Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (24 page)

“
O
h, there you are. How did the readings go tonight, honey?”

I shrugged and slipped behind my mother into the booth, where she handed out spells and bottles of good luck, protective amulets of all varieties, and her big seller, love charms. “Same old, same old. Big and small mounds of Mars, lots of lines, a couple of scars, and one missing finger.”

She gave me a warning look out of the corner of one eye as I picked up Davide, her fat black-and-white cat, and sat down in the chair he'd been occupying. Davide gave me a long look, his whiskers twitching irritably as I stroked his back. Mom handed over a bottle of good luck, warning the buyer to use it sparingly.

“Were you wearing your gloves?” she asked, once the buyer had trotted off. “Or did you really read palms?”

I lifted my chin. Mom had made a deal with Peter that I would read palms every night for four hours, in exchange for Tesla's food and other incidentals. Peter said once my apprenticeship to Imogen was up—I had another two months left on that—he'd also start paying me a salary in addition to the horsey things. “I did the readings the only way I know how.”

She shook her head as she gathered up her things. “Franny, Franny, Franny . . . the God and Goddess gave you a gift. You should be proud of it, proud to use it to help people.”

“I don't see how being able to feel people's emotions and thoughts is going to help anyone—”

“You were given that gift for a reason, honey,” she said, just like I knew she would. We'd had this argument regularly since I was twelve, when my “gift” (
I
thought of it as a curse) manifested itself. “If you would just open yourself up to the path . . . oh, bullfrogs, I'm late. I'm off to get into my invocation things. We're short on happiness and insight, honey, so don't allow anyone to buy more than one of each.”

I nodded, eyeing the colorful array of glass vials that Mom had set out to entice buyers. Unlike other people who hocked similar items, the stuff my mother made and sold actually worked. I know. I had a case of the giggles for three weeks straight last year after she accidently spilled a batch of happiness on me.

“Oh, there's a man looking for you,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried off toward our trailer. She waved toward the end of the row of booths, where the main tent that held the magic shows was located. “I think he's somewhere down there.”

“A man?” I asked, wondering if Ben had returned. But no, Mom knew Ben. Even if she didn't approve of him—and I sensed another “you're too young to have a boyfriend” lecture coming over her—she wouldn't refer to him as just a
man
. I wondered who could be looking for me, and why, but didn't have too long to ponder the question. Mom's booth was very popular no matter what country we were in because she used only positive magic.

“I'm sorry, but for curses, you'll have to visit the demonologist,” I politely told a serious-looking young man. I held up an onyx-colored bottle decorated with a question mark charm. “The nastiest thing we have here is forgetfulness.”

The man frowned even more. “Where is this demonologist?”

I pointed toward the right. Although it was almost eleven o'clock at night, it was still light out, kind of a twilight. Because we were so far north, the sun never completely set during the summer. The Swedes have something they call white nights—basically, it's light enough to read by, but not as bright as the midnight sun areas farther north in the Arctic Circle. “Black-and-white-striped awning on the left-hand side. His name is Armand. You can't miss him—he has a goatee and horns.”

The man blinked at me.

“The horns are fake,” I reassured him. “Just for effect.” I waited before the guy left before adding, “At least I
think
they're fake.”

You never really knew with the people around here.

I sold a few spells, had to argue with a lady who wanted to buy all three of the remaining bottles of inner beauty, and caught someone trying to do the five-finger discount on a packet of dried rose petals (one of the ingredients in the do-it-yourself love spell kit). I've always told Mom that she should keep something bad on hand for people who tried to rip her off, but she insists that we return cruelty with kindness, so instead of calling over Kurt (who, in addition to being a magician, also doubled as a security guy), I grabbed the girl's hand and sprinkled a little kindness on it, gritting my teeth the whole time.

“Have you seen Tib?” Mikaela asked when the shoplifting girl ran off rubbing her hand. She stopped in front of the booth, scanning the crowds.

“Not lately, but if you look for a group of drooling women, you're bound to find him,” I answered, sucking in my lips in case I was slobbering just thinking about Tibolt.

Mikaela, her husband, Ramon, and Tibolt made up Circus of the Darned, a group that specialized in odd sideshow-type acts. C of D was traveling with us for a couple weeks, something they evidently did each year.

Mikaela made an annoyed sound, her short black hair sticking up like a porcupine's spines. She muttered something in Swedish, then said, “He is supposed to be checking the chain saws!”

“The chain saws? Oh, for your juggling bit. Yeah, well, you know Tibolt. Where he goes, so go a whole bunch of girls.”

Mikaela, who just happened to be Tibolt's cousin, rolled her kohl-lined eyes. “Hrmph. When is your mother's circle?”

“In an hour. She always holds them at midnight. Something to do with the lineup of stars and stuff. Are you going to watch?”

“No, she has invited me to join.”

My eyebrows raised up. Mom was usually very picky about inviting non-witches to participate in her circles. She normally tapped into the big Wiccan network that spread across Europe, using the local witches to form circles.

“Are you Wiccan?” I asked.

Her spiky hair trembled as she shook her head. “I am a high priestess of Ashtar.”

“Wow. A high priestess who juggles running chain saws, spews fire, and swallows swords. Cool!”

She grinned at me for a minute. “It runs in my family. Tibolt is a mage, you know, but he will be at the
blot
tonight after our show.”

“He's a mage?”

She nodded. “A practitioner of magic. He is fifth level.”

I couldn't help wondering if he was working some sort of mojo that had all the girls fawning on him. I mean, yeah, he was gorgeous and all, but I had a seriously hot guy who believed that I was the key to his salvation, and yet even I couldn't resist staring at Tibolt.

“Uh . . . how many levels of mageness are there?”

