Velvet

by Temple West

  I frowned at the distance between us. “I think I like hydrophilic better.”

  He didn’t catch on. Which was probably a good thing.

  “Do you understand now?”

  “Yep. But that wasn’t the part I was having trouble with.” Adrian stared at me blankly. “Thanks, though; I liked the three-D demonstration.” I smiled and did another somersault in midair, managing to get upright again without Adrian’s help. I grinned at him and pressed the release button on the harness, plummeting toward the ground at a frightening speed. Luckily, I landed on an overstuffed couch, let go of the button, and bounced, doing another somersault on the way up with a lighthearted “whoo-hoo!”

  Adrian crossed his arms, a smile clinging to the corner of his mouth. “So you think sledding down a hill is a near-death experience, but you don’t mind doing gymnastics twenty feet in the air?”

  “If I fall here, I’ll land on a sofa,” I said in a reasonable tone. “If we crash on a hill, I’ll hit a tree. Sofa. Tree.” I looked at him, holding out my hands and pretending to weigh the options.

  He grinned and propelled himself toward me until he could grab hold of my cables again. “Is there anything else you don’t understand?”

  Oh, the things I didn’t understand. But I shook my head, because I was having way too much fun with the harness thing to do homework.

  “Good,” he said with a slight smile. “Now—we’re going to do something I’ve never done before that I’ve always wanted to try.” For about two-and-a-half heartbeats, I thought he meant kissing me. But he followed his previous statement with “Lucian’s not coordinated enough, Julian’s got a stick up his ass, and Mariana and Dominic would rather die than do anything fun. So—you ready?”

  I frowned at him, intrigued. “You haven’t told me what we’re doing yet.”

  He looked around the library and held out his arms, smiling the biggest smile I’d ever seen him smile. “We’re going to play tag.”

  And he dropped straight down like a rock, hit a sofa, and bounced back up, landing on a bookshelf and using it as a springboard to leap a quarter of the way across the library. I laughed, heading toward the same bookshelf. I was about to push off when I paused.

  “Are these steady?” I called to him halfway across the room.

  “They’re bolted to the floor, each other, and the ceiling. Just try not to knock any books off.”

  I grinned. “Okay!”

  Carefully planting my bare feet on the ledge, I grabbed on to a cast-iron light fixture affixed to the edge, bent my knees, and jumped. I probably weighed half as much as Adrian, so I didn’t get very far, but enough to reach another bookshelf and leapfrog myself off that one as well.

  Waiting for me to get the hang of it, Adrian clung to the side of a shelf until I was only one spiral-formation away. Grinning, he jumped to one of the sliding ladders on the edge of the room. I followed on a ladder fifteen feet to his right. We both ran along the bookshelves, holding on to the ladders as they slid. Once they picked up momentum, we hopped on and rode them around the room. Luckily the tracks curved at the corners of the library, so we didn’t crash into the walls.

  Right when he reached the gigantic fireplace at the far end of the library—where the curved tracks abruptly stopped—he sprang off the ladder and flipped through the air to land, spiderlike, on a bookshelf twenty feet away. I jumped, too, landing ten feet lower, intending to climb up and tag him, since it seemed like I was “it.”

  But all of a sudden he let go and fell. I watched in a sort of slow-motion horror as he neared, grabbed me, and pressed the button on my harness. I was sure we were going to hit the ground, but at the last moment he pushed against the bookshelf with his legs and, wrapping his arms around my torso protectively, landed on an overstuffed sofa—the same one we’d sat on for the disastrous interview with Mariana and Dominic.

  I stared, dazed, at the ceiling, my heart racing furiously. And then I went limp and laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

  “That’s odd,” I heard Adrian murmur from underneath me a few moments later.

  “What?” I said, trying to limit myself to an occasional happy chuckle as tears leaked down my face. I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before.”

  I wanted to turn around and look at his face, see what he was feeling—and at the same time I didn’t.

