Call of the Vampire (13 page)

“No, the Bishops are the oldest and most powerful vampire family in the world. They rule as kind of a governing body for us.”

“Oh.” I had more questions, but figured I’d better learn the fate of Aunt Colette first. “So, you loved Colette so much you were willing to be shunned?”

“I didn’t care,” he said with such passion that I definitely believed him. “Being part of the elite was nothing compared to being with Colette.”

“You wanted to marry her?” I asked, feeling jealous of a girl who had more than likely died several decades before I was even born.

“When it’s a vampire with a human, it’s not considered marriage. We call it conjoined. And like I said, it’s very rare. I would have had to vouch for her as my mate and then never take another, not even after her death.”

“Not another human?”

“No. Not another mate, period. That’s how much the Bishops want to discourage a non-vampire union.”

“Wow,” was all I could manage. It was such a big decision to make for someone who was really just a teenager. Colette would have gotten older and older, and Jessie would have stayed young and fresh. Eventually it would have looked like she was his grandmother. “You must have really loved her.”

Jessie nodded.

“So, did you...” I felt awkward with the new terminology. “Did you conjoin?”

He shook his head and looked down at his hands, which he was clenching in his lap. “I told my family of my intentions, and they became very upset, forbidding me to soil the Vanderlind name with human blood.”

I knew he didn’t mean to insult me, but I couldn’t keep myself from saying, “Yeah, gee, wouldn’t want to soil the good name of a vampire.”

Jessie was so caught up in the memory that he didn’t pick up on my sarcasm. “Daniel kept insisting that I should just turn her or make her my companion.”

“Why didn’t you turn her?” I asked.

“No,” Jessie whispered, the memory obviously causing him pain. “No, that wouldn’t have been right for her. She would have refused to eat. She would have starved herself.”

“Just like the Brontes,” I murmured.

“We decided we were going to run away together. We would elope and then face whatever we’d have to face as husband and wife. I knew if we were legally married in the human world that it would help our plea with the Bishops.”

I did very much want to know more about who the Bishops were and how much power they had but didn’t want to keep interrupting. Jessie’s eyes were wide and filled with grief as he relived the whole thing with the telling. “What happened?” I asked in a voice just above a whisper.

“I wanted to tell her my secret before we were wed. She insisted there was nothing I could say that would stop her from loving me, but I knew she didn’t realize the extent of evil that was in the world. We arranged to meet in the woods outside the castle that runs along the river. If she still loved me after I explained what I really was, then we would take a boat down to the next town and wake up the justice of the peace.”

“What happened?” I asked, feeling a chill run up my spine.

“I don’t know,” Jessie said in a voice that choked back a sob. “She never showed. I never saw her again.”

“Not to be cruel, but maybe she found out about the whole vampire thing and just ran away?” I suggested. It was a pretty damn scary thing to know.

“No. I wish that were true. When she didn’t show up, I searched for her. I found one of her shoes by a log in the woods, and that’s all. There was no blood; there was no trail; her family seemed to think she’d eloped. Or maybe they just wished she did. For years, I held out hope. Not that we could be together but that maybe she was still alive. Finally, I had to accept that she was gone. My darling girl had vanished,” he said in a ragged voice.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I survived,” he sighed. “I kept going. I put one foot in front of the other day after day, year after year. Daniel insisted that I would get over it eventually, but he didn’t realize how much I loved her.”

“And it’s been like that ever since?” I asked, my heart aching for him.

“No, not quite. Maybe fifteen or twenty years ago I woke up one night, and something was different. I felt a feeling that I hadn’t had in a long time.”

“What was it?”

“Hope,” he said simply. “I wasn’t happy, but I began to feel like I might want to live again. I started feeling better and better each day. I even agreed to celebrate my maker’s day this year, which is something I’ve refused to do for decades. That’s why it was such a large celebration.”

I could hear my mom moving around downstairs, cleaning a few dishes that had been left in the sink. Crickets chirped, filling the night with their special music. “So you don’t really know what happened to Lettie. It’ll always be a mystery.”

