Vampire Crush(35)

"I need your answer now," he snaps. "Your sister has been sending me letters, endless letters asking me to tell her what went wrong in our relationship."

"A week," I say quickly. "Give me a week."

He hesitates. Footsteps reverberate up the wooden porch steps.

"A week," I insist.

"Agreed," he says. "Now, quick, point me to the back entrance. She cannot find me here. I have told her we are different people a thousand times."

"A week without you coming to see me," I clarify as we hear the jingle of keys in the lock.

"Fine!" he yells. "Where is the exit?"

I point to the room behind me. And then with a whoosh and the sound of a chair toppling in the dining room, he's finally out of my house.

When Caroline bangs into the foyer, she's clutching a twelve-pack of diet root beer. "Why is there a silver Hummer parked on the street?" she says excitedly, ripping the iPod buds out of her ears. "Seriously, what is wrong with you? You're standing in the middle of the room like you're cataclysmic or something."

"I just woke up," I say, but it sounds hollow even to me.

"Right, okay, whatever," Caroline says, looking around the room. "Is Vlad here?"

The eagerness in her voice is only a hard-edged reminder of what I am dealing with, how hard it will be to keep everyone safe. "Why would Vlad be here?" I say as casually as I can.

"I thought maybe he had gotten my note and-"

"He's not here, Caroline."

"Oh," she says, her hope visibly deflating. "Anyway, warning-Mom was out jogging this morning, and she swears that she saw a boy who looked like James Hallowell going next door. I tried to tell her she was crazy, but I'm pretty sure she suspects. If I were you, I'd pretend you don't know anything."

Joy bursts through the catatonia, and I grab Caroline by the shoulders. "James? James is next door?"

"Good. Act exactly like that!" she calls out behind me as I run out the back door and across the yard.

                       
       
           



       Chapter Fifteen

I bang on James's back door, and then, when that fails to make it open, kick it at the same time. It's no longer a knock, it's a cacophony, and I keep it up until the door finally swings inward.

"What-," James begins, but he stops when I hug him like someone they just let out of the asylum for hugging maniacs, but only because they were facing overcrowding.

"You're alive," I say into his neck.

"I think you're strangling me."

"You don't breathe."

"Good point." After a moment's hesitation, he wraps his arms around my back and slips his thumbs into the belt loops at my waist. It feels familiar and intimate and I like it. I allow myself a few moments to bask in this joy before I have to face the new situation with Vlad.

James pulls back and frowns. "What situation with-," he starts to ask, but I punch him on the shoulder.

"Why didn't you let me know that you were fine?"

"I tried!"

"When?"

"I threw rocks at your window as soon as we made it back."

"We?" I ask just as I spot Violet in the room behind, dwarfed by an oversized T-shirt and gray sweatpants that are rolled up at the cuffs to expose their fuzzy underbelly. Her hair is still pulled back, but a few loose tendrils curl around her ears. A floral sheet is draped over the end of the banister.

"Marisabel's here too," James says quickly.

"And that makes this . . . better?"

His eyes widen. "No! I mean, Marisabel and Neville." He runs a hand through his hair. "I probably should have said him first."

"You didn't tell me you were having a slumber party," I say, but Violet bounces over before he can respond.

"Oh no, it is nothing as fun as that," she says. "Vlad kicked us out and ruined the dress I made."

"Vlad tried to kill us, Violet," he says.

"Well, yes, that too. Come on-we are discussing our next step in the salon," she says, grabbing my hand and dragging me behind her.

James has added a few things to the living room since I first peeked through the window that first day of school, most of which I've seen gracing the neighborhood curbs this past month: an orange-and-brown plaid couch that could only have come from the seventies, a small television that still has a VHS slot, and an uneven coffee table that's only standing because there's a thick copy of The Wall Street Journal beneath one leg. What do you know-a vampire really did steal my dad's paper.

I take a seat beside a despondent-looking Marisabel. She's alternating between staring into space and idly trying to pick out the tangles at her shoulders.

"What were we talking about?" James says, suddenly sounding very weary.

"I would like the largest room," Marisabel says. "Violet claims that she should have it because there are purple curtains, but I saw it first."

"You did not," Violet says. "And I still do not see why you do not want the bedroom with the green paper, because it matches your eyes."

They both look at James, who is rubbing his own eyes in frustration. "I told you both that I don't care who has the master bedroom; you're not going to be sleeping in it anyway. And this is just temporary until you find out where to go."

Marisabel's face crumples. "But I don't have anywhere to go!"

Violet shoots him a dirty look before moving to pat Marisabel's knee. "You can be very insensitive at times," she tells James. "Do you know about this aspect of yourself?"

Before James can defend himself, Neville stands. He's been sitting against the wall looking guilty, but now his face looks determined. "James may be insensitive, but he is right. Now is not the time for discussing bedroom arrangements. We barely managed to escape with our lives last night, and I for one do not believe that the danger has passed. He might very well be coming for us, and we need to be ready; we need to be prepared; we need to be at full streng. . . " He trails off when he sees that I've raised my hand. "Yes? Sophie?"

"I don't think you're Vlad's number-one concern," I begin, but then catch sight of Marisabel's face. Ever since we stopped talking about bedrooms, she's done nothing but sniffle. The fact that Vlad has proposed to someone else a day after they ended a sixty-year relationship and tried to kill her might be the final stake to the heart. While Violet continues to pat her consolingly, I look at James and Neville. "Can we talk somewhere else?"

"We can go to my room," James says, his face worried. "Just to be safe."

As we wind past the dining room on our way upstairs, I notice that the wild floral wallpaper hasn't changed-the last time I stood in that room was when we said adios to the Hallowells over chips and dip. Marcie made a heartfelt toast while I stood in a corner and tried to blend into the jungle of mauve flowers, hoping no one-especially James-noticed how miserable it was making me. But everything else is different. The hallways are eggshell blue instead of the old hunter green, and the stairs beneath my feet have been varnished to a different woody hue.

"Even my baseball wallpaper is gone," James says when we've reached his room. I study the place where I spent hours trying to beat him at all of his video games. Back then the floor was always littered with sports cards and electronic wires, but now there's nothing but dust. It used to be crammed with bookshelves, but now the only piece of furniture is a full-size bed covered with a navy blue spread. Unlike everything else in the house, it looks new.

"Sophie, what happened?" James asks.

As I take a seat on the bed next to Neville, I search for words that will make it sound less insane, but then realize that they don't exist. So I calmly explain the facts about the particularly demented way that Vlad has decided to proceed. The reactions are as expected.

"Ha-ha," James says flatly. "No, seriously."

"Seriously," I say. "He shoved his way into my house this morning to backhandedly propose."

"But why-"

"He thinks it will make him Mervaux," I say and then look to where Neville has put his head in his hands. "Will it?"

"If you were who he thought you were, I suppose," Neville says. "Oh, I should never have encouraged his delusions."

I'm thinking that that may actually be the understatement of the year, when James clears his throat.

"Uh . . . did you tell him no?" he asks.

I give him the death look to end all death looks. "Yes, James, I told him no, but for some reason he wouldn't accept ‘Thanks, but no thanks.' I finally got him to agree to give me a week to think things over, but who knows if he'll stick to that." I turn to Neville. "What exactly happens at a vampire marriage?"

"The usual. You exchange blood before witnesses who will testify to the courts that it was done properly."

Right. Totally the usual.

"But he can't marry you unless you are a vampire," Neville says. "Human-vampire marriages are forbidden."

This gives me a tiny smidgeon of hope. "Violet said that you cannot make someone a vampire unless they agree."