Emerson’s face didn’t change expression. He still had on that half-cocky smirk, like his jaw was tense and he was still holding his hand in pain.
‘I’m out in the sunlight,’ Emerson pointed out. ‘And I go to church.’
‘Myths,’ I said.
‘I don’t turn into a bat.’
‘Super effing myth,’ I said.
‘How did you get so informed about the lies and lives of vampires, Liv?’ Emerson asked me.
‘How did you turn?’ I asked him. For the first time his facial expression changed. It was like a shutter went down and his eyes went blank. ‘Too personal? Then don’t ask me how I know either. Quid pro quo, asshole.’
I thought that would be the end of the conversation – what with Emerson looking ever so slightly like he wanted to hit me and/or storm off. But he unclenched his jaw and shook out his hand, like he was shaking off both physical and mental pain.
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea you sitting with us at school,’ Emerson said.
‘No? Tough tits. I don’t think it’s a good idea you sitting with Gi at lunch.’
‘You want me to find somewhere else to sit?’
‘Sit – go to school, attend church… potayto-potahto.’
‘Has anyone ever told you you’ve got kind of an attitude problem?’ Emerson asked.
‘Kind of. Don’t mince your words now. Someone would accuse you of being soft.’
‘Are you purposefully trying to get a reaction out of me? What is it you want me to do: attack you?’
‘That’s what every girl loves to hear from a man. Tell me more, stud,’ I said, feigning a low-sex-phone voice.
Understanding flickered in Emerson’s eyes. His cold expression grew intrigued and a new smile I couldn’t read formed.
‘Holy hell, you actually are, aren’t you? That’s why you hit me.’
Emerson shook his head. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him he was right. He already knew.
‘It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to provoke me.’
He was bound to figure out my plan sooner or later – it wasn’t exactly intricate as strategies went – but it still bugged me that he knew that I had been testing the Code by provoking him. It meant that he would now be more aware and on guard to keep his activities a secret from me.
Not that I’d been exactly trying to provoke him to attack me now. The route of pissing him off had just come naturally. It wasn’t even personal to him. I acted like that to any conceited asshole who spoke to me the way he did.
I began to storm off. The rain had fully soaked through my skirt and down into my CAM boot. Goosebumps had risen on my bare thighs and I had to shove my hands into my pockets to stop their visible shaking. I’d never been too good with the cold growing up – and I’d never been out in this weather in skirts before. Some women could handle it and partied in mid-winter in nothing but short dresses and heels, but I wasn’t one of those girls. I had to have layers. Death would just love to take me any way he could get me, and a cold winter’s kiss would probably be perfect for him.
‘You should head back inside. This rain can’t be good for you. You were in a serious accident only a couple weeks ago, weren’t you?’
I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t going to pay attention to that fake note of concern in his voice. It was probably just part of the vamp-glamour trying a new avenue to win me over. I ignored my shivering as I picked up my pace. I would probably be back at Maybelle’s house in five minutes or so – no need to worry or call her to pick me up.
I turned around to see why he wasn’t continuing to pester me. He had stayed on his side of the sidewalk when I crossed over, no longer following me. That was at least a plus.
‘Where are you going?!’ he called over to me, seeing that I’d looked back.
‘Hell! I’ll tell the Devil you said hi!’
Emerson’s low chuckle followed me. I could almost imagine him rolling his eyes at me. ‘I’ll see you at school, Liv. Don’t sit with us,’ he warned.
His casual demand pissed me off. Like he had any right to dictate my actions.
‘You might wanna get that hand checked out sooner or later, kiddo,’ I mumbled to myself as I continued to walk away. ‘My rings are fine silver.’
I heard Emerson swearing as I rounded the corner of the block, him easily having heard my taunt. Much like he would still hear my cackling laughter as I walked the rest of the way home.
Monday started with homeroom, then science class. This time, Emerson arrived before me. There must have been some assigned seating because every girl was looking longingly at the empty spot beside him. If I’d stuck around long enough last week, I probably would have been told to move it when the teacher arrived.
When Emerson saw me approach, he pretended he hadn’t even noticed I was there. He kicked himself back on the chair, so it was resting on two legs, and looked up at the ceiling, purposefully plugging his headphones in and making a show out of it to prove that he was actively ignoring my existence. He probably was still bitter about the whole silver burn thing. I tried not to be too smug.
The teacher droned on at the front of the class. I spent my time fluctuating between reading ahead in the textbook and watching the front board. I would have usually looked out the window, but since Emerson had taken the window-seat I didn’t want it to look like I was looking at him. If he was pretending I wasn’t there, I could do the same.
Despite leaning back on his chair and looking like he was sleeping through the class with earphones in, the teacher hadn’t called him out on it. Vamp-glamour worked no matter the age of a human. Emerson was irresistible to all. For a forty-plus male science teacher, Emerson was simply a likeable and charming young kid he didn’t want to trouble by handing out a detention – like he would have done for any other student acting as obnoxious as Emerson was.
At the end of the class, Emerson put all four legs of the chair down and turned to me.
‘I thought you wouldn’t show,’ Emerson said.