“I’ve had to come to accept that,” he said with a sigh; then he lifted his arms in the air and stretched. “I should go. Your mother will be up soon to say goodnight.” He got to his feet. “Oh,” he said, remembering something that caused him to search his pockets. “I brought you something. I hope you don’t mind.”

My heart did a little somersault. “No, I don’t mind,” I managed. “As long as it’s just a trinket.”

Jessie chuckled. “It’s definitely a trinket. I think you’ll be pleased,” he said, squatting down next to me, closer than he usually sat. I closed my eyes for a second to just enjoy the cloved-orange smell of him. “Open your eyes. Look,” he said, pulling a chain from his pocket. At the end dangled a clear orb that seemed to capture the moonlight.

“What is it?” I asked, captivated by its simple beauty. The orb had a belt of silver around it to keep it in place. The metal had been worked into a design of flowers and vines.

“It’s carved from a rock crystal called Pools of Light. It’s the clearest of all the crystals and was very popular in jewelry when I was growing up. It made me think of you.”

“Why me?” I asked as I reached out to gently touch the smooth orb with one finger.

“Well, when I first saw you in the library, I thought you were Lettie. I could see only her when I was looking at you. But you’re not her. I know that now. You just look alike because you’re related.”

“Okay...?” That still didn’t explain anything about the crystal.

“Well,” he went on, “with Pools of Light, when you look through the crystal, it magnifies whatever you’re looking at and refracts it. That’s how you know it’s genuine.”

“I’m still not following you,” I said, our hands almost uniting over the bauble.

“It’s just a way for me to separate you from Lettie in my head. You’re not her, but it took a while for my brain to adjust. It’s like looking at a refracted image.”

I was too embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by a refracted image. Science was not my strongest subject. My confusion must have shown on my face because he said, “Here, let me show you.” Lifting the pendant to his eye, he said, “Look through the crystal. We can still see each other, but differently.”

I leaned so close to him that our breath mingled together; we were just a kiss apart. Steadying myself to peek into the crystal, I stifled a shriek.

“Are you okay?” he asked, lowering the bauble.

“Yes,” I managed to whisper.

“You don’t like it,” he said, his handsome face showing keen disappointment.

“No, I love it,” I told him. “It’s the loveliest thing anyone has ever given me.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I assured him. I was trembling all over, and he knew I was lying. I tried to cover with, “Sometimes I find it hard to be so close to you.”

“Because I’m a vampire,” he said bitterly, looking away.

“No,” I assured him, touching him on the sleeve. “You know that’s not true. It’s just...”

“Aurora? You still up?” my mom tapped at my door.

“Goodnight,” Jessie whispered, pressing the orb into my palm and then disappearing into the night.

I can’t even remember what I said to my mother. I guess I managed to string a few coherent sentences together because she wished me goodnight and went to her own room. As soon as she left, I scrambled for my dream journal. My last entry was about the inverted eye. I had been just inches away from someone I loved, but viewing him in a way that was distorted. Upside down somehow and backwards. When I peeked through the Pools of Light, looking into Jessie’s beautiful gray eye, that’s how it appeared.

It didn’t make sense. Not any of it. My stomach clenched with the realization that I had somehow dreamed about Jessie’s gift before he’d even given it to me. I slumped on my bed clutching my head in my hands. My brain had gone haywire. What was wrong with me?

It was getting late, but I knew I would never be able to fall asleep. I started flipping through the journal, looking with fresh eyes at the dreams I’d written down. Originally, I had been trying to make sense of them as they’d related to Jessie, not as they related to Aunt Lettie. I thought the dream about the beautiful library was because Jessie was so beautiful and I’d first seen him in a library, and it all kind of blended with my love of books. The splashes of color that became the wildflowers dream just seemed like a magical setting to be with a magical being, but maybe it was something to do with gathering flowers for the sick brother that didn’t exist.

My head started to throb the more I thought about it. Was I somehow Colette Gibson reincarnated?

No, that didn’t make any sense to me at all. She was always that mystery from Grandma Gibson’s past, but I didn’t feel connected to her. Not like how I felt connected to Jessie. And the Pools of Light pendant wasn’t hers, so that didn’t explain the whole thing with my dreaming about Jessie’s eye.

