Call of the Vampire (19 page)

At exactly nine, Jessie came drifting out of the sky like a puff from a dandelion gone to seed, his long coat billowing around him. He landed on the edge of the roof with the velvet paws of a panther, then turned and strode toward me.

“Good evening, Aurora.” He smiled as he seated himself near the window, his eyes twinkling. With his next breath, he noted, “You’ve changed your hair.” He reached out and lightly touched a few strands with hesitant fingers.

I felt my face flush with pleasure. All of my reservations melted away. “Just trying something new.”

“How are you?” he asked, looking deep into my eyes. “After I left you last night, I began to worry that you might have a concussion. I couldn’t sleep thinking about it.”

“Do vampires sleep?” I asked. “I mean, the same as you did when you were human?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “We close our eyes; we lie very still; we turn off our minds; but it’s more like being unconscious than it is being asleep. We don’t get to dream.”

“Oh.” I looked down at the dream journal I had in my lap. “I have a lot of dreams. Some of them pretty vivid,” I told him. “And...” it felt awful pushing forward, but I had to, “they’ve gotten much more intense ever since I met you. Like, weirdly intense.”

I knew I sounded like an idiot, but he didn’t make fun of me. He just nodded and said, “Okay.”

Pushing forward, I extended my journal out the window and said, “This is my dream journal. My dreams have become so strange lately that I started keeping it by my bed so I can write things down while they’re still fresh in my brain.” He kept looking at me very intensely, so I kept talking. “I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or what, but I think you’d better take a look. I really need your opinion.” I extended the notebook out the window, and he accepted it.

After opening the journal and reading a few lines, