The Vampire Next Door (12 page)

Except that I wasn’t a vampire.

I wanted to hit something, but I settled for throwing the confetti angrily. The shreds of paper scattered through the basement in a completely unsatisfying way, fluttering about desperately like tiny, dying butterflies before drifting down to the carpet, where they remained, still as stone.

CHAPTER 9

The day trickled by, and my mood worsened when I realized that my cell phone could no longer make calls. I’d been calling my dad and Cole pretty regularly, hoping against hope that eventually I’d get through, but it looked like the outage had finally reached me, too.

Lame.

I resolved to rest my knee as much as possible for the next week or so, and only venture out of the basement to shower and let Holloway into the backyard. Thanks to Reeve, I had plenty of food.

Even though I was grateful to Reeve, I resolved to keep to myself from now on. I didn’t want to make an enemy of the vampire, but I had no plans to see him again, either.

I’ve heard that before,
my inner voice said dryly.

That night, after darkness had fallen, I went to the storage room in the basement and stared at my pantry, trying to decide what to eat for dinner. My eyes strayed upward and lingered on an old duffel bag on the top shelf.

I frowned as a thought occurred to me.

The last time we’d used that duffel bag was when we’d gone to Flagstaff for a family camping trip. The same camping trip I’d purchased Arizona maps for- before Cole had bought his iPhone and rendered my paper maps useless with his high-tech GPS and map applications.

I stood on the tiptoes of my right foot and stretched for the duffel bag, but couldn’t quite reach. I was too short by at least three inches.

I took a step back and looked critically at the shelf I was using for my makeshift pantry. It was metal, the kind of shelf you usually see in people’s garages. I reached out with one hand and shook the shelf. It barely rattled, and I noticed belatedly that it had been attached to the wall with screws through the support posts. I expected this shelf could probably hold my weight. But could I climb it with one bum leg?

I leaned my right crutch against the shelf in preparation for climbing, but stopped.

Wait a minute.

I picked up the crutch again and slid my hand lower, below the grip. I reached it up and easily snagged one strap of the duffel bag.

“Gotcha,” I said as the bag fell to the floor. I leaned down to unzip it. Lying inside were the maps I’d purchased. I was completely unsurprised. A normal person would have put the maps on one of the bookshelves upstairs, but not Cole. Whenever he didn’t know where to put something, he just hid it on top of a shelf in either the laundry room or the basement. I should have thought of looking in the basement earlier, when I’d first gotten the idea.

I hobbled back to the couch and sat down with the maps, my dinner forgotten.

Kellie was outside, yelling her head off. I put on my headphones and hit shuffle on my iPod. I was already in a sour mood after the events of this morning, and I didn’t feel like struggling to keep a handle on my temper tonight.

I rifled through the maps. There were two for northern Arizona, which I didn’t need. I came to the one for southern Arizona, which conveniently included west Phoenix. Perfect.

It didn’t take me long to find the route on I-8. It was a longer distance than the straight shot I normally took- almost forty miles longer- but this particular path took me through the more rural cities of Gila Bend and Buckeye, both of which were preferable to central Phoenix. Eddie had once told me that vampires liked to hang out in heavily populated urban areas, which provided a better food source.

Ick. Food source. I wrinkled my nose.

“Now all I need is a car,” I muttered. There was nothing I could do about that right now, however- not unless my knee suddenly healed itself tonight while I was sleeping, which was doubtful.

I was too restless to eat anything, but I read another Barbara Cartland novel-
A Duel of Hearts-
before I finally drifted off to sleep, my headphones still blaring to drown out the sounds of Kellie’s screams outside.

As it turned out, my knee did seem much improved when I woke up the next morning. I babied it for the next few days, unsure of how fast I should push myself. By the end of the week, I was hobbling around with just one crutch- and I’d also accrued a number of letters from Reeve.

I’m not sure why I read them. The first letter was accompanied by a slew of Arizona maps that I no longer needed, and I resolved to leave everything there, untouched. Maybe Reeve would get the hint and leave me alone. But I only lasted an hour or so before my curiosity got the better of me, and I went outside to read the letter.

It turned out to be more like a note than a letter.

I’m sorry.

Reeve

“Sorry?” I said out loud later, as I reorganized my romance novels alphabetically. “Sorry for what? For yelling at me? For saving my life? For being a vampire? For killing those people?” It was far too complicated a situation to be remedied by an apology.

If he’d intended for his note to incite forgiveness, it didn’t work. I was more irritated than anything. I put the note and the maps back outside, scribbling at the bottom of the note,
I’m going to have to scrap the plan to leave town. Didn’t work out. Thanks anyway.
It was a polite way of telling him to buzz off.

Reeve, however, didn’t take the hint.

The following morning, there was another letter, wedged between the maps, the first note, and the flowerpot.

Do you want to talk about it?

Reeve

“No,” I said the moment I read it. “No, I do not want to talk about it, and I definitely don’t want to talk to you, you stupid vampire.”

I crumpled the note and flung it on the ground, feeling rebellious for littering in my own backyard. I flounced back inside- or tried to flounce, as much as was possible on my crutch.

