Velvet

by Temple West

  “I think your uncle doesn’t know what to do with me,” he whispered a moment later.

  I immediately popped up and looked first at Adrian, then at my uncle, then at Adrian again, horrified. “What do we tell him?”

  He shifted underneath me, tucking the blanket around my shoulders. “We tell him that we’ve become good friends since you’ve moved here, and that we’d like to see where the friendship takes us.”

  “Does that mean we’re dating?”

  “It means your uncle can interpret that however he wants.”

  I frowned. “So, you’re doing all this just because you don’t want my family to worry about me?”

  He waved his head back and forth in a so-so gesture. “There’s more. But I’ll tell you tomorrow. Enjoy your birthday.”

  I raised a brow. “That doesn’t sound ominous at all.” He smiled, but refused to elaborate. “Fine,” I told him, “be cryptic.” I hunched my knees up to my chin. “What about my aunt, though? She’ll ask detailed questions. And Norah will repeat anything we say here to all her friends, so what do we tell people at school? Also, if this is all some weirdly elaborate joke about vampires because I wore a vampire costume on Halloween and it’s my birthday, tell me now, and your death will be quick and painful.”

  He winked at me. “I can’t die, remember?”

  Before I could reply, Rachel called out that dinner was ready, so we stood and walked over to the table.

  “Caitlin, how was your birthday?” my aunt asked, breaking the silence as she handed her husband a bowl of salad.

  I almost choked on a crouton. Adrian patted my back helpfully. For half a second, I toyed with the idea of telling her the truth: Well, Aunt Rachel, I went to school, I came home, I put on my boots, and I got naked-ish and cried on a large rock, but Adrian here just had to stop me, and oh yeah! he’s a vampire and we’re dating now. I think.

  “It was good,” I lied.

  “Adrian,” my aunt began, “I can’t tell you how nice it is to have you here. And I wanted to thank you for taking Caitlin to school; it’s been such a help.”

  “No trouble at all,” he replied, smiling warmly.

  I was clearing dishes later, so I didn’t notice at first when Adrian took Joe into the living room to talk. Over the dishwasher, Rachel leaned in conspiratorially.

  “So,” she began, trying to sound casual. “What’s going on with you two?”

  I’d known this was coming, but my face still turned red. Norah was rinsing plates in the sink and trying to listen without looking like she was listening.

  I scrubbed at an imaginary spot of food on the plate I was holding and mumbled, “We’re dating, I guess.”

  They both gasped and turned to each other with equal I-told-you-so smile.

  “He’s a very nice young man,” Rachel said.

  I peeked over at Adrian. “I’m not sure Joe agrees.”

  As if he heard me, Joe stood and walked toward us.

  “Well, I better be going before the roads get too bad,” Adrian announced, following him into the kitchen. I threw a tight smile at everyone as they wished him good night, grabbed Adrian by the arm, and walked him to the door.

  “What did you say to Joe?” I whispered.

  “Not much,” he replied, tugging on his boots. “Mentioned the weather, the horses, what my intentions toward you are.”

  I paled.

  He smiled, looking satisfied. “Don’t worry, your uncle and I have an understanding.”

  “An understanding,” I replied flatly.

  He bent down and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  He opened the door and walked back out into the night. I stood there in a daze as the engine to the truck revved to life. When I turned around, Joe, Rachel, and Norah were staring at me.

  “Um,” I said intelligently, “I think I’m going to go do some homework. If that’s all right.”

  “Sure,” my aunt said, smiling. “Good night!”

  I headed upstairs, closed my door softly, and started a fire in my tiny little fireplace before wrapping myself in a blanket to huddle in front of the heat-spitting light.

  I was now dating Adrian de la Mara.

  I didn’t really know how that had happened, but there it was.

  I mouthed the words Caitlin Marie de la Mara as a joke—after all, it wasn’t like we were actually dating.

  Right?

