His lips were soft and cool and serious, like his scent. I barely had time to close my eyes before he broke away and disappeared into the crowd.
I stood there for a moment, feeling strange thrills in my fingertips and toes. Well, that was sudden. A real kiss—not the slobbery grope-fest I’d always gotten from Zach. This one was elegant and meaningful, as if the kiss was the main attraction, if that makes sense. With Zach, kissing always seemed like a burdensome truck stop en route to more grabby things. Daniel’s kiss was more like my first boyfriend’s, although Daniel clearly had a much better idea of what he was doing.
So does that mean we’re dating? Doesn’t the first kiss usually come after the first date? Or does sneaking out of school at night after poking around a murder scene somehow count as a date and nobody told me?
On the other hand, I had dodged a bullet there. If Rowan or Milo had seen him kiss me, it would have been much harder to get close to them. I needed to be careful not to get my guys crossed, at least while they were all still suspects.
Luckily Milo had to eat lunch with the swim team, as he’d informed me yesterday—although he’d made sure to add that if I wanted him to quit the swim team so we could share sandwiches, he’d do it in a heartbeat. I laughed and told him a sacrifice of that magnitude wasn’t necessary.
Now the trick was finding Rowan. I had a hunch he probably ate by himself, and probably not in the cafeteria, although I checked there first, just in case. The usual swirl of noise and mayhem—that many hearts beating so fast in one place is a little much for a vampire to handle. Vivi and I usually ate in the theater, where the drama kids congregate. Vivi is one of the regular stars of the school plays, so she’s allowed to bring in whomever she wants, even poor, desperately undramatic me.
So I knew Rowan wouldn’t be there, because I’d never seen him there before. Nor was he in the cafeteria or the courtyard (where Milo was sitting at the same table with his swimming friends). I wandered up to the library and peeked into the gym—no luck. Finally, I checked the stairwells. Which turned out to be the right instinct.
Rowan was hunched on the bottom step of the school’s back stairwell, the only one that leads down to the basement. I wouldn’t have gone all the way down to check, but when I leaned over and peered down the center well, I spotted his backpack leaning against the railing, way at the bottom.
He heard my boots clopping down the stairs toward him and jumped to his feet with a startled expression.
“Sorry, it’s just me,” I said, holding up my hands. “Kira—remember?”
“Oh,” he said, still looking fairly spooked. He sat down again, crumpling his brown bag between his hands.
“I thought I saw you disappear down here,” I lied. “Can I join you? What a cool place to get away from everyone.” That was a lie, too. The little space at the bottom of the stairwell was dark and pretty dreary. The solid gray door in front of us was labeled BASEMENT. On the plus side (if you’re a vampire), absolutely no sun filtered down from the windows on the next level up. The only light was a flickering fluorescent above the basement door, which was sort of unfortunate in terms of me trying to be all cute and attractive. That’s a lot harder to do when the light is turning you a washed-out, ghostly mint-green, but I didn’t have much choice.
“Yeah, okay,” Rowan said, waving his long pale hand at the step beside him.
“How’s it going?” I said, sitting down and pulling out my lunch. I peeked sideways at his to see if it was at all suspicious, but it looked like a normal ham sandwich on white bread.
“Fine,” he said. It’s conversations like these that made me realize why Rowan didn’t have girls flocking after him, despite his cool eyes and the tall-brooding-handsome thing.
“Have you ever been in there?” I asked, nodding at the basement door.
He squinted at it for a moment, then rummaged in his bag and pulled out a digital camera. “Yeah,” he said, thumbing it on. “I took some shots. Dark and dusty.” He scrolled quickly through the images and then handed the camera to me.
The photo on the screen was a close-up of large pipes and the side of a furnace. “Oooh,” I said, trying to sound admiring. “How…artistic.” I hit the arrow to move to the next shot. More pipes. “Can I look at the rest?” Maybe there was a clue in here.
