the deep purple coverlet pushed to the foot of my bed, one fuzzy raspberry pillow buried in the sheets and the others fallen to the floor … and Fluffy, the Creamsicle-colored stuffed cat I’d had for as long as I could remember. Without a thought, I reached out to grab Fluffy and hug him to me. I wondered what Bobby made of it, but I didn’t want to turn and see pity or whatever in his eyes. One of his arms was still around me; the other hand stroked my hair. I tried to relax into it, but I was freaked. I’d lost time. Between sunrise and sunset was … nothing. No dreams, no rolling over to find a better position. Just, like, sudden death.
For some reason it hit me—as it hadn’t fully, before— that my old life was truly gone. I’d missed some finals already, and would miss more. Without, like, divine inspiration and an extreme makeover, my diploma was nothing but a pipe dream—and after all the effort I’d taken to cheat off Marissa’s French tests and actually study for Math 12. I’d never again mock Mr. Collins’ bad rug with Becca and Marcy or ogle the butts of the football team as they did their pre-game stretches. If I’d been human I would have hyperventilated. But I wasn’t … not anymore.
I held on to Fluffy for dear life and snuggled against Bobby, as a cue to keep on doing what he was doing.
Eventually, Bobby’s soothing did the trick and the knife-edge of panic slipped away. I could get used to this, I thought, nearly bringing back the blinding fear. Boys were fickle, and my parents had pretty much taught me to rely on myself alone. Somehow, Bobby had just kind of snuck up under my defenses with his tenderness and white-knighthood. Made me want to trust. I stiffened right up at the thought and Bobby paused in his stroking, giving me the perfect cue to throw off his arm and the covers and rise from the bed.
My feet thumped as they hit the floor, making me realize that I was still in the knee-high boots I’d nabbed at the mall along with my bite to eat. My sassy new miniskirt and red pirate blouse were now so horribly wrinkled that I couldn’t be seen in them, not even by Bobby unless I decided to scare him off. I remembered the after-prom party where we’d hooked up, the feel of his teeth on my neck …
“Don’t look,” I ordered him, quickly grabbing a hot pink cami from my closet to replace the wrinkled pirate blouse. At least I’d be partially presentable.
“Why?” he asked, sounding honestly baffled.
“Because I said so.”
I did a quick change with my back to him, all the while wondering if there’d been some kind of hypnotic power to his bite that was making me go all soft and dreamy, making me forget myself. Yeah, that was probably it. The hottie I’d ambushed at the mall on the way to his car had gone all dreamy-eyed when I bit him, after the initial protest and attempt to run. Then had come the high of a successful hunt, the hot rush of his blood … mmm. I’d left him passed out in the front seat of his Civic, but smiling, which was a totally weird side-effect.
My vamp-boy rubbed sleep out of his eyes as he ignored my order and watched me pace the room—from my completely hot Pirates of the Caribbean poster, to a concert still of Su Surrus, to a group shot of the Baden Boys. I should have ditched that last one, since I was so over them, but the backdrop totally picked up the purple in my wallpaper border and bedspread.
“So, what’s our plan?” Bobby asked.
“You’re a morning person, aren’t you?” I asked, whirling on him for no particular reason.
“Well, night now.” My lips rose in a snarl. “Anyway,” he continued quickly, “we can’t just hide out here forever.”
“You want a plan? We need to stage a comeback. You’re damn right that we can’t keep scrounging mall meals and hiding out. We’re vamps! Top of the food chain and all that. We need to make some kind of splash. I’m thinking we crash graduation.” And I knew just the set of wheels to get us there—a chariot rather than a rattletrap like Bobby’s POS. If Chaz’s cherry-red sportster had survived the accident and the muscle car that ran us off the road—and if Chaz himself had survived—I could get revenge on my ex and get a hot new set of wheels in a single act of grand theft auto.
Bobby blinked. “Crash graduation? I’m talking seriously.”
“So am I.”
Outside, something went crash-bang and I whirled toward the sound as if I could see through walls. It sounded like one of the decorative flower pots my mother kept on the front porch.
“I thought your folks were gone,” Bobby hissed, his voice now barely above a whisper. He was already rising from the bed, searching for the shoes he’d had time to kick off, unlike me who’d been totally ambushed by the sunrise.
“They are. They have to be … ” because no way would they risk countering their Botox treatments—their faces might crack. “Let’s check it out.” I was flooded with purpose. “Maybe it’s a burglar and we can have some fun.”
Bobby looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but I was getting used to that.
“Come on,” I insisted.
