Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (19 page)

“You'll get yourself killed . . . or worse.”

“There's nothing worse than death, except maybe having to go through the tenth grade again.”

He didn't even bat an eyelash at my joke.
Men!

“You have no idea of the dangers in this world, Fran. You don't even have the most basic, rudimentary protection skills, skills your mother should have taught you.”

I shoved his shoulder. He didn't budge, not an inch. It was like he was made of rock or something. “No one picks on my mom but me; got that? She hasn't done anything wrong.”

His eyes all but spat black at me. “She didn't even teach you how to guard your mind against others! That is the most basic skill, and yet you didn't know it. You know no protection wards, no ways to keep yourself from harm when facing someone more powerful than you—”

“Mom doesn't know how to do wards! She asked Imogen about them, but
your
sister wouldn't tell her how to do it. How can she teach me something that she doesn't know?” Now he was really ticking me off. I admit I was curious about Mom's not telling me how to guard my mind, but she probably didn't know there was such a thing.

“Then
I'll
show you!” he yelled at me.

“Fine!” I bellowed back at him.

We both stood there glaring at each other, breathing a little hard because of our fight.

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them. The weren't quite as black as they were before. He touched my cheek, just a little butterfly touch, but I felt it all the way to my toes. “I can't lose you, Fran. If anything happened to you—”

I smacked his hand away. “What's the ward, tough guy?”

He showed me. When you draw a ward, you follow a basic pattern, but each person makes a little change to it, something unique that only he or she knows. Ben watched me draw the basic ward, then told me to add something else, another little bit that was all my own. I tried a few curves, a few extra swoops in the middle. He made me do the customized ward over and over again until I had it memorized.

My inner Fran pointed out that the customized bit was his name, written in cursive. I told her to get a life.

“Try it again,” he snapped, still obviously peeved with me. That was fine with me, because I was still annoyed with his Mr. Protecto attitude. “You're still not doing it right.”

“I am so! I'm drawing it the exact same way!”

“You have to believe in the power of the ward, in your ability to draw it. Without that you're just waving your finger around in the air.”

I felt like screaming at him. Goddess above, was there anyone so annoying as a pushy vamp? “I'm trying, okay! So get off my back!”

“Do it again!” he snarled.

“Fine, I will. And then you know what? I am
so
leaving you! I never want to see you again—got that?
Never!
” I threw everything I had at the ward, all my emotions, all my thoughts, all my will, every last bit of desire I felt to go home and crawl back into my nice, safe little world. As I traced the last symbol, the last curve, the ward flared to life in the air between us, an intricate gold pattern that slowly dissolved particle by particle into nothing.

The ward was drawn. I was protected.

“Happy?” I snapped.

“Not even remotely,” he growled.

“Noogies of toughness,” I said through my teeth, and walked away.

“Where are you going?” he yelled after me.

“To do my job!” I yelled back, and stormed off toward the bright lights of the Faire.

Y
eah, okay, so you saw through my big act. The truth was, I was so angry at Ben and his “you will stop investigating this because you are a girl, and I am a vamp” attitude, I ran off without asking for his help, which I had finally decided I would do, because honestly, what is the good in having a tame vampire around unless you put him to use once in a while?

So there I was, marching down the length of the Faire looking really mean and all, when inside I was wondering just how the heck I was going to tackle Absinthe without a little help from my friends (namely Ben). I was so focused on yelling at myself—and thinking of at least a dozen really cool responses to Ben's snarky comments—that I ran right into Imogen before I saw her.

“Fran, I'm sorry; I didn't see you.” Evidently I wasn't the only one walking around all introspective. Imogen looked mad enough to kill, her blue eyes all sparkly with anger. She held a crumpled-up bit of paper in her hand. “Have you seen Benedikt?”

“Yeah, just a few minutes ago, over by the main tent. What's the matter? You look really cheesed about something.”

“I
am
cheesed; I am so very cheesed you could call me Gouda.” She shoved the paper into my hands. “Read that. Have you ever read anything so ridiculous in your life? The nerve of him!”

I smoothed out the paper and read the short typewritten note.
My beloved Imogen,
it started. I glanced down to see who had signed it (Elvis), then looked up. “Um . . . do you really want me to read your love letter?”

“It's not a love letter,” she said, grinding her teeth over the words.

Ouch
. I read the letter aloud. “‘My beloved Imogen, long have I waited for you to realize that I am the one man life has fated for you, but time and time again you insist on flaunting your infidelities before me. This will end, tonight, once and for all. You will meet me at the bus stop to Kapuvár at midnight.' The bus stop? Oh, the one down the road from here. That's close to where I found Tesla. ‘From there we will go into town and be married at once. You are mine, Imogen, and I no longer intend to share your charms. Your devoted Elvis.' Boy, what a maroon. What is it with these guys and their bossy ways?”

“He is insane. That is what he is, insane! I am
not
his, and he is
not
the man fated for me, and I will have Benedikt tell him so in a way that will guarantee that Elvis will not bother me again.”

I looked down at the paper in my bare hand. The letter was typewritten, so it didn't hold as much emotion as one that was handwritten might, but even so I could feel Elvis's determination to have Imogen. I gave it back to her. “Yeah, well, I suppose Ben could put the fear of the Goddess into Elvis.”

“It is not the Goddess that Elvis shall be fearing when Benedikt is finished with him,” Imogen said dramatically, shaking back her mane of blond hair. She looked different somehow, more intense, more . . . just more. I guess it was because I'd never truly seen her angry before that I was impressed by her fury. “I shall send him to this little rendezvous. My brother is very protective of those he loves. Elvis will soon learn just how unwise it is to cross a Moravian.”