“Sure,” he said, taking another bite of his sandwich. As I scrolled through the images, I could tell he was looking surreptitiously at my shoulders. Or possibly my neck. Hmmmm.
Pipes. Pipes. Big pipes. Small pipes. Extremely dusty pipes. A door.
“Are there any other doors to the basement?” I asked.
“Just from the outside,” Rowan said. “They always forget to lock it.”
Hmmmmm. “Good tip,” I said with a smile.
The basement photos ended and I came to one of the horizon at dawn, with the moon still glimmering in the sky. Dark tree branches crisscrossed the sky.
“That’s pretty cool,” I said.
He nodded. “I don’t sleep well. Sometimes I sneak out while my parents are asleep and go for walks really early in the morning.”
How early? Midnight early? Vampire early?
I moved to the next photo. The silhouette of the school against the pale orange sky. I hit the arrow key again and gasped.
The image on the screen in front of me…was Tex’s dead body.
Chapter 12
What does one say to that?
Um, excuse me, why do you have a picture of a corpse on your camera?
But it was even spookier because I could tell from the angle of the shot that the body wasn’t surrounded by police tape and curious teenagers.
Rowan had taken this photo earlier that morning…when he was alone with the body.
A horrified chill crawled across my skin. I was even more scared than I had been when Daniel frightened me at the murder scene. My hands were shaking so badly, I could barely see the image in front of me anymore.
I nearly got up and ran away. Only forcibly reminding myself about my vampire strength made me stay where I was. There wasn’t much he could do to me, unless he was hiding a stake in that backpack.
But I also wanted to react like a normal girl; I didn’t want to tip him off that I was anything out of the ordinary. Except…he wasn’t exactly acting like a normal guy. Didn’t he think I’d get to this photo eventually? Or was that the idea?
I looked up and met Rowan’s eyes. He was watching me. He knew exactly what I’d seen.
He was waiting to see what I did.
“Wow,” I said faintly. I decided to opt for a tiny bit of honesty. “I’m a little bit freaked out right now.”
“It looks like art, doesn’t it?” he said. “The red is so bright against the gray steps, and the composition—you don’t even think about what you’re seeing at first, because it’s such a striking image.”
Um, yeah, it’s striking…it’s a DEAD BODY. That was certainly my first thought.
“When did you take this?” I asked. Was it…right after you MUUUUUUURDERED him, perhaps? I scrolled forward and found two more, similar photos, from closer angles. Then it was back to the basement pipes, and that was all the photos on the camera.
Rowan gave me a sideways look. “I saw it while I was out walking that morning,” he said. It, I noticed…not him. “I guess I was the first person to find it. Around five o’clock…no one else was up yet. It was really quiet and still and peaceful and then…this.”
“Didn’t you freak out?”
He stared into space for a minute. “Maybe a little.”
“What did you do? Are you the one who called the police?” But not your dad, I guess. Rowan hadn’t told me yet that his dad was a policeman; I only knew that from seeing them together on the morning after the murder.
“No way.” Rowan frowned. “I don’t trust the cops. Besides, they might have blamed me. Never get them involved if you can help it.”
I was processing the Oedipal ramifications of that statement when
suddenly he took my free hand and flipped it over in his. His hands were cold but gentle as he traced his fingers over the lines on my palm.
“I don’t trust many people,” he said.
Seems odd that you’d share your creepy death photos with a girl you hardly know, then, doesn’t it?
He shoved his auburn hair out of his face and looked at me with infinitely sad eyes.
“Such a short life line,” he murmured, running his index finger over it again.
I shivered. “No way. I’m going to live forever.” In a manner of speaking.
“I wonder if Tex felt the same way,” Rowan said.
“Maybe everyone does,” I said. I decided the direct approach was the way to go with this guy. If he thought we shared a connection…“You know,” I said, leaning toward him, “I wasn’t going to say this to anyone, but it’s a relief that someone else is as curious about this murder as I am. I mean, I feel like I’m being morbid if I bring it up with anyone else, but with you, I can be myself. It’s like—it’s like you understand. You know? I hope that doesn’t sound too weird.”