  I thought back to all the times he’d had headaches. Were they really headaches? Or did it have something to do with his weird eye thing? What did I even call the weird eye thing? And did I really have to call him a vampire? Because that was completely ridiculous. Had it all been in my head? Did I dream up the snow fight, the molten-silver eye trick, that little tidbit that his dad was a demon? Was this all just one incredibly detailed hallucination? Hallucination seemed more plausible than Adrian being immortal. I was totally in the middle of a fugue state, wasn’t I? Maybe if I just slept, I’d snap out of it in the morning. That seemed reasonable.

  * * *

  The truck looked exactly as it had the day before. Maybe I was expecting it to turn into a giant pumpkin carriage or a flaming chariot, but it was just a truck, black, at least a few years old, with a couple of dings in the door. Probably the only thing of Adrian’s I’d ever seen that wasn’t brand-new and flawless. The driver’s side window rolled down.

  “Morning, sunshine,” Adrian said with a big smile.

  Who was this and what had he done with the brooding underwear model I’d known before?

  “Hi,” I returned, and climbed into the passenger side. “You’re still a vampire?”

  “Yep.”

  “Cool, yeah, just checking.” Damn. Not a fugue state. “And we’re still pretend-dating?”

  Instead of answering, he just put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him, driving left-handed down the road.

  I looked up at him. “I take that as a ‘yes.’”

  He smiled.

  I settled into his arm, because why not? “So now’s the part where I ask you questions, just FYI.”

  He kept his eyes on the road. “What do you want to know?”

  What did I want to know? Everything. “How did you find me yesterday?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, glancing at me. “Before I say anything, please keep in mind that half of this is lore, the other half’s myth, and the rest is bullshit that’s been passed down so long no one really remembers the truth anymore.”

  I frowned. “That’s more than a hundred percent.”

  “Shhhhhh,” he said, exaggeratedly patting my hair. “All right, so, I am what I am because the thing that got my mom pregnant was a demon.”

  I was about to tell him I didn’t believe in demons—not that I really believed in vampires either, but I definitely didn’t believe in demons—but he saw my look and cut me off.

  “That’s just what we call them,” he explained. “If you want to get into a theological debate, don’t bother. I don’t claim to know anything about heaven or hell or God or gods or afterlives or any of it. At least, not any more than anyone else can. We’ve been around long enough that demon has always been synonymous with monster. For all I know, he’s really an alien, or a superevolved parasite. Whatever he is, he’s not human and he’s not what I am. What we do know is that he—and all of his kind—feed off human emotions. It’s their only energy source, the only one they need, because for the most part they don’t seem to exist in a physical state.”

  He paused, and then admitted, “As his offspring, I feed off emotions, too. Except instead of draining people of them, I simply”—he looked around, searching for the right word—“absorb them.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  He frowned, thinking. “Demons are basically leeches, slowly sucking out your life-force. Vampires are sponges, soaking up the energy you’re already putting out—kind of like solar panels. We both get the energy humans emit, but
one is a parasitic relationship and the other is merely commensal.” He saw the blank look on my face. “One party gains while the other remains unaffected.”

  “Ah,” I replied intelligently.

  “You, though,” he said, glancing down at me. “With enough concentration, we can actually pick you out from a crowd. It’s definitely easier out here, where the population density is so low. The stronger you’re feeling any particular emotion, the easier it is to find you. That’s how I knew where you were in the woods.”

  “One, that’s super-creepy,” I interrupted, “and two, how?”

  He frowned, thinking, then looked over at me. “Have you ever walked into a room and just felt that everyone was really angry, or sad, or whatever, without anyone having to say a word? It’s not really like that at all, but that’s the closest I can explain without diving into theoretical physics and emotional resonance and revealing that my alter ego is an unequivocal nerd.”

  I smiled at that. “I figured the nerd part out a while ago. But how do I know you’re not just staying around me because you’re hungry?”

  He snorted a sudden, surprised laugh and glanced at me. “We’re in a small town, but it’s not that small—I get breakfast just passing people at school.”

  I sat up. “So, wait, if you were in the city, would you be crazy-strong or something, because there are so many crowds?”

