Blood Forever (7 page)

But what can I do? Demand an explanation? Force him to explain why he never told me about a former girlfriend when, in his mind, we’d only met minutes before?

I force myself to face facts. As much as I’d like to know what the hell is going on, I realize this isn’t the time or place to ask. If I suddenly start acting like a possessive freak, I’m only going to alienate him more. No, I need to bide my time instead, wait to get him alone. Then he’ll likely be more amenable to explanation.

“Um, you can turn the music back on now,” I inform the DJ, trying to keep the tremble from my voice. “Everything’s cool.” Luckily the DJ obliges, and a moment later Muse blasts through the club and everyone starts dancing again, drama forgotten.

Except Jareth and his hoochie mama GF, who are still standing there, staring at me.

“Well, I guess I’ll, um, catch you later then,” I stammer, feeling like I need to close this awkward conversation out somehow before vanishing into the night.

“I’ll be waiting with bated breath,” Jareth replies drolly. His stupid girlfriend chortles and it’s all I can do to stop myself from drop-kicking her in the head. Instead, I force myself to take the high road, choosing to live to fight another day, turning and pushing my way through the crowd, ignoring the stares burning into my back as I head toward the exit.

I’m proud to say I manage to keep most of my tears at bay until I get into my mother’s car and drive off into the night.

I
jump in the Prius and race home, trying and failing to obey most traffic laws. Which now is doubly risky, seeing as I no longer have that alluring vampire scent to charm my way out of a ticket, were I to be stopped by the police. But still, how can I rightly keep my mind on mundane things such as speed limits and stoplights when all I can I think about is Jareth sticking his tongue down another girl’s throat?

As I pull onto our street, my mind flashes to those final moments I spent with Jareth down in the Underworld. When he took me into his arms as I cried and consoled me as I promised, over and over again, that I’d find him, no matter what it took. I remember him whispering in my ear, telling me not to worry. We were destined to be together, he said, and there was no way a pesky little thing like a time reset could ever come between us.

Was that Jareth—my Jareth—still there, hiding deep under that smug, arrogant, in-love-with-someone-tacky exterior? Or—and this was my biggest fear, deep down—had the strands of time already taken me down a different path? An alternate future where Jareth and I are no longer meant to be together?

It’s all too much to contemplate. I pull into the driveway just in time for the tears to start all over again, blurring my vision and almost causing me to run into the garage. Salt tears, not the blood ones I’d gotten so used to crying over the last year as a vampire. A little less messy, but no more welcome, only serving to remind me that I am no longer that tough vampire, vampire-slayer girl that Jareth loved so much, but rather a weak, helpless mortal whose boyfriend is hooking up with another girl.

As I slink into the house, feeling as if my world has fallen apart, I see a light on in the kitchen. I follow it, surprised to find Sunny sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. She looks up at me, an expression of relief written on her face.

“Where were you?” she asks. “I’ve been calling your cell all night.”

“Sorry,” I say, slumping down into a chair across from her. “I forgot it in the car.”

Sunny squints at me. “Are you okay?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” I demand, my tone more defensive than I mean it to be. I should have gone to the bathroom to wipe my face and put Visine in my eyes to stop the redness. After all, I so don’t want to have to explain how I’d completely gone against what we’d agreed to on the very first night we’d agreed to it.

“Well, maybe it’s just me, but I find most people who are okay don’t usually have tears streaming down their cheeks and snot coming out of their nose.”

Ugh. I swipe my nose with my sleeve before remembering how gross that must look to my sister. All these nasty slimy bodily functions I forgot about when I became a vampire. I mean, imagine spending nearly a year bathroom free and then suddenly having to remember to go every few hours…or else.

“It’s just allergies. The pollen here is ridiculous.”

“Rayne…” Sunny narrows her eyes and gives me a hard look. “I’m your identical twin. And neither one of us has ever suffered an allergy in our entire lives. It’s part of the whole fairy gig. Remember how much money Mom saves on health insurance?”

“Fine,” I retort, giving up the pretense. She’s probably already figured it out anyway. “Jareth’s dating someone else. Someone really tacky,” I add, as if his having a cool girlfriend would be any better. But still! I want to assume he has some sort of taste in women—after all, he did pick me, right?

