Velvet (11 page)

“No-no-
no!
” I stuttered, remembering the vivid pain that had come last time he’d done this.

He kept his eyes locked on mine. “It’s not like before, I promise. Just hold still.”

I don’t think I could have moved if I wanted to. His eyes flared brightly and he murmured in that lovely language I couldn’t understand. All of a sudden I felt sort of calm and tired and warm. Tears ran down my cheeks again as I kept my eyelids open involuntarily. Then he blinked and I blinked and it was over.

“Feel better?” he asked, stepping a polite distance back.

I did a quick check. “Yeah, actually. What did you do?”

He looped his arm through mine and started walking back toward the ranch. “I transferred some of my body heat to you.”

I stared at him. “You can do that?”

He smiled his half smile and it looked a little bit wicked. “I can do a lot of things.”

Well, then.

We walked side by side in the quiet forest. Before I knew it, we were back at the house. When I opened the front door, Rachel looked frantic as she came and enveloped me in a hug.

“I thought something had happened to you! Are you all right?” She looked down at me and blinked. “Why are your clothes all wet?”

“My apologies, Mrs. Master,” Adrian stepped in. “I forgot to give Caitlin her birthday present at school, so I was walking over here when we ran into each other on the road. We started a snowball fight,” he grinned sheepishly, believably, “and I accidentally pushed her into a pile of snow.”

“Oh,” Rachel said, unsure of what to make of this.

“It was slushy snow,” I clarified.

“Very slushy,” Adrian confirmed.

“Well, come in! Dry yourself off. I was going to start dinner soon; why don’t you stay?”

“Thank you,” he said, stepping into the house and pulling me with him. “I’d really appreciate that.”

“Just hang up your wet things on the rack there. Would you like some coffee?”

He grinned. “I’d love some.”

Rachel smiled and went off into the kitchen. As soon as she was out of earshot, Adrian murmured, “Consider me your personal shadow from here on out.”

“Why?” I whispered back.

He frowned. “I guess I forgot to mention that part.”

I jumped at the sound of my aunt speaking. “Caitlin, get out of that sweater; it’s soaked! Here you go,” she said, handing Adrian a cup of coffee. “Do you want any sugar or creamer?”

“No, ma’am; black’s just fine.”

Rachel grinned at him. Of course he drank it black. And of course he said “ma’am.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said, hobbling up the stairs as fast as my half-numb limbs would allow. I closed the door to my bedroom and leaned against it.

What had just happened? I shivered violently and realized I could think about it much better after I got warm. I tugged everything off and threw on dry clothes, then headed downstairs. Adrian was sitting at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee, talking to my aunt. When she saw me, she smiled.

“Why don’t you and Adrian watch a movie until dinner’s ready?”

“It’s okay, I can help,” I said, stalling.

“No, no; it’s your birthday, you’re banned from the kitchen.”

Adrian smiled. “I’m up for a movie.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but there was nothing I could do and he knew it. We headed into the living room.

“What’d you say to her?” I whispered.

“Nothing much.”

I gave him a look.

He shrugged. “Just that I was very happy you had come to Stony Creek, and I was having a wonderful time getting to know you.”

I scowled at him and he smiled at me. I rolled my eyes. “Fine then. What do you want to watch?”

“It’s your birthday,” he said with a lazy smile. “Why don’t you choose?”

I grabbed a random DVD from the pile, and popped it into the player, then headed for the armchair. Before I could sit, Adrian grabbed my hand and patted the seat next to him on the couch. I looked at him and shook my head no.

“I’m cold,” he said. “I gave you all my body heat, remember?”

I snorted. “Way to play the guilt card.”

But I sat next to him. He took the throw from the back of the couch and wrapped it around me, then leaned into the corner of the couch and pulled me against his chest in a very non-platonic manner.

“Are you crazy?” I whispered in his ear. “My aunt is right over there!”

“Do you want to sell the story?” he murmured, looking at the TV. “Wouldn’t you rather have them wonder if something is going on between us than wonder if they should ever let you out of their sight because you might do something stupid?”