  He shook his head. “We’re like batteries—we can only charge up so much.”

  I didn’t really know how I felt about all this. Was he feeding off me now? Was “feeding” even an appropriate verb? I wanted a different one, mostly because I didn’t want to think of him as some sort of animal. “Charging up” was much cleaner.

  “I sense confusion,” he said half seriously.

  “Can you really pick out which emotion I’m feeling?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes all I can tell is tone. Dark or light. Negative or positive. Demons can only feed off negative emotion. Like Dementors.”

  A smile spread over my face. “Did you just make a Harry Potter reference?”

  He shrugged, blushing. “I was a kid, too. I may or may not have read Harry Potter.”

  “How many times?”

  “The whole series?” I nodded and he blushed harder. “Five times,” he admitted finally. “I had a huge crush on Hermione.”

  I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. “You totally have a Gryffindor scarf, don’t you? And an Elder wand and a Goblet of Fire.” I grinned at him. “Tell me you have a Goblet of Fire.”

  His face was red, and it was adorable. “No goblet.” He paused, then admitted, “I might have the wand.”

  I laughed again, suddenly liking him so much more. “Well, I’m glad you’re not a Dementor. Although it’s super-creepy to think that something like a Dementor exists. Which I’m not totally sold on, by the way. Maybe you got some sort of bio-tech contact lenses yesterday to freak me out, and you’re really committed to an elaborate joke. I could be on a reality-TV show right now.”

  “Could be,” he conceded. “And you’re welcome to believe whatever you wish. My job is simply to keep you safe.”

  I looked up at him sharply. “Wait—what?”

  But we were coming up on the school parking lot. He pulled into a spot and cut the engine, then looked at me.

  “Later,” he said. “I promise.”

  I scowled, but got out, shutting my door. Before I could even make it to the sidewalk, Adrian caught my hand.

  “I’ll see you at lunch,” he said quietly. He bent and kissed me lightly on the cheek like he had the night before. All too soon his fingers left mine and he walked off.

  I floated to Mr. Warren’s room and hovered above my seat. What on earth was happening to me? I was one of the least romantic people I knew. I didn’t get whimsical over a kiss on the cheek. I was probably just still in shock that Adrian wasn’t gay. And the whole vampire thing. And that we were fake-dating, which I still didn’t really understand, at all. Trish walked in and plunked down next to me.

  “Ready for the quiz?” she asked.

  “The quiz?” I repeated stupidly.

  “On the last chapter of the novel?”

  Yesterday, I would have shrugged and been perfectly happy failing. Today, somehow, I felt awake—I felt alive—and I cared. Maybe it was that everything Adrian had told me made me feel like the world was bigger than it was before. Maybe my life—my future—wasn’t as closed in and cut off as I’d imagined. Maybe the cheek-kiss was affecting my brain.

  I spent the next ten minutes skimming the last chapter, trying to remember what we’d read. When Mr. Warren passed the quiz around, I guessed on maybe half the questions and slunk off to second period.

  An eternity later it was lunch and Trish and I walked to the picnic tables. Just as I was about to sit down, I felt an arm slide around my waist. I froze, blushing instantly. I guess Adrian was really determined to make the fake-dating thing look legit, even at school. I did not, however, expect to feel the brush of lips against my temple. Half the table was staring at us, and in the sudden, rippling hush, everyone turned to stare. The red flush covering my face was burning hot, even though a cold breeze was blowing the snow around in little flurries. Trish stood opposite me, lunch in hand, mouth hanging open.

  I cleared my throat and that seemed to trigger everyone back into motion. When we sat, Trish kicked my shin under the table and gave me a meaningful look.

  Later, I mouthed.

  She scowled at me, but didn’t say anything. I looked around and spotted Norah at another table. There was a crowd of freshman girls around her, craning their heads closer to hear. By the end of lunch, everyone up to the principal would have heard that Adrian and I were dating.

  “Something wrong, sugar plum?” Adrian murmured in my ear.

  I smiled my most demure smile and leaned close so only he could hear. “I am going to punch you in the left kneecap if you call me ‘sugar plum’ again.”

