Ben shouted nonsense against my neck, slumping to the ground underneath me. I laughed, melting on top of him in a boneless heap.
I wasn't moving.
For a year.
Eventually, Ben persuaded me that my yearlong-nap plan wasn't valid, because Dr. Hudson was eventually going to show up. And given his tendency toward neck injections, we didn't want to be around when that happened.
After shrugging into our clothes (using my hair clip to make an emergency button for Ben's damaged pants), we stumbled home, coming up with increasingly elaborate plans to hurt Dr. Hudson as we traipsed through the woods. Our best plans involved a jar of honey, a grizzly bear, a rubber duck, and a pair of gardening shears. The walk seemed to take longer with the soreness between my legs, but it was kind of pleasant spending this time with Ben. I was used to boys sliding out of my bed before the sweat dried and promising to text me, which they never did. I'd never had a guy walk me home, his fingers wrapped in mine as we hopped over fallen trees and little creeks.
After we agreed on the honey-bear-duck-shears plan, we talked, just talked, about nothing related to the Council or school or Jane. We didn't talk about my parents or his, our pasts. We just talked about movies we liked, foods we used to enjoy, which professors we'd loved and which ones we'd created accounts on Rate My Professors just so we could warn people about them. It was nice having the sort of conversation we might have had if we'd stayed human, like a glimpse of an alternate universe where we were just two normal college kids, not the next generation of neovampires who might or might not make it to see the next year, depending on whether Dr. Hudson managed to get the drop on us.
We ran the final mile to River Oaks, as fast as our blood-deprived bodies would allow. I was going to drink a gallon of Faux Type O when we finally got inside. Unfortunately, my plans for a Thanksgiving-style throwdown were interrupted by Jane sweeping across the lawn at top speed and clotheslining both of us into a hug-a hug that ended with the three of us rolling into a sort of Twister people-ball sprawling across the grass.
"Someone's elbow is lodged in my left boob," I grumbled. "Ben, is that you?"
"Sadly, no." Ben's voice was muffled, because he was facedown in the grass.
"Jane, please move your elbow," I muttered as we untangled ourselves and sat up, but Jane would not be distracted by my chest pain.
"Don't ever do that to me again!" she yelled, throwing her arms around us and, frankly, squashing us to her in a damned unreasonable fashion. "Where have you been?"
"Sleeping in an open field," Ben said sheepishly. He glanced at me. "That sounded less lame in my head."
"But hey, turns out we don't burst into flames in the sun, so no harm done," I added brightly.
Jane spluttered. "You-what-why? What would possess you to do such a thing? And what was your plan if you did happen to burst into flames like every other vampire in existence? Did you think about how it would have affected those of us who live with you and are responsible for you, if something had happened to you? People who care about you? And oh, my God, you're making me sound like my mother, which is probably the most unforgivable part of all!"
Jane held up both of her hands and took three very deep breaths through her nose. Over her shoulder, I saw Gabriel and Dick come out the front door of River Oaks to watch the proceedings.
///
"OK, back up," Jane said. "I'm trying to remain calm, even though I have spent the last sixteen hours or so absolutely terrified for you and worried sick."
"Wouldn't you have to be calm in the first place to remain-"
Jane shot me a look that made me shut my mouth immediately.
"So please explain to me how you ended up ‘sleeping in an open field' instead of, say, calling your foster sire and letting her know that you needed help getting home?" Jane asked.
I sighed. "Dr. Hudson lured us to a secluded floor of the office with misappropriated Post-its. He injected us with what I suspect to be vampire-strength horse tranquilizers and locked us in a wire mesh box out in the middle of a tobacco field. We think it was an experiment to test how sunproof we are, since he didn't get to complete his initial tests. Also, we're hoping that it was an experiment and not Dr. Hudson being a raging sociopath."
Jane's face drained of what little color it had. "He did what?"
"It's true," I said. "I saw him sneak up behind Ben and inject him, right before I went down."