The students began filing out for their next lesson. I attempted to get up and follow them, but Emerson stopped me by grabbing my books and bag, swinging himself in the way of the door.
Since I wasn’t likely to get my stuff back until I answered him, I said, ‘what gave you that impression?’
‘Just the days you’ve skipped class since seeing me.’
It wasn’t like I could admit to him that I had skipped school because I’d been waiting at home to see if he was a psychopathic supernatural creature and I’d been prepped for if he came to kill me. It made me sound like the crazy one. But better safe than dead.
‘You’re very self-centred to think that was all for you,’ I said.
‘Was it not?’ he asked. ‘Did you not run out of this classroom, hating the idea of being forced to sit next to me for an entire hour?’
I didn’t answer him.
‘Staring at me, you’ve got no problem at that. Your tongue was practically on the floor when you watched me on the baseball pitch, but actually engaging with me in conversation – that’s a whole different thing, isn’t it, love?’
‘Just because you’re nice to look at doesn’t mean there’s anything beneath the surface worth discovering. I know all I need to about you.’
I made a grab for my books and bag, but he easily dodged out of the way.
‘You’re just going to make assumptions based on what you think you know? Continue to provoke me to what end, exactly?’ Emerson’s voice turned low, his whisper barely audible, though I caught it. ‘Angry people are not always wise.’
‘Austen,’ I said. I’d read enough of her works to recognise her writing.
‘See. I’m not all surface beauty. I read.’
‘You’ve certainly had the time to.’
Emerson shook his head. I didn’t know if I was imagining things, but I swear it was almost like he was trying not to laugh.
‘How’s the hand?’ I asked him, sinc
e I knew that would wipe the smile from his face.
I could still see a faint red mark from where I gripped him. I wiggled my fingers suggestively at him, the silver glinting in the fluorescent ceiling lights. He visibly flinched, but attempted to hide it. The purer the silver, the longer it took for vampires to heal from it. If it had been Sterling silver or silver plated, he would have already healed by now. My rings were the highest purity silver money could buy – the best investment against vampires, Ali had told me.
‘For a girl with inside information, you’re awfully misguided. That’s not exactly a great match for ignorant and stubborn.’
‘Ignorant and stubborn?’ I seethed.
‘Do you have a problem with my assessment, love? How about anti-social and borderline psychotic?’
I almost growled at him.
‘You can’t argue with that, surely. Punching a stranger and routinely pissing them off is hardly the actions of a regular upstanding citizen.’
‘Olivia! Am I interrupting your private tête-à-tête, or do you perhaps have a class to get to? I know there a quite a few students who would like to get through that door.’
Emerson seemed to notice the group of kids who had been waiting behind him to get through. A lot of the girls were in awe, practically fanning themselves from being so close to such a god-like specimen. I wanted to throw up at their blushes and giggling. The guys weren’t any different, even a couple years younger, they still looked like they wanted to engage Emerson in conversation as much as the girls.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Emerson apologised.
The teacher nodded, like he hadn’t expected the trouble to be Emerson’s fault, anyway. I didn’t bother with the pleasantry. I grabbed my books and bag back from him and stormed off. Emerson didn’t seem surprised.
I headed to English where Gi had saved me a seat.
We were studying comedy and romance. I was way too sober for that shit this early in a morning. Give me tragedy, any day. I could manage through Brontë and Austen – there was something about the nineteenth century that even the romances with happy endings were undeniably tragic for the lives of those living through that time period. But we were doing Shakespearian comedies.
I resigned myself for an hour of cross-dressing, mistaken identity, a return to the pastoral and over indulged sub-plots that had nothing to do with the main drama and all about bawdy humour and over the top sex jokes to win the contemporary audience’s favour.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ Gi asked.
I realised I’d groaned aloud when one of the girls asked if we’d be watching Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. Obviously not since that was a romantic tragedy.
‘Brilliant,’ I said, flashing her a sarcastic smile.
‘Is it true you can’t make it to lunch with us today?’ Gi asked me, once the teacher had left us to fill in some worksheets and the conversation level of the class had risen.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Emerson text to say you weren’t going to make it.’
Emerson could go suck a dick.
‘Did he really? You must have misunderstood,’ I said. ‘He was probably saying he couldn’t make it to lunch.’
‘Hmm,’ Gi said, going back to her phone and re-reading the messages. ‘You and Emerson don’t have, like, a history, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like, you don’t know each other from a past school?’
‘No. We’ve never met before. Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t know… he just seemed off about you when I mentioned you’d be sitting with us for lunch.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just get a bad vibe about that guy. I wouldn’t trust him if I were you. But that’s just my opinion. He probably knows that and doesn’t want me to persuade you to my line of thinking.’
‘Funny,’ Gi said. ‘He said the exact same thing about you.’
Gym class had me sitting out again. I asked whether it was possible if I could sit on the bleachers. Coach thought it was because I was uneasy standing on my leg for that long. She wasn’t wrong, it was a bit of a pain with my CAM boot, but it was mainly because I didn’t want a repeat of last time. If Death figured he could catch me with a ball to the face, he’d be willing to go for it again – and I didn’t want to risk that this time I might not be able to catch the ball before it did some damage.
