WE MADE IT TO LAX with lightning speed. My mind was still reeling from the visions of Talitha and Caleb that I’d seen the night before, not to mention the date between Clair and Ryan where I had been a psychic third wheel. But as soon as we arrived at the airport, I forgot about everything. My nerves were on edge and I replayed potential meetings in my head. Would Evie cry? Would I? Would she be afraid of me? Would she try to stake me through the heart? I sure hoped not.
The airport was busy. We parked and went into the domestic arrivals section, Ryan trailing behind me at my insistence. I didn’t want Evie to see him until I’d explained him to her properly. I don’t know why I cared what she thought about him. Maybe it was because he was all I really had to fall back on if she decided she didn’t like Vampire Me. Or maybe it was because I was a vampire like him, and I was linked to him through our bond, and I stupidly cared about him despite everything he had done.
I smelled cheap coffee and sweaty bodies as I got closer to the arrivals gate. Being a vampire, my senses were so much more acute, which wasn’t always pleasant. I tried to focus on finding Evie. I scanned the arrivals board, seeing that a flight from Newark had landed and baggage was available. I started towards the baggage carousels, hoping I would find Evie waiting for her suitcase there.
I was halfway there when somebody grabbed me from behind in a bear grip around my shoulders.
I stiffened, fighting against the grip immediately. It was a guy, and he was tall. I broke free and whirled around, expecting a vampire.
Oh my God. My jaw dropped in disbelief.
It was almost an anti–climax. The moment I’d been wishing for, the one I’d given up hope of ever seeing, was jammed in my face so quickly and violently, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I didn’t say anything, couldn’t form words. I just stared at him.
“Jared?” I said shakily.
I still loved him just as much as I always had, and that was a relief, to feel something so light and wonderful amidst the darkness that had all but engulfed me.
He grinned like an idiot, his sandy blonde hair all messed up and his deep, brown eyes tired and lined with black circles. “Hey, beautiful,” he said affectionately.
“H–hi,” I managed to croak back. “Hey, you.”
He launched himself onto me in a second giant bear hug, which I returned tightly. He tensed, and I loosened my grip instantly, remembering my newborn vampire strength could probably suffocate him. I hoped he hadn’t noticed. My throat got all tight and my eyes started leaking hot, wet tears that flowed faster as I felt his lips graze my forehead. I breathed him in, remembering all the other times I had held him like this. Under his olive skin, I could smell rich copper and chocolate pulsating through his veins—but it didn’t overwhelm me the way the others had warned me it would. For that, I was grateful.
We parted eventually, and I took the time to drink him in—from his mussed–up hair that he always left forever before getting a haircut; his almond–shaped eyes that turned from chestnut to ebony depending on what he was wearing; his smooth skin, broken by stubble; his broad swimming shoulders that had been a place for my head to lay many a summer’s night; but most of all, the feeling that he was here, and that it felt so right.
“Don’t cry, Blake.” I smiled as Jared gently wiped my cheeks with his thumb.
“I’m so happy to see you,” I breathed. “You have no idea how happy I am.”
Was I dreaming? I wasn’t, thankfully. But less than two minutes after Jared’s arrival, dread was already settling into my bones like an old friend. The others had warned me about relationships with humans—and although I didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to feed from Jared, I could still smell the rich coffee and spice scent of blood through his thin flesh, could still hear the steady thrum of his heart beating inside his chest. Pretty soon I felt myself drawn to him, wanting what was inside of him—I wanted all of him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, painfully swallowing my thirst.
“Surprising you,” Jared replied with a smile. Oh God, I could have melted hearing his voice after so long. I spotted Ryan ten feet away, watching everything with guarded concern. His presence suddenly brought everything crashing down inside of me. I wished he hadn’t come. How was I going to explain him to Jared?
“I just got a text from Evie,” Jared said. “She’s running late, said we should wait in the car for her.”
Evie. Of course. I had forgotten all about her.
I gulped. “In the car?” With Ryan?
He nodded.