I pursed my lips as she thanked me, and strode off down the long aisle, her hair streaming behind her, righteous indignation pouring from her in waves. I almost felt sorry for Elvis . . . almost.

“Like you have any sympathy to spare for anyone else when you've got the mother of all mind readers to grill?” I asked myself, then reluctantly turned toward the small kiosk where I knew Absinthe would be setting up for ticket sales.

I found her just leaving the kiosk, giving Tess, the ticket girl, some last-minute instructions. I watched her for a minute, trying to steel my nerves to touch her. I put my lace gloves on over my bare hands so she wouldn't notice anything different about me, reminding myself that I was protected by my ward and could keep Absinthe out of my head (I hoped) if she tried to get in. I had faith in the ward—I knew Ben wouldn't lead me astray with it—but am not too ashamed to admit that my faith in my mental No Trespassing sign was a bit shaky when it came to being physically in contact with Absinthe.

“You can do this, Fran,” I whispered to myself, moving out of the shadow so Absinthe would see me when she turned around. “It's just one person, one last person. She can't hurt you.”

Absinthe turned and started toward me. Inner Fran screamed and urged me to run away. Outer Fran forced a smile and tried to look like she wasn't going to barf. “Hi, Absinthe. I have a quick question for you, if you've got a mo'.”

“A mo'?” She stopped, frowning as she scanned beyond me. She normally made the rounds just before the Faire opened to make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be.

“Moment.”

“Ah. Are you not assisting Imogen vith the reading of the palms? Vy is it you are not at her tent?”

“There's still fifteen minutes.” I chewed on my lip for a second, sizing Absinthe up. Really, she was a tiny thing, tinier than Imogen, but you forgot about that because her personality was so big, if you know what I mean. Her spiky pink hair helped, too. Besides, there's nothing like the knowledge that someone can bring you to your knees with just a flex of their psychic powers to make you respect them. I tried once more to pin down the fleeting feeling that I had seen something today that was important, something that I should have noticed, something someone said or did, but there were too many vague “somethings” to be of any help. I took a deep breath. “It's about the safe. You said that the morning after it was stolen the door was locked? You're sure it wasn't propped open?”

“No, it vas closed. Vat sort of a fool are you thinking I am?”

“Sorry. I didn't mean to imply anything; I just thought I'd better check.”

“You have found nothing,
ja?
” She
tsk
ed, and started to walk past me. “That is because it vas that Josef who is the thief. I vill find him, you vill see, and ven I do—”

Desperate to touch her before she walked off, I said loudly, “Oh, you have a big bug on you,” just as I brushed my hand across her shoulder.

She stopped and spun around, her eyes wide and almost glowing. “You.” She gasped. I snatched my hand back, mentally slamming shut the stainless-steel doors of my sealed room, just barely closing my mind to her before she got in. I could feel her nudging around the edges, pushing at the walls, trying to find a way in, but I kept the mental image of my sealed room solid, and thank the Goddess, both it and the ward worked.

She swayed for a moment as if she were suddenly weak; then her chin snapped up and she leveled a pale blue gaze at me that made me take a couple of steps back. “I am not finished with you,” she hissed, turning on her heel to stomp off.

“Holy moly,” I breathed, rubbing my arms. They were all goose bumpy, like they got around real magic, only these weren't goose bumps of fun. They were scared-silly goose bumps.

Imogen ran past, stopped to have a word with Absinthe, then beckoned me toward her tent. I followed more slowly, trying to fit together everything I knew. Absinthe wasn't the thief. She had more power than I had imagined, but she wasn't a thief. She honestly thought Josef, the lead guitarist, had taken it. Which meant I had seven suspects, all of whom
weren't
the thief. In other words, I was back to square one.

We were busy for the next three hours, just as I knew we would be. Last nights are always packed, since the Faire comes around only every year to year and a half. I more or less handled all the palm reading (with both sets of gloves on, in case you were wondering) while Imogen read runes. I didn't even have time to ask Imogen whether she found Ben, and what he thought of Elvis's letter, let alone try to figure out what I was going to do about my failed investigation.

Just before midnight it started to rain bullfrogs. And no, I'm not speaking metaphorically.

“What the . . . That's a frog,” Imogen said as a big lumpy green-and-yellow frog jumped onto her table, blinked at her a couple of times, then jumped off.

“Not just a frog, a bullfrog,” I said, then stood up and hurried toward the front of the tent when I heard shrieking. People were yelling and holding things over their heads as they raced for cover. “Bullfrogs aren't good. I'm going to go check on my mom. I'll be back in a minute.”

I raced out of the tent, trying to avoid bumping into people or stepping on the frogs that were falling out of the sky. Luckily the frogs were pretty quick on their feet, because I didn't see any of them smooshed as people ran through them. I saw a lot of them bounce when they hit the ground, though, and I have to say, they looked as surprised to see me as I was to see them.

“Mom? It's raining bullfrogs!” I yelled as pushed past the people who were hiding under the opening of the tent. Because of the circle, the rest of the tent had been emptied of its usual table, chairs, etc. My mother and the rest of the witches had closed the circle and were all standing with their eyes closed, swaying slightly as someone chanted the invocation to the Goddess . . . standard circle stuff. I knew better than to cross into the circle (I did that once—it took three weeks before my eyebrows grew back), so I skirted around the circle until I could tug on the back of Mom's dress.