  He just chuckled.

  Twenty minutes later the bell rang, and I would have dashed off to fifth period if Adrian hadn’t caught me by the back of my coat.

  “What is it with you and running away from me?” he asked quizzically, slinging an arm over my shoulders.

  “Maybe you’re hideous, and I can’t stand the sight of your face?”

  He looked thoughtful. “Mmm, no, that’s not it.”

  I snorted. “Confident much?”

  He leaned in close and murmured, “I’m not the one who talks in my sleep about sexy pirate men.”

  I paled, horrified. “I did not.”

  He grimaced at me in a way that clearly said, Yes. Yes, you did.

  We stopped in front of my classroom and he leaned down and slowly brushed my cheek with his lips. I stumbled through history and music, walking with my stomach in knots to study hall. For once, I beat Adrian. I’d just settled in when he stopped and looked at the vacant chair opposite me.

  “I take it I’m allowed to sit with you again?”

  I tried to keep my face composed, neutral. “Yes.”

  He set his stuff down and took out a book.

  “Nope,” I said, placing my hand on the cover and sliding it toward me. “Questions first.”

  He looked around. “In study hall?”

  “Do you seriously think I can concentrate on homework right now?”

  He put the book away. “All right—what’s next?”

  We were pretty secluded in our little corner, but I leaned in anyway. “What did you mean when you said you were my personal shadow?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “It means that you’re in trouble.” I frowned, waiting for him to elaborate. “For instance—that storm? Wasn’t a storm.”

  “The storm was not a storm.”

  “It was a disturbance.”

  I snorted. “In the Force?”

  He shrugged. “I mean—yeah, sort of. My father came back.”

  “From where?”

  He looked at me, equa
l parts amused and uncomfortable. “From hell.”

  I blinked. “Oh.”

  “It’s not a fiery lake or lava pit or anything like that. It doesn’t seem to be a physical dimension at all.” He glanced at me, then down at the table, twirling a mechanical pencil in his hands before clearing his throat. “My little brother, Lucian, he’s only been with us for a year. When he was born my father took him. He grew up in hell until he was ten.”

  I stared at him, thinking he must be joking. “Your brother grew up in hell?”

  “Yes. Or the dimensional plane we collectively agree to call hell.”

  I thought he must be joking, but he looked dead serious. “But, if it’s not a physical, y’know, place,” I asked, “how did your brother survive?”

  Adrian started to speak, then stopped. “I—I’ve never been. Some of us have. It’s been explained to me that it’s a bit like when you’re e-mailing someone a picture. The visual information—colors and shadows and lines—it all gets converted to ones and zeroes and compressed before it’s transmitted. Apparently Lucian’s body was like that—stored, indefinitely, as information. As an idea.”

  Well, that one was certainly hard to wrap my head around.

  He smiled uncomfortably. “The more science progresses, the more we understand particles and light and time, the more it seems to wrap right back around into myth.” He shook his head. “The point is, we found him—which was unprecedented—and took him back—which was even more unprecedented.” He risked a glance up at me.

  “So,” I said slowly. “You’re immortal. Your dad’s a demon. You absorb emotions as energy. You can do freaky things with your eyes and make people forget stuff, your brother was stored digitally in hell, and for some grand, mysterious reason, I am being intentionally informed about your secret vampire society.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. The point of all this has to do with Lucian—and you. Julian, Mariana, and I are all lost causes as far as our father is concerned. But when you invest ten years in a kid, like our father did with Lucian, you’re gonna be a little pissed if he’s taken away. We knew he was going to come looking, which is why Lucian came to live with us. We’re remote, unlike most others of our kind, who prefer high-density population centers. If there was going to be any kind of altercation, the collateral damage would be minimal out here. But we had no idea that he’d be so close when he came. Usually, it’s very difficult to pinpoint where you come through. When you travel between dimensions, you sort of upset physics. It literally agitates the fabric of the universe. Anyway—he opens a gateway, we get a freak storm.”