by Jayme Morse
Her mom wasn’t allowed to tell her any specific details about how she had died, though. It was against the “rules” for a ghost to tell a living person details about things like that if they wanted to be able to visit again anyone in the human world again. Go figure.
Shrugging thoughts of her mom away, Lexi asked, “Why did you even want me here? I don’t understand. It’s not like I’m going to let all of the people in Briar Creek feed from me. I have no intentions in saving all the people in that town . . . not after they all planned to sacrifice me.”
“He wanted you here because of me,” Gabe chimed in.
Lexi turned and looked at him. He had been so quiet that she had somehow forgotten that he was still in the room. “What do you mean because of you?”
“I had a vision,” Gabe explained, looking into her eyes. “I saw what’s going to happen in the future and … and you were there. The only way we can stop the evil vampires in Briar Creek is with your help.”
“Why me?” Lexi asked, trying not to sound as angry as she felt. “And stop them from what? I’m the only thing they want. If it wasn’t for me being here, wouldn’t everything be normal? Well, as normal as it could be considering.” She couldn’t kid herself; nothing in Briar Creek would ever be completely normal since the entire town was made up of cursed vampires.
“We’ll discuss all of that later,” Austin interrupted. “But I knew at the time that I had to trust Gabe since his visions are always right. He saw you there and the rest of the town lying dead on the ground . . .” Austin drifted off. “Gabe’s actually the one who helped me change into a vampire.”
“I thought you guys didn’t get along,” Lexi said accusingly.
“Me and Gabe had to pretend that we didn’t get along. We made up a fake fight so that my parents would never suspect that Gabe had any involvement in this.”
“Gabe, why didn’t you tell me?” Lexi felt herself becoming angry again. “When I asked you about the vial of blood of Austin’s that I found, you told me he wasn’t a vampire.”
Gabe looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry, Lexi. I couldn’t tell you. We agreed that it would be best if you didn’t know anything about Austin being alive or being a vampire . . . or anything, for that matter. There were so many things that I wanted to tell you to try to help you, but we decided that it was best to let you find out on your own or through Austin’s letters.” He sighed, a guilty look crossing his face. "It didn’t seem likely that you would have told Violet or Tommy, but Mrs. Lawrence can read minds.”
Lexi gulped. Mrs. Lawrence really hated her, which freaked Lexi out. She couldn’t remember what she had thought while she was in the woman’s presence, but she probably had thought about something that she wouldn’t have wanted Mary-Kate’s mom to hear. It would have been nice to have had some type of warning ahead of time, but it was too late now. Whatever Mrs. Lawrence had heard, she had heard.
Lexi glanced around the cottage. “So, you’ve been living here all this time? Both of you?”
Gabe shook his head. “No, not the whole time. Austin was hiding out at my house for awhile in the beginning.”
“It’s true,” Austin nodded in agreement. “I thought you were going to catch me one of those times I peeked out at you through the blinds.”
“That was you?” Lexi asked, surprised. For some reason, she had thought that Gabe had been the creeper looking out at her. Actually, at the time, she hadn’t really thought it was that creepy because she was so busy crushing on him. It had been almost flattering. Now that she knew it had been Austin, she felt really vain for thinking that Gabe had been that obsessed with her, when it hadn’t been him at all.
If Lexi had known at the time that it hadn’t been Gabe at the window all those times, his mom would have been her second guess. Even though Lexi had never really had a conversation with Mrs. Marshall, she hadn’t seemed to like her from the very beginning for some reason. Lexi was pretty sure that there was no way she would ever like her now after she had banged on her car window like a crazy person, demanding to know where Gabe was. It also probably didn’t help matters that Gabe was here hiding out with her right now.
Austin nodded. “Yup, it was me.”
“Eventually, we figured that it was way too risky for Austin to be living across the street from his parents. If something happened and they realized that he was there . . . we would have been screwed. So, we came here on the night of the car accident. The night that I tried to kill you.” Gabe had a genuinely apologetic tone in his voice and a sad look in his eyes.
