“Sadly,” Regina said, “Sheena was not a punk rocker, and to this day is still the dippy hippie we all know and love.”
A tall, pale woman glided out of the hallway’s shadows. Her hair cascaded past her waist in blood-red ringlets. Beside me, Lori let out a squeak.
“Shane!” The vampire was in his arms in a flash, straddling his waist with her gypsy-skirted legs. She planted a hard, tonguey kiss on his resistant lips.
With a heroic effort, he extracted himself from her embrace. “I can’t believe it’s you.” Over her head he staked Regina through the heart with his eyes.
“Remember my VW microbus?” Sheena dragged her nails down his chest. “How many donors did we do in that little pink sweetheart?”
“Wow. I’d forgotten all about, uh…”
“Althea. Her name was Althea, after the Grateful Dead song.” Sheena pouted. “Her carburetor gave out last year. Now I drive a 1970 Chevelle named Bertha.” She grabbed his hand. “She’s so cherry. You want to see?”
“No. Thanks.” He pulled his hand away and put his arm around me. “Sheena, this is Ciara.”
She gave my body an appreciative once-over. “Yummy. Is she your new favorite donor?”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“His live-in girlfriend,” Lori added.
“But… you’re human,” Sheena informed me.
“And loving it,” I said with a smile. I would not let her get to me. Shane was mine now. Besides, this girl didn’t have nearly the, uh… well, okay, she had everything I had, and more. Possibly I was a better speller.
Jeremy saved me by switching to the next tune. Regina looked startled, then said, “Okay, next guest! It turns out, Shane didn’t spend all his time spinning records and shagging babes. He saved lives.”
Shane reflected my bewilderment, until the man’s voice came over the ceiling speaker. “When I called the suicide hotline that night, I thought I didn’t want help. I thought I just wanted some company while I checked out, you know?”
“Whoa.” Shane put a hand to his head. “Luis?”
“But you talked me down, man. I mean, literally talked me down off that roof. I can never repay you, hermano.”
A man in his forties with close-cropped black hair stepped from the hallway. This time, Shane leaped forward to greet his guest. They shared a giant, backslapping embrace.
“Come here, I want you to meet my girlfriend.” Shane dragged Luis over and introduced us.
Luis pointed at Shane. “This guy risked his life to save me, and I didn’t even know it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I swore if Shane called the cops, I would jump. So he found where I was, got up on the roof with me, and we talked.” He shook his head at Shane. “Almost until sunrise.”
I stared at the man I thought I knew. “You never told me you worked a suicide hotline.”
Shane looked away. “Then you would’ve asked why I stopped. Besides, what I did for Luis was totally against protocol. We weren’t supposed to contact clients.” He turned to Luis. “So how are you?”
As the guys caught up on the last five years, Sheena took my arm and steered me into a corner, her ankle bracelets jangling with every step.
“Is this for real?” Her sharp voice nearly sliced my eardrum. “You and Shane are serious? How serious?”
“We have an apartment. And a dog.”
“Wowsers.” She chewed her lip. “So I probably can’t borrow him for the night.”
“You’d have to kill me first.” I immediately wished I hadn’t said that.
Sheena examined me some more, hands on her hips, then peered around the lounge. “Where’s Jim? I saw his car outside. I used to love that Janis. Now there was a carburetor.”
“I think he’s actually sitting in Janis right now. Why don’t you two go for a ride? I think you’re just what he needs.”
“Cool!” Her green eyes practically glowed. “If I’m not back in twenty, tell Shane I said happy death day, okeydokey?” She took a lock of my hair and sniffed it hard.
“Okey.” I leaned away from her. “Dokey. Bye.”
“Hmm, I like it.” She yanked out a strand. My teeth rattled from the pain, but I held back a cry.
When she was gone, Lori handed me a glass of wine. “Can I make a BFF request? No matter which milestone birthday I reach, you will never do this for me.”
