by Gayla Twist
I immediately walked over and put my arms around her. “I’m sorry,” I said, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “I lost my phone, so Blossom and I were retracing our steps trying to find it.” I knew she was about to demand that I should have called using Blossom’s phone, so I cut her off with, “I would have called you on Blossom’s phone, but she forgot it in the charger.”
“You could have used a payphone,” Mom insisted. “You do know they exist, right?”
“Yeah, but none of them actually work. Or the receiver's missing. Or they’re so disgusting you would never want to put it next to your face.” I could tell her relief in my being safe was overcoming her anger. “I’m really sorry, Mom. I’ll call to cancel my service right now, and I’ll pay for a new phone out of my wages. Okay?”
Mom gave me a stern look, but I knew I had covered all the bases pretty well. “Don’t be so careless next time.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
She was so worried and mad and relieved that she hadn’t looked at me too closely. Between fighting off the vampire, crying hysterically in Jessie’s arms, and flying through the air, I knew I was a mess. While it’s never a good thing to get clobbered, I was lucky that Viktor had hit me on the side of my head and not on the face because a black eye would have been really hard to conceal. “I’m bushed,” I told her, giving her a kiss on the temple. “See you in the morning.” With that, I frisked quickly upstairs.
“Goodnight, sweetie.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was in the clear.
I had a bit of panic as I was getting undressed to take a shower. My Pools of Light was missing. I knew it was a small loss compared to what I could have lost during my night of terror, but I still felt it quite painfully. It was only after my shower, when I was gathering my clothes off the floor, that I realized it was tangled up in my bra. I snatched up the pendant and covered it with kisses, I felt so relieved.
Once in bed, I couldn’t sleep. Again. My head throbbed, and my brain was going a mile a minute. I took some aspirin and, once my mom was in her room, snuck back downstairs for an ice pack. That helped quite a bit and eventually I was able to drift off.
I had the dream again, the terrifying one in the woods where I was running for my life. That was no surprise, given the events of the evening. I was in the woods, running and crying. The creature was after me. I knew that if it found me, it would rip me to shreds. My lungs were burning with each breath. Between the dark and my tears I was practically blind. The heel of my shoe got caught on something, and I pitched forward, sprawling on the ground. I quickly crawled behind a fallen log, losing my shoe in the process. The creature was somewhere nearby. I could hear it sniffing the air. I tried not to move; I tried not to breath; I just tried to stay perfectly still.
Minutes dragged by, and nothing happened. Maybe the creature had left. Maybe it had picked up the scent of some other animal in the dark. Slow, carefully, I inched up to peer over the log.
The woods were very quiet. There weren’t the chirps and rustles one usually heard on an early fall stroll. The moon was full, and the clouds that had been darkening the sky drifted away. My tears dried, and I was able to see more clearly. With all the trees and undergrowth, at first I saw nothing. Still, I didn’t move. The beast had to be somewhere. I realized there was a large stick quite close at hand, and I tried to gently pick it up for a weapon. I was quiet, very quiet, but it wasn’t enough. Something out there in the dark had heard me and turned in my direction.
With a gasp, I realized it was not the beast, but Jessie. I recognized his broad shoulders and commanding stature. He had come looking for me. He didn’t know there was a predator on the loose. I had to warn him.
“Jessie!” I shrieked, springing to my feet, ignoring the pain in my ankle. I ran to him, off kilter, with my one shoe still caught in the tree root. “We have to run. There’s something out here. Some type of beast.”
He came toward me, striding quickly, his arms open wide. I flung myself at him, so relieved and still so terrified. And then he was holding me. Holding me so tightly. “It’s okay now,” he said, gazing down at me, his handsome eyes shining in the moonlight.
“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”
“I know.” He smiled, a set of long fangs appearing silver in the moonlight.
I woke up when I started screaming. Just when Jessie’s fangs were about to plunge into my flesh.
Chapter 22
The next morning, I told my mom I didn’t feel well and even called in sick to Cup of Joe’s. My boss got very annoyed when people cancelled at the last minute, but I had been a model employee for at least a year, so he was easier on me than he would have been on a slacker.
I stayed in bed for most of the day, only getting up for the bathroom and snacks. My skull was bruised and tender, but I didn’t show any discoloration at my hairline, so that was good. I wrote my dream down in my journal, then regretted it and considered tearing out the pages.
Did Jessie Vanderlind kill my Aunt Lettie?
Jessie was so kind and so brave, fighting Viktor to save me, that it was impossible for me to believe he’d killed someone. Especially someone he still loved so dearly eighty years after what was most likely her death.
A horrible little corner of my brain suggested that maybe that was why he still loved her. Regret.
It just couldn’t be true. My heart kept insisting that it wasn’t true. But my dream was still pretty vivid in my head. I could almost feel his fangs piercing my flesh. The whole thing had been terrifying, but for some reason I still didn’t fear him. He was a vampire, but I trusted him with my life.
I obviously needed my head examined.
