Vamplayers (13 page)

Immediately my senses are awash with a bouquet of pleasing scents, which is strange because I never, ever lust for human food.

Then again, this isn’t human food. At least, not in the strictest sense of the word. I can sense the ripe blood before I even see it, before I even smell it.

“Blood cheese,” he says quietly, almost reverently, unwrapping a thick wedge of the imported delicacy.

My hunger is so strong it’s all I can do to not snatch it out of his hand and devour it, fangs out, before his very eyes, mission be damned.

“Blood sausage.” He slides another foil-wrapped package onto the picnic table. “Chilled blood consomme and, for dessert, blood wine. She even sent plastic glasses, two of them, as if she knew—”

“She who?”

“Why, Mother of course.” (He may as well have added,
Ta-da!)

I shrug. That’s good enough for me. The hunger is too potent for me to be suspicious.

We gorge ourselves. Well, mostly I gorge myself.

The blood cheese is heavenly, heavy on the blood, light on the cheese, and literally melting the minute it hits my tongue and evaporating into my system the way a tea bag bleeds in hot water.

The blood sausage is richer but no less fulfilling as my thirsty cells drink up every last drop of its rich, oily goodness, no need for digestion of any kind.

And the blood wine is quite literally intoxicating.

“Oh, I haven’t had this in years.” I’m so ecstatic I almost say,
Decades!

Pump the brakes, Lily. Pump ‘em! Don’t let a little thing like blood wine sabotage the whole mission.

“Really? We have it all the time where I come from.”

I bet you do,
I think but don’t say. Best to let him do all the talking. Despite the quasi-romantic setting and extravagant meal, I’m still at work. This is still an interrogation. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” I say, like they taught me in Advanced Vamplayer Flirting.

I lean closer, lips flush and thick from the intake of blood, senses on high alert, pores open, fangs quivering below the gum line, making my teeth tingle.

”Nor you I,” he says eloquently (I think), and I practically need a dictionary to decipher it. “You are like a flower, Lily, in more than name.”

Wow, he is good.

I don’t need a dictionary to translate his next move. One hand creeps into the leather jacket and straight toward my chest.

I slap it briskly, so sated by the meal, so supercharged I think I hear something snap.

“Witch,” he says, standing, clutching his offending hand close to his chest. “After all I’ve done for you. This meal. Do you know how much it cost to import to this godforsaken school in these godforsaken sticks? I think I deserve a little—”

A sound behind us interrupts him, which is good because if he’d said two more words my foot would’ve interrupted him one way or the other—al-though he still would have been able to talk, if you know what I mean.

He sniffs, grabs his precious wicker basket plus the rest of the blood wine, and stomps off.

“We’re not through here,” he says over his shoulder before disappearing into the school.

“Trust me,” I say to the breeze rustling the branches in the tree line. “I know.”

Chapter 18

I
am not alone in the dark.

It isn’t just the breeze rustling the branches.

Three figures emerge from the tree line just beyond the picnic area, looking gaunt and ghostly in the darkness surrounding them.

It’s such an odd sight, like something you’d see in a really bad scary movie, that it takes me a minute to focus. When I do, the words pour out of my mouth: “Bianca? Alice? Cara?”

They step forward, as if they’ve choreographed the whole scene to look extra super creepy, then stand there looking at me.

And looking.

And watching.

And waiting.

They don’t say a word. Not one. Not to me, not to each other. This from two girls who have not shut up in the entire time I’ve known them.

I stand but stay put. I know it’s stupid, especially for me, but it feels safer somehow on the patio under the lights.

“What are you guys doing?” My voice disappears into the darkness once it’s past the cloistered little patio area where we’ve been enjoying our picnic. You know, until Mr. Vamplayer got all touchy-feely at the last minute.

“Aren’t you cold, standing out there?” I say, realizing I’m still wearing Tristan’s jacket. I tug it closer around me, feeling his warmth lingering in the shoulders, on my arms. It smells vaguely of cigarettes and imported cologne.

Nothing.

They don’t even blink.

They look eerie, odd.

For girls who are normally so active to suddenly just be standing there, doing nothing—I think that’s the scariest part of all.

I move to the left, positioning myself for a run at the back hallway door.

Only then do they move, advancing in unison two full footsteps.

“Guys, come on, you’re freaking me out. It’s late. Are you kidding me with this?”

I sound so corny speaking to the wind, talking to spirits, but it’s like the quieter they are, the more I want to talk.

They shake their heads, again in synchrony, and take two steps forward into the light of the patio.

I see Cara’s fangs first and am immediately upset that she’d bare them in front of Bianca like this. Revealing herself to a civilian so blatantly? And soon?

Protocol, my butt. That’s it. I’m writing her up when we get to the Academy. Her and Alice both. I don’t care if they do outrank me.

This whole assignment has been strictly amateur hour. I don’t blame Dr. Haskins for keeping us out of the Saviors if this is how we’re going to—

Cara’s fangs! They’re twice as long as I’ve ever seen them, and she’s well past the age when her fangs should have stopped growing.

Alice’s too. She smiles next to Cara, and her fangs just keep extending past the point where they usually stop.

It’s like they’ve gotten fang extensions in the last forty-eight hours.

A kind of secret ripple passes among them, and they smile. The fangs retract, if they were ever out in the first place. Am I seeing things out here in the moonlight?

“Lily?” Cara says, “What are you doing here?” Her tone is vaguely accusatory, like I’ve caught her up to something rather than the other way around.