“And don’t even get me started on that,” Austin cut in, an annoyed tone in his voice. “That wasn’t part of the plan. I had nothing to do with that. The plan was for him to pick you up and then call me to meet him so that the three of us could come to this house together. When he called me, he told me that he killed you and to meet him in the graveyard. I was livid. He should be relieved that you lived through that accident because if you hadn’t, I probably would have killed him myself.”
Gabe scowled. “I already told you my reasoning.”
He had told Lexi, too. Gabe had a vision of what was going to happen to her if they did run away together . . . and it wasn’t pretty. He didn’t want Lexi to be sacrificed Salem witch hanging style like the town was planning, so he thought that killing her would be a kinder, less painful death. Lexi had mostly forgiven Gabe for it, but at first, it was only because her mom had told her to. Lexi didn’t know much about what happened to a person after they died, but she assumed that ghosts had a good grasp of what was really going on in the human world, and if her mom could forgive him, Lexi should be able to forgive him, too. Over time, she had really forgiven him.
Trying not to think about the painful memories of that night and the weeks that followed, Lexi glanced around the cottage. “So, is this your house Gabe?” Normally, a teenager probably wouldn’t be able to afford their own house (unless he was Justin Bieber or something), but Gabe wasn’t just an ordinary teenager. He was a vampire who was over one hundred years old, so it would make sense if he did own his own home after all this time.
“No,” Gabe replied. He glanced over at Austin. “Should we tell her?”
“Yes, you should,” Lexi answered for him. They both looked at her, annoyed.
Austin sighed. “We might as well. If we don’t, she’ll bug us all night about it, and I am not in the mood to deal with that. Lexi, this house belongs to Benjamin Hunter.”
****
Chapter 3
Lexi froze at the mention of her father’s name. She found herself, for some reason, laughing at the thought that she could possibly be sitting on the couch in her father’s house. “What? This can’t be my dad’s house.”
“It’s his,” Austin nodded.
Lexi’s eyes widened. “Where is he? Will he be home soon?” She tried to hide the excitement that was bubbling inside of her at the possibility of being reunited with her father. She had dreamt about this since she had first realized that he had gone missing, but sometime after she began high school, Lexi had given up hope of ever finding him. It made it even more difficult for her when her mom had refused to talk about it all of these years.
“Well, that’s the thing, Lexi,” Gabe replied quietly. “We don’t actually know where Ben is. We haven’t seen him or heard from him in about a month.”
“He let you use his house without telling you where he was even going?” Lexi asked in disbelief. “Or what, did you just come to his house because you knew it would be empty?”
Austin shook his head violently. “No, it’s not like that at all. He said that we could stay here, rent-free and everything. It might be hard for you to believe it right now, but Ben said that he wanted his little girl to be taken care of.”
Lexi gulped and tried to hold back the tears that she felt building up behind her eyes. She hadn’t seen her father since he had abandoned her and her mom before they had left Briar Creek when she was just a child. When things had
started to get crazy after her mom died and she was stuck living at her aunt’s house, Lexi had found her dad’s name and phone number online. She had left him a voicemail practically begging to speak to him, in the off chance that he would come get her and save her from living at her aunt and uncle’s house, but she never got a response back. Of course, that could also be because her aunt had taken her cell phone away from her and likely would have intercepted the call.
Since then, Lexi had found out that Mary-Kate was her half-sister and that she had other half-siblings who were younger than her. No one would be able to tell her who those siblings were, except for her father, since even no one in Briar Creek knew who they were. Lexi assumed that he was trying to protect their identity so that nobody would be after their blood, too.