By the time nine o’clock that evening rolled around, I really didn’t know what to think. I was jumpy and afraid while simultaneously desperate to see Jessie. I’d fixed my hair a new way to cover the purple that had started seeping into my hairline, bruising from Viktor’s blow. It was only parting it on the right instead of the left and letting my forelock cover a portion of my forehead, but I wondered if Jessie would notice. My mom told me that boys who really like you will notice the little details about you. They’ll say something when you’ve changed your hair even slightly. Boys who don’t like you, or are just horny and hoping to score, don’t notice you. Not the real you. Not the subtle you. They’ll notice when you’re wearing a tight top, but they won’t notice that you changed your toenail polish from pink to silver. There’s that expression, The devil is in the details, but it’s also true of love.
At exactly nine, Jessie came drifting out of the sky like a puff from a dandelion gone to seed, his long coat billowing around him. He landed on the edge of the roof with the velvet paws of a panther, then turned and strode toward me.
“Good evening, Aurora.” He smiled as he seated himself near the window, his eyes twinkling. With his next breath, he noted, “You’ve changed your hair.” He reached out and lightly touched a few strands with hesitant fingers.
I felt my face flush with pleasure. All of my reservations melted away. “Just trying something new.”
“How are you?” he asked, looking deep into my eyes. “After I left you last night, I began to worry that you might have a concussion. I couldn’t sleep thinking about it.”
“Do vampires sleep?” I asked. “I mean, the same as you did when you were human?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “We close our eyes; we lie very still; we turn off our minds; but it’s more like being unconscious than it is being asleep. We don’t get to dream.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the dream journal I had in my lap. “I have a lot of dreams. Some of them pretty vivid,” I told him. “And...” it felt awful pushing forward, but I had to, “they’ve gotten much more intense ever since I met you. Like, weirdly intense.”
I knew I sounded like an idiot, but he didn’t make fun of me. He just nodded and said, “Okay.”
Pushing forward, I extended my journal out the window and s
aid, “This is my dream journal. My dreams have become so strange lately that I started keeping it by my bed so I can write things down while they’re still fresh in my brain.” He kept looking at me very intensely, so I kept talking. “I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or what, but I think you’d better take a look. I really need your opinion.” I extended the notebook out the window, and he accepted it.
After opening the journal and reading a few lines, Jessie said, “Your penmanship is quite good. Very legible. We get mail at the castle all the time that I can’t distinguish from chicken scratchings.”
“Who sends mail to the castle?” I asked, not revealing the gossip I’d heard at the post office.
Jessie blinked a few times. I could tell he wasn’t expecting my question. “Mostly crazy people who should know better,” he mumbled. He went immediately back to reading, so I didn’t push it. I wanted to focus on figuring out my dreams, not teasing him about his vampire fan club.
When he’d finished reading the entry of my first frightening dream, the first time I was running through the woods, he stopped. Lowering the journal, he said to me in a very serious voice, “Aurora, I want to believe you, but you have to be honest with me, did you write this before or after I told you about Lettie?”
I reached out of the window and squeezed his hand. It trembled slightly beneath my touch. “It’s all dated. I dreamed things when I dreamed them.”
“But,” he struggled to find words that made sense. “That...” he tried again, running his free hand through his hair repeatedly. “This... these are memories. Some of them, at least. These seem like Colette’s memories.”
“I know. And believe me, it’s been freaking me out, too,” I assured him. “After you left that night, when you told me about Lettie, I started putting it all together. I was going to tell you right away, but then you stopped seeing me, and I just assumed you were blowing me off. Then there was the whole Viktor thing, so I didn’t have a chance to tell you until now.”
“This is unbelievable,” he marveled, looking at my words and shaking his head slowly back and forth. “It’s just... it’s unbelievable.”
“I know,” I agreed. “But if you’d told me a few weeks ago that vampires existed, I would have said that was unbelievable, too.”
Jessie was suddenly clutching my hand in both of his. “Is it you, then? I mean, do you feel like Colette? Do you feel like... I don’t know, like somehow you used to be her?”
“Not really.” I could tell from his expression that he was disappointed, but I had to be honest. “But my grandmother told me that when I was a child, I used to pester her constantly about the castle. And then, when I saw you for the first time, in the library, I felt something. Something very strong. I mean, you’re gorgeous so there’s that, but this was different. I did really feel connected to you. Still, though,” I babbled, “I mean, people claim they feel connected to another person all the time. That’s why they came up with that whole soul mates thing, right?”
He nodded. “I guess.”
“But you have to keep reading,” I told him. I took the notebook and opened it to my dream about the inverted eye. “You remember the night you gave me this?” I indicated the Pools of Light pendant hanging around my neck, “and how I reacted after you had me look into it. Look through it into your eyes, I mean. Well, the night before, I dreamed this.” I tapped at the notebook.
Jessie bent his head and quickly read the page. “No wonder you reacted so strangely,” he said when he was finished. “I was wondering about that.”
“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about it, too,” I admitted. “I mean, you were never outside in the sunshine with Lettie, obviously, but what about the pendant? Was it hers? Or maybe you were planning on giving it to her?”