“No, no,” Rowan said, shaking his head. “I know exactly what you mean. Most people think you’re a total psychopath if you say anything about death. But I had a feeling you were different.”
“Totally,” I said. Probably helps that I am dead. Oh, and P.S.: I still think you might be a total psychopath.
“I mean, why should we be afraid to talk about death, right?” Rowan said. “I bet the guy who killed him wishes he could talk about it.”
“Um,” I said. “Yeah. Totally. I wonder how he feels about it.” Meaningful look.
His eyes shifted sideways again. “You want to see something else?”
Um. Do I? “Sure.”
He let go of my hand, put away the camera, and rummaged in his bag again. I had no idea what he was about to pull out. A weapon? A vial of Tex’s blood? Pictures of his other victims?
Instead he pulled out a cell phone.
Which I guess was a relief.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“No, it’s not mine,” he said, handing it to me. As I took it from him, he said, “It’s Tex’s.”
Oh, fabulous, I thought. Thank you so much for letting me get my fingerprints all over a dead guy’s phone. “Where did you get it?” I asked, holding it gingerly between my finger and thumb.
“I found it near the body,” he said. “It must have fallen out of his pocket when he fell.”
Actually, this could be useful evidence. I turned it on and went to the call list.
“I did the same thing,” Rowan said, watching me.
So if your number was in here, it’s probably gone by now. I checked incoming calls first. There was one at about eight o’clock on the night of the murder—probably just a few hours before his death. The number didn’t have a name attached to it.
“That’s a pay phone,” said Rowan. “Here at the school.”
“Pay phones still exist?” I said.
He smiled wryly, which for him was a lot of expression. I was surprised he didn’t hurt himself using that many facial muscles. “Well, there’s one, at least. Behind the gym.”
So someone had called Tex from the school. To arrange a meeting? To lure him to his death? Did that mean the murder was planned? If it wasn’t just a random killing, then there must have been a reason the vampire picked Tex.
There weren’t many other numbers in the phone; the rest of the incoming calls were from the days before Tex was killed. Photos of cheerleaders or football players were attached to some of them. I glanced at Rowan again. Had he deleted evidence? Was that possible? I’d never tried deleting calls on my cell phone. But Rowan seemed like a tech-savvy kind of guy, at least if you went by the stereotype of computer guys being shy and hanging out in basements. Okay, possibly I was jumping to conclusions just a little.
I was about to open the outgoing calls list when the end-of-lunch bell rang. Rowan snatched the phone out of my hand and stood up.
“Okay, bye,” he said, stuffing his things quickly into his backpack.
“Oh, uh…thanks for having lunch with me!” I said. “It’s great to, you know, finally meet a kindred spirit.”
He eyed my cheerful yellow shirt skeptically. “Yeah.”
“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” I asked. “I mean, if it’s not too last-minute, maybe we could get together and…talk some more?”
He shoved his hair out of his eyes and scuffed one boot along the floor. “I’ll be at home,” he said. “I’m not allowed out on weekends.”
“Wow, really?” I said. “That is so sad. Why?” Rowan was already starting to climb the stairs. I scrambled after him, trying to look like I casually hung out with the death-obsessed all the time.
“My dad’s a little…overprotective,” Rowan said.
“Oh, he’ll like me,” I said. “Parents usually do.” Well, they did before the green hair and the multiple piercings; I hadn’t met a lot of parents since then. So this would be an interesting experiment. “How about I come over to your place? Is that allowed?”
Rowan paused on the landing and stared at me for a second. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “He deserves that.”
Whatever that meant.
“Any particular time?” I asked brightly.
“Whatever,” he said with a shrug. “6675 Stone Key Circle. Come over whenever.”