“I caught a cab here,” I lied, knowing that Ryan could hear me.
You are not coming with us, I told Ryan through our bond. You can follow behind in your car, but you are NOT chaperoning me home.
I glanced over to see him scanning the airport.
Jesus, Blake, he replied, mimicking Jared’s nickname for me. Catch a cab. Catch a flying saucer. I’ll drive at a respectable distance.
I was so relieved at his cooperation, I didn’t berate him for calling me Blake again. Nobody called me that except my friends, and I was sick of him pretending he was one of them.
“That’s cool,” Jared was saying. He dangled a set of keys in front of me and it took me a minute to realize they were the keys for my car. My Honda Element, the one I’d been walking towards when I was taken by the vampires.
“You drove here?” I asked incredulously. “From New Jersey?”
Jared nodded. “ I knew you’d be missing your wheels. There’s some weird little towns between here and there.”
“I have no doubt,” I replied. “So you drove all this way just to bring me my car?”
“And to see you,” he replied, swooping in for another leg–tingling kiss that flooded me with warmth.
“Come on,” he said, taking me by the hand. “Your chariot awaits.”
In the car, my car, I realized I wasn’t just frightened by the prospect of Caleb turning up at the airport—I was genuinely nervous to be around Jared. I could feel myself turning inwards, shy and shameful of the secret that coursed through my veins, the secret that separated us from now on. Or did it? Why did it have to spell the end for us? It didn’t seem fair; nothing about the last month of my life had been fair.
“So, whatcha been up to? You must have done something other than run and miss me.” Jared looked exhausted.
The air was humid, and I could practically feel the positive charge in the approaching storm. Lightning cracked in the distance and I had a horrible flash of falling, of the way my face smashed into the ground two stories below, of the way I pleaded with Ryan not to inject his vampire blood into my veins. My happiness at seeing Jared was instantly engulfed by the abyss of sorrow inside me. I had died. While he was surfing and swimming and missing me, I had died. And now I was something else—someone else—entirely.
“I’ve had the worst flu,” I lied, slouching back in my seat. It was eighty odd degrees outside, but I wrapped my hands in my sweater sleeves and tried not to cry. “I’ve been watching a lot of HBO, actually. I’m a lame tourist.”
“Well, at least you have plenty of time to find your feet. You’re here for the long haul, right?”
“Right,” I answered uneasily. Because I wasn’t going home to put my family and friends in danger.
Jared looked pensive. “Are you…okay?” he asked after a few moments.
“I’m—fine,” I stumbled. “Why? Do I not seem okay?”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “You just seem … different. Your voice—you don’t sound like you. You look sad or something.”
I felt my face fall, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. He was probably planning to stay for the weekend. How was I going to keep it together when I couldn’t even look at him for ten seconds without wanting to scream about how fucking unfair my life was?
“I just really miss you,” I said honestly. “I miss everyone. I miss home. I’m lonely sometimes. This isn’t what I thought it would be like, you know? And I’m so glad you’re here right now—but I’m already missing you because I know you probably have to leave on Sunday.”
I looked away from him then, embarrassed at my vulnerability, my nakedness.
“Mia,” he said gently, taking both of my clammy hands and squeezing them affectionately. “I miss you already. You’re all I think about. All I want to do is quit Ithaca and live illegally in your dorm room.”
That made me laugh.
“But,” he continued, “it’s only a few years and we can be together all the time. Wherever you want. We’ll get awesome jobs and live on the beach somewhere. It’ll be epic.” He rolled his eyes, making a sweeping gesture with one hand as he said the last word. I had a bad habit of describing everything as epic, and he always teased me for it.
“It just seems like forever,” I said lamely, my voice cracking under the strain of my secret burden. Forever.
“Give it time,” he replied, kissing my forehead, long and lingering. “If you’re still not happy next semester—but you will be—then come home. You can live illegally in my dorm room.”
