In the Company of Vampires(19)

I opened the door the bare minimum amount needed to slide through, so no sunlight could sneak in and harm any vampires who might be sleeping therein.

The room was dark and warm. A muffled grunt came from the bed.

“Ben?” My heart beat wildly, and my stomach did flip-flops. It was him! He was right there in front of me. I should leave. I should run away as fast as I could. I should put him from my mind and heart.

I groped my way along the bed to sit on one end of it, pulling off both sets of gloves before reaching out to find him. My hand touched bare flesh.

A light clicked on at the exact moment that I realized the man wasn’t Ben. I snatched back my hand as two surprised hazel eyes met mine. “Was ist es?”

“Er . . . hi. You’re not Ben.”

The man pulled the blanket up over his naked chest. “Who?”

“Ben. Benedikt. Are you Günter, by any chance?” I asked, hastily getting off the bed and backing toward the door, my face redder than a baboon’s butt.

“Ja. You are Imogen friend?”

“Yes, I’m Fran. I’m sorry to disturb you. I thought you would be out with Imogen. And then I thought you were Ben, but clearly you’re not. Where is she?”

“He?”

“No, she, not he. You know, the word ‘she.’ ‘She’ is female; ‘he’ is male.”

He blinked at me. “In trailer,” he said, waving a hand toward the window. “Tattoo trailer.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks. Sorry again about waking you up. Nice meeting you.” I slipped out of the room, closing the door behind me, leaning against it for a moment while I covered my burning cheeks with my hands. “Just when I think you can’t be a bigger idiot, you top yourself. Nice job, Fran.”

I all but ran down the line of trailers until I reached one with familiar artwork. I never had much to do with Gavon, who did tattoos and custom piercings at the Faire, mostly because he struck me as somewhat creepy, but I had a faint memory of Imogen being friends with him.

I knocked on the door, mentally writing an apology to Imogen for barging in on her boyfriend, when the door opened. A woman stood in the doorway. I stared at her bare legs, stared at her thigh-length silk robe, stared at a pretty face topped with a cloud of soft, curly hair. This was not Imogen.

“Yes?”

I gawked at her for a minute. I’d always thought Gavon was gay . . . Maybe I’d been wrong, and this was his girlfriend? “Is Imogen here?”

“Imogen? No. Her brother is.” She continued to stand there, looking me over with narrowed blue eyes. I suddenly felt every inch my six-foot, built-like-a-line-backer self, not to mention the wrinkled T-shirt and pair of jeans I wore.

“Ben’s . . . here?” I groaned to myself. Somehow in the conversation with Günter, we’d crossed our lines regarding pronouns. “Right here?”

“Yes. You wish to see him?”

No. I absolutely did not want to see him. I had not gone through the hell of the last year for nothing. I had made a decision, and I was going to stand by it.

“Yes, please,” I heard someone say, and realized with horror that it was me.

I knew I should have turned around and left. I had to find Imogen, and then make a plan to locate my mother. But despite the desperate need to know she was okay, my feet refused to leave. After all, my brain pointed out, I would be much less distracted once a meeting with Ben was done.

“He was sleeping when I left him,” the woman said in a voice with a faint French accent. “Why do you want to see him?”

My heart shattered. Just like that, it was whole one moment, then in a billion pieces the next. Poof! Dust. Not that it had any right to shatter, but you try reasoning to a heart. It’s impossible. “You’re not Gavon’s girlfriend, are you?”

“Gavon? No. I took over his business. I am Naomi, the tattoo artist. I am Benedikt’s girlfriend. And you are . . . ?”

“Fran Ghetti.” Pain seared my soul with such intensity I had to clutch the side of the trailer to keep from keeling over at her feet. Stupid, stupid Fran! You broke up with him; you can’t be shocked now because he got over you.

“Ah, the former girlfriend.” Her look scalded me up and down with enough heat to peel off at least three layers of skin.

I gave her a long look that by rights should have left her hair smoking. “If he’s sleeping, I won’t disturb him.”

“Benedikt is mine, now. Did he not tell you? Poor little American. Did you believe that he still wants you? Desires you? He does not even think about you. He thinks only of me.”

Her voice turned suddenly syrupy and sickeningly sweet. It was just what I needed, because her words pulled me out of what threatened to be a massive well of self-pity, and into the land made up of me turning her into a wart-encrusted cockroach. “There’s nothing little about me, chicky. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Ben.”