“Seven. Oh, there he is—I will see you at the circle, yes?”

I sighed. “Probably. Mom likes me to watch. She thinks it's good for my inner spirit or something like that.”

She mumbled something about that being true, then raced off toward the tall blond man who was being swarmed by a gaggle of females.

Ten minutes later I was relieved of booth duty, and went off to watch the end of Peter and Soren's magic act.

Normally the magic acts were over by ten P.M. so whatever Goth band was playing with us that week could set up and go live by eleven, but during the two weeks that Circus of the Darned teamed up with the Faire, there were no bands, and the magic acts alternated with C of D shows, which included a killer double sword-swallowing finale that made me hold my breath.

I slipped into the back of the main tent, standing at the rear to avoid getting in anyone's way. When you're almost six feet tall and built like a linebacker, you tend to block people's views. On the raised stage, Peter and Soren were turning a member of the audience into Bruno. That was an illusion, of course, not the real magic that Peter sometimes did, the kind that left my arms covered in goose bumps. I rubbed my arms just thinking about it, hoping that tonight he would feel inspired enough to perform one of his mind-boggling magic tricks.

“. . . and with the magic words—what were they?” Peter waited for the crowd to shout back the magic words, which were never the same.

“Isosceles triangle!” the audience shouted in response.

I smiled. Peter told me two nights before that he was running out of magic words, and did I have any suggestions for words that had a nice alliteration. Evidently he was as desperate as he said, because I didn't think my suggestion sounded particularly magical or alliterative, but the crowd seemed to get a kick out of it.

“I say the magic words—
isosceles triangle—
and voilà! Jan has been turned into a wild stallion.”

Soren whipped off the thin nylon covering the metal frame that hid Bruno from the audience's view. The horse charged down the stage, stopping at the edge to rear on his back legs and paw the air as if he were about to leap straight into the audience. People shrieked and threw themselves down, some laughing, some yelling exclamations at the thought of a dangerous horse loose.

It was all an act, of course. Bruno was very well trained, so well trained that I'd never seen him put a hoof wrong. I watched him paw the air, the sight of it triggering a memory of something Tesla had done a few weeks before, when a demon had attacked us.

Why do you look so puzzled?
a soft voice asked next to me.

“What Bruno's doing . . . I think Tesla did the same thing. That move where he sits on his haunches and paws the air—”

It suddenly struck me that the voice I had heard had spoken directly into my mind. And there was only one person I knew who could do that.

I spun around to see Ben lounging in the doorway of the tent, wearing a cool Indiana Jones-type hat, and the same black leather motorcycle jacket I'd seen him in before. His arms were crossed over his chest, a kind of half-smile on his face as he watched me. My stomach did a funny little flip-flop as I smiled back at him. I forgot for a minute that I was mad at him for taking off without telling me, instead wanting to just look at him.

Huh?
I was a bit confused by why he was talking about Tesla for a moment.
Oh, yeah, you did. So?

I walked over to where Ben leaned against the doorframe. “Hi. What's an air above the ground?”

“A series of movements that Lipizzans are known for.”

“OK. But Bruno isn't a Lipizzan.”

“No, he isn't, but he's related to them. Andalusians are occasionally trained in the airs above the ground as well.”

“Huh,” I said, then socked him on the shoulder. Hard. “Where the horned bullfrogs have you been? And why haven't you called? Or sent me an e-mail or a letter or something? Why did you disappear like that, without a word to anyone? I thought you wanted to do the boyfriend thing with me?”

“What boyfriend thing would that be?” he asked, looking at my mouth. My stomach did three backflips in a row. “Are you talking about kissing? Did you want to practice on me some more?”

If my stomach had been in the Olympics, it would have won a medal for gymnastics. I stared at Ben's mouth, feeling incredibly squidgy, but at the same time, I couldn't look away. Ben was the world's best kisser—he'd had more than three hundred years to practice, so that was no surprise—but what
was
a surprise was how much I enjoyed his lessons.

Don't get me wrong, I've never had anything against guys. They're, you know, guys. Nice sometimes, sometimes not. But I've never really wanted to kiss one of them the way I wanted to kiss Ben.

“Fran? Do you want to kiss me?”

“Yeah,” I answered, then remembered an episode of Ricki Lake that said guys like it when you play hard to get. Something about the thrill of the chase. “I mean, no. Maybe. Er . . . what was the question?”

He laughed and pulled me outside the tent, into the shadow of the ticket booth, his hands warm around my waist.
I prefer you enthusiastic and willing rather than hard to get. Say Mississippi.

“I have a better place-name,” I whispered against his lips. “It's the name of a town in Wales.”

“Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch,” I murmured, my lips against his in a way that made all my insides melt into a great big puddle.

He laughed into my head.

I let him kiss me then,
really
kiss me, because . . . well, he was good at it. And even though I was pissed at him, I wasn't so pissed I didn't want to kiss him, so I just kept whispering the Llanfairpwyll word (it's easier to pronounce than it looks).

“Miss Ghetti?” A soft voice followed by an embarrassed cough managed to work its way through my brain. “My apologies for disturbing you, but are you Miss Francesca Ghetti? The owner of the horse currently grazing in the meadow next to the fortress?”

Ben spun around and blocked my view of the man who spoke. “Who are you?”

I shoved his back, but he didn't move, so I edged my way around him, blushing like mad that someone had caught Ben and me lip wrestling. “Hi. I'm Fran.”

“What do you want her for?” Ben asked.

I pinched his wrist, smiling at the man in front of me. He didn't look like a stalker or anything—he kind of looked like my father, tall, with faded red hair and dark brown eyes. “Can I help you with something? Were you looking for a palm reading?”