Coach agreed, then said she’d figured something out with Maybelle and was going to put it in place for next week so I would actually be able to participate and not miss out on my gym credit for the year.
I sat on the first row of the bleachers, behind the coach’s box, thankful for the metal divide between me and the field. I chose to sit on the left side, as the home dugout was on the right side between Homeplate and first base, and I didn’t feel like drawing the attention of the guys playing. Especially since I was so close I could see that Emerson was playing.
Now that I knew it was him, the ease at which he hit the ball and ran around the pitch made a lot more sense. Vampires having heightened reflexes and strength was part of the myth that was actually true. His skill would have a lot more to do with restraining his preternatural abilities than it would attempting to do his best. No wonder the whole town was practically wanking themselves off over the Sons joining their varsity teams. It was basically like having gods on the field.
As he went for another homerun, I couldn’t help but mutter under my breath how ridiculous it was him playing high school baseball.
‘Do you have something against my skills?’
‘Effing hell, stop doing that!’ I shouted at him, jumping out of my skin. Thank god I’d not been holding anything.
He’d jogged up to me from the field, only I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t know whether it had been because he’d used his preternatural speed, or just because I’d missed him looping around back after he’d hit his homerun, assuming he’d go back to the dugout.
Unlike the last time I’d seen him, he was in full baseball attire. White pants, burgundy shirt (our school colours) and a helmet in his hand. His socks were pulled up his shins and I thought he looked mighty ridiculous, even if he did manage to pull off the look. Baseball didn’t just bore me; I had a thing against the stupid aesthetic. Honestly, why was it considered a thing to have socks that prominent?
‘It’s not skills. It’s cheating,’ I said, pretending that I hadn’t just been staring at him for the past several seconds.
‘How on earth is it cheating?’ Emerson asked me through the backstop netting, leaning up against the divider.
‘Like boxing weight classes. You’re heavyweight playing against strawweight.’
‘I wouldn’t have guessed you for a boxing fan.’
‘I’m full of surprises.’
‘Yes, I can imagine, love.’
He didn’t say anything for a while, just stood there. I was sure someone was going to scold him for blatantly ignoring practice, but no one did. The presence of the glamour made me want to move closer to him, reach over the divide, so I was standing right next to him. I tried to ignore it and him. That glamour probably explained why he could get away with being an arrogant prick.
I turned my attention forcibly away from Emerson. In the distance, I could spot Gi and Jenny running track. They had their heads turned towards me, no doubt gossiping about spotting their friend who didn’t trust me, and didn’t want me sitting with them, taking time out of his lesson to approach me. Way to make our relationship not seem suspicious, asshole.
I almost threw up in my mouth. I didn’t want any sort of relationship with Emerson. Even if I was unnaturally attracted to this creature.
‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to your lesson?’ I prompted him.
‘I’m not batting for a while.’
‘Well, if you’re here do you want to answer why you told Gi I’m not sitting with you at lunch today?’
‘I thought we’d come to an agreement.’
‘I think maybe we w
ere agreeing on different things. As far as I can see you’re still attending school here.’
‘It’s a little farfetched to believe you’re actually going to run me out of town.’
‘Is it?’
Humourlessly, Emerson laughed. ‘I suppose not. Prejudice groups have been running out minorities for centuries.’
‘Minorities?’ I choked. ‘You’re trying to play the victim card here? Since when have vampires-’ I didn’t bother to continue. He didn’t deserve my rant and he was probably only doing it to wind me up and make me seem even more crazy talking about vampires when anyone could overhear me.
‘Like I said in science class, love. You’re greatly misinformed to what you think you know.’
‘Would you care to enlighten me?’
‘As soon as you stop acting like a bitch, sure.’
‘Hey, Emerson! You coming back or what?!’ Robbie’s voice called over the field.
He gave me one last quick smile and then jogged back to the dugout. The guys on the field began to swap over, and Robbie waved at me when he spotted what had distracted his friend.
‘Asshole,’ I said under my breath to Emerson. He was quite a distance away, but I knew he heard me.
We had art class before lunch. Emerson snuck up behind me, taking my books out of my hand, just as I was walking into the classroom, so it looked like we’d been walking together.
‘Oh, are you walking her to class? That’s so sweet!’ Jenny gushed. She was sat next to Gi who had taken up one of the easels at the front of the classroom.
‘I don’t need walking. I’m not a dog.’
Emerson cocked his eyebrow. Woof, woof, bitch.
I slid into the spare seat next to Gi. Ironically, if it wasn’t for Emerson, I would have left Gi alone. The attention he gave her was what pulled me all the more to her.
As I chose my seat some moronic guy started humming the lyrics to the new Katy Perry song. Gi’s face scrunched up, paying special attention to the plain canvas in front of her. I recalled the lyrics and realised it was probably a taunt of some kind.
‘Just ignore him,’ Jenny said. She gave Emerson a side glance that I read into it as something along the lines with, here we go again.
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