"They could be Renfields, I guess."
"What's a Renfield?" Caleb asked. He was turned in the seat looking directly back at the car between us and the blue Jeep.
"Turn around, Caleb. When that car turns off I don't want the Jeep to know we've noticed them."
He turned around immediately without arguing, which was unusual for Caleb. I didn't approve of threatening people to gain their obedience, but there were some that nothing else seemed to work with. Maybe he was one of them.
I explained what a Renfield was.
"Like the guy in Dracula who ate insects," Caleb said.
"Exactly," I said.
"Cool," he said, and seemed to mean it.
I'd once asked Jean-Claude what they called Renfields before the release of the book Dracula in 1897. Jean-Claude had said, "Slaves." He'd probably been kidding, but I'd never had the heart to ask again.
The car behind us pulled into one of the narrow driveways. The blue Jeep was suddenly revealed. I forced myself to not look directly at it and only use the side mirror, but it was hard. I wanted to turn around and stare. Knowing that I shouldn't made it all the more tempting.
There was nothing ominous about the Jeep, or even the two men visible in it. They both had short hair, clean, well groomed; the Jeep was even shiny and clean. The only thing ominous was the fact that they were still behind us. Then... it turned into a narrow driveway. Just like that, not a threat.
"Shit," I said.
"Ditto," Jason said, but I saw his shoulder sag, as if tension drained away with that one word.
"Are we becoming too paranoid?" I asked.
"Maybe," Jason said, but he was still spending almost as much time staring back in the rearview mirror as straight ahead, as if he couldn't quite believe it. Neither could I, so I didn't tell him to watch the road. He was watching forward okay, and I, too, was expecting the blue Jeep to pull out and start after us again. Just a ruse, guys, not really harmless after all. But it didn't happen. We drove down the long car-crowded street, until the Jeep's driveway was hidden by trees and parked cars.
"Looks like it was just driving our way," Jason said.
"Looks like," I said.
Nathaniel rubbed his face against my leg. "You still smell scared, like you don't believe it."
"I don't believe it," I said.
"Why not?" Caleb asked, leaning in between the seats from the backseat.
I finally turned around in the seat, but I wasn't looking at Caleb, I was staring past him at the empty street. "Experience," I said.
I smelled roses, and a second later the cross around my neck began to glow, softly.
"Jesus," Jason whispered.
My heart was thumping painfully in my chest, but my voice came solid. "She can't roll me while I'm wearing a cross."
"You sure of that?" Caleb asked it, as he moved back away from me into the far reaches of the seat.
"Yeah," I said, "I'm sure of that."
"Why?" he asked, eyes wide.
I blinked at him as the soft, white luminosity grew brighter in the tree shadows, almost invisible in full sunlight, over and over again. "Because I believe," I said, voice soft as the glow around my neck, and as sure. I'd seen crosses burst into a white-hot light so bright it was blinding, but that was when I'd been face-to-face with a vamp that meant me harm. Belle was far away, and the glow showed that.
I kept waiting for the scent of roses to grow stronger again, but it never did. It stayed faint, definitely there, but didn't grow on the air.
I waited for Belle's voice in my head, but it didn't come. Every time she had spoken directly in my mind, the smell of roses had been thick. The sweet perfume stayed faint, and Belle's voice was gone from me. I squeezed the cross with my hand, feeling the heat, the power of it, skin prickling up my arm, thrumming like a continuous heartbeat against my hand. Caleb asked how could I believe. What I always wanted to ask, is, how can you not believe?
I felt Belle's anger like warmth on the air. Power filled the Jeep, in a neck-ruffling, breath-stealing tide, so much effort and all she could send was an image of herself sitting in front of her dressing table. Her long, black hair was unbound, like a cloak around a dressing gown of gold and black. She watched herself in the mirror with eyes full of honey-fire, like the eyes of the blind, empty except for the color of her power.
I whispered out loud, "You cannot touch me, not now."
She looked into the mirror as if I were standing behind her, and she could see me. Rage changed her beauty into something frightening, a mere mask of pale beauty that looked as false as any Halloween mask. Then she turned and looked past me, beyond me, and the look of fear on her face was so real, so unexpected that I turned, too, and I saw... something.