“You are not my pet, Grant. Why are you so eager to get yourself killed?”
She sat next to me on the bed and gingerly put her hand on my knee. The intense heat from her hand transferred through my jeans and onto my knee, making me blush.
“I’m not. I’m just eager to help and to experience something else.”
“Something else?”
“Yes. How can you show me glimpses of this alternative world and then send me home to the college-dorm life to pretend it never happened? How can I go back knowing you all are going to risk your lives? I feel like I need to help, and I think I can. I can help you prepare. I can dig up as much as possible about this place. Please, Anna, let me stay. I can prove that I am useful.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose again with painful contemplation. I knew enough about her by now to know I had won her over and worn her down, and she was irritated about it. I wanted to say I couldn’t leave because I wanted to be near her. I wanted to tell her I felt oddly drawn to her and couldn’t imagine leaving now, no matter how many demonstrations she wanted to act out. She could’ve acted them all out because I knew she would never hurt me. Something about her made me trust this dangerous girl I barely knew.
But I didn’t say those things. The coward in me kept me silent while I waited for her to eventually raise those beautiful blues back up to me and give in to my persistence. When she finally did, I could have danced around the room.
“All right, Grant, but I have a few conditions.”
Chapter Sixteen
Grant
Anna and I both knew the nature of most college men. While I would have liked to tell her that my friends were different, in reality, we both knew they weren’t. So when I sent a message to Eric’s phone with an outlandish story about a drug-induced stupor with a blond that I didn’t want to come out of yet, the non-interfering guy in him didn’t begrudge me a bit of it. He said they were headed back tomorrow because Kyle wouldn’t stop puking and that if I changed my mind, I knew where to find him. He also said he was glad I was getting some good tail for once. No wonder this was so easy for vampires. Humans truly were dumb and trusting creatures.
It was one of Anna’s conditions that I tell Eric what day I would be home as sort of a reassurance that if I didn’t show back up, suspicion would arise and the authorities would be called. This was an added incentive for Lea and her crew to leave me alone since they wouldn’t want police sniffing around down here anymore than Anna did. Anna even had me give Eric Lea’s name just to give them a lead if I never came home on that day. It was a day we had both agreed to, and one she would share with Lea so that she would know the stakes involved in messing with me.
One week from today was the day. It was late night Wednesday or early morning Thursday depending on how you looked at it, so that meant I had to be back at LSU next Wednesday. I somehow convinced Anna it would take that long for us to complete this mission. She looked at me crossways when I said I wanted to go with them to the prison, and it took some convincing to get her to relax.
“Think about it, Anna, how are you going to get in looking the way you do? If they see your eyes, they will know what you are if this place truly is like the other one. You need a daytime person who is human to help you here.”
“I just don’t like putting you in that much danger.”
“I’ll be surrounded by vampires to protect me. How much safer can I be? Besides, we should probably go into the place as visitors first to scope out the layout and find where the others are kept.”
“I do have colored contacts.”
I looked at her and tried to imagine covering those brilliant-blue eyes with any other color. It seemed wrong.
“Do they work? Do your eyes look human with them?”
“No, not really, but they look less unusual. They are less noticeable. They will work for a short-term project.”
“Okay, but with a human with you, you will be less conspicuous, and we can get a good feel for the prison. Plus, before we go, I can go to the library here and research everything ever written about this place. That is assuming you guys don’t have a computer here.”
“No, we don’t. We didn’t have much use for one in the past.”
“Well, that’s okay. I’ll just use the library. I can also look up the inmates there, and maybe I can get a name of one that we can pretend to visit when we go to get a look at the place on the inside.”
“I hate when you make sense,” she said quietly and sighed. “I want to just send you home where you will be safe.”
I smiled, knowing I had a point that she couldn’t ignore, and her deep desire to eradicate this prison was overtaking her need to protect me.
“The truth is you would be very helpful in getting us into the prison, but once we are in there, it will be very dangerous for you.”
“You’ll protect me.”
“Yes, I will,” she said as she gently put her tiny hand over mine.
I looked up from where we touched to see her looking right into my eyes, and I was instantly lost in hers. We were still sitting on her bed in her bedroom. My heart began to thump erratically when I noticed she wasn’t breaking the gaze this time. She began to lean in closer to me.
Was this real? Had I fallen asleep in my exhaustion and was somehow dreaming this now? It felt too real to be a dream. I decided to lean closer to her too, and she got even closer to me in return.
My heart began to throw itself wildly against my rib cage as we both moved closer to one another until her face was just inches from mine. She closed her eyes and bridged the gap between us by pressing her lips against mine delicately, and I kissed her back with an emphasis I tried to control. I put one hand on her shoulder, expecting it to be rejected and thrown off, but she left it there and placed her own hand on the back of my neck to pull me in closer. It was heaven. It was bliss. It was everything I wanted, and it was interrupted.
She stiffened suddenly and ended our kiss by gently pulling away from my face a few significant inches. I opened my eyes to see hers open and looking at me, and when she spoke, she sounded mechanical and no longer intimate.