I held out my hand. “Mutual request.” We shook on it.
At midnight Shane returned to me and whispered, “We have to be somewhere soon.”
“We definitely do.” I thought he meant bed, and I was glad to go. Watching Sheena’s and Luis’s testimonies made me realize, for completely different reasons, how lucky I was to have Shane.
The others were watching the closing chapters of his Unlife So Far when we snuck out. But as I closed the door, I saw David cast his gaze our way, then lift it toward the ceiling in the direction of his office.
Shane took the stairs three at a time. “Now for the real celebration.” He tugged me toward the front door.
“First, I need you to work your magic for me.” I led him into David’s office.
He wrapped his hands around my waist. “Hmm, we’ve never done it on his desk.”
“Your other magic.” I pointed at the filing cabinet’s bottom drawer.
“I don’t have my lock-picking tools.”
“You can’t use a paper clip?”
Shane tweaked my nose. “You watch too many movies, but I’ll try.” He knelt before the bottom drawer, thumbed the switch, and pulled the handle. The drawer slid out with a squeak. “Ooh, magic.”
David had left it unlocked. Ha—I knew he wanted me to read this stuff.
Halfway back—protruding above the other folders, no less—was a file labeled “Immanence Corps.” He might as well have left it on my desk.
“What is that?” Shane whispered.
I tucked the folder under my arm and slid the drawer shut. “Hopefully not my future.”
7
Sign Your Name
“Where are we going?” I asked Shane when I noticed our car speeding out of town instead of toward our apartment. I’d been trying to read the contents of the IC folder by the light of my cell phone screen, but it was making me carsick.
“We’re going away. Take a nap.” He softened the volume on Monroe’s current song, a peppy little Asie Payton number called “Back to the Bridge.”
“Away where?”
“Don’t question.”
“You know that’s impossible.”
He glanced at me, his face tense in the blue glow of the dashboard. “I can be stubborn a lot longer than you can be curious.”
Outmatched, I frowned and looked out the window into pure black. We were heading due west, toward the mountains. Toward nothing.
As I drifted into a doze, the darkness gave way to a bright afternoon sun shining on a grassy field. I recognized it as Sherwood College’s football stadium, where the Baltimore Ravens had their summer training camp.
In front of me stood a row of tackle dummies. To the left and right, my Control cohorts were doing jumping jacks with stakes in their hands. I held one, too, but kept my feet on the ground and my sights on the dummies. Each had a red heart painted on its chest.
A whistle blew. My fellow agents and I assumed fighting stances. My muscles moved with such natural grace, I knew it must be a dream.
The tackle dummies morphed into human forms as they lumbered toward us on mechanical tracks. I struck.
The dummy lurched back and my blow fell short. While I was off balance, it surged again and knocked me down. I held onto the stake, jamming my finger against the wood when my hands broke my fall.
The dummy paused, then clickety-clacked forward, shuddering on its track. This time I feigned injury until it was almost upon me. Then I rolled to my feet and slammed the stake deep into its heart.
I screamed without sound. Not its heart. His heart.
&n
bsp; The last thing I saw was the sun shining on Shane’s hair. The last thing I heard was his sigh of relief as he pulled out the stake.
I woke when the car stopped. Rubbing my face, I peered through the windshield at a wide rustic porch lit by a warm yellow lamp near the door. In the gleam of Shane’s headlights, a blue-and-white sign read INTO THE NIGHT BED AND BREAKFAST.
I got out of the car and gaped at the A-frame log cabin, its windows lit with electric candles. Woods surrounded us, and a chorus of spring peepers swelled from what must have been a nearby creek.
Shane collected our bag—which he had packed without my knowledge—and his guitar case from the trunk. I followed him up the wooden stairs to the front door. A pale blue porch swing rocked in the breeze.
The door opened to reveal a couple in their mid-thirties. Both short and lean, they beamed at us with no trace of sleepiness.
“You must be Shane!” the woman said.