“And how do you know this, Miss Vampire Free, That’s Me?” Sunny asks pointedly.

I sigh. “I went to Club Fang to go dancing,” I confess. “How was I supposed to know that Jareth would be there? And with a tacky, nasty girlfriend, too.” I scowl, thinking back at her vinyl pants and bat earrings.

“Well, for one thing it
is
his favorite hangout…”

Yeah, yeah. “Look,” I say, deciding to come clean. “I tried to stay home. But I had to see him again. At least one more time.
Then I was going to leave him forever, I swear.” I could feel the beads of sweat dripping down my forehead. God, it sucks to be a human. There are way too many ways to be caught lying.

Sunny purses her lips. “O-kay,” she says slowly. “So you saw him. Are you ready to leave him forever now?”

I lean down, banging my head against the table mournfully. “No,” I admit. “And I can’t imagine I ever will be. I mean, one look and I was completely smitten all over again. Except for the fact that he was super-rude this time around.”

“Um, if I remember right, he was super-rude the first time around as well,” my sister reminds me.

“Yeah, but that was only because I was a member of Slayer Inc.,” I protest. “The same organization that killed his family. This time he started hating on me for no reason whatsoever.”

My sister raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe there was a tiny reason. I tripped and stepped on his toes. But accidental toe-stepping shouldn’t warrant full-on hate, should it? I mean, maybe mild dislike and annoyance. But you should have seen him. It was as if I’d burned up his favorite Batman shirt.” I look up. “And did I mention he has a girlfriend? A tacky, nasty, disgusting girlfriend?”

“Hmm. Yes. Several times, in fact.”

“I know, I know. But I can’t help it. I mean, how would you like it if you went and found Magnus and he had a girlfriend in tow?” I sigh. “But, of course, you wouldn’t go and do that. You’re smarter than me and appreciate the second chance you’ve been given. You’d never go off and try to find Magnus
after vowing to live a vampire-free…” I trail off, suddenly seeing my sister for the first time. “Hang on a second. Is that my corset?”

Sunny’s face turns bright red. “Um, maybe? Yeah?”

“Since when do
you
wear corsets?”

“Um…” She bites her lower lip. “Since
Easy A
was on HBO? Emma Stone rocked them so well, I thought I’d—”

“Sunshine McDonald. You went to see Magnus tonight!”

“No!” she cries, her eyes wide. “I just—”

“Just dressed up as me and attended my vampire-certification class,” I conclude. “And here you had the nerve to go all Judge Judy on me for going to Club Fang.”

Sunny stares down at her bowl of cereal.

“I knew it!” I cry, actually feeling kind of better knowing the truth. That I’m not the only weak McDonald twin after all. “He didn’t have a surprise girlfriend, by any chance, did he? Like a really tacky, nasty, disgusting, hideous one?”

My sister shakes her head emphatically. As if
her
future boyfriend would never dream of cheating on
his
future love. “No,” she says. “In fact, he was very sweet. Of course he thought I was you, I guess.”

“Well, duh. You did wear my clothes.”

“Which didn’t impress him in the slightest, let me tell you,” Sunny points out. She pauses, then adds, “Not to mention—how the heck do you scratch your bellybutton when you’re wearing this thing?”

“You don’t. You suffer for fashion,” I reply curtly. “But let’s
not change the subject here, Sunny my girl. What happened at class? Did you let him bite you?” I study her neck closely, searching for marks or bruises. After all I sacrificed for her…

But my sister shakes her head. “No. No biting,” she assures me. “Not even a practice one.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No…well, not really.” Sunny sighs. “Rayne, I’ve been thinking…”

I lean forward. “Yes?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all you did to get us back here and give us a second chance. And it’s not like I suddenly want to become a vampire or anything. But, at the same time, do we really have to go all cold turkey on the entire otherworld? I mean, look at us. Night number one and we’ve both epically failed to stay vampire free. What does that say about our chances for the future?”

“Well, I definitely wouldn’t go to Vegas on the odds…”

“Exactly.” Sunny nods. “And you know what? I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Do you?”