I was out of the room and halfway down the stairs before he could protest, not that it would have done him any good.
“I don’t hear anything now,” Bobby whispered.
Neither did I, unless I counted the creaking of the staircase close behind me. “Keep toward the railing and walk on the blades of your feet,” I instructed him.
“You’ve done this before?”
I refused to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me. Besides, if “this” meant catching burglars in the act, the answer was no. If it meant sneaking out … “The sound came from around front,” I said instead. “We’ll go out t
he back door and circle around behind them.”
“What if they’re coming in one way while we’re going out the other?”
“Jeez, Bobby. First you think no one’s here, now you’re afraid we’ll miss them. Make up your mind.”
I stopped Bobby’s eye roll with a light elbow to the gut, causing him to “oof.”
“Follow me,” I ordered.
I led him through the kitchen, all silent and pristine, and put my ear to the back door. Nothing. Or maybe a little wind and some rustling leaves, but nothing special.
“You ready?” I asked, feeling him move up behind me.
“Go.”
I turned the lock, threw the door open, and bolted through it, a reprise of the Mission Impossible theme song running through my head.
Pain registered before the pressure. Something grabbed my arm and twisted. Blunt force smashed me up against the wall of the house, my cheek scraping on the fake Tudor stucco.
“Ouch!” I yelled.
“Hey, let—” Bobby’s cry was cut off by the thump of more flesh on stucco.
The smell of something really foul, like beef jerky and cheap beer, nearly made me gag.
“Shut up,” a voice ordered, low and mannish and the source of those fumes. “Mellisande wants to talk to you two.”
“Who?” I asked.
Bobby moaned.
The owner of the jerky breath wrenched my arms up and my shoulders shrieked in pain as my blades tried to meet in the middle of my back. Something was slipped around my wrists and pulled tight before I could even process it enough to react. Only once my hands were trapped did the weight against my back ease.
I whirled around to face Chickzilla—the same bulgy bimbo I’d seen lugging the bags with Rick Lopez last night. Bobby was getting pinned and zip-tied by some thug built like a hydrant—low to the ground and rock-solid—with scary amounts of hair bursting out of the collar of his wife-beater T-shirt.
Larry and another thug came running from around the front of the house.
“Piece of cake,” Chickzilla announced.
“Oh, man, I missed all the action,” Larry protested.
“Later. You have all eternity,” the Chick said with a twist of her lips, like maybe she didn’t.
She did, however, have the joy of manhandling me toward some waiting cars, one the sedan from the strip mall and the other a matte green muscle car … with a nearly caved in wheel well and a long scrape along the side. It was the last thing I remembered seeing before waking in my coffin.
I stopped short and the Chick crashed into me, almost knocking me to the ground.
“That car,” I said, ignoring her attempt to budge me again. “You’re the reason I’m dead!”
A blow fell right between my poor abused shoulder blades, propelling me forward again.
“Oh, was that you?” asked the thug who hadn’t yet had the pleasure of smacking us around.
He didn’t sound the least bit sorry, but he would be. I turned to memorize his face, which wasn’t hard. Though he had similar bulges, he had half a foot on Sparky, as I’d decided to call the hydrant-shaped guy (since “Hydrant” just made me think of peeing dogs). Not-Sparky had a hawklike, down-turned nose and a prominent, upturned chin that were trying to meet in the middle of his face. It was not a good look.
Bobby’s silence through all of this seemed nearly inhuman, and I was about ready to explode on him when the thugs plus Larry threw us into the back seat of the sedan and set the child locks. Larry and Hawkman, as I’d dubbed my killer, folded themselves into the muscle car, which looked like it had been a sweet ride before nudging me over to the dark side. A Charger, I thought, proud of having picked up something from all the time wasted listening to Chaz and his friends froth at the mouth over cars, video games, and football stats.
I landed with my head on Bobby’s lap and quickly righted myself—as best I could with my bound hands. “Who the hell is Mellisande?” I asked him.
“I’m totally sorry,” Bobby whispered, as if Chickzilla and her cohort couldn’t hear him from one seat away.
“About what?”
“Well, see, you and I weren’t together then.”
Boys. “Wait, Mellisande’s the vamp from after the debate, the one you—”
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t know what I did to piss her off. I don’t even think I gave her my real name.”
“Shut up back there,” Sparky barked.
“Why? It’s not like we’re plotting. You can hear us just fine,” I snapped back.
“Because I said so.”
“Whatever.” My hands instinctively tried to come forward to form the “W” sign, but the twist-tie thingies brought them up short, giving my poor, abused shoulders another twinge.