Laughter died inside my throat and I gasped as a face appeared in my window. I jumped, shrinking back in horror. We’d been followed. It had to be Caleb. And now poor Jared was going to be dragged into the whole sorry–assed affair that had become my life as a vampire.
We were so screwed.
I let my breath out in a whoosh as Evie smiled through the glass back at me. I unlocked my door and got out, wrapping Evie in a bear hug whilst carefully not smooshing her to death. “You scared the shit out of me!” I said happily, relief slamming into me like a freight train. All the nervous adrenalin circling my body had nowhere to go, and I let out another excited squeal as I released my hug and stepped back to study my best friend.
I don’t know how I knew that something was up, but I just knew. Call it my vamp sense, but I felt the smile slip from my face as Evie regarded me with concern.
“I’ll go pay the ticket,” Jared called as he got out of the car and started walking towards a lit up pay station about fifty yards away.
“Okay,” I said. I turned back to Evie and swallowed nervously. I had no words. I felt utterly exposed. I may as well have had VAMPIRE written across my forehead in a poor college boy’s blood.
Moments passed.
“I thought you were dead,” she said finally, in a tight voice that betrayed her fear.
“Why are you afraid?” I asked desperately. “Evie, it’s me!”
“Do you know what I am?” she asked me quietly, nervously scanning the parking lot. I glanced over to see Jared having problems with the pay station. From a hundred yards away, I could hear the coins being spat back out of the slot and an automated voice notifying him to go to the next station to pay.
“You’re a girl from Jersey,” I answered stupidly, hopping from one foot to another. Why was she looking at me like that?
“I’m a witch, Mia,” she said, her voice still razor–like. “I know what you are. You’re different now.”
I sagged against the car, looking at the ground as tears welled up in my eyes. “Okay. So what am I?”
She didn’t want to say it. Her face softened, and she started to cry as well. “I’m sorry I left you alone in the parking lot, Mia. I could feel those vampires—I was trying to draw them away from you. I thought they wanted me. I had no idea it was you they were after.”
I gasped in horrified disbelief at what she was saying. That she had known Ryan and the others were there before me. That maybe if we had carpooled that night, none of this would have happened. “You knew they were there?”
She nodded ruefully. “A vamp followed me all the way home. I didn’t realize until the next day when you wouldn’t pick up my calls that—that they had taken you. I’ve been looking for you ever since, but someone’s put a spell on you that makes you impossible to track down.”
Ivy’s spell, to protect me from Caleb’s trackers, must have also kept Evie from locating me. Ryan silently confirmed this through the bond, irritating me. He just couldn’t stay out of my head for five minutes, and it was driving me insane.
I glanced over at Jared again, who was still struggling at the second pay station, when a thought suddenly occurred to me.
“You’re not doing that,” I said quietly. “Are you?”
Evie looked over at Jared, and suddenly he was walking back towards us, looking a little frustrated. “I had to get you alone somehow,” she replied. “I broke his car so my flight would get here before he did. I didn’t know he was bringing your car.”
“Why did you come here?” I asked suddenly, desperate to know more before Jared joined us.
“I missed my bestie,” Evie replied cagily. “Besides, I couldn’t let you eat your boyfriend by accident, could I?”
“I’m glad you came,” I said honestly, ignoring the part about eating Jared. “I’ve missed you so much, Evie. So much has happened. So much crazy shit has happened.”
Jared was almost at the car.
“Why didn’t you just call me sooner, Mia?” Evie asked, the hurt obvious on her face. “I could have helped you. I could have been here with you. You didn’t have to go through this by yourself.”
I shrugged, pain settling in at my temples. Yeah, why hadn’t I just called her, or someone, anyone?
Because I was scared, that’s why.
“They told me not to. They said I’d be putting you in danger if I contacted you. The vampire who took me—he’s still looking for me.”
Evie looked confused, but the moment was lost as Jared handed me the validated parking ticket and grabbed Evie’s suitcase, lugging it around to the back of the car and opening the tail.
“Later,” she said to me, her voice lighter. “We’ll talk, you and me. About everything.”