by Jayme Morse
“I know,” Gabe said, flopping down on the couch next to Lexi. “I was trying to catch a vision, but it just wasn’t happening today.”
“Damn.” Austin put his controller down and switched off the Nintendo Wii. “I was hoping you would have one . . . because of what we’re doing tonight.”
Lexi raised an eyebrow, even though she found herself feeling slightly excited. She was getting tired of sitting in the house doing nothing, even though it had only been a few days since Austin and Gabe had brought her here. “What are we doing tonight?”
“We’re going back to Briar Creek to get your tote bag.” Lexi’s heart sank when she heard his reply and she felt shivers creep up her spine. Suddenly, staying inside this cottage for the next few weeks didn’t sound all that bad after all.
*
“I don’t understand why we had to come at night,” Lexi said out loud. She was sitting in the backseat of the black car, which Austin told her he had borrowed from her father. It was dark out, and the streets of Briar Creek were mostly empty. “It makes more sense that they wouldn’t spot us in the day.”
“It’s a myth that vampires stay in during the day and go out more at night,” Austin replied, turning onto a back street. “That’s what sunscreen is for. As long as you are wearing your bat necklace, it should be fine. No one will smell you, and I doubt we’ll bump into anyone.”
Lexi grasped the bat pendant that she wore around her neck. The necklace, which her father had given her as a child, was supposed to keep vampires from being able to smell that she was a human. Lexi had already decided that there was no way she was ever going to the pendant off, no matter what town they were in, but she wasn’t sure how necessary it really was. “I thought that they can’t smell me anyway because of Wilkins’ Syndrome,” Lexi pointed out.
“It depends on how far the disease has already progressed,” Gabe explained. “Most of them probably can’t smell you, but you should still wear the necklace, just as a precaution. You never know who is in town these days. There are also a few vampires here . . . including Greg Lawrence . . . who have also been cured by the disease, so they can smell you.”
Of all the vampires who had been saved, Greg Lawrence had to be one of them. He was probably her biggest enemy in Briar Creek. He intimidated her even more than Violet and Tommy, mostly because he was the mayor and he had such authority over the town. Greg Lawrence also hadn’t made things easy for her. The only other time she had ever tried to escape from Briar Creek, he had caught up with her and made her come back. He must have been able to smell her that night.
“Okay, I think we’re ready to go find Lexi’s tote bag,” Austin said. In the dim glow of the streetlamp, Lexi saw her cousin turn to Gabe. “You’re sure that Dan said he’s distracting them right now?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lexi interrupted, throwing her hands up in the air. “Dan is in on this?” Dan had been Austin’s best friend, who her aunt had also forced her to date in an attempt to keep a close watch on her.
“Yes, unfortunately,” Gabe muttered.
“You’re just bitter because he likes Lexi,” Austin teased. He turned to Lexi. “Sorry, but that’s the truth. Dan’s a good guy. He’ll help us however he can.”
“I don’t trust him,” Lexi replied, unconvinced. Since she had been in Briar Creek, Dan had the opportunity to show her his true colors on multiple occasions. When he wasn’t busy insisting that Lexi date him or trying to attack her, he was having private conversations with Violet and Tommy that had Lexi convinced that he was on their side. She trusted him about as much as she trusted Gertie, the town busybody, to keep a secret: not at all. “I mean, he did attack me that night, you know.”
Austin shook his head. “I know that must have been really scary for you, Lexi, but I think you need to see it from Dan’s perspective . . . from a vampire’s perspective. You smell so good to vampires. It’s like waving a bottle of vanilla vodka in front of an alcoholic. It’s hard for a vampire to resist,” Austin said. “Dan didn’t attack you because he wanted to hurt you. He was just having a really hard time controlling himself.”
“That’s bullshit,” Gabe chimed in. “I was around Lexi for a long time. I lived across the street from her, for Christ’s sake. I definitely got a whiff of her scent, but you didn’t see me attacking her for blood.”
Lexi glanced over at Gabe and thought she saw the angry expression on his face in the moonlit. “No matter what his intentions were, it was still really scary. I don’t trust him, and I don’t think you should trust him either.”
“As someone who’s known Dan for almost my whole life,” Austin began, climbing out of the car, “I can vouch for him. He’s a good guy. He’s on our side. Don’t worry. Now, let’s drop it.”
As Lexi opened her own car door, she opened her mouth to say something, but quickly shut it, deciding to keep her opinion to herself. There was no way Austin was going to let her win this fight right now. She was just going to have to find a way to prove to him that Dan couldn’t be trusted. If Lexi knew Dan as well as she thought she did, he was going to make it really easy for her.
When she was standing on the pavement, Lexi glanced around. On the night of the festival, she had tossed her tote bag into the bushes somewhere around here, but she couldn’t remember exactly where. It was important for them to find her tote bag because it held all of Austin’s belongings that had been given to Lexi by his friend Anna. She’d assumed that everything in the bag was really important, so they really needed to find it.
“Question,” Lexi said to Austin, as she crouched down to look under the bushes. “Why did you give this stuff to Anna to give to me, anyway? I mean, you were alive the whole time. You could have just held onto the stuff until you could give it to me on your own.”