I gaped at him, fishlike.

“Besides,” he said, settling into the sofa, “I still need to warm up. And if I remember correctly from the effects of a certain Halloween party,” he murmured into my hair, “you
like
cuddling with me.”

I was blushing too hard to think of an elegant reply. With the blanket on top of me and Adrian’s chest beneath me, it was like a sauna, but in a good way. “Fine,” I grumbled. Then I sat up again, remembering his earlier comment. “Wait—what was that about being my shadow?”

He shook his head. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“
Adrian,
” I warned.

“Caitlin,” he replied, staring back at me evenly.

After a long moment, he very sternly pointed at his chest, then pointed at me, then motioned for me to lie back down.

How the hell was I supposed to resist that?

7

SELLING THE STORY

I woke up to a variety of noises: the sound of silverware and glasses being set on the table, the drone of the movie sound track, my uncle speaking with my aunt, the bubble of a pot on the stove, and most vividly, the beat of Adrian’s peculiarly slow heart against my left ear. I stretched, waking slowly, and rubbed my face into his chest.

“You’re in a better mood,” he observed, looking down with a small smile.

“I forgot how incredibly comfortable you are.” I laid my face on his sweater again and almost drifted off. I could feel a chuckle trickle up through his chest.

“I think your uncle doesn’t know what to do with me,” he whispered a moment later.

I immediately popped up and looked first at Adrian, then at my uncle, then at Adrian again, horrified. “What do we tell him?”

He shifted underneath me, tucking the blanket around my shoulders. “We tell him that we’ve become good friends since you’ve moved here, and that we’d like to see where the friendship takes us.”

“Does that mean we’re dating?”

“It means your uncle can interpret that however he wants.”

I frowned. “So, you’re doing all this just because you don’t want my family to worry about me?”

He waved his head back and forth in a so-so gesture. “There’s more. But I’ll tell you tomorrow. Enjoy your birthday.”

I raised a brow. “That doesn’t sound ominous at all.” He smiled, but refused to elaborate. “Fine,” I told him, “be cryptic.” I hunched my knees up to my chin. “What about my aunt, though? She’ll ask detailed questions. And Norah will repeat anything we say here to all her friends, so what do we tell people at school? Also, if this is all some weirdly elaborate joke about vampires because I wore a vampire costume on Halloween and it’s my birthday, tell me now, and your death will be quick and painful.”

He winked at me. “I can’t die, remember?”

Before I could reply, Rachel called out that dinner was ready, so we stood and walked over to the table.

“Caitlin, how was your birthday?” my aunt asked, breaking the silence as she handed her husband a bowl of salad.

I almost choked on a crouton. Adrian patted my back helpfully. For half a second, I toyed with the idea of telling her the truth:
Well, Aunt Rachel, I went to school, I came home, I put on my boots, and I got naked-ish and cried on a large rock, but Adrian here just
had
to stop me, and oh yeah! he’s a vampire and we’re dating now. I think.

“It was good,” I lied.

“Adrian,” my aunt began, “I can’t tell you how nice it is to have you here. And I wanted to thank you for taking Caitlin to school; it’s been such a help.”

“No trouble at all,” he replied, smiling warmly.

I was clearing dishes later, so I didn’t notice at first when Adrian took Joe into the living room to talk. Over the dishwasher, Rachel leaned in conspiratorially.

“So,” she began, trying to sound casual. “What’s going on with you two?”

I’d known this was coming, but my face still turned red. Norah was rinsing plates in the sink and trying to listen without looking like she was listening.

I scrubbed at an imaginary spot of food on the plate I was holding and mumbled, “We’re dating, I guess.”

They both gasped and turned to each other with equal I-told-you-so smile.

“He’s a very nice young man,” Rachel said.

I peeked over at Adrian. “I’m not sure Joe agrees.”

As if he heard me, Joe stood and walked toward us.

“Well, I better be going before the roads get too bad,” Adrian announced, following him into the kitchen. I threw a tight smile at everyone as they wished him good night, grabbed Adrian by the arm, and walked him to the door.

“What did you say to Joe?” I whispered.

