I shoved my hands into the puffer jacket I was wearing, scrunching my neck tight into the scarf around my neck. My thick sock went up to my mid-thigh on my uninjured foot, but that still left a decent portion of thigh exposed to the elements. Skirts didn’t exactly keep in the heat.
Despite my lack of money, I still found my way into a bookstore. Something drew me in, like I was at the end of a tether and the store was its origin. I couldn’t buy anything. After buying a new wardrobe thanks to the CAM boot, my savings were pretty much depleted. Unless I found a job here soon, I wouldn’t have much money for the next few months. My eighteenth was the third of January. Legally, I could leave Maybelle’s house by then, but we’d already agreed that I’d stick it out until graduation. Even without any cash to spend, I figured I could still have a look, especially if it meant getting out of the cold for a bit.
The warmth of the bookstore was a welcome greeting. In the heat, I could feel how ice cold my bare thighs and hands had gotten in the bitter fall weather. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets as I walked my way through the stacks, pretending I was perusing for something to buy.
Like always, I drifted from one shelf until the next until I found myself gravitating away from Young Adult fiction or Crime – or whatever I was supposed to enjoy at seventeen – to the Classics. There was something about the books of old that pulled me towards them. Perhaps it was because those writers had written all they ever could and there would be no surprises of next instalments. Or the dichotomy that the “Classics” were finite, and yet there was so much from the past that it may was well be infinite to me as I was never going to be able to read every work.
I knew the most obvious answer was the one I didn’t want to admit. In the eras gone by, Death held more of a presence than the modern world we lived in now. The authors – and therefore their characters – understood more about the workings of my old friend than anyone here today. And I was drawn to that as much as Death was drawn to me.
I had picked up a copy of Jane Eyre, with a beautiful leather and gold gilded cover, when I heard that familiar out-of-place accent.
‘This is the extent of your collection on witches? Half of this is fiction,’ Emerson said.
I froze, holding the book mid-air that I had been about to return to the shelf.
‘I, urm, know, but you’re talking about witches. I mean, it is fiction, isn’t it? Do you mean you want witch trial stuff? Like Salem. Or, urm, Wicca?’
Panic – nothing like the deep chasm of despair that I had experienced before, when I’d first seen him in the science room – gripped me. I knew if my eyes connected with his and he spotted me here, my world would explode.
As it was, just hearing his voice began to fray my very existence. Everything about the bookstore became louder. The colours, the smell of the pages, the sounds of books scraping across wooden shelves as they were pulled from the bookcases. It was experiencing the world with the volume turned up. My heart pounded exponentially loud in my chest – so loud I thought that it was practically shouting at Emerson to notice me here.
I took a deep breath, returned the book and slowly started to back away out of the store before I was spotted.
I hadn’t exactly come up with any more of a plan since punching Emerson in the face. His reaction had given me one answer, whilst causing me to ask a million more questions. I’d had in my mind that I’d be able to put off the inevitable until tomorrow. And damn was I sticking to it.
The further I backed away; the more Emerson came into view. He was wearing tan chinos this time, along with a white polo shirt. Both were very fitted. Despite the weather, he wasn’t wearing a coat. Vampiric freaking senses.
He was the epitome of boy next door, until you looked at that wicked smile and then his entire look screamed: danger! Bad news! Back away now! Or maybe that was only my brain that had that certain warning alarm. The woman at the counter certainly didn’t seem put off by his attentions, even though he didn’t exactly seem pleased with her service. She was stuttering over herself trying to please him.
I’d almost made it out the door when I bumped into a large pyramid display of The Hunger Games, a new book released a week ago.
The black books fell like dominos, scattering on the floor. I’d even managed to knock the poster and little podium stand off the table. If I’d been attempting to escape incognito – I had failed miserably.
‘Holy f-’ the woman at the till swore, rushing over to her ruined display.
‘Are you okay?’ Emerson asked me.