  I shrugged, still smiling. “I haven’t run around like that in a long time.”

  “Endorphins.”

  “Mmm,” I said, which he misinterpreted as an invitation for a verbatim recitation of the word’s definition.

  “When you participate in physically demanding activities, your body produces endorphins. Endo means ‘inside,’ and orphin is short for ‘morphine,’ so it’s like morphine that your body creates to bond to receptors in your nervous system and dull pain, which makes you feel good.”

  I wriggled around to face him. “You’re a huge word nerd; you know that, right?”

  But it was a bad idea to turn around. Bad because my arms were resting on either side of his face. Bad because we were lying down. Bad because I was lying down on top of him. Bad because we were alone. Bad because the firelight made his silver eyes bright and deep and beautiful. Bad because my heart was racing suddenly, and the temperature had skyrocketed about fifteen degrees. Bad because his hand had somehow ended up on my hip, and bad because I realized I was basically straddling him.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  I was so scared I actually jumped about five feet in the air, doing an involuntary backward flip and hanging upside down with my hair pointing everywhere as a strange figure stared at me from the end of the couch.

  “Hello, Julian,” Adrian called from where I’d left him. He put his hands behind his head and smiled at his brother and then at me, looking amused.

  I awkwardly flipped right side up again and felt all the blood drain back down out of my face. I blinked a few times and then looked at what was apparently Adrian’s older brother. He was barefoot, too, wearing expensive jeans and a linen shirt that was completely unbuttoned, revealing a chest and abdomen so sculpted they looked fake. He had medium-brown hair that fell in a perfectly tousled mess a few inches shorter than Adrian’s. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were from here, but something dark. He was different from Adrian, but certainly lived in the same sphere of physical perfection.

  He smiled, but it wasn’t a very nice smile. “You must be the infamous Caitlin Holte.”

  “Hi—yes—I mean, I am.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on slowing my heartbeat, which, in the company of vampires, was way more embarrassing than my inability to speak.

  “Be nice,” I heard Adrian warn his brother from the couch, although he sounded more amused than threatening. I pressed the button on the harness, lowered myself to the coffee table, and hopped lightly to the floor. Trying to salvage some of my pride, I walked over and held out my hand.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  He grinned and shook it slowly. “The pleasure is absolutely mine.”

  He raised my fingers to his lips and placed a light kiss on my knuckles, his focus entirely on me. I was close enough now to see that his eyes were a curious brown-blue, a combination I’d never seen before. They were absolutely gorgeous.

  “Julian, now that you’re back in subfreezing weather, do you think it might be wise to dress more—natively?” Adrian asked drolly from his place on the couch. Julian looked down at his bare chest.

  “Oh, I suppose. I’ve been used to being naked for so long, I forgot what clothing felt like.” He glanced at me. “They paint me as an angel most of the time. And as everyone knows, angels fly around the heavens rejoicing in the Lord in the nude.”

  I swallowed. Adrian rolled his eyes.

  “You’re a model?”

  “Something like that,” he replied with a smile. “I don’t need the money, but I do so love pr
omoting the arts.”

  “Such a sacrifice,” Adrian commented.

  Julian smiled. “I do what I can.” He draped himself across the opposite couch and asked, “So what’re you kids up to?”

  The word choice struck me as funny—and then I remembered he wasn’t really our age. He looked fresh out of high school.

  “We were just working on some chemistry homework,” Adrian said coolly.

  Julian slowly eyed the two of us, the corner of his mouth tilting up. “Uh-huh.”

  “Actually, I need to go finish, so why don’t you two catch up while … I … do that.”

  I ran out of words, so I hopped on the coffee table and pushed off, landing on the middle of the bookshelf and propelling away from the brothers as quickly as possible. That much gorgeous was not good for a girl.

  After a few seconds, I found our previous study station and let myself down onto the couch. I contemplated taking the harness off, then decided against it. I might need another fast escape.