“Look,” Chickzilla said. “Rick and Larry recognized you two last night. And since you,” she twitched in my general direction, “are supposed to be dead, and you,” a second twitch at Bobby, “aren’t—as far as we knew, anyway—blue eyes here has some explaining to do. End. Of. Story.”
I glared daggers at our captors and we drove in silence for a while, until I couldn’t stand it any more.
“You must have made quite an impression,” I said to Bobby.
He gave me one of those smiles that convinced me he had some typical male in him after all. “Guess so.”
Sparky hissed.
“No one was talking to you,” I told him.
“No one should be talking, period.”
“Napoleon complex,” I whispered to Bobby. Then louder, “Hey, you know you’ve got some male-pattern baldness starting back here?”
Chickzilla chuckled and Sparky started to veer toward the shoulder of the road before she nudged him back on track. “Just drive. I don’t think Mellisande wants this one, so you can probably do whatever you want once she’s done, but she’ll be pissed if you take the initiative without her say-so.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I looked at Bobby to see if he was going to pipe up, but he seemed totally focused inward, like he was trying to be some kind of Zen master … a Zen master with ants in his pants, the way he was squirming around. I didn’t know what his hands were doing there behind his back, but—
Bobby suddenly nestled up against me and I felt his hands scrabble at my waistband.
“Hey.”
“Shhh!” he hissed.
“What’s going on back there?” Chickzilla asked.
“Bobby bumped me,” I offered, though I still didn’t know what I was covering for.
“Don’t make me pull this car over,” Sparky threatened.
Something cold and hard pressed into my hand, and I started before I realized that Bobby was trying to pass me something. I grabbed hold of what felt like a Swiss Army Knife, and he gave a tug, as if to free one of the tools. Then he scooched until his wrists were beneath my hands, which I guess meant I was supposed to saw him loose.
He winced as I moved the blade back and forth over what I hoped was the restraint but maybe wasn’t. The thing—knife—jerked in my hands with every swipe, and I strained to hold on in my awkward position. The car hit a pothole, Bobby yelped, and I lost hold of the knife.
Bobby let his head smack back against the seat. “Great,” he muttered.
I felt around on the seat for the dropped knife and only succeeded in pushing it farther into the crevice.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
After only a second, Bobby whispered, “Never liked that knife anyway. Been thinking of upgrading.”
I smiled—feebly, because that’s all it deserved. Still, I appreciated that he’d made an attempt at a joke, especially after I’d fumbled our chance at escape.
6
Mellisande’s digs were a thing of beauty. All clean, modern lines and
mirrored windows that I was guessing protected the vamps within and foiled prying eyes from without. And it was … maybe not huge, but ginormous at the very least.
I was still trying to figure out the mixed bag of bodies we’d seen so far. Larry had to be a vamp, since Bobby knew him to be dead, but everything about him said newbie. Chickzilla had the power to smack us around, but she didn’t seem to be one of us. Sparky just wasn’t pretty enough to be a vamp. Hawkman … I hadn’t seen enough of him to be sure. He wasn’t Top Model material for certain, but maybe the transformation could only do so much. Anyway, it was clear that this Mellisande chick had at least some human minions, which made sense if daylight smacked her around the way it did me. She couldn’t let herself be helpless and unguarded from sun-up to sundown. Minions sounded pretty cool, maybe even cooler than a mere entourage.
I didn’t get much chance to mull all that over, since Bobby and I were being hustled through a low-lit entryway that nonetheless gave an impression of space (or at least height). We were pushed into a back room with heavy, dark gold drapes and lamps and such in a style I think they call “Missionary” or something like that. Everything was all light-wood frames filled in with rectangles, triangles, and circles of stained glass in earthy tones, like the artist only had elementary school skills and a natural palette to work with. It still managed to be cool, I guess, in that monied, understated kind of way.
The lady herself rose from behind an impressive desk as we entered, leaving the hottie who’d been leaning over her in mid-sentence. I sized up the competition as she practically floated toward us like a finishing-school diva. A cornflower blue silk dress crisscrossed low over her chest, spilling cleavage and yet still managing to look classy. The skirt portion had just enough fabric to levitate as she glided, revealing way too much leg. I looked down at the bed-wrinkled skirt I hadn’t gotten to change and then at Bobby, whose gaze hadn’t yet risen above Mellisande’s mid-thigh. She smirked at me as I turned back toward her. Above the neckline she was all Kewpie-doll cute. Bowed lips, pert nose, wavy honey-blond hair, eyes the exact same shade as her dress. I hated her on sight.
Vamped Page 3