Lexi had known Mary-Kate, though. Finding out that they were related was really weird. As it turned out, her dad had been involved with Mrs. Lawrence until he had left her for Lexi’s mom. Being half-sisters not only added a weird twist to Mary-Kate and Lexi’s already confusing relationship, but it made her question whether or not her dad had really loved Lexi and her mom in the first place. A thought that hadn’t occurred to her before crossed her mind. She wondered if the fact that father had left Mrs. Lawrence for her and her mom had anything to do with why the woman hated her so much.
“Anyway, Ben said he’ll be back whenever he’s back,” Austin said, interrupting the awkward silence that was lingering in the room. “There’s no telling how long that will be. It’s already been months since the last time we’ve seen him . . . long before you even came here. He called about a month ago, but we missed his call and there had been a long period of time before that since we talked to him on the phone.”
Lexi had felt hurt and angry that her father hadn’t returned her phone call, but it had never occurred to her until now that he might not have gotten it in the first place or that she had missed his call back. She’d assumed that he just wanted nothing to do with her, which didn’t seem like a huge stretch since he’d never tried to have her in his life before. “How did you even find him? Or have you always kept in touch?” she asked, looking up at Austin. As far as she knew, her mom and dad hadn’t kept in touch. That didn’t mean that her dad hadn’t kept in touch with her aunt and uncle after all of those years, though.
“No, the last time you heard from him was the last time I heard from him until recently,” Austin replied. “I found him through Mary-Kate. She had his address, which helped me find his phone number.”
“Mary-Kate has his address?” Lexi squeaked. She couldn’t help but feel jealous that her father had been keeping in touch with her half-sister and not her, but that wasn’t the important thing right now. “You realize what that means, don’t you? They’ll know to look for us here! They’ll find his address and figure it out.”
“We’ve already thought of that. Actually, Ben did. That’s why he suggested that we use his summer home instead,” Gabe interceded. “Mrs. Lawrence doesn’t have this address. Mary-Kate knows where we are, though, Lexi. She actually came here with us right after the accident.”
Lexi turned to Austin as all of the pieces began fitting together. “You’re the one who she ran away with!” Aunt Violet had said that Mary-Kate ran away with a boyfriend immediately following the accident. Lexi had assumed that it was Craig Lindstrom, her cute gym teacher who had at one point suggested that they go on a vacation together. She’d caught the two of them having an intimate moment in the school hallway. Come to think of it . . . that probably hadn’t even been an intimate moment. Craig had probably just been drinking Mary-Kate’s blood. Lexi felt silly that she hadn’t figured it out before now.
“Yeah, we brought her along with us. It was the plan . . . until her dad threatened to start an investigation if she didn’t come back home,” Austin replied. “We decided that it would be better for her to stay in Briar Creek, anyway.”
“She’s sort of like our spy,” Gabe told her. “She lets us know what is going on with everyone over there so we can act accordingly.”
“So, Mary-Kate knows we’re here right now, then?” Lexi asked. “How do you know that she won’t tell anyone?”
Gabe shook his head. “She won’t do that. Mary-Kate’s on our side, whether you want to believe it or not. I know you’ve always been so suspicious of her.”
Lexi thought that she picked up on a tone of accusation in Gabe’s voice, but who could blame him? Ever since Lexi had found a message in Austin’s Facebook inbox from Mary-Kate that was sent on the night he had died, Lexi couldn’t help but wonder about her involvement in his death. All of the signs seemed to point to Mary-Kate having something to do with it. Lexi had mentioned it to Gabe and had asked loads of questions about her and Dan, but now she felt silly. She had spent so much time questioning whether Mary-Kate, her half-sister, had been involved in Austin’s death, when really he wasn’t even dead at all (at least not the type of dead that Lexi had been thinking).
“I’m suspicious of everyone, not just Mary-Kate,” Lexi replied quietly, feeling slightly guilty that she had even asked. Mary-Kate was one of the few people who had been nice to her – which should mean something because it didn’t feel like she had been able to trust many people since she’d come to Briar Creek. “Speaking of which, why should I even trust you right now? I saw you talking to Violet and Tommy earlier tonight. You were helping them look for me. Why would you do that?”