“Hi, Lulu.”
That’s it. That’s all she said, but I was in a cloud. I had been pulled from this wonderful moment by two little words. The fog lifted, and I realized the meaning of those words.
I let go of Anna’s shoulder and pulled back to see Lulu, silent little Lulu, standing at the opened door and looking at us with what looked to be embarrassment. While I was sure I looked twitchy and guilty as I separated from the embrace, Anna turned to face her with the poise and grace of a dancer.
“Anna, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have Grant’s room ready.” Lulu’s embarrassed look changed to giddiness, and she smirked curiously at me.
“Okay, thanks, Lulu,” she said mechanically.
Anna stood, and I instinctively stood as well. She turned to me and seemed to try to avoid eye contact with me at first. Was she embarrassed? Did Anna get embarrassed?
“Lulu has your room ready, Grant. It’s late, and you should sleep. I will see you later when we wake up. I’ll get Marshall to write down some directions to the library for you if you would like to go tomorrow, and you are free to use one of the cars.”
She finally met my eyes, and I was able to see through the mechanical speech she had just given me. I nodded and reluctantly followed Lulu out of the bedroom. She practically skipped in front of me as she led me through the house, and I could hear the jingling of her metal crosses and chains as she did. Her childlike giddiness seemed a strange contrast to Anna’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility. I followed the pixie up a flight of stairs and to the third door on our left. I hadn’t seen any of the others since I went to Anna room, so I looked around nervously, still remembering the look of the black-eyed vampires staring at me after my threat earlier.
“Don’t worry. They have all gone out to get supplies, even Gabriel. He did so well with you that Marshall thought he was
ready for a supervised night out.”
“That’s a relief.”
“This is your room while you are here,” she said in a sing-song voice as she opened the white door in front of us.
The room was painted a faint yellow color and with the white furniture, white crown molding, and the overabundance of windows, it had the feel of a Florida sunroom. This sunny feeling seemed ironic.
“None of us like this room because of all of the windows,” chimed Lulu. “We have blackout curtains on all of our windows, but it still feels very bright even at night to me. Not appealing, but it makes for a nice guest room for humans, not that we get many of you visiting us.”
I looked at the door and saw it was significantly sturdier and thicker than a normal door would be, and when I looked at it from inside the room I saw several heavy duty locks attached to it. Lulu saw me looking and answered my unspoken question.
“Yes, you know how she is. She over thinks and overprotects. These are for you to lock yourself in when you are sleeping. She’s worried about Gabriel. None of us would do anything, but he’s so young. We can’t keep him in that cage the entire time you are here. In all honesty, he won’t do anything. If he decided to, this door would slow him down enough for one of us to come and get him in time.”
“That’s comforting,” I said uncertainly.
“Hey, you chose to stay,” she said plainly.
“Yes, I did.”
It was silent for a moment while I surveyed the bed. Staring at the soft pillows made me suddenly realize how extraordinarily tired I was. The bed looked very inviting now that my heart had calmed down from the intimate moment with Anna. When I didn’t hear Lulu make a sound for a while, I turned to see what she was doing. She was standing in the doorway, looking at me with her head tilted to the side again with that same expression of wonder and curiosity. I was beginning to hate that look.
“What is it, Lulu?”
“It is just strange. You are very strange.”
I sighed and almost laughed at the simple honesty of this pixie of a vampire. She bade me good night, and I returned the favor as I struggled to shut the heavy door behind her after she exited the room. I hesitated to maneuver the oversized locks at first, thinking maybe Anna might want to come see me again before she went to sleep, but I quickly shook the idea from my head. If I knew Anna at all, she wouldn’t try to come see me. She would want me to lock the door to protect myself, and she would be busy preparing for the next part of her mission.
I hesitated once more at the thought of our kiss before I forced all five of the locks into place. My body hit the bed with all my clothes still on, but I didn’t care. I shut my eyes while trying to push memories of that kiss out of my brain. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I was still thinking of the taste of her on my lips.
Chapter Seventeen
Grant
I awoke to an eerie silence in the house without knowing what time it was. The blackout curtains had kept the room just as dark as it had been at night, and the disorientation was dizzying. I reached over sleepily and grabbed for my cell phone to see what time it was.
The blue screen read twelve fifteen in the afternoon, but it couldn’t possibly be that late, could it? I found out just how well those curtains worked when I pulled one of them back only to be blinded by the afternoon sun. My stomach growled with the intensity it would around lunch time, and I decided to get moving if I was ever going to get anything done.
I was grateful there was an adjoining bathroom in my room. It granted me the ability to go in and take a much needed shower without ever leaving the sanctity of my room. I pondered for a moment about whether or not vampires took showers, but then I quickly decided that was idiotic. They must take showers. I had to get the notion that they were dead or magical out of my brain. With centuries of Dracula movies, it was a difficult undertaking.