“Me? What are you guys doing out there? Just lurking. You nearly scared me half to death.”

“Oh, come now.” Bianca runs her fingers through her luxuriant hair. “A big, bad
sister
like you getting scared by a couple girls like us?”

Half of her tone is condescending, and so is the other half.

“Yeah, who just appears out of the woods like that,” I splutter, still trying to make sense of this place, these people, this night, “and doesn’t say anything? I called you guys, like, four times. Why didn’t you answer?”

Alice makes a face. “It’s really loud in there. All those crickets.”

“I don’t hear any crickets.”

They say nothing.

It’s like they’ve all agreed to say nothing.

Or maybe I’m overreacting.

I mean, I
did
just get date groped. Vampire or no, I’m still prone to basic overreaction mode.

What did I really see? And besides, now they are standing right in front of me under the patio lights, happy and smiling. Or at least smiling.

“Nice jacket.” Bianca reaches out to touch it. “Why does it look so familiar?”

“That’s what I get for shopping at Target,” I bluff.

Cara wrinkles her nose. “It’s a little big.”

“It’s way big,” Alice says. “Like a-guy-let-you-borrow-it-because-it’s-so-cold-out big.”

Stupid Alice and her stupid big mouth. She’s borrowed, what, four thousand guys’ jackets, and I’ve never said two words. I show up in one—
one—
in all this time and she has to go and make a big deal out of it? In front of
Bianca,
no less?

“Yeah, so this is a coed school, right?” I turn around to put an end to the jacket conversation.

Bianca smiles. “Speaking of boys, aren’t you late for a very important date? Something about zombies or werewolves or vampires if I eavesdropped correctly?”

Oh, God, the witch is right!

Zander.

Grover.

Me.

Zombies.

Movie marathon.

Hours ago.

But how would she know? When did she have the chance to eavesdrop on us?

I guess she was right. Nightshade is the kind of place where you know everything about everybody.

“Oh, shoot!” Over my shoulder, I echo Tristan’s parting words, “We’re not through here.”

Is it my imagination when somebody says, “Not by a long shot, Lily”?

Chapter 19

I
don’t knock on Zander’s door so much as kick it open. “Whoa!” Grover sits up in his easy chair, which would look more at home on the command deck of the Starship Enterprise, in the process spilling a double batch of triple butter popcorn on his lap.

“What the?” Zander says from the tiny kitchen area, where he’s pouring tap water into an overflowing pitcher of Grape-Ade and glaring at me.

“Lily?” Grover scoops a handful of popcorn out of his lap and shoves the kernels into his mouth.

“Hmm.” Zander turns off the faucet, looks at his weak Grape-Ade, and leans rakishly in the doorway. “You’re right on time for the credits, Lily. Thanks for showing up so soon.”

“I know.” I gasp, not quite out of breath but out of patience with myself, with the Sisters, with this whole operation. “I’m sorry. I just had some homework and forgot. I’m so sorry.”

Zander spots Tristan’s jacket right away. “Hmm, was your assignment to borrow some big guy’s jacket and wear it all sexy-like over your shoulders?”

I cock my head, about to apologize, when good old Grover steps in: “He’s joking.”

A hand reaches up from a fake grave on their big-screen TV.

“Look,” Grover says, “another movie’s starting right now. You’re just in time. She’s just in time, Zander,” he shouts toward the kitchen, like he’s half of a bickering, old married couple. “Don’t be rude, dude. Come and join us.”

Zander ignores him, ignores me, pours out his light purple drink, and starts all over again. He makes much ado about it, huffing and puffing and tearing and pouring and measuring.

I drift into the dorm suite area. The room is warm and smells vaguely of guys who spend way too much time in front of the TV, eating out of the microwave, and hiding candy bar wrappers under the couch. It’s not an entirely unpleasant smell.

Grover is normally polite to a fault, at least to me. But tonight he is glued to some B-rate (maybe even C-rate) zombie flick about a zombie. In a bride dress. Marrying a zombie groom. In a tux.

I notice the
Star Wars
posters again and realize they aren’t just framed and evenly spaced. They’re in order of release, from
Episode IV,
the first, to
Episode III,
the last. Impressive. Not everybody remembers that.

The spaceship models hanging from the ceiling aren’t just good but excellent. I’m talking down-to-the-detail excellent with the right pilots in the right vehicles, with plenty of burn marks and bullet holes to look like they’ve flown straight out of the silver screen. (Hey, you live forever, you watch a lot of movies. Even
Star Wars.
You should hear me wax poetic on the Terminator series, you
really
want an earful.)

Next to Grover’s seat, there’s a papasan chair with metal legs, a lime-green cushion, and a matching Yoda throw pillow, which I clutch to my stomach as I sink in.

I can feel Grover’s warmth oozing from his massive body in the next seat over. He looks away from his precious screen (that athlete’s foot commercial might have something to do with it), sees Zander still mixing his precious Grape-Ade, and says quietly, “Thanks for coming. I know I’m breaking some kind of bro code or whatever by telling you this, but he was really upset when you didn’t show earlier.”

“I know. I just got carried away.”

He looks at the too big leather jacket and says, swishing his finger for maximum effect, “I hope he was worth it, girlfriend.”

I slap one of his massive shoulders.

He clutches his popcorn bowl protectively. “Seriously, though, that massive thing is way obvious. Why don’t you give it to me and I’ll stow it in the closet?”

I do.

By
stow it in the closet,
apparently he means
toss it on the floor amidst a pile of dirty black jeans and one giant Chewbacca slipper.