Austin took a deep breath. “I just wanted to make sure that you would be able to get it . . . if I wasn’t able to get it to you. I didn’t really know what was going to happen to me when my mom and dad tried to kill me. I thought my plan would work, but I couldn’t be too sure. I couldn’t get the stuff back from Anna at that point because I needed as many people as possible to believe that I was really dead. I didn’t want to involve everyone in this. Then, I planted my journal when I knew you would find it and read it.”
“You knew that I read your journal?” Lexi asked, somewhat embarrassed. Though she wasn’t sure why she would be, he had obviously wanted her to read it, just as she had suspected. It was just strange hearing him admit it out loud, but it also made her feel happy. She wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about snooping through it from now on; she was supposed to.
“I didn’t know at first, but I had hoped you would. The only reason I put the coded messages in there was to help you. You always liked playing detective when we were kids, so I knew you would try to figure it out. Or at least, I hoped you would. Then Gabe came back one day, telling me that you had been reading it.”
As she continued looking through the bushes, she thought of one of the questions that had been running through her mind. “Austin, I’ve been wondering . . . how did Violet and Tommy try to kill you?” Lexi asked hesitantly. Austin hadn’t mentioned how they had tried to kill him, so she wasn’t really sure if he wanted to talk about it. He didn’t seem overly sad when he talked about his parents attempted murder on him, but she knew that it had to hurt. She couldn’t even imagine what he was going through. Lexi also thought that the way in which her aunt and uncle had tried to kill him would reveal a lot about them. She wondered if they had chosen to give him a really horrendous death or a smooth, easy one.
“They had someone attack me as I walking home from school one day,” Austin answered. “I’m not actually sure who it was because I couldn’t look at them after they had already supposedly killed me. Once I was on a ground, they injected me with a lethal injection. I’d found the injection in our bathroom closet when I was getting sunscreen a few days before, so I knew it was going to happen that way.” Austin paused. “I guess they
at least tried to give me a relatively painless death.”
“I doubt any death is painless. Not that I’ll ever know what a real death feels like,” Gabe shrugged.
Lexi sighed. She really hated thinking about the fact that Gabe was going to live forever, and she wasn’t. Checking under a bush, she gasped.
“This is where I put it,” Lexi whispered slowly. “But it’s gone.”
****
Chapter 5
“What do you mean ‘it’s gone’?” Austin shouted. “It couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“Dude, keep your voice down or someone’s gonna catch us out here,” Gabe snapped at him.
“I – I don’t know! I put it here.” She pointed at the bush, which had bent branches and fresh green leaves that had fallen to the ground on top of the damp, old-looking autumn leaves. “See, it was obviously thrown up against this bush . . . but it’s gone now. Someone must have taken it.”
Austin exhaled, a cloud forming as his breath hit the cold air. “Who could have taken it? Did anyone see you that night?”
Lexi shook her head. “I don’t know. No one was around when I put it here.” She paused, trying to remember that night but her memory was foggy. “At least, I didn’t see anyone near me.”
“You should have been more careful,” Austin snapped at her.
“It was a stressful night,” Lexi replied. “And it was a last minute thought. I didn’t even think about what I was going to do with it until I got here, but I knew Violet and Tommy would have been able to spot me in the crowd if I had been carrying my tote bag with me. Besides, I wanted to go back for it that night so that something like this wouldn’t happen, and you said no.”
“Going back for it that night would have been dangerous,” Gabe intercepted, his voice calm. “There’s not much we can do about it now except hope that we’ll figure out who took it, if anyone did. What exactly was in the bag, anyway?”
“Umm, mostly stuff that Austin gave me.” She tried to recall everything she had been carrying in the bag the night of the festival. “I know I had his journal, the code to figure out what he had written in his journal . . . and some old book.”
“A very important book,” Austin said through gritted teeth. “But you’re right. There’s nothing that we can do about it right now. We need to figure out who has it first. Let’s get out of here before someone sees us.” He led them back to the car and climbed in.
As Lexi struggled to buckle her seatbelt, Austin pulled off the back road and onto Main Street. The Briar Creek Halloween festival had been held on the street days ago, but candy wrappers still covered the sidewalks and the smashed Jack-o-lanterns hadn’t been cleaned up yet. Lexi guessed that it all had to do with her; by disappearing the way she had, Lexi had changed the lives of the people in Briar Creek. Some of them were going to die soon if they didn’t get her blood, so they had probably been too panicked to bother making the town look pretty. Some of them might not even live to see it another day.
Lexi would almost feel guilty. Almost. But she couldn’t bring herself to feel any guilt knowing what they had in store for her.
Austin brought the car to a slow halt at a traffic light, and Lexi felt a weird feeling form in the pit of her stomach. When she glanced out the front windshield, she immediately knew why.
The red truck that was stopped in front of them looked familiar . . . really familiar. It belonged to Greg Lawrence.
Lexi felt her heart freeze in her chest as it skipped a few beats. “Austin?” she could barely hear herself whisper, keeping her voice quiet as though Mayor Lawrence could hear her from inside the truck in front of them. Then again, he was a vampire, so for all Lexi knew, his sense of hearing could be heightened and he really could hear her. Lexi still had a lot of learning to do about vampires and the powers that they possessed.