  As I sat down, the clasps and knots bit into my legs uncomfortably. I sighed and stood, mulling over what to do. Finally, I jumped into the air, pushed the button to lower me just a bit, and hovered parallel to the coffee table where my papers were spread out.

  After struggling through homework for a few minutes, I slowly became aware that all the hairs on my arm were standing on end. I looked up from my textbook and saw a familiar pair of aviator goggles peeking just over the edge of the coffee table. The boy that went with them was perfectly still.

  “Are you breathing, Lucian?” I asked, half afraid and half concerned.

  I heard a deep intake of breath from somewhere below the surface of the table.

  “Now I am.”

  I peered at him curiously. “Why weren’t you breathing?”

  He peered right back. “I forgot.”

  “You forgot?”

  “Yeah.”

  All righty. “Why are you hiding underneath the table?”

  He blinked. “Why are you on top of the table?”

  Smart-ass. Cute little munchkin smart-ass.

  “Good question. Why don’t you come out so I can see you and we can talk some more? The couch is probably a lot more comfortable than the floor.”

  I swiveled the harness so my body faced the couch, but kept my gaze locked on his face. Lucian was an unknown entity. And I doubted he had Adrian’s control, or Mariana’s and Dominic’s maturity—or at least, their natural reservation. There was a good possibility he viewed me as a snack.

  He blinked again and slowly slithered out from underneath the table to crawl onto the couch. He turned around and sat limply, peering at me with his head tilted to one side, wavy brown hair sticking out in all directions.

  “Isn’t that more comfortable?” I asked with what I hoped was a friendly smile.

  He seemed to consider. “Yes.”

  “Now what’s all this about not having to breathe?”

  He did a funny one-shoulder shrug. “Didn’t need this so much back then.”

  It took me a second before I realized “this” meant “body.”

  “Where were you before?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from Lucian. Just because Mariana and Dominic believed all this stuff about demons and hell didn’t mean he did.

  He stared at me from behind his big goggles, his eyes too dark behind the tinted glass to see what color they were. He replied without blinking, without breathing, without moving a single muscle but his lips.

  “Where my father lives.”

  I shivered. It seemed like a crazy question, but I had to ask it. “Did you like it there? At home?”

  He tilted his head slightly farther to the side and held his hands in front of his face as if they were alien. “I didn’t … I don’t remember … these…” His expression turned frustrated. “Everything gets in the way.” He let his hands drop limply at his sides.

  “But, you can do lots of great things with those,” I said, wondering why I was trying to convince him that having a body and being a quasi-human were great things. “I mean, you can pick up stuff and you can hug people and you can play.”

  He seemed to perk up. “I like to play.”

  I smiled encouragingly. “You do?”

  The boy grinned. “Adrian plays card games with me.” And then he frowned. “Nobody else does.”

  “Do you like Adrian?”

  He nodded. “Adrian doesn’t tell Mariana when I’m in his truck or when I do things people aren’t supposed to do, like hang upside down. And he tells me stories when I go to sleep. I like to sleep. I like dreams.” He paused and tilted his head again in consideration. “I like to be awake, too.” He smiled. “I like blood.”

  We’d been doing great up until that last part.

  “Why is your heart fast again?” Lucian said in that half-dead monotone of his.

  “Because I’m happy to be talking with you,” I said, only sort of lying.

  “Your heart goes fast when you’re happy?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes. Sometimes it goes fast because of other things.” And before he could ask what other things, I asked a question of my own. “Why do you wear those goggles all the time?”

  He blinked at me through the semitinted lenses before answering. “Light hurts.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I never used them before,” he said, tapping the glass slowly with his finger, indicating his eyes.

  Oh.

  “Are you Adrian’s girlfriend?”

  I was a little shocked by the abrupt turn of topic and could only come up with, “I, um—yes?”

  He frowned. “What’s a girlfriend?”