That was enough invitation for me. I mean that literally. As a vampire, I needed a specific invite like that before I could saunter into his house. And that one was pretty open-ended. Score.
“Bye till later, then,” I said, brushing his shoulder with my fingertips as I sailed past him and out into the crowded hallway.
The look in his eyes was sort of haunting—sad and lonely and full of longing for…something, I wasn’t sure what. It stayed with me down the hall, dampening the sunny mood I’d been in when I woke up.
But then I walked through the doors into my new art class and saw Milo—and Milo spotted me.
Is it weird that seeing a guy I’d just met yesterday could make me feel all warm and fizzy inside? Or that his face lit up when he saw me as if he felt the same way? It was like having sunshine poured over my soul, which was exactly what I needed after the dark lunch in the basement with Rowan. I grinned at Milo and wiggled my fingers.
Mrs. Malone didn’t bat an eye when I handed her the note. “All right,” she said, glancing at it. “Miss November, sit anywhere you like. We’re sketching still lifes today. There are blank sketch pads over there.”
I grabbed a sketch pad and charcoal pencil. Milo was jerking his head at the stool beside him in a really unsubtle way. I tapped my finger against my lips and pretended to look around at the other tables like I was considering my options. He widened his eyes at me and then pointed his chin at the empty seat again with such vigor that I was afraid he’d break his neck.
“Oh, all right,” I said, sitting down next to him with a laugh. “But only because your table has the best still life.” The other two guys at the table were already absorbed in their drawings. People all over the room were murmuring to each other as they drew, while Mrs. Malone went around peering at their sketches. She didn’t seem to mind if people talked while they worked, which made this the perfect class to have with Milo.
“I know. Have you ever seen a prettier pile of oranges?” Milo said, propping his chin on his hand and gazing at me rapturously. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I needed some culture,” I said with a mischievous smile. “I figured it would be good for my soul to spend some more time around a really attractive…pile of oranges.” I should perhaps mention that he looked even cuter than he had yesterday because he was wearing a pair of absolutely adorable glasses. Their thin gold frames brought out the gold flecks in his eyes and made him look all smart and thoughtful and stuff. Yeah, I’ll admit it: I’m kind of a sucker for cute boys in glasses.
“If I were a suspicious guy,”
he said, reaching over to doodle on my sketch pad, “or, you know, a really egocentric one, I might think you were stalking me.”
Well…yes. “Of course, if you did think that highly of yourself, you wouldn’t be worth stalking, would you?” I batted my eyelashes at him.
“True,” he said. “But if you are stalking me, you know…feel free to keep doing that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Stalking would take so much effort. I’d have to figure out where you live—”
“31 Summer Street,” he said promptly.
“And which window to stare at—”
“Second floor, the one on the left if you’re facing the house,” he said. “And it’s always open. For you, anyway.”
That sounded like an invitation to me! I smiled at him. “Well, maybe if I can fit it in around my other criminal activities.”
“How about Sunday?” he said. “I’ve got some free time to be stalked on Sunday. Or I can ditch my swim meet if you’d rather stalk me on Saturday.”
“And deprive the world of shirtless-you time?” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Not to mention I already have a date for Saturday, la la la. “Sunday would be perfect.”
“I like your hair like that,” he said, grinning at my butterfly clips.
“I like your glasses,” I shot back.
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “I wear contacts on swim days, but these are more comfortable.” He wasn’t at all self-conscious about them. I liked that even more.
I didn’t end up with the world’s best sketch of a pile of oranges, but by the end of class, I was more convinced than ever that Milo couldn’t be the murderer. He was just too cute. And funny. And dreamy. And adorable. And did I mention funny? I like funny.
Not that I was falling for him or anything. That would be a bad idea. Because if he turned out to be the murderer, then I’d be in love with a murderer, which would suck.
And if he wasn’t the murderer, then I’d be in love with a human…and that would be even worse.
Chapter 13
Never Bite a Boy on the First Date Page 8