“I know,” Austin whispered back, obviously aware of what she was going to say next. “Shit.”
“I knew Dan was a little weasel,” Gabe muttered under his breath.
Austin turned and looked at him. “We don’t know this has anything to do with Dan.”
“This has everything to do with Dan,” Gabe shot back. “If he were doing his job, Greg would still be at Violet’s house right now so that we had time to get the back instead of sitting in front of us.”
“Something must have happened . . . something out of his control. We’re jumping to conclusions. Let’s just hope that Greg doesn’t see us,” Austin replied.
“I told you we should have gotten the windshield tinted,” Gabe said. Lexi noticed that his voice sounded less calm than usual. It was obvious that he was panicking.
“Well, it’s too late now,” Austin replied coolly. “Besides, like I told you, it would have drawn more attention to us. No cars in Briar Creek are fully tinted. The back window being tinted is distracting enough. Just act natural.”
“Look, just stop arguing,” Lexi chimed in, sinking further down in her seat. “We don’t need to fight right now. We need to focus on not getting seen.” She kept her eyes glued to the truck in front of them. It felt like the red light had lasted forever.
When the light finally flashed to its bright shade of green and the Mayor’s truck began to pull forward, Lexi held her breath as she watched him glance into his rearview mirror. When he continued to drive and his facial expression didn’t seem to register that he knew they were in the car behind him, Lexi breathed a sigh of relief. They didn’t get caught. They were safe . . . for now.
*
After they got back to her father’s house, Lexi found herself feeling disappointed. She was glad to be away from Briar Creek and all of the crazy people who were out for her blood, but she didn’t really want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere. She even missed being able to go to school at a normal high school, like the one she had gone to in New Jersey. And Lexi still really, really missed her mom.
“Do you want to play Wii?” Austin asked unenthusiastically, an obvious attempt to take away some of her boredom. Or maybe he was bored himself. Gabe was taking a shower, and there wasn’t really anything for them to do besides talk, watch TV, or play games. As far as Lexi knew, there wasn’t even a working computer in her dad’s house.
Lexi shook her head. “No. Austin, how are we going to afford this? I mean, none of us are working and we’re sort of living out here in the middle of nowhere. I know my dad isn’t charging us rent or anything, but we still need to eat and stuff. What are we going to do?”
Austin smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Lexi. We’ve been doing this for awhile now. Your dad gave me a debit card that gives me access to millions of dollars. Your dad’s rich.” Before Lexi had the chance to ask any questions, Austin went on. “He’s been around for a long time. He’s done a lot of saving over the years. You also might not know it, but he’s owned many businesses over the years.”
“Businesses?” Lexi asked, raising her eyebrows. She remembered asking her mother what her dad had done, hoping that it would give her some clue as to what she should do when she got to college. If she couldn’t be a part of his life, maybe she could at least devote her life to doing what he had done. Maybe he had been a successful painter or songwriter, or had some talent that she could have inherited and didn’t know about. As much as she had tried to get her mom to talk about Benjamin Hunter, she’d never spilled anything about him or his endeavors.
“Ben has owned a few restaurants in his lifetime, along with a company that produced coffee pots. He’s also dabbled in the stock market a lot. Right now, he owns and runs a bed and breakfast in Long Island.”
Lexi had never pictured him as the coffee pot-making, bed and breakfast-owning type. Then again, she hadn’t really had much to go on, since she hadn’t seen her father in years. “I always wonder if . . . Ben and my mom ever kept in touch with each other. You know, after I left.”
“They did,” Austin replied. “At least, that’s what he told me. He said that your mom used to send him pictures of you. You�
��ll find some of them around the house, actually.”
Lexi bit her lip. Why hadn’t her mom told her all these years that she had kept in touch with her dad? All of this time, Lexi had been asking her mom questions about Benjamin Hunter, only to provoke an argument or get no response from her at all, and her mom had kept an open line of communication with him that whole entire time.
For the first time in her life, Lexi felt like her mom had really kept a secret from her.
A loud scream from the back of the house filled the awkward silence that had crept over the room as Lexi let the truth sink in.
“Gabe,” Austin muttered. Jumping up from the couch, he raced down the hallway. Lexi followed him. When they reached the bathroom, she could hear that the shower was still running. Austin knocked on the bathroom door. “Gabe? Is everything okay?”
There was no answer.
Austin slammed his body into the bathroom door, breaking it opening in one try. Lexi was surprised at how strong Austin was.
Lexi stepped into the bathroom and pulled the blue shower curtain open, afraid of what she may find. Gabe stood in front of the stream of water that flowed from the faucet and onto his pale skin.
“Gabe?” Lexi asked. “Are you okay?”
Gabe continued to stare ahead of him, completely emotionless, and didn’t answer her, as though he were in a trance. His body quivered; it looked like he was shivering because he was cold. His eyes had taken on a sunken hallow appearance that Lexi had never seen before.
Lexi glanced over at Austin questioningly. Austin shook his head, a worried expression on his face. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never seen him this way before.”