  My cheeks blushed. I did not want to be the person to explain this to him. “Uh—well, a girlfriend’s kinda like a wife, but not. I mean, Mariana is married to Dominic, and I’m dating Adrian, which is sort of like being married to him, but … not.”

  It was a really bad answer, mostly because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Lucian simply nodded once. Then he asked, “Do you play with Adrian?”

  “Uh—”

  Just then, I heard the telltale whisper of magnets rolling across the ceiling and looked up to find Adrian clinging to a bookcase twenty feet above us.

  “Hey,” I said, grateful for his timing.

  He hopped down to float next to me. “Lucian,” he said to his brother, “why don’t you go ask Julian how his trip was? He can tell you stories about New York.”

  Lucian instantly scrambled over the back of the couch and disappeared. Adrian turned to me. “Sorry about him. He’s got the body of an eleven-year-old and the social skills of a toddler.” Before I could comment, he asked, “How’s the homework going?”

  I scrunched my face. “It’s going. Did you and Julian catch up?”

  A dark look passed over his face. “You could say that.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes and peered down at the table. I’d never seen him look tired before. “Family dynamics are a little interesting when your siblings are old enough to be your parents or great-great-grandparents. We didn’t get along back then, but I at least knew Julian from when I lived in Paris. I didn’t even meet Mariana until I came here when I was twelve.”

  “That’s hard,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry,” he said with a short, sharp chuckle. “Julian’s an ass, my sister tried to scare the shit out of you, my father’s after you, not to mention psycho-Lucian—I should be the one apologizing.”

  Without thinking, I touched his arm and said, “Don’t.” He looked up at me. “Besides Trish, you’re the closest thing I have to a real friend. You have nothing to apologize for.”

  He smiled in a painful sort of way, and sat up. “Need some help with the rest of this?”

  I nodded, smiling.

  * * *

  I muttered angrily.

  “What was that?”

  “I said I hate money.”

 
Adrian looked at me strangely. “You hate … money?”

  “Okay, I don’t hate money; I hate not having a job, and therefore not having money.”

  “That makes more sense.”

  I was sitting at my desk, staring dully at my laptop as I searched Craigslist for jobs. Adrian was lying stomach-down on my bed, checking my math homework. The door to my room was, of course, open. I thought Joe was going to have a heart attack when he saw us head upstairs. I’d very intentionally left my door as wide as it would go.

  “What kind of work are you looking for?” He sat up and peered over my shoulder at the screen.

  “I’m not really sure. I mean, my mom taught me how to sew and knit and crochet and embroider and all that, and I’m pretty good, but what jobs can you get with those skills? It’s a dead art. And even if it wasn’t, what am I going to find in Stony Creek?”

  Adrian set his chin on my shoulder and said “hmm” in a deep, rumbling sort of way as I continued my search. The nearest job that I was anywhere near qualified for was over forty miles away.

  “What kind of stuff do you sew?” he asked finally.

  I shrugged. “All sorts of things. I made that blanket on the bed, with my mom.”

  “This?” he said, leaning back and holding up the green quilt. “Wasn’t this your Halloween costume?”

  “Yep. I also made the dress I wore that night.”

  He looked up. “Really?”

  “I’ve got a few other things I made here, but most of it’s packed away in my grandma’s basement. I’ve got whole books full of designs I’ve never made because I can’t afford the materials. The kind of fabric I like to work with is stupidly expensive.”

  “Can I see them?”

  I shrugged and reached over to my nightstand, pulling out my journals and setting them on the bed next to Adrian. While he opened the top one, I turned back to the computer and glumly continued searching.

  “Cait?” I heard him say a few moments later.

  “Hmm?”

  “Can I borrow these?”

  I was preoccupied by the job postings. “Sure. I’m not doing anything with them.”

  “Why not?”

  I jerked a thumb at the corner of the room. “Pedal’s broken on the sewing machine and I can’t afford to get it fixed.”