“But Sunny, look what happened the first time around!” I protest. “You were killed. Magnus was brought in for treason. The Blood Coven was kicked out of the Consortium. We don’t want to start the chain of events all over again.”

“Of course not,” my sister agrees. “That would be crazy. But what if we could do something else? What if we could change things for the better? Figure out a way to not only save the Blood Coven and the rest of the Consortium from Pyrus’s reign of terror but also get our boyfriends back?”

I frown. “It sounds good in theory, Sun, but how the heck are we going to make that happen? I mean, we essentially tried to do that already, and look what a disaster it turned out to be.”

“But this time will be different,” my sister says fervently, a strange light in her eyes.

“And how do we know that?”

Sunny smiles. “Because this time we know the future.”

T
urns out, once you’ve made the decision to embark on a mission to save the world (once more with feeling), it’s really tough to spend the entire next day locked away in a boring old high school. But unfortunately, since we can’t clue Mom in to our superhero plans, she sees no reason why we can’t make the bus on time. And I suppose there’s not a ton we could do during the day anyway, seeing as all good vampires are fast asleep in their coffins during school hours.

Not to mention, as Rayne points out, you can’t very well list
saving the world from a vampire apocalypse
on your college application as one of your extracurriculars. And now that she’s no longer an immortal vampire with riches beyond belief, she’s going to need to score a scholarship or two.

And so I’m forced to content myself to suffer through
endless classes and tedious lunchtime talk, offering up a polite “Mm-hm” at all the appropriate pauses in conversation. But truth be told, if you asked me what my friends and teachers were going on about, I wouldn’t have had a clue. All I can focus on is our master plan and how I’m going to get Magnus to go along with it, without spilling all the time-travel technicalities.

Rayne and I spent most of last night planning our strategy. Our idea is simple, really. I’ll warn Magnus about Slayer Inc.’s threat to Lucifent’s life and by doing so, earn the respect of him and the entire Blood Coven. Then, once they trust us, we can move on to the bigger fish we’re hoping to fry—well, stake. Pyrus himself. It’s perfect, really.

Finally the day ends and the sun goes down and Rayne and I head over to Club Fang, the scene of the crime, so to speak. As we get out of the car in the back parking lot, my eyes wander over to the simple wooden post where long ago (or next month, in this case) Magnus accidentally bit me and started my vampiric transformation. At the time, I’d been royally pissed off, not to mention horrified beyond belief. I mean, turning into a vampire one week before prom? So not cool.

But looking back on it now, after all of Magnus’s and my adventures over the last year, that night will, without a doubt, go down as one of the most romantic in my entire life. I remember leaning against the post, my body pressed up against his, his lips brushing my neck—his fangs scraping my skin. It was the night I met my soul mate. A night that would change my life forever.

I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if
we hadn’t been able to reverse the curse in time. What would it have been like to stay a vampire forever? Living as Magnus’s blood mate for all eternity with nothing to tear us apart. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe Bertha wouldn’t have been able to kill me. Maybe Magnus and I could have fought against Pyrus and saved the Blood Coven right then and there. Maybe we could have lived happily ever after.

But I can’t think of that now. It does no good. All I can do is focus on our current mission to change history for the better and hope for the best.

Rayne and I pay our cover and head upstairs into the club, pushing past all the weird Gothy patrons, all doing the same “foot stuck in the mud” dance on the dance floor. Seriously, dancing to Goth music seems like the dumbest thing ever to me. I mean, most of it’s so freaking slow. How do you work up a good sweat just swaying your arms like that?

We leave the dance floor behind and head through a wooden door into a small coffeehouse at the back of the club. Or what appears, at first glance anyway, to be an establishment that serves coffee. The place actually specializes in a fine merlot that’s not exactly fermented from grapes, if you get my meaning.

There, among a mess of motley patrons, sits Magnus, as expected, flanked by his two donor chicks, Rachel and Charity. Rayne nods to me and pushes me forward, then slinks back into the crowd, presumably to find Jareth. As I step toward the table, Charity recognizes me immediately from the night before and give out a delighted squeal before running over to hug me.