Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (5 page)

Which is probably why I hesitated for a few seconds rather than running off, watching him roll on the ground clutching his groin, clearly in pain but not saying a single, solitary word. He was absolutely silent. The only other guy I've ever kneed (my first and only date) was screaming obscenities at me after I kicked him, but not Benedikt. Guilt washed over me as I watched him, guilt and a horrible urge to laugh. Not at Benedikt, but at me, at my life. All I've ever wanted is to fit in, to be like everyone else, to not be the odd one, the one who is different from all the other kids, and what happens? I meet a vamp who tells me I'm the only one who can redeem his soul. Oh, yeah, like I bet
that
happens to every other girl who goes to Europe.

“I just want a normal life,” I yelled at Benedikt. “Is that so wrong? I am
not
Buffy the Vampire Slayer!”

A little grunt escaped him as he got to his knees. “Good. I'm not up to playing Angel if you're going to be attacking me very often.”

I stood at the front of the tent, part of me twitching to get away from him, the other part wanting to apologize. All he had done was be nice to me, and I repaid that kindness by kicking him where it counts.
Oh, good one, Fran.

“You watch
Buffy
?” my stupid mouth asked. It was like I was possessed or something. I should have been running or apologizing, not standing there talking TV with an honest-to-Goddess Moravian Dark One. “Which season was your fave?”

“Third.” He got to his feet, breathing heavily as he stood doubled over, his hands on his knees.

“Oh. I like the fourth. Spike rocks.” He didn't say anything, just slowly straightened up until he was standing more or less normally. “Um. Are you okay?”

He nodded, his hand twitching like he wanted to rub himself but couldn't because I was there. I felt guiltier than ever.

“I'm sorry.”

I stared at him, blinking like an idiot. “What?”

“I said I'm sorry.”

I blinked even more until I realized what I was doing. “You're apologizing to me? For what?”

“Frightening you. I shouldn't have dumped it all on you so soon.”

“Oh.” My inner Fran, the annoying one who always tries to make me do the right thing, nudged me hard. “Um. I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to hurt you. Well, I did because you were getting bossy with me, but now I'm sorry you did. I mean, I'm sorry I did. We both did.” Great, now I sounded like a lunatic. If he was in any doubt that I was the queen freak of all freaks before, he wouldn't be now. A lunatic freak.

“You're not a freak,” he said tiredly, like it was something he said a lot.

“Will you stop that! No one gets into my mind unless I invite them.”

“I'm sorry,” he said again, and rubbed his neck.

Before I knew what I was doing, I stepped forward and touched the red mark on his neck where I had hit him. He stood still, his hands at his sides as I gently felt around his Adam's apple. His skin was warm. “I thought vamps were supposed to be dead. How come you're warm?”

He placed my hand on his chest, over his heart. I could feel it thumping away in there just like anyone else's heart. “Do I feel dead?”

“No.” I let my fingers wander over to the silver Celtic cross that hung from his neck. “You can wear a cross.”

“I can.”

“You're not dead and you can wear a cross.” I gave him my best squinty eyes. “Are you sure you're a Dark One?”

Quite sure
. He laughed into my mind.

“Hey!”

He held up a hand and grinned. “Sorry. Won't happen again. Not unless you invite me first.”

“It'd better not.” I took a step back and nibbled my lip as I looked at him. “How come you're not mad at me for hitting you?”

“I frightened you. I don't blame you for what you did.”

“Why not?”

His eyes had lightened while we were talking, but they suddenly went black again. He didn't say anything.

“Anyone else would have been pissed at me, but you're not. Why? Because you think I'm you're salvation?”

He just stood there, one hand in his jeans pocket, the other hanging open and relaxed, his eyes glittering like those shiny black stones Mom sometimes uses—hematite, they're called.

“I'm sixteen, Ben.”

His eyebrows raised. “Ben?”

“Benedikt is kind of a mouthful.”

He smiled. “I know how old you are.”