He appeared by my side in a second, like he had used his vamp-speed to reach me. He hesitated from touching me, but his hand hovered for a moment, like he had been thinking of guiding me away from the mess before he’d thought better of it.
‘Fine,’ I said. I rubbed my thigh which had hit the table and knocked it over.
‘Any papercuts?’ he joked.
‘No.’
It wasn’t like I’d be able to tell from my already damaged hands. My injuries were healing in record time. Already the skin around the stitches had closed and faded into red lines. In another couple of weeks, they’d simply be silver scars.
‘Let me help,’ Emerson said, offering his assistance to the woman. He began stacking the books precisely as they had been before I’d backed into it. The woman simply gushed at how polite he was, how amazing bla, bla, bla.
‘I’m just going to-’ I continued to back out of the store and quickly exited.
Once I was a block away, I let out a ginormous sigh. ‘Holy hell, Liv. Get a bloody grip,’ I scolded myself.
I was about to laugh at my stupidity when my phone started ringing in my pocket. I usually kept it on vibrate, but I’d switched it to “normal” since I couldn’t feel the vibrate too well in the thick coat I currently had on.
The first few beats of Rhianna’s Disturbia played before I hit “answer call”. It was a number I didn’t recognise. Very few people had my cell phone number.
‘Liv?’ Gi’s voice said from the other end.
‘Gi…?’ The sound of her voice on a call was almost as much of a shock to me as seeing Emerson had been. When had she gotten my number?
‘Hi! Sorry, Maybelle gave me your digits when she realised I hadn’t got them. She said you left in a hurry after the service finished. I hope it wasn’t anything we did. I was totally rude ignoring you back there. I’m real sorry about that.’
‘-Yeah, I totally didn’t mean to drag her away!’ Jenny interrupted, her voice faint at the distance she was from the speaker.
‘It’s fine,’ I said. I thought I’d managed to escape them – but apparently Gi was persistent. There was some rummaging on the other side of the phone, like she was holding the speaker away from her mouth as she spoke to the other guys from the AA Team.
Gi was really nice, truly she was. A little bit persistent and peppy for my usual tastes. And the rest of them were fine, even Martha, though she was a little bit… much, but I had a rule about friends. And nice, normal people didn’t mix with Liv Morgan. Not when they wanted to keep their nice normal lives. I kept to myself because it was safer that way for everyone else.
After almost a minute of silence I said, ‘did you just ring to apologise or…?’ I trailed off, waiting for her to answer me.
‘Oh! Right, totally. Sorry. I wanted to ask you whether you might like to hang out at school tomorrow. I know we share a lot of classes and I was thinking maybe you’d like to sit with us at lunch?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be part of the AA Team,’ Martha mumbled through the speaker. I didn’t think I was supposed to hear that.
Gi wasn’t deterred by her friend’s obvious disinterest in me joining their little circle. ‘I know it must be hard starting a new school and not knowing who to hang with, but you can totally sit with us, it’d be no problem. What do you think?’
‘I’m not really into the whole… zoo experience of the cafeteria,’ I told her, honestly. It was the same excuse I’d
told Lawrence, but it wasn’t like I was lying. Cafeteria BS was just not my jam.
‘Oh. I get it. We don’t go there, anyway. We mostly hang out in the auditorium. Or we could hang in the library?’
‘We’re not changing where we sit for the new kid,’ Martha said. ‘You know we have to stay in the theatre for Emer-’
Her voice was cut out as Gi continued. ‘You’re not really allowed to bring food in there, but I know Miss McKinney and she’d totally let it slide if we don’t make a mess and keep to the back tables that no one really uses.’
‘Urgh, yeah, maybe,’ I said. I had been planning on stalking Charlotte (in a non-creepy way) to figure out whether she was human or not. Having that answer would at least tick off one possibility for why the Sons were in high school.
