by Amira Rain
I did, though, because while you were upstairs brushing your hair before we left for the store, my dad told me that Trevor, Sam, and Mr. Westwood would be following us to be our bodyguards today. See, my dad says that the Warrens are all under control now or whatever, and that after what happened with two of their guys getting killed by Hayden, they probably won’t send any more guys to try to get you anytime soon.
But my dad also says that even though this is what’s going on right now, everyone still needs to do everything to keep you safe and all that, just because the Warrens are so crazy and all that different junk. So, anytime you leave the farm, you’ve got to have some of our vampires following you to be your bodyguards, just so that you don’t get run off the road again or anything.”
Deeply embarrassed by my own airheaded-ness, I realized that the possibility of that hadn’t even crossed my mind when Jen and I had left the farm that afternoon. I supposed that I’d just been thinking about different things, primarily Hayden and our interaction earlier that day. I was glad that at least Mark was on top of things like my personal safety, because obviously, I was currently too spacey to be.
I still didn’t know why the Warrens even wanted to kill me, and I didn’t know why they’d killed my mom. Really, I hadn’t even begun to process the fact that they’d killed her. The whole thing still seemed too bizarre to be real, as did what Mel had told me about my mom being some kind of a witch.
While we continued on to the farm, I asked Jen if she could explain some things to me, like why the Warrens wanted to kill me.
Looking a little sheepish, Jen glanced over at me before responding. “Well…basically, the Warrens are just really bad vampires who pretty much just want to kill everyone all the time. But as far as why they want to kill you, personally, I know I’ve probably heard the answer to that, but I just kind of can’t remember.
I think it has something to do with your baby, or Hayden or something. Or maybe your mom. To be totally honest, I just kind of zone out most of the time when everyone’s talking about vampire things, so…I don’t know if I can really explain too much about that to you. Ask Hayden when we get home, though. He’s kind of the vampire king of the whole farm now, ever since all these different things happened a couple of years ago. It was just, junk with Hayden’s dad, my dad, my mom, the Warrens, and all that junk. Hayden will explain it all to you.”
All I knew was that someone needed to explain everything to me. A group of “bad” vampires, as Jen described them, was apparently hell-bent on killing me, and it seemed like I should at least know why. However, at the same time, there was a small part of me that was almost feeling like it was best that I was getting info in bits and pieces.
With everything I’d been through recently, and everything that had happened to me, I felt like “easing into understanding” of everything was probably wise so that I didn’t have some sort of nervous breakdown from simply having too much to process at once. As it was, I was still just trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I was having a baby.
That evening, to my disappointment, I didn’t see Hayden at all. Mark said that he and Trevor were out “running some patrols,” whatever that meant exactly, and would be gone overnight. I was disappointed that asking Hayden for answers about some things would have to wait. I was also disappointed for a different reason as well, which was that I wasn’t able to give him the onesie I’d bought.
Jen and I had also picked up a little gift bag, some pale yellow tissue paper, and a yellow bow, and I was going to tuck the onesie inside the bag and give it to Hayden for a gift. Oh well, I thought. It’ll keep. I still couldn’t shake a feeling of disappointment, though.
The following morning, Hayden still hadn’t returned home. Jen, Mel, and I spent several hours cleaning the Ice Creamery building for the upcoming opening day, and we also made a “test run” churn of ice cream, using organic sugar, the season’s first strawberries from the farm, and fresh cream and milk from the nearby Amish farm.
In a word, the homemade strawberry ice cream was delicious, probably the best ice cream I’d ever had in my life. I ended up having two bowls of it, starving after having skipped breakfast because of an extreme bout of morning sickness that had made me vomit twice.
“Hayden should really be here to help you through this, too,” Jen had said, holding my hair, while I leaned over the toilet bowl, waiting to see if my stomach was done heaving. I couldn’t deny that I felt like she was right, even though on the other hand, I wasn’t sure how comfortable I’d feel vomiting around someone who was virtually a complete stranger to me, despite being the father of my baby.
Around noon, a girl named Carla joined our group at the Ice Creamery and helped us finish cleaning. She was twenty years old, or had been when she’s been turned into a vampire about two years earlier.
“So, now, I’m forever twenty,” she said with a smile.
Her smile was dazzling, as was everything else about her. She was tall and slim, with chocolate-colored, glossy, waist-length hair; and her high cheekbones, along with the rest of her beautiful face, made me think that she could be a model. Having always been just slightly self-conscious about my short stature, and having always questioned whether I was “pretty enough,” whatever “enough” was, I might have been a little intimidated by Carla if she hadn’t been so down-to-earth and friendly. as she was Mel and I, anyway.
Toward Jen, she wasn’t quite so warm, and I got the feeling that she was a bit annoyed by her, particularly when she sent about six freshly-washed, stainless-steel mixing bowls clattering to the floor when she tried vaulting over the creamery’s counter.
“Sorry,” Jen said, a little red-faced, while picking up the bowls. “I was just trying to impress you, Sydney, because you’re my new friend.”
