A Bloody London Sunset (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 2) (16 page)

“The back porch is through the dining room there,” Caleb offered while pointing towards the back of the house.

Once Gil departed and they heard the back door close, Paige looked at Caleb with a mix of amusement and curiosity. She patted the couch cushion next to her a number of times with her left hand. “Come sit with me, and tell me what’s wrong,” she offered lightly.

He considered the perky blonde vampire with a tentative expression. “Kat and I kind of had a disagreement of sorts, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I already gathered that from a recent phone call with her,” she replied. Her eyes narrowed, and she asked in a curious tone, “Caleb, did you forget I’m a vampire?”

“What? Of course not,” he replied in a confused tone.

“I’ve been listening to your heartbeat since arriving, particularly when I mentioned you weren’t your usual cheerful self. I also noted the change in the dilation of your pupils from all the way across the room. So, come on over here and sit down, and tell me why you seem upset. But don’t make me ask you twice, okay, tiger?”

He moved slowly to sit down next to her, slightly unnerved by her intense stare.

“Katrina mentioned you two had a pretty heated disagreement, but I failed to get a call from you about it, which I found sort of strange, kiddo,” she explained. “We usually talk about everything. In fact, you haven’t called me at all recently, despite my leaving you repeated voicemails. So, in the four or five minutes it’s going to take Gil to get back, you need to have told me a little bit about it. Now, spill.”

He smiled briefly at Paige’s popular catch phrase, but reverted to a more serious expression and ventured tentatively, “Well, it all started with a photograph of my mother that I found by accident in the garage when I was going through some things.”

“I don’t get it. Why would that cause an argument?” she asked in a confused tone.

He swallowed, wondering if Katrina would be upset with him for saying more. “It was a photo taken when I was only a child, back when my mother worked at Columbus Mortgage. She and a few others won a contest for receiving a college scholarship for their children, and there was a group photo taken with the lady who owned the company. She had personally sponsored the giveaway, you see.”

Paige frowned and shook her head while trying to discern the substance of the issue. She could tell he was clearly uncomfortable talking to her about it, but she didn’t know why. “Can I see the photo?” she asked.

Caleb sat where he was and, folding his arms in front of his chest, stared past her to the dining room nearby. She watched his eyes and turned to look in the direction he was staring. Darting into the dining room, she picked up the picture lying next to the exams he had been grading. She scanned the image, noting that the woman on the far left had eyes that reminded her of Caleb’s. The other faces were rather ordinary looking, until her eyes fell upon the face of someone she recognized. Her eyes widened with surprise.

“So, Katrina knew your mother?” she asked. “And she didn’t mention it to you, which instigated an argument?”

“Sort of,” he conceded, fearing to say more. “I guess that’s sort of silly, isn’t it?”

Yeah, unusually silly
.
But there’s got to be more to this than meets the eye
. Her eyes darted back to Caleb, who appeared very tense and even less pleased than a few moments ago. “What aren’t you telling me about this?” she asked with narrowed eyes as she walked slowly back into the living room with the photograph in hand.

“There’s things I don’t recall from my youth, Paige,” he hedged. “And I’m having some flashbacks, which started when I first looked at that photo. Although actually, I suppose I had a couple even before seeing that, but didn’t realize they were related.”

Paige’s mind raced to try and put the facts together in some meaningful fashion, but she was still having trouble. She stood before him and noticed him glance at his watch nervously.

“Kat should be back anytime now,” he ventured.

Is he relieved about that, or worried?
She sat down next to him and stared into his pale blue eyes with concern. “Are you okay, kiddo?”

“Not really,” he answered with a weary expression.

They heard the back door open, and Gil walked into the room muttering, “Well, it’s not as cold out there as I thought it would be, but it’s still way worse than winter in L.A.”

Paige suddenly wished she hadn’t brought Gil to Atlanta with her. But she wouldn’t have been comfortable leaving him alone in California until she had a better idea of his trustworthiness. When she turned her head again, Caleb had risen from the couch and was heading back towards the reading chair. More than anything, she wanted to know the full story of what was going on between him and Katrina, but Katrina’s absence coupled with Gil’s presence was complicating matters.