Gabe looked up at her with his piercing steel blue eyes. “I had to distract them so that they wouldn’t find you. We also had to dress in the same Halloween costume so that it would throw them off if they did happen to see Austin. They would have assumed it was me bringing you to them instead of Austin leaving with you. Pretending to be on their side was probably the only way we could have gotten you out of Briar Creek alive today.”
“And it was pretty easy, if I do say so myself.” Austin shot her toothy grin.
“Okay, that makes sense,” Lexi exhaled. She owed her life to Gabe and Austin. Lexi wasn’t sure how, but she was going to find a way to repay them both for it eventually.
Austin stretched and yawned. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been a long, crazy, and exhausting night. I think I’m gonna turn in.”
“I thought that vampires didn’t sleep,” Lexi pointed out.
“You’re right, we don’t. We do relax, though. Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now.”
As he got up to walk away, Lexi said, “Wait. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?”
“Oh, I didn’t think about that. Well, there are only two bedrooms,” Austin replied hesitantly.
“You can sleep in my room,” Gabe offered. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Lexi looked at him questioningly. “Are you sure? I don’t mind sleeping in the living room.”
Gabe nodded. “Yes, I want you to be comfortable while we live here. This couch sucks. Unlike you, I don’t actually have to sleep, though.”
Lexi thought about telling Gabe that they could share the bed, but after the night they had both just experienced, it didn’t seem like a good idea. Earlier today, she hadn’t even been sure if Gabe had been on her side or if she was working with her aunt and uncle. It just seemed too soon to share any type of intimacy with Gabe, whether it was sharing a bed or her blood with him.
As Lexi walked down the hallway that led her to the bedroom, she couldn’t help but feel a magnetic pull, as though something was telling her to go back to the living room and step into Gabe’s arms. Fighting to ignore the feeling, Lexi climbed into the double-sized bed and dozed off to sleep.
The next morning, the sun poured through her bedroom window, shining across her face and causing her to stir. Lexi climbed out of the bed. She found Austin and Gabe sitting at the kitchen table scarfing down plates of eggs, butter-slathered toast, and greasy-looking bacon that made her stomach growl.
“Good morning,” Lexi said.
Austin stood up and went over to th
e stove. He piled scrambled eggs and bacon onto her plate. “Good morning. There’s salsa in the fridge. I know that’s how you like your eggs.”
Lexi tried to hide her grin. “How do you know it’s still how I like my eggs?” she asked. She was happy that even though she hadn’t been able to keep in touch with her cousin, he still remembered some things about her.
“Just a wild guess,” Austin winked at her, shrugging. “Some things never change.” He handed her the plate and sat back down.
“Why are you guys eating? I thought that you only eat in front of people to keep up with your act,” Lexi said, as she grabbed the jar of salsa from the fridge. She remembered that Gabe had once told her that vampires couldn’t digest their food, so whatever they ate had to be brought up somehow. Yuck.
“It keeps us in the routine,” Gabe replied. “And we know that you need to eat, so there’s no sense in you eating alone.”
“Yeah and besides, I’m having a hard time giving up eating. Gabe’s old. He’s used to living off of blood. I like food,” Austin said with a mouthful of toast. “So, we are talking about our strategy.”
“Strategy?” Lexi raised an eyebrow. “Strategy for what?”
Gabe met her eyes, causing goose bumps to form over her arms. “A strategy for stopping the people in Briar Creek.”
Lexi plopped down in the chair next to him. She twirled her fork in between her fingers. “Have you come up with anything?”
Austin shook his head. “Not really. We’re sort of going off Gabe’s vision, but we don’t know what needs to happen before we can get to that point. It’s weird because in his first vision, he saw that everyone was dead and you were there . . . but this time, it was different.”