"Darkness doesn't matter. One of the few benefits of my new condition."
"What?"
"I can see body warmth, pools of blood. And right now, your cheeks are two giant beacons." He points at my face like I might not know which cheeks he means.
"I flush easily," I say.
"Uh-huh," he says, clearly a nonbeliever. Now seems like the perfect time for another subject change.
"So what other superpowers do you have?" I ask. "And if you say X-ray vision I am going to shoot myself."
He doesn't respond. It's obvious that the question makes him uncomfortable-he sits up straighter and shifts his weight from side to side. Apparently I am going to have to play a guessing game. "If Vlad is any indication, I would say that you have powers of persuasion."
"To an extent," he says cautiously.
"And you're stronger?"
"Yes."
"And you have heightened senses."
"Yes."
"And you sparkle in the sunlight."
His lips make the "yuh" shape, but then he does a double take. "What?"
"You, uh, sparkle?" I try again. When his bafflement fails to disappear, I begin to ramble. "I mean, now that I think about it, I've seen you in the sun and there doesn't seem to be any glitter action. But aren't you not supposed to go in the sun?" Someone really needs to step in and universalize vampire lore, pronto.
He continues to look at me as though I like to eat grass in my spare time. "Sunlight doesn't kill us, but it makes us weaker. So does using any of our gifts," he says, and the sarcasm is thick on the last word. "The more we use them the more we need to . . ."
"Need to what?" I prod.
"The more we need to drink," he says.
My stomach lurches. While I knew that vampirism was a blood-sucking operation, this is James. James. He likes red licorice and banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches. I know this because he used to steal them out of my lunch box all the time and replace them with pieces of paper that said, "James: 1, Sophie: 0."
I turn to study him in the moonlight. He has gone back to studying his shoes, but I can tell that he is watching me from the corner of his eyes. My mind is tossing up images of him bending over the ivory columns of exposed necks and snatching up rabbits in the woods. In these images he is dressed in a cape with red lining and a tailed tuxedo, not the T-shirt and jeans he's wearing now.
Unconsciously, my fingers creep up to my neck. The puncture wounds have scabbed over into two bumps that are hard and curved like tiny turtle shells. Perhaps I should be more worried than I am.
"Yes," James says darkly. "I do drink blood. But never yours. Never anyone alive's really. Too dangerous. And . . . you know. Wrong."
His voice startles me-I hadn't thought that I said anything out loud. I look at him, confused.
"Er, right. We can sort of read thoughts when we're close to someone. Sometimes. Occasionally. We have to be touching you if we want to go very deep. But it goes hand in hand with the mind-wiping thing that we should talk about."
I know that I should be like, "Yes! Mind wiping! Please explain at length and in detail!" but right now I just feel like seeing if I can stuff myself beneath my bed for the rest of eternity. I frantically try to think back to the times we've been "close" in the last week. There was that first night in his backyard, and then today in the lunchroom, and then-
"Now," James fills in helpfully.
I scoot sideways faster than anyone has ever scooted before, and I don't stop until my back is against my bedroom door and there's at least twelve feet between us.
"Oh, come on," he says, "I haven't picked up on anything embarrassing. Although it's nice to know that someone thinks my arms are pretty." His mouth starts to twitch. "Well, mine and Danny Baumann's."
Dear God. Danny Baumann was something that I had meant to take to my grave, unless that fantasy played out where we met at a twentieth high school reunion and he was blown away by my poise and reporting experience, and I got to spend a lifetime staring at him before we were buried side by side. Which would still mean taking him to my grave, actually. So yeah.
"This is not funny," I say when I can finally speak. "This is an invasion of privacy. Stop it."
"I would if I could," he says. "It just happens. They say that you learn to control it as you get older-the other vampires can-but so far it's been a year and it's still going strong." He rubs his eyes, suddenly weary. "I'm glad this came up, because we need to figure out what's going to happen on Monday. Vlad will be expecting you to know nothing about what happened today in the woods. If you show the slightest ounce of mistrust, he will become suspicious, and I can't predict what he'll do next. If you haven't noticed," he says wryly, "he's kind of a loose cannon."