The shower helped me to wake up and start thinking clearly again, and that’s when I remembered the kiss with Anna last night. The memory put me in a fog as I scrambled around the bathroom and found a newly bought toothbrush. I huffed in astonishment. The girl really did think of everything.
It wasn’t until I walked back out into the bedroom that I took in the large bolted door again. It was something that hadn’t seemed peculiar last night, but it looked really out of place in the daytime. When I went to unbolt it, I felt like I was about to walk into a theme park haunted house during the day. A barrage of fake ghosts, zombies and other made-up terrors were just waiting to ruin my nice afternoon. I moved the door with difficulty and looked out into the dark hallway to find no sign of anyone or anything. It was terribly quiet. When I looked down, I saw a stack of clothes and a note addressed to me. I took the pile of folded clothes back into the bedroom and locked the door again before I read the note.
Dear Grant,
Hope you weren’t too scared to sleep. Here are some clothes for you. Anna said you might need them because your friends have your clothes. I have some errands I need to run at dusk. Let me know if you want to come to get out of the house. The directions to the library are enclosed as is the key to the Toyota.
Sincerely,
Marshall
I went through the clothes to find a pair of khaki pants, three T-shirts, a pair of jeans and a button-down polo. Knowing the size of the giver, I was sure these would just bag on me, but oddly enough, they didn’t fit badly at all. They were a little big, but nothing that was unbearable. It was nice of Marshall to loan me his clothes, even if Anna had asked him to do so. I almost laughed at the simplicity in the note. It read almost like a child had written it because it was so simple and honest. I could see why he and Lulu were together. They both had a strangely straightforward sense of humor about them while Anna and Cat seemed so serious most of the time.
Armed with some new clothes, directions and the keys to a car, I set off to find food and the library. The house was still and didn’t stir at all as I passed through it and out of the door. I decided it was better not to check any of the other doors for fear of waking a cranky vampire and headed straight for the Toyota parked outside. I drove through the first fast food place I found and ate everything I ordered in the parking lot with a greedy intensity I had not known before. I couldn’t remember ever being this hungry. Surely I had, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember when. I even drove through a second time and ordered another round of every flavor of fried pie they had. They came in little warm boxes, and even though I knew they were probably just microwaved flash-frozen version of pastries, they were just heaven.
I got to the library with little difficulty and downed a few dozen mints to mask the smell of fries and grease I was sure lingered on my breath. The library was blessedly empty of patrons, and I hopped on the first computer without having to look at another person. I researched everything I could find on the Saint Lawrence Prison outside of Midland, Texas.
It had been given awards, and the local newspaper had bragged it had been a model prison in a time of total chaos in most correctional facilities. The prison boasted not one riot or uprising in nearly two years. It sounded exactly like what Anna had told me about their prison. I also found a list of prisoners who were currently incarcerated at the prison. I narrowed the list to only include the ones who were not married and had minimal family members alive. It would be easier to pose as a visitor for someone if there was no way they were going to have any real visitors coming that day. I printed this all out to share with Anna and my new friends. Then I went about the other research I had planned to do. This research I was not planning to share with anyone just yet.
“I’m glad that you decided to come with me.”
“Me too, Marshall.”
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the Toyota as Marshall maneuvered it through the streets. We were on an errand, but I didn’t know what it was. I had gotten back to the house just before dusk to find everyone was already awake. I was still thinking about the way Anna had beamed at me when I h
ad given her the research I’d done for her mission. The other crucial information had been folded and safely stashed in my nightstand right before Marshall had busted into my room to see if I was going to go with him. I would give that to her later when we were alone.
“So what are we going to do?”
“We are going to get food,” Marshall responded happily.
My mind stuttered mid thought.
“Food? Does that mean blood? We aren’t going to kill anyone or anything are we, Marshall? Because if that’s what you had in mind…”
He began barking with laughter and slapped the back of my seat hard. The seat lurched and so did my stomach.
“I like you, man. You crack me up,” he said as he continued to laugh. “No, we aren’t going to kill anything. You know that much about us by now. We are going to the meat market.”
“You eat meat?”
“No, not really. Just blood, but the butchers do sell blood. People use it for all kinds of things. They know me in there, you’ll see.”
“Do they know what you are?”
“No way. They think that I am making blood boudin and selling it out of my house.”
“They don’t notice your eyes?”
“You need to understand something, Grant. We are in New Orleans. This is Cajun country. Why do you think we decided to settle here? Look around you. It’s like another world here. This is a place filled to the brim with all sorts of strange types. You saw the vampire wannabes at the hotel, right? This is a city with a long history of death and art and music that draws some strange characters to it. Our eyes mean very little to these people. Most think its artsy, like they are fun colored contacts or something. We blend here.”
“I see.”
We pulled into the parking lot of a little building in desperate need of a paint job with a sign that read Violet’s Meat Market and Café. Marshall parked the car, and we walked inside while I pondered what the hell blood boudin was. I decided to keep quiet and ask later. A large man behind the butcher counter greeted Marshall with an extremely thick Cajun accent as soon as we walked through the door.
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