I desperately wanted to talk to Jessie but also knew I should probably never speak to him again. He was one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet, but I also felt the safest when I was close to him. Were the dreams I was having actually mine or just the fragmented memories of a dead girl? And what about the dream where a creature was chasing me in the dark and I fell near a large log?

I lay awake for most the night again, playing with the Pools of Light. I wished I could use it like a crystal ball and see into the past. If the dreams I was having were in some way Colette Gibson’s memories, then something very evil had killed her. Something that lusted for blood. Something animal as well as man. Something with hateful gray eyes.

*****

“Hey,” Blossom said when she opened her front door. “I was beginning to think you were blowing me off.”

I had almost blown her off. Not intentionally, but I had completely spaced that we’d planned a bake-a-thon. “No, I couldn’t fall asleep last night and just couldn’t get it in gear this morning,” I said. I didn’t tell her that I also had to scramble to find some interesting cookie recipes to print out once I’d realized we had plans.

“Yeah, you didn’t email me any ingredients, so my mom just got the basic stuff.”

“Oh.” Another thing that hadn’t even entered my brain. “Sorry.”

She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing me. “What’s up with you lately?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Just been a little off.”

“I know,” she said as we headed for the kitchen. “It’s like you don’t even want to have fun anymore.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” I was letting her be a little critical of me because I had been pretty absent for the last few weeks, but I didn’t want her to go too overboard. “I just don’t find Jimmy Stevens and his football buddies all that interesting to be around.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Blossom agreed as she tossed me a frilly apron that she’d pulled off a hook from the pantry. Part of the fun of a bake-a-thon was that we wore traditional aprons like the housewives from the nineteen fifties. “He’s not even that good of a kisser,” she confided. “And he’s been getting kind of handsy lately.”

Blossom and I both weren’t down with how grabby guys could get once they thought you were their girlfriend. So many of them acted so entitled. “Did you talk to him about it?”

“Damn straight, I did. I told him, ‘Your erection is not my problem,’ but I don’t think he was really listening.”

“Why not?”

She rolled her eyes. “He was too busy trying to shove my hand down his pants.”

“Yeah, um... Blossom...”

She put up a hand to stop me. “Don’t even get started, Mrs. Keys. I already told him if he doesn’t cut the crap then he’s history.”

“Okay, that’s good.” Whenever she had the chance, my mother took the liberty of training my friends not to accept any nonsense from boys either. I tied my apron around my waist. It was white with green checks and plenty of ruffles. “What should we make first?”

And then things were fun. We were just two girls goofing around in the kitchen baking cookies and eating cookie dough. There was no talk of boys or vampires or any of that junk. It felt great just to be with my best friend having a good time and not worrying about all the other stuff. By four o’clock, we were lying on the floor in the family room too stuffed with cookies to move.

The phone rang. Blossom only shifted her eyes slightly in its direction. “Are you going to get that?” I asked.

“Nah.” She closed her eyes drowsily. “It’s probably only Jimmy wanting to rub up against my leg. So not romantic.”

And there was the difference between high school boys and girls.

The afternoon was so enjoyable, I felt a very strong urge to share with Blossom everything I’d learned since the party at the castle. She was my best friend, after all. Plus, it was hell not having anyone to confide in about the vampires and my crazy dreams. I actually took a deep breath in order to tell her, but then the words caught in my throat. Jessie would never forgive me if I blabbed. Plus, what if she believed me? And then other people believed her? At the very least, Jessie and his family would have to leave Tiburon, and then I would never see him again. That would just be too horrible to imagine. So I kept my lips zipped.

There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to see Jessie that evening. So when he didn’t show up, I was really blindsided. Was he mad at me? Had something happened to him? Did he not know how to use a phone? It was so frustrating. I just sat there by the window for two hours feeling like a complete jerk. Even after I decided to give up and closed the window, I didn’t actually give up. Not really. My brain knew he wasn’t going to come, but my heart kept jumping every time there was a small noise outside. I was frustrated enough to scream into my pillow.