"So what am I supposed to do? Not think?"
"No. But if the way you followed four hungry vampires into the woods is any indication, you weren't doing much of that this afternoon anyway."
I hold up a finger. "Okay. One, I didn't know they were vampires-I just thought they were part of some sort of weird cult thing. And two," I add, because number one doesn't sound all that smart in retrospect, "insults are not going to help me keep my neck intact. Seriously, what am I supposed to do?"
"There are things that make it harder for us to pick up anything."
"Like what?"
"I've noticed that if people are concentrating really hard on something, I don't hear anything. It's the stray thoughts that come through, the departures from regularly scheduled programming." He stops, a new emotion flickering across his face. "Are you really going to keep hiding in the corner?"
"Can you hear me over here?"
"Not really."
"Then yes," I say, and he frowns a little and looks away. I may not be able to read minds, but he's obviously hurt, and that makes me feel guilty. Especially considering that the reason he's here tonight, telling me all of this, is because he had to stop me from becoming Vlad's very special Pringle.
Knowing I'm going to regret this later, I scoot back across the room until there are only a few inches between our knees.
"Okay, let's practice. Try to tell what I'm thinking," I say, but he's already dropped his gaze to squint down at my legs.
"What are those? Dancing raisins?"
"Whales. And I would kind of like to focus on the tips and tricks to vampire mind defense right now, not my pajama decisions."
"Fair enough," he says and then leans forward, close enough that I can make out the green of his eyes. I'm suddenly distracted by his bottom lip, which really is very nicely shaped. And there's a freckle punctuating the corner of his mouth that I can't recall from our early years.
"That's because I doubt you ever looked at my mouth this closely when we were eight," he says.
I rear back. "I wasn't ready!"
"Sorry. It's not a one-two-three-go kind of situation."
I point behind him. "Argh. Just . . . go to that side of the room."
"What?"
"You say you have to be close to hear anything, and since I can see Vlad coming, I should at least have two or three seconds to start concentrating. So go over by the bookcase and then walk toward me." When he doesn't move, I add, "Any time now."
Reluctantly, he stands up and moves to the far wall, and I search for a topic. I could choose a subject like the weather or why I hate the word "pungent," but that's not going to prove that I can hide my thoughts when it really counts.
After I hop to my feet, he starts his re-approach. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the things that I would never ever want to say aloud.
James, the fact that your new hobby is drinking blood does not disturb me nearly as much as it should. Also, you have grown up to be quite cute.
When I open my eyes, his chin is in front of me. I look up to find him staring down at me with patient attention and something else that I can't quite define.
"It worked," he says after a few moments. "Nothing but fuzz."
"Really?"
"Yep. Complete blank. What were you thinking about?"
"Er, nothing important," I say, staring up at him. When did he get so tall?
"Sophomore year," he says and then winces. The brief courage that came from my previous success starts to crumble.
"How am I supposed to do this?" I ask.
"Avoid Vlad. Period."
"But I have English with him! I mean, he sits in the front and I sit in the back, but-"
"It should still be fine," he says, sounding about as reassuring as a doctor who's just dropped his keys in his patient's open heart cavity. "Like I said before, Vlad's old enough that he won't be picking things up unless he's actively trying. Just try not to let him get too close."
Realizing how close I am to James, I retreat to take a seat on the end of my bed. "What about Violet? She's in my English class too."
"Violet doesn't use her powers very often. It's draining, and she thinks blood drinking isn't very ladylike. Besides, she has enough problems in her own head to worry about anyone else's."
"Harsh words for your girlfriend."
"Ex-girlfriend," he corrects quickly. "If that."
"Nice."
James blinks in a way that would be cute if he were not being a dirtbag. "I don't understand why you're angry."