“Hey man, any chance I could snag another beer?” Gil queried as he plopped down on the couch.

Paige rolled her eyes and glared at him. “How about ’please?’”

“Huh?” he asked obliviously, and then smirked in recognition. “Yeah, please, dude?”

She bit her lower lip and managed to keep from growling as she looked at Caleb with a visibly strained expression. “He calls everyone dude, Caleb. It’s so cute that I almost hear it in my sleep sometimes.”

Caleb stifled a laugh while shaking his head and heading towards the kitchen. “No problem,” he replied easily, though he wondered how long it would take before Paige lost her composure. As he entered the kitchen, he thought he heard the garage door opening. A few seconds later, Katrina appeared in the kitchen seemingly out of nowhere wearing a frown as she glanced into the living room.

“Hi, Kat,” he greeted her amicably. “Oh, Paige and Gil just got here an hour or so ago.”

“Gil?” she asked curiously as she moved towards Caleb, suddenly noting his unusually pleasant demeanor. It was only hours earlier when he had still seemed somewhat distant from her, not that she didn’t appreciate his upbeat attitude change.

He detoured from the refrigerator to approach her and bent his head up towards her while puckering his lips. She arched an eyebrow and met his lips in a quick kiss.

“She didn’t mention him to you, either?” he asked. “Gil’s her date.”

“Oh,” she replied absently. She recalled Paige mentioning dating someone recently, but she failed to remember his name. At the time, she thought that Paige’s news seemed more incidental than substantive.
And I’ve had my hands full lately
.

Caleb reached out gently to take her hand in his, looking up into her eyes with a mix of distress and concern, “Two things. First, I’ve been thinking about us, and I hope you know how much I still love you, even though I haven’t been very pleased with things lately. You’ve done so much for me in the time I’ve known you, Kat. I realize that I should be more appreciative about that. I hope you’ll understand, and I suppose I wouldn’t blame you if you were upset with me.”

Her eyes rose with surprise, but she appreciated his sudden and sincere acknowledgement of his recent attitude towards her. It also helped to soften the feelings she had been contemplating on her return home that evening. A hopeful feeling flowed through her, but she was concerned by the other emotions reflected in his eyes. “And?” she prompted by squeezing his hand in hers lightly.

“Well, second,” he broached uneasily, “I’ve really tried to keep our recent disagreement to ourselves for the most part.”

She noticed Paige was suddenly standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a photograph in her right hand. “Howdy, Red,” she offered with a tight-lipped smile.

“Hi, Paige,” Katrina acknowledged, realizing the photo was the one that had started the troubles between she and Caleb. “Always good to see you, though I didn’t realize you were coming to town. How long are you here for?”

“Not sure yet,” she replied and turned her attention to Caleb. “Why don’t you forget that beer for now and help Gil bring the luggage up to one of the spare bedrooms?”

Caleb released Katrina’s hand as he glanced sidelong at Paige. His eyes darted back to Katrina, and she smiled wanly at him and nodded.

“Go ahead, my love,” she replied with resignation.

He gratefully slipped from the kitchen into the living room, not particularly wanting to be around when they had their discussion about the photograph. It was still a difficult enough topic for him to discuss just with Katrina.

Paige waited until she heard Caleb and Gil in the front entry area before she addressed Katrina. “What’s going on, Red?” she insisted emphatically. “First there’s the situation with Devon Archibald, and then the visiting vampires on campus. And since last Saturday, Caleb quit returning my calls, and all you’ve said is that you two were fighting. On top of that, I felt like he’s avoiding me. Come to think of it, you’ve been pretty downtrodden and unusually distant in our conversations, as well. So, I called Alton, and he didn’t seem to know anything about it, which is odd because you normally tell him everything.”

Katrina felt irritated that Paige came all the way to California just to confront her about things, although some of that might be because she was altogether avoiding the topic with both her and Alton. The issue had been her little secret for so many years, and she had hoped Caleb might be the only person in whom she would need to confide.