Smiling, I knelt and helped her finish picking up the bowls. “I was impressed. I’ve done gymnastics my whole life, and I’ve never seen anyone try an over-the-counter vault like that. I don’t really want you to try it again, just because a counter isn’t real gymnastics equipment and I don’t want you to get hurt, but I thought it was pretty gutsy.”
Reddening even further, Jen grinned. “Well, thanks. It was pretty gusty, wasn’t it?”
Smiling, I nodded, then stood up with a stack of bowls, just in time to see Carla casting a slight eye roll in Jen’s direction. Mel wasn’t even slightly rolling her eyes at Jen; she was doing it openly and dramatically.
Jen didn’t exactly seem to be Carla’s biggest fan, either. Around one, when Carla asked if we’d all like to head over to her place, where she’d fix Jen and me some lunch with food she had on hand for the kids she babysat for, Jen said thanks, but no thanks.
“Sydney and I have plans to go back to the house and make pizza bagels for a late lunch.”
We’d actually made no such plans. However, I didn’t want to embarrass Jen by directly contradicting her; so, I tried to gently steer her toward the idea of going over to Carla’s, because I kind of really wanted to go.
“Oh, come on, Jen. Pizza bagels sound good, but we can always make them some other time. But right now, I think going over to Carla’s place sounds fun. What do you say?”
Jen stood stony-faced, with her arms folded across her chest. “I say no thank you. You can go, though. I’ll have lunch with Wanted. He loves pizza bagels.”
With that, Jen turned heel and began stomping out of the creamery.
Knowing that I’d probably hurt her feelings and hating it, I immediately went after her, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder. “Jen, please wait. I really would like to make pizza bagels with you sometime, but it’s just that—”
“It’s fine, Sydney.” Jen had turned around, and now looked at me wearing an expression that was more resigned than hurt or angry. “I know that Mel and Carla are super-mature-type girls or whatever, and that maybe you want to be friends with them, because you’re kind of the same type of girl. I don’t mind that. I really don’t. I don’t mind if you have lu
nch with them. But just promise me one thing, though. Just promise me that when you come back to the house later on, you’ll still be my friend, too.”
With my heart kind of melting and breaking at the same time, I said of course I would. “I promise.”
Looking pleased, Jen gave me a small little smile. “All right. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
She turned and began leaving the creamery again, only this time, walking normally instead of stomping. I watched her go, thinking that she was possibly a more mature person than people thought, or that she even gave herself credit for. I thought her handling of me going to lunch at Carla’s had ultimately been pretty mature anyway.
Because Carla lived alone and didn’t need much space, she lived in one of several smallish manufactured homes among the other much larger homes on the farm. Sitting at her kitchen table while she made me a turkey club sandwich and a garden salad for my lunch, I asked her if her parents lived nearby, thinking that she was pretty young to be living completely on her own, no matter that she was technically twenty-two in “vampire years.”
Glancing up from slicing a cucumber on the cutting board, she told me that she actually didn’t have parents anymore. “My mom died in a car accident when I was about seventeen, and I never knew my dad. My mom never even really told me anything about him. He was always just…gone.”
Carla had basically just recounted my own life story. I told her that, and she gave me a small, sympathetic sort of smile.
“Well, welcome to the ‘orphan club,’ although I wish you didn’t have to be in it. And me, too. It is kind of nice to meet someone who knows exactly what I’ve been through. I’m really glad you came here to the farm, Sydney.”
I said that I was, too, and I meant it, thinking that despite all the upheaval of the previous few days, my life had generally improved. I’d made a good friend, Jen, who I somehow felt closer to than any friend I’d had in years, despite only knowing her for a few days.
Now I was making a new friend in Carla, and I was getting to know Mel a little better. During my brush with death when Christopher Warren had tried to run me off the road, I’d come to realize that I wanted to live, and that I wasn’t quite as “zombified” as Kayley had thought I was.
Being away from my aunt and uncle, I’d started to feel like some oppressive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. And as far as middle-aged people looking out for me, Mark had displayed more caring to me than my aunt and uncle ever had. I’d even started to slightly warm to the idea of having a baby. I was at least coming to full acceptance about the fact that I was pregnant, anyway.
The only missing piece of the puzzle that I felt could possibly mean a happier new life for me was Hayden. I wanted my baby to have the involved, loving father that I’d never had. I also wanted to have a partner in child-raising, like my mom had never had.
Also, even though I felt almost embarrassed to admit it, even to myself, because I’d only known him for a short time, I thought that I might want Hayden in my life even beyond just being my co-parent – if he could come to a point where he accepted our baby, , which I didn’t know if he could.
While I ate lunch with my new vampire friends the three of us shared a few laughs and got to know each other even better. Carla had an idea to have a “welcome to the community” party for me in a few days, and she offered to clear some things out of an unused barn near the houses so that we could have the party there and fit everyone who lived on the farm inside. I told Carla that I didn’t want to be any trouble, but she said it wasn’t any trouble at all.
“There’s really not much to move out of this particular barn anyway, and then a few friends and I will just need to set up some tables, make some food for you and the other non-vampires to enjoy, and set up some kind of a little bar for us vampires of legal drinking age.”
Surprised, I said that I didn’t know vampires liked drinking alcohol. “I guess I just thought that since you all dislike having to choke down regular food, that maybe alcohol would be the same way.”