‘I don’t think Emerson would like it,’ Martha said. Her voice wasn’t as muffled as before; I imagined she’d taken Gi to the side to confer. ‘Seriously, Gi. You know how he said he liked to be alone.’
‘Liv is hardly a thousand people, is she? And she sounds like a loner, too. They’d get on.’
Martha huffed.
‘Gi?’ I said, reminding her that I was on the call, too. ‘Would Emerson mind me joining you guys?’
I’d been focusing a lot of my attention on Charlotte – what with Grayson dating her and all – that I had put Emerson’s interest in the AA Team to the back of my mind. Martha’s insinuation that he’d mind someone joining his one-on-one time with them raised my heckles.
‘Oh, no. He’s not a snob or anything. He just likes to keep to himself. Especially since everyone wants a piece of the Sons,’ Gi said. ‘Our hide out in the auditorium is the only place he doesn’t get mobbed. Grayson and Charlotte don’t really seem to mind being in the spotlight. But Emerson prefers just hanging with us.’
‘Well us is stretching it,’ Martha said. ‘You hog all of Emerson’s time, don’t you? It’s like he’s obsessed with you. You can take the queen out of the hive, but she still finds worker bees to buzz around her….’
I ignored the jealously in Martha’s tone as her analogy trailed off into the background. Warning bells were going off in my head that a vampire had decided to close in on a group of self-proclaimed outcasts. Ali had warned me that for those vampires that toed the line with going rogue often went for humans on the fringes of society – people no one would miss if they disappeared or would simply assume that they’d left their normal life of their own freewill.
Whether Charlotte was mortal was still on the table – and that would answer one question about what the Sons were doing here – but I knew for a fact that Gi and the AA Team were a hundred percent human. Emerson’s request to be alone with them was not something that sat right with me.
‘The theatre sounds good,’ I told her.
Whatever the vamp-Sons were getting up to, the AA Team was not going to get caught up in the middle of it as long as I was here. It wasn’t like I needed the whole lunch to figure out if Charlotte was a vampire after all.
‘Great! I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ Gi said. We ignored the groans from Martha. ‘I’m really sorry if I overstepped getting your number from your foster mom.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. But I was definitely going to have a little talk with Maybelle about privacy. I couldn’t have her just handing out my cell to every random on the street who asked for it.
Gi said bye again, Jenny shouting that she’d see me tomorrow at lunch. I had to wonder whether I was making a mistake getting involved with these kids. I hadn’t tried making friends since Christian and that hadn’t turned out spectacular. Rather the exact opposite.
‘So, you’re sitting with us at lunch, love?’
I whipped around, my hand flying to my heart like it was about the leap from my chest – which I honestly believed it might.
‘How long have you been there?’
The street I was walking down was entirely empty. A fine mist had begun to drizzle down from the sky as I had been making my way back to Maybelle’s house. Since it was mostly a residential block, no one was particularly keen on wandering outside for a simple stroll. No one besides Emerson, who had clearly followed me from the shop, and I’d been too distracted by Gi’s call to realise he’d been stalking me. Now that I knew he was here; I could feel the chord between us emphasising his presence around me. I felt it on my skin more than the mist.
Emerson shrugged, smirk in place. ‘Not long.’ He had his hands shoved in his pockets.
I flipped up my hood, wondering if my CAM boot would do so well in the rain. I knew that Maybelle had bought a waterproof cover for it that apparently was state of the art or something, but hadn’t thought to put it on when we left for church that morning. Emerson was entirely unperturbed by the weather.
‘Long enough to eavesdrop on a private conversation?’
‘I heard my name,’ he said, as though that justified his curiosity. He studied my expression. Whatever hostility he found there made him apparently wary enough to ask, ‘you’re not going to hit me again, are you?’
‘Debating it.’
He just continued to smirk at me. Wary – but still cocky enough to think no matter how angry I got or how much I hated his presence, I was still a feeble creature compared to him.