“Brenda?” he replied as he shook her hand.
“No, I’m Brenda,” the man behind her said with a laugh. “She’s Mel. People make that mistake all the time.”
I was so disoriented by the late/early hour and these people’s chilling normalcy that for a moment I almost called him Brenda.
We walked through a short hallway into a kitchen with a center island. Beyond the kitchen, the house opened onto an enormous yet cozy living room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all polished wood, with long thick crossbeams extending the length of the room. A woven tapestry showing wolves on a pine-strewn snowscape hung from the brick fireplace façade that extended to the high ceiling.
“Is this place for sale?” I asked Brenda.
She laughed. “I think it might be a little bright for your man’s tastes. You two will be staying downstairs, of course.” Brenda beckoned us to follow her.
Mel spoke up. “There’s a fruit and cheese plate to go with the champagne. Figured you might be hungry.”
“Champagne?” I looked at Shane, then at the proprietors.
Brenda held up her hands. “Don’t ask us what it’s for.”
Shane gestured for me to precede him. A muscle twitched in his jaw as I passed.
At the bottom of the stairs, Brenda opened a door, then handed me a skeleton key. “This is the only copy, for security reasons, so don’t lose it.”
I nodded as I pocketed the key and followed her through a short passageway to a second door. A single key meant that no one could come in during the day, letting in sunlight that would fry Shane and ruin our—
Wow.
The bedroom beyond the second door took up almost the entire level. The ceiling featured long wooden beams amid swirling white plaster. A small fireplace held a virtual fire, safe for vampires.
To the left, a set of double doors opened into a large bathroom, where I could see a Jacuzzi tub big enough for a baseball team. My skin tingled at the sight.
On the right lay a king-size four-poster covered in a plush red comforter. Soft light suffused the entire room.
It was perfect. I couldn’t wait for them to get the hell out.
“If this is suitable,” Mel said, “we’ll just leave you alone.”
“We don’t want to keep you up.” I hoped the ceiling was soundproof.
“You won’t,” Brenda said. “The ceiling is soundproof.”
With a final good night, Mel and Brenda made themselves scarce.
I went to the bed and grasped one of the posts. “Very sturdy. I hope you brought the handcuffs.”
Without responding, Shane pulled his classical guitar from its case, then sat in the corner armchair and began to tune it.
“This is so cool—a vampire-friendly B and B!” I bopped over and gave him a quick kiss. “Talk about a niche market.”
“Yeah. Let me focus for a second, okay?”
I pressed my lips together and piled a small plate with fruit, cheese, and slices of baguette, while behind me Shane tuned and fretted. Finally he took a pair of deep, slow breaths, muttering to himself in words I couldn’t decipher.
“Come sit down,” he said finally.
I moved to the brown-silk-upholstered ottoman in front of his chair, pulled it back a few feet to give him room, and sat with my plate upon my knees.
Fingers poised above the strings, he looked at me for a long moment. “I wrote this for you.”
My heart halted, then sped up. He’d never written a song for me—never written a song, period. One effect of a vampire’s temporal adhesion was difficulty learning new things, whether it was how to surf the Internet or how to love contemporary music. Shane’s relative youth and his involvement with me helped him overcome the natural vampire stickiness, and while he wasn’t exactly downloading the latest Kings of Leon tracks, he’d at least started playing music from the twenty-first century.
But concocting something new out of his own head and heart? Vampires didn’t do that. Creation was an act of the living.
My food forgotten, I watched him play. I never tired of seeing his hands travel over the fretboard and the strings, imagining and remembering how they felt on my skin. He used no pick, only his nails and fingertips, stroking and coaxing beauty into existence.
When he started to sing, I closed my eyes.
First he sang of the past—our disastrous first encounter that almost ended in my death; our hands-off, one-hundred-percent-platonic first real date; and the first night we made love, after another vampire had almost taken my life. How Shane’s own life had changed.