Carla cracked a smile. “Oh, it is. It definitely doesn’t taste in any way ‘good’ to us vampires. Like, for example, we can’t even appreciate the finest wine. All alcohol just tastes something like overly-chlorinated, brackish water to us. Some vampires just like the effect of a glass or two of wine sometimes, though…not that I’d even know who those vampires are. Definitely not me.”
Mel and I laughed, and Carla grinned, revealing her perfectly-shaped, almost blindingly white teeth.
After an hour or so, when Mel and I left her house to go back to ours, I was feeling the best I had, both physically and mentally, since learning I was pregnant. This was soon to change, though, the moment I stepped into the kitchen and came face-to-face with Hayden.
CHAPTER 14
Entering the kitchen through the front door, I actually almost crashed right into Hayden, because he was on his way out. Stopping short just an inch or so from his hard chest, I murmured an apology.
“I didn’t mean to almost run into you.”
Standing so close to him, I caught a whiff of his woodsy scent, which smelled so heavenly that I probably would have been content to breathe it in for hours.
However, almost immediately, Hayden took a step back from me, telling me not to worry about almost running into him. “It was my fault, too.”
For a long, somewhat awkward moment, we just looked at each other. Slightly wounded, I wondered why Hayden had felt the need to take a step back from me so immediately, like I was poison that he didn’t want to get too near or something.
Breaking eye contact with me and raking a hand through his hair, he spoke again first. “Anyway…I’m heading out on a hunting trip up north. Mark and a few other men are coming, too. There are wild animals around here that we can feed on, of course, but we find large game, like the kind that can be found in the wild forestlands far up north, to be more satisfying. It kind of keeps us ‘fuller’ longer.”
“Oh. So, how long will you be gone for?”
Hayden finally returned his gaze to my face. “Oh, probably just a few days. In the meantime, Sam, Trevor, and many other very strong vampires who aren’t going on the trip will keep you safe. So, don’t worry about that.”
“All right. But….” I hesitated, thinking about what I was going to say next and feeling stupid for some reason. “Carla is having a ‘community welcome party’ for me Friday evening, and I guess I was just hoping that you’d be there.”
“Oh.” Once again, Hayden shifted his gaze from my face. “Well…I’m sure there will be other parties.”
This was not what I’d been hoping to hear, and now I took a step back, putting another foot of distance between us.
“I think we need to talk, Hayden. I need some answers about everything that’s happened to me, and why it’s happened, and I need to know what your thoughts are about some things. I need to know if I should start preparing myself to raise the baby I’m carrying alone.”
Turning from me, Hayden heaved a sigh, jamming his hands in his jeans pockets. “Look. Maybe when I get back—”
“I vomited my guts out this morning because I was so ill with morning sickness. Jen ran into the bathroom with me and held my hair back while I leaned over the toilet. Where were you? Definitely not providing support while I was sick, which seems like something that the father of the baby I’m carrying should do. And you are the father, aren’t you? If you have some kind of doubt, like if you don’t truly believe that I got pregnant by magic or something, just tell me right now.”
Still standing with the front of his body turned away from me, Hayden spoke in a low, resigned sort of voice. “I’m the father of the baby you’re carrying. I don’t have any doubt.”
“Then, can you at least face me while we talk so that I don’t have to speak to your shoulder?”
Before he could respond, the front door, which I hadn’t fully shut, slowly opened, just gently bumping into my back. I turned to l
ook and saw Mel creeping into the house, wearing an apologetic sort of expression that told me that she might have heard a few heated words. Although we’d walked back up to the house together, she’d remained outside to water the flowers by the front steps when I’d gone in, and I’d kind of forgotten that she was still out there.
Giving me a little wave, she breezed right on by Hayden and me, saying that she was sorry for interrupting. “I’ll just leave you two to continue talking now.”
I watched until I saw that she was out of the kitchen, then turned my focus back to Hayden. “Can we please just sit down and talk? With all I’ve been through lately without really even knowing why, I just feel like I’m at least owed a few explanations. That doesn’t seem too much to ask. After all, how would you feel if you were a teenage girl, you turned up pregnant, and didn’t even know how it happened?”
“I thought Mel told you.”
“Yeah…she did. Magic or whatever. Some spell that some sorceress did. You’ll have to forgive me, though, because that explanation raised a few more questions than it answered.”
Stony-faced, staring at a side door that led to the garage, Hayden didn’t respond, and I suddenly threw my hands up in exasperation.
“All right. Don’t talk to me. Don’t tell me anything. That’s fine. I’ll just direct all my questions to Mel or Mark. I guess I just thought that since you and I are having a baby together, you might want to talk to me and answer all my questions as a way of getting to know each other a little better. How silly of me.”
Fuming, I began storming out of the kitchen, intending to find Mel; but before I’d taken more than a few steps, Hayden called out for me to wait.
After coming to a stop, I turned to face him, folding my arms across my chest. “Yes?”
Frowning, he took a few steps closer to me. “You’re right…about many different things. I should have been there for you this morning when you were sick. And you do deserve some explanations…from me. Not from Mel or Mark.”