“No.” He shook his head. “She would have loved it, but I actually chose it especially for you.”
That little nugget of information was very gratifying, but it didn’t explain my dream any better. I unfastened the chain and dangled the bauble off my fingertips. The crystal became infused with moonlight, glowing and swaying gently in my hand. We both sat, staring at the orb, trying to ponder out its mysteries. After a few minutes, I observed, “It’s going to be a full moon soon. Almost time for the gloaming.”
“The what?” Jessie asked, his eyebrows narrowing in confusion.
“You know.” I felt suddenly silly, like I believed in old wives’ tales. “The gloaming.” He continued to give me a blank look, so I added, “Oh, come on. You must have heard of it. You’ve lived here forever. It’s that weird weather thing we get around here every fall.”
“Weird weather thing?”
“You know.” I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. “That weird howling noise that happens for a couple of nights this time of year. It’s a weather anomaly; that’s what everybody always says. It just sounds like someone is wailing for a night or two, and then it goes away. You know what I mean.”
Jessie closed his eyes as if trying to process some unpleasant news. “Yeah, I know what you mean. There’s a name for it?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. “Why shouldn’t there be?”
He ran his hand through his hair a few times. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.” He turned his attention back to the notebook. “Any other dreams I should know about?”
I felt a wave of panic. “No,” I said quickly, yanking my journal out of his hands and tossing it across the room onto my bed. I’d decided I really didn’t want him to see my latest entry.
Jessie stared at me for a second. “I should go,” he said, abruptly getting to his feet.
“Why?” I glanced over at my clock. It was just a few minutes past ten. “It’s not even that late.”
“Because there’s obviously an entry you’re not sure if you want to show me, and I’m trying to give you time to think about it.”
“No, I...” My brain had no excuse at the ready. He saw through me. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll show it to you, even though you’re not going to like it.”
I retrieved my journal from the bed, opened it to my entry from the previous night, and handed it to him. “Thank you,” he murmured, his eyes immediately falling to the words. I felt myself trembling but not with fear. Or to be clear, not fear for my well being. I was desperately worried though that the pages I’d written would hurt him, hurt him deeply. I fought the urge to grab the journal out of his hands and tear the paper to shreds.
When he was finished, Jessie closed the journal and handed it back to me. He was silent, so I stayed silent, giving him time.
“You think I might have killed Colette,” he said, not as a question, just as a statement.
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s impossible. I know how much you loved her. I know how much you still love her.”
“But your dream made you doubt me.”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to insist that I never doubted him. And in my heart, I didn’t. But in my head, I knew there was a chance that he had sucked the life from the person he loved most on the planet, and that was why her loss tormented him so much. Looking at him, being in his presence, I couldn’t believe it to be true. But when I was alone, I had to admit that a small part of me doubted. I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I hung my head, letting my tears fall onto the window sill.
Glancing up, I saw that he was gone.
Chapter 23
Monday morning, I was in a daze. I just wanted to fold in on myself and get through the day, but people kept greeting me eagerly, kept smiling at me in the hallway. One kid even tried to get me to high five him, which I refused. He shouted, “Don’t leave me hanging,” but I don’t enjoy high fiving even under the best of circumstances.
I was grateful to see Blossom waiting for me at my locker. “What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice. “People are being extra weird.”
“Oh,” she snortled. “That was me. There was a rumor going around that you were a narc or something be
cause you were looking for the cops at the Tib, so I started a rumor that you were actually trying to lead the cops in the wrong direction so everyone else could get away.”
Opening my locker, I stuffed in and pulled out assorted books, as needed. Blossom’s behavior had me mystified. “Why did you do that?”
She gave me an incredulous look. “I figured you’d rather be a hero than a narc. Although it really is pathetic how easily people will believe anything you tell them at this school.”
Someone walked up to us, on the other side of my locker from where Blossom was standing. I could tell by the expression on her face that it was a boy that she considered noteworthy. “See you at lunch,” she said, while simultaneously turning and walking away.
“Hi,” Fred said as I slammed my locker shut.
“Oh. Hi, Fred,” I replied, organizing my books in my arms.
“Are you doing your hair different?” he tilted his head slightly and gave me a little smile.
“Um, yeah.” I fought the urge to touch my hair.
“I heard what you did at the Tib. That was really cool of you.”
“Yeah, well... I wasn’t drinking so I figured... you know.” I started heading toward homeroom.
“You were drinking,” he said, keeping pace with me. “I gave you two beers. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah...” I’d forgotten about that. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing that there weren’t any cops. I’d be grounded for life.”
I kept walking, and Fred kept dogging my heels. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked.
“This weekend?” I was a little dumbfounded. Why did he want to know about my weekend? “I don’t know. It’s Monday. Way too early to start thinking about the weekend.” With that, I sailed into homeroom, leaving Fred in the hall.
Fred was tall, good looking, reasonably nice, and not the biggest lunkhead on the planet. He was the kind of guy I should have been pining for in high school. Instead, I was blowing him off because I was hung up on a vampire. I really needed my head examined.