I tried to watch an episode of
Doctor Who,
but my mind wandered.

I’d made up my mind that I wouldn’t be mean to Reeve. He’d done so much for me already, for no reason that I could see other than from the sheer goodness of his undead heart. As tempting as it was to take out my anger over the vampire pandemic on this stranger who’d come to my aid, I knew it wouldn’t do either of us any good.

Not to mention, I really did not want to make an enemy of quite possibly the biggest, strongest vampire I’d ever seen.

He deserved a response- more of a response than me crumpling up his note and throwing it on the ground like a piece of trash. That was something that Kellie would do, and I wasn’t like that.

It wasn’t long before I was using my broken pencil to scrawl agitatedly on a piece of notebook paper.

I wish you hadn’t done what you did. Before that, I thought we could be friends. But I was standing there, begging you not to kill those people, and you wouldn’t listen to me.

What would happen if you got hungry when I was the only human around? How am I supposed to trust you after this?

I guess I feel pretty stupid. You probably never expected to see me again, and if I hadn’t gone to your house, those people wouldn’t have shown up. Maybe I shouldn’t have thought that we could be friends, maybe I shouldn’t have presumed so much.

I’m just not sure what to think right now. And I can’t believe you thought I’d be okay with what you did to those people.

K.

I read the letter over and over again, debating about whether I should actually leave it outside for him or not. As I’d reminded myself several times, beyond my gratitude to him for the help he’d given, there was no relationship to speak of between us. Neither of us had any obligation to the other, and it would have been easy for me to ignore him and let us go back to our separate lives. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to push Reeve out of my mind. Whether I had any right to, I felt betrayed, and I wanted him to know about it.

I put the letter under the flowerpot.

His response had replaced it the next morning.

I let the woman go.

My heart flip-flopped wildly inside me at those five words, and I read them again to make sure I’d understood correctly. He’d released the woman, and I knew the potential consequences of his decision. She knew where his lair was and could tell other humans, thus endangering him- and maybe me, too. But he’d let her go anyway, and I knew he’d done it because I’d been so upset.

He’d killed the redheaded man, but I found it much easier to justify that death, just as I’d shot my attacker in the parking lot at the dollar store, Reeve had acted in my defense when the redheaded man had pointed a gun at me. In fact, Reeve had taken a bullet that could have seriously injured or even killed me.

This note complicated matters. His decision to release the woman didn’t change the fact that he was a vampire. Although a few days ago, I had been willing to pretend that his vampirism didn’t matter, things had changed now. I’d not only witnessed firsthand what he could do to humans. I’d also realized that there was no future for a friendship between us. Vampires wouldn’t accept me and humans wouldn’t accept him.

Was acceptance really necessary, though? If I left for Phoenix, we’d never see each other again. Assuming he was still willing to help me find a car, our relationship would be a means to an end…but if Reeve ever snapped, my end would be a lot sooner than I wanted.

I spent the entire day trying to figure out how to respond to his note. I decided to spend some time sorting through my belongings, trying to figure out what I wanted to take with me and what I would move into the basement for safekeeping. Even if someone did break into the house while I was gone, the basement provided some extra security. If I were ever able to come back, I wanted my stuff to still be here.

I ended up passing more than two days that way, distracting myself from the Reeve situation by focusing on getting my household organized. Fortunately, I didn’t have much in the way of sentimental keepsakes. The girls and I had been addicted to the TV show
Hoarders,
watching in morbid fascination and gagging at the squalid conditions of some of the homes featured. I credited my
Hoarders
obsession with the lack of clutter in my house, but even a minimalist has a few things that are special to her.

In my case, those few things were pictures. I had over a dozen albums filled with photos of my family- candid moments from the past that made my heart ache when I looked at them. It took me a long time to decide, but eventually I took out the photos I knew I couldn’t bear to lose, fitting them all into a large manila envelope that I planned to take with me to Phoenix. The rest of the albums were transferred to the basement. I hoped I’d find a car large enough to take them with me, but they weren’t essential.

I had almost managed to put Reeve from my mind when he left another note. I saw it when I let Holloway outside one morning. For some reason, the dog’s wanderlust had all but disappeared, and I had a nagging feeling that Holloway’s sudden enthusiasm for home life had a lot to do with Eddie’s absence.

It had been a week since I’d hurt my knee, and although I was still a little sore, I’d ditched the crutches and was walking around on my own now. I’d taken to wrapping my knee with two ace bandages every morning, trying to give it some support so that I wouldn’t accidentally injure it again.

I wished more than anything that I had some medical knowledge so I would know if I was doing the right thing or not. But there didn’t seem to be an overabundance of doctors just hanging around, waiting for random scooter accident victims to show up and ask for advice.

I let Holloway outside and saw the piece of paper secured underneath the flowerpot. Moving closer, I stared down at it. The text was in plain view, and the message was simple, as was customary with all of Reeve’s letters.

Are you okay?

“Are you serious?” I exclaimed, glaring down at the hapless piece of paper. I wanted to stomp all over it, and probably would have if I’d had two good legs to stomp with.