“Not much,” he replied, tugging on his boots. “Mentioned the weather, the horses, what my intentions toward you are.”

I paled.

He smiled, looking satisfied. “Don’t worry, your uncle and I have an understanding.”

“An
understanding
,” I replied flatly.

He bent down and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

He opened the door and walked back out into the night. I stood there in a daze as the engine to the truck revved to life. When I turned around, Joe, Rachel, and Norah were staring at me.

“Um,” I said intelligently, “I think I’m going to go do some homework. If that’s all right.”

“Sure,” my aunt said, smiling. “Good night!”

I headed upstairs, closed my door softly, and started a fire in my tiny little fireplace before wrapping myself in a blanket to huddle in front of the heat-spitting light.

I was now dating Adrian de la Mara.

I didn’t really know how that had happened, but there it was.

I mouthed the words
Caitlin Marie de la Mara
as a joke—after all, it wasn’t like we were actually dating.

Right?

I thought back to all the times he’d had headaches. Were they really headaches? Or did it have something to do with his weird eye thing? What did I even call the weird eye thing? And did I really have to call him a vampire? Because that was completely ridiculous. Had it all been in my head? Did I dream up the snow fight, the molten-silver eye trick, that little tidbit that his dad was a
demon
? Was this all just one incredibly detailed hallucination? Hallucination seemed more plausible than Adrian being immortal. I was totally in the middle of a fugue state, wasn’t I? Maybe if I just slept, I’d snap out of it in the morning. That seemed reasonable.

*   *   *

The truck looked exactly as it had the day before. Maybe I was expecting it to turn into a giant pumpkin carriage or a flaming chariot, but it was just a truck, black, at least a few years old, with a couple of dings in the door. Probably the only thing of Adrian’s I’d ever seen that wasn’t brand-new and flawless. The driver’s side window rolled down.

“Morning, sunshine,” Adrian said with a big smile.

Who was this and what had he done with the brooding underwear model I’d known before?

“Hi,” I returned, and climbed into the passenger side. “You’re still a vampire?”

“Yep.”

“Cool, yeah, just checking.” Damn. Not a fugue state. “And we’re still pretend-dating?”

Instead of answering, he just put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him, driving left-handed down the road.

I looked up at him. “I take that as a ‘yes.’”

He smiled.

I settled into his arm, because why not? “So now’s the part where I ask you questions, just FYI.”

He kept his eyes on the road. “What do you want to know?”

What did I want to know? Everything. “How did you find me yesterday?”

He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, glancing at me. “Before I say anything, please keep in mind that half of this is lore, the other half’s myth, and the rest is bullshit that’s been passed down so long no one really remembers the truth anymore.”

I frowned. “That’s more than a hundred percent.”

“Shhhhhh,” he said, exaggeratedly patting my hair. “All right, so, I am what I am because the thing that got my mom pregnant was a demon.”

I was about to tell him I didn’t believe in demons—not that I really believed in vampires either, but I
definitely
didn’t believe in demons—but he saw my look and cut me off.

“That’s just what we call them,” he explained. “If you want to get into a theological debate, don’t bother. I don’t claim to know anything about heaven or hell or God or gods or afterlives or any of it. At least, not any more than anyone else can. We’ve been around long enough that
demon
has always been synonymous with
monster
. For all I know, he’s really an alien, or a superevolved parasite. Whatever he is, he’s not human and he’s not what I am. What we do know is that he—and all of his kind—feed off human emotions. It’s their only energy source, the only one they
need
, because for the most part they don’t seem to exist in a physical state.”

He paused, and then admitted, “As his offspring, I feed off emotions, too. Except instead of draining people of them, I simply”—he looked around, searching for the right word—“
absorb
them.”

“What’s the difference?”

He frowned, thinking. “Demons are basically leeches, slowly sucking out your life-force. Vampires are sponges, soaking up the energy you’re already putting out—kind of like solar panels. We both get the energy humans emit, but one is a parasitic relationship and the other is merely commensal.” He saw the blank look on my face. “One party gains while the other remains unaffected.”