“I don't even want a boyfriend, let alone to get married to you or whatever it is you Moravians do to get your soul back. I just want to be left alone. I just want to get through this summer so I can go live with my dad in the fall and go to school and not have to travel all over Europe with Mom tutoring me, like she's threatening to do. Besides, you're . . . you're . . .” I stopped. I'd rather die than tell him that he was so gorgeous he probably had to pry the girls off him with a two-by-four, whereas I was . . . me. Okay, people didn't actually barf when they saw me, but I was
not
gorgeous.

“I'm what?”

I shrugged. “A vamp.”

He tucked one side of my hair behind my ear. It was an oddly intimate gesture, and left me feeling hot, then cold, then hot again. “I don't want anything from you, Fran. The only reason I told you that you were my Beloved is so you understand that you can trust me. A Dark One can never harm his Beloved.”

“Oh, really? So if I had a stake and started pounding it on your chest, what would you do?”

He pursed his lips as he thought it over. He looked so funny, I couldn't keep from smiling. “Depends. Where would you be pounding?”

“Right over your heart.”

“Then I'd die.”

My smile faded. “Really? The stake thing works?”

“Yes, it works. So does beheading.”

“And you'd let me kill you? You'd just stand there and let me kill you?”

He nodded. “If it was in your heart to see me dead, yes, I'd stand there and let you kill me.”

Wow
. Talk about a head trip. I decided I wasn't ready to think about that and pushed it aside. “How about sunlight?”

He made a face. “It wouldn't kill me, not unless I was out in it for several hours, but I do my best to avoid it. Gives me a hell of a sunburn.”

“Huh.” I looked him over. He'd taken his leather jacket off earlier and was now wearing a sleeveless black tee. His arms were tan. So was his face. He had a tattoo of words in a fancy script twined around in a circle on his shoulder. “So, what, they have Moravian sunlamps to keep you from looking fish-belly white?”

He laughed. I liked it; it was a nice laugh. It made me want to laugh, too.

“Something like that.” He looked over my shoulder, then bent down to pick up the gloves I had dropped, handing them to me as he added, “Maybe we can talk about this another time.”

“Sure. I promise I won't hit you again.” I meant it, too. It might be stupid to believe what he said about not stopping me if I wanted to kill him (as if!), but I did believe him when he said he wouldn't hurt me.

He started toward me, toward the exit behind me. I chewed on my lip for a few seconds before I blurted out, “Would you take me for a ride on your bike?”

He was right next to me when he paused. His eyes were back to their normal dark oak color, the gold flecks clearly visible as he stared down at me; then they lifted to look beyond me. “If your mother says it's all right, yes.”

I turned to see what he was looking at. Mom stood in the entrance to the tent, dressed in her white-and-silver invocation gown, the layers of light gauze fluttering around behind her in the breeze. She had a crown of white flowers in her hair, ribbons trailing down her back. In one hand, on a piece of scarlet velvet, she held her silver scrying bowl; in the other was a handful of invocation candles. Davide sat next to her, his mouth open in a silent hiss at Ben.

I sighed and plopped myself down in the nearest chair. Why did I even try to act normal when everyone around me was so weird?

 

Mom grilled me about Ben for the rest of the night and most of the next morning. Who was he, what did he want, why had I mentioned hitting him, yadda yadda yadda. I answered her questions because it was the first normal mom-type thing she'd done since I was in the sixth grade, and reassured her that she didn't need to cast a spell on Ben (not that I was sure it would work—maybe Dark Ones are spell-resistant? I'd have to ask Imogen).

Then she started in on stuff that really made me uncomfortable.

It was around eleven in the morning. We had just gotten up (the GothFaire closes at two in the morning during the summer), and Mom was standing at the tiny little stove that she sometimes cooked on. When she absolutely had to. She may be a great witch, but she's a pretty bad cook. Usually I do it, but this morning I had been too busy being grilled about Ben.

“I don't like the thought of you seeing a boy that much older than you,” she said once she started to wind down.

“I'm not seeing him; we were just talking.” Yeah, okay, so he expected me to salvage his soul at some point, but hey, that didn't mean we were dating or anything, right? “Is there any more hot water?”