Then he moved to the present, extolling our mismatched, underground existence and making Dexter the first vampire dog to be immortalized in song. Shane sang of how he tried so hard to be normal.
The last verse told of the future, of silver hair and sallow skin. Of my deathbed and grave, and how he would be there, at my side. Until the end.
Tears squeezed out between my lids and rolled in swollen streams down my cheeks. I held back a sniffle, wanting this room to hear no sound but his promise.
He offered me his life, eternal youth, and timeless strength, wrapped in a love that would transcend the ravages of human fragility and vampire eccentricity.
We could do this, he was saying. He had faith in us. I’d never had faith in anything.
He stroked the last chord and let it echo against the wooden walls. Then he set down the guitar, leaning the headstock against the chair.
When he finally looked at me, his eyes held no fear.
“Do you know what comes next, Ciara?”
I opened my mouth, but could fit no words around my incoherent croak.
Shane sank to his knees before me, then reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt. When his hand opened, it revealed a velvet jewelry box. Small. Black. Square.
My throat closed up.
He took my hand, and I met his gaze as he spoke. I’d been dreading this moment for years, the moment we’d move forward or fall apart. The beginning of the end.
“That song exhausted my supply of pretty words, so these are all I have left.” He opened the box. “Ciara, will you marry me?”
I kept my eyes on his face and didn’t even glance at the ring. It didn’t matter how big or beautiful it was. My answer would be the same.
“Yes.”
His eyes reflected my own shock. “Are you crazy? I mean, are you sure?”
“Yes. And yes.”
I was sure. Sure this was insane. Sure it was unheard-of, for a million damn good reasons.
Sure it was what I wanted.
He looked at me sideways. “But are you sure you’re sure?”
I hesitated, asking my gut if I was saying yes for fear of losing him or from the desire to make him happy or the rebellious urge to prove the world wrong.
My gut replied with a thousand celebratory butterflies.
“I want to be with you.” I held his face between my trembling hands. “As long as I live.”
The tension lines between his brows vanished. “Amazing,” he whispered, then kis
sed me hard, with a deep, human sigh. I reveled in the feel of his lips against mine, and didn’t care that they’d be the only lips I’d ever taste again. If I lived to be a hundred, my life with him would be too short.
He pulled away, face contorting into a half smile, half grimace. “I can’t believe you said yes right away. I had this whole long argument planned out.” His words tumbled over one another, his eyes gleaming with adrenaline. “I was going to keep you awake for days until you said yes out of sleep-deprivation-induced insanity.”
I laughed, then finally looked down at the ring in his hand.
“Oh my God!” My plate flew off my lap, scattering fruit and cheese cubes across the rug. I snatched the jewelry box out of his hand. “Sapphires?” A pair of them, marquise cut, sat on either side of the round diamond. “They’re my favorite.”
“They are?”
“As of now.”
Shane brushed my hair off my cheek. “I got them because they reminded me of your eyes.” He winced. “Wow, that sounded cheesy. Can I take it back and say something macho like, ‘They were on sale’?”
“Whatever.” I reached for the ring, but he grabbed it first with supernatural speed.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “I’m supposed to put it on you.”
I stretched out the fingers of my left hand. “I didn’t know you were such a stickler for tradition.”
“I knelt, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but on both knees instead of one.”
“I knew something was off.” He shifted to set one foot down, then slid the ring onto the proper finger. “Anyway, happy engagement,” he said with mock brusqueness.
I held the ring up to the fake firelight. It was a little loose. “Did you guess my size?”
“I borrowed its counterpart.” He touched the silver band with the Celtic knot on the third finger of my right hand. “Your left hand must have skinnier fingers.”
“You stole my ring?” I smacked his chest. “You knew I was looking for it. My mom gave that to me.”
“And I found it for you in the garbage disposal, remember?”
“Bad boy.” I curled my fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “You’re a bigger con artist than I am.”
Bring On the Night Page 6