I could feel his glamour working on me, drawing me in. It told me to let go of that distrust, that hatred. More than anything, my body focused on the ways I found him attractive. The mist had curled his hair slightly at the edges as it dampened the silk-like texture. His skin took on a glow, no goose bumps appearing on his porcelain flesh despite the cold. His eyes were sharp, their colour a deeper brown in this natural light than the fluorescent of the science room. I had hoped that maybe his Adonis-good looks had simply been the shock of first seeing him, but this was the third time now. No, he really was that unnaturally beautiful.
The more I stared, the more the glamour affected me – not just finding him physically appealing, but tainting my own perceptions and thoughts. I could feel it working on me, making me want to change myself so I was more appealing to him so that he’d want me-
‘Stop doing that.’
‘Doing what?’
I gestured to his face, ‘everything.’
Emerson chuckled. ‘Way to be specific, Liv.’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Don’t call you your name?’
‘Anything, don’t call me anything.’
‘Alright, love.’
I groaned. ‘Especially that.’
I started to walk away again, picking up the pace now – more to get out of the rain than escape the vampire. It wasn’t like even on a good day I could outrun him. Minus a fully functioning ankle, I might as well have been the lame deer of the herd ready to be picked off by the lion.
‘You didn’t seem all that keen on hanging out with Gi until you learnt I might not be cool with it. Care to comment on that?’ Emerson asked. He’d caught up with me in no time at all.
‘No.’
‘You’re not interested in me, then? Not even a little?’
What? Did this vamp think that we were back in the playground and we flirted by annoying each other rather than outright saying that we liked it, or god forbid, flirting in a positive and healthy way? For a near-immortal creature, he needed to grow up.
‘Interested how?’
‘Is there more than one way to be interested in someone?’
‘There are plenty of ways. My interest in you has absolutely nothing to do with you as an individual and all about your species.’
I’d only ever spoken about vampires to Ali and her gang. It was weird being open about it now. But no weirder than actually speaking to the creature that should only exist in folklore and myth.
‘Taking the “men are from Mars” a little bit too far with the “species” comment, don’t you think?’
I ground my teeth. ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’
‘What do you think I kn
ow, love?’
What an interesting route he decided to go down. I mean, it wasn’t a surprising route. For a vampire that followed the Code, the best way to keep the first rule of not letting humans uncover your secret was to deny it point blank, even when the human knew the truth and confronted you about it. More chances than not, the human would think they had gone a little insane or be considering insane by other people. But that wasn’t going to work with me.
There was no way I was mistaken. Though he hadn’t exactly latched onto my neck or held a sign that said: “where’s your nearest blood-bank, I’m hungry” – I knew a vampire when I saw one. But if he needed proof that I knew what he was, that I could do.
I stopped abruptly and I grabbed Emerson’s hand. I clutched it tight enough so the silver rings on my hands dug into his skin. Whereas my contact with his skin had been brief when I punched him, this was prolonged enough that the silver rings had the desired effect.
I ignored the way my skin sang as I touched him. His skin wasn’t cold, like books and myths expected him to be. He had a heartbeat. His hands were smooth and unblemished, warm and soft like skin fresh from a shower and perfectly moisturised. Not clammy – even with the mist from the rain, his hands were quite dry in comparison to the way human skin always had some form of natural oils, sweat or moisture.
He pulled his hand free, sharply. Where my rings had touched his flesh, the skin had blistered like it had come into contact with acid.
‘That was vulgar.’
‘You asked for clarification on what I knew.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘That’s not exactly an answer.’
‘Are you asking me to say it aloud, Emerson?’
‘Only so you realise how insane you would sound if you did.’
I stepped forward so I was toe-to-toe with him. ‘How do you know what insane thoughts I’m thinking, if you’re not thinking the exact same thing?’
‘What am I thinking, love?’
I wasn’t going to go round and round in circles with these benign questions. He was clearly going to deny it until I said the words. ‘You’re a vampire.’
Twice Bitten Page 7