Mom shook the electric teakettle and handed it over to me. I made another cup of tea (Earl Grey—I may be a freak, but I'm a civilized freak) and squeezed a quarter of a lemon into it.

“How old is he?”

I looked at her over the top of my mug. She was standing in front of the stove alcove, poking at some fruit hanging from a wire basket. The trailer we shared had one bedroom (hers) and a second bed (where I slept) that was converted from the tiny table and couch I was sitting at now. Mom has a very good lie radar. I figured she was suspicious enough without my saying something that would get her undies in a bunch. “Um . . . he's younger than Imogen.”

“Is he? Then he must be about eighteen or nineteen.”
Give or take a couple of hundred years, yeah.
“That's still too old for you. I'll have a little chat with him. What would you say to French toast this morning?”

Now
my
radar went off. She was offering to make me breakfast? “Sounds good. You don't have to talk to Ben, Mom. I'm not dating him or anything.”

“Mmm. Do we have any eggs?”

“In the fridge.” I watched her for a few minutes as she hummed a little song to herself while she whipped up a couple of eggs, sniffed a small carton of milk and decided it wasn't too old, added a sprinkle of cinnamon, then started slicing thick slabs of bread from the loaf she'd picked up a half hour earlier. “Okay. What are you up to?”

She turned around to look at me, her eyebrows doing a pretty good job of looking surprised. “What do you mean?”

“You're cooking breakfast. You never cook breakfast for me.”

“I most certainly do! I cooked breakfast for you just last . . . last . . .”

“Uh-huh. You can't remember, can you? It's been that long.”

She waved an eggy spatula at me. “I remember like it was yesterday. It was when you broke your arm riding your bike to school. I made you eggs Benedict. You loved it.”

I smiled into my tea. “Mom, I was in the fifth grade then.”

She turned back to the stove with a self-righteous sniff. “I merely pointed out that I have, upon occasion, made you breakfast.”

“Usually only when you want something from me, so dish. What do you want me to do? If it involves dressing up as a naiad and frolicking around a stream like you made me do last summer, the answer is no. One round of poison ivy is enough to last me a lifetime.”

She flipped the French toast in the skillet, not saying anything until she put it on a plate and handed it to me. To my surprise, she sat down across the table rather than making a plate for herself. “Franny, I'm worried about the Faire. It's these thefts—if they continue, the Faire will go bankrupt, and we'll have to go home.”

Home! Oh, man, how I wanted to go home! Home to our little house with the tiny little flower garden, home to my room with the two leaks when it rained hard, home to everything familiar and normal, where I had my place and no one bothered me in it. Home sounded just fine to me.

Unfortunately, Mom didn't feel the same way. She'd signed a year's contract to tour with the Faire, dispensing her potions and spells while she got in touch with the European Wiccan community. She had looked forward to this year with an excitement I'd never seen in her. For three long months she yammered about how thrilling it was to be able to see Europe, and what an education I'd have going with her. She even had the school district convinced that her Ph.D. in education was good enough to tutor me for the school year while I was dragged all over Eastern and Western Europe.

Don't get me wrong; it's not like I love school or anything, but at least there I fit in. Relatively. As long as I didn't touch anyone. Most of the kids thought I was just shy, which was fine with me. At least no one thought I was a weirdo.

“I thought Absinthe said the last band ran off with the money. If they're gone, how can they steal more money?”

She fretted with her teacup, her spoon clinking against the side as she stirred it a gazillion more times. The sound of it set my teeth on edge. I buttered my French toast and spread raspberry jam on it. “Peter said this morning—this is in the strictest confidence, Fran; you can't breathe a word of this to anyone, not even Imogen—that the safe was rifled again sometime after Absinthe had put the evening's take in it. He said he was going to have to call in the police, but I don't see how that's going to do any good. Whoever is stealing the money is very clever. He or she wouldn't be so stupid as to leave their fingerprints on the safe. Especially not if—”