After another moment of no response from Katrina, Paige continued assertively, “I decided to come check on things firsthand and maybe surprise Caleb, but I’m the one being surprised because he greets me like I’m his last, best hope or something. Then our boy’s all tight-lipped and won’t say anything, and
that
bothers me, Red. Finally, I’ve got this photograph of you with his mother from way back when. So now it’s time to spill.”

“Let’s go for a walk,” Katrina urged as she led the way towards the door leading out into the back yard. She determined that her friend seemed genuinely concerned and perhaps deserved an explanation. There was also no denying that Paige had an important vested interest in Caleb, which merited the information more than most.

Paige followed her friend, laying the photograph on the dining room table as she passed by. Once outside, she fell into step beside her friend and waited patiently. The two vampires walked through the darkness of that cold, moonless evening until Katrina reached a stand of pine trees in the furthermost part of the property. She turned to Paige with a serious expression and related the history of her first meeting with Caleb following her aborted suicide attempt nearly twenty years prior.

Paige listened raptly, her surprise turning to shock as the story unfolded. Although she had only known Caleb in recent months, she had no difficulty envisioning him as a curious blue-eyed child who unknowingly helped a vampire under the guise of aiding a supposed angel from Heaven. She shared Katrina’s outrage at how Caleb had been abused by his father and sympathized with her decision to kill Ted Taylor. And she was touched by Katrina’s desire to help Caleb and his mother following Ted’s disappearance, as well as Katrina’s generosity to provide for Caleb’s college expenses. But most of all, she was amazed that Katrina had been able to hypnotize Caleb as a child, never having thought it was possible to do so to a human, much less with such success.

She was still wide-eyed by the time Katrina finished speaking, merely shaking her head in disbelief. She had once marveled at the close, loving relationship that Caleb and Katrina had settled into, but the complete story made it seem incredibly fateful. And it made their eventual pairing once he had reached adulthood seem like something from a Hollywood film rather than reality. However, she disagreed with Katrina’s decision to wait so long to tell him about the past, even while appreciating her reluctance. Still, she had a full understanding as to why Caleb had been so upset.

“Holy crap, Red!” Paige exclaimed. “My fangs nearly popped out of my head, and I can only imagine what Alton would say.”

Katrina nodded and sighed deeply, feeling as though a heavy burden had been removed from her shoulders. She was suddenly happy she had told her friend everything and hadn’t anticipated that such relief was even possible, given the subject. Still, she wasn’t sure what her close friend and former mentor, Alton, would say.
I’ll cross that bridge later
.

Paige warmly reached out to embrace her tall friend and asked, “What can I do to help?”

Katrina wrapped her arms around the young woman who was like family to her, rested her chin atop the short blonde’s head, and asked with a sigh, “Do you know anything about hypnotic memory modification?”

Paige arched one eyebrow in silence.

Gil was sitting alone on the couch when Katrina and Paige walked into the living room. Caleb appeared from the kitchen with a fresh beer and placed it on the coffee table for Gil, unaware the two women were standing at the side of the room near the dining room.

“Thanks, dude,” Gil offered.

“Sure,” Caleb replied and stopped upon seeing the two women standing off to his left.

Paige walked purposefully up to him, and her short arms slowly encircled him in a warm embrace. She inclined her head upwards so her lips were near his ear and whispered, “I had no idea before about yours and Katrina’s history, but I understand completely now, kiddo. I’m always here for you.”

She kissed him on the side of the cheek warmly, lingering for a few moments before pulling away from him. It was an uncustomarily emotional gesture for the normally playful and eccentric vampire, and her actions meant the world to him. He smiled gratefully, feeling both satisfaction and relief wash over him that his guardian finally knew the truth about him and Katrina.

“Thanks, babysitter,” he quipped in a whisper.

Meanwhile, Gil looked up with a mix of surprise and curiosity. “Hey babe, what’s with the body pressing going on there? I thought you said he was your adopted brother.”

“Hush, Gil,” Paige admonished as Katrina looked on with a wry expression.

Caleb separated from Paige’s embrace, moved to stand next to Katrina, and held her hand while interlacing their fingers together. “Gil, I’m proud to introduce you to Katrina,” he said while glancing up at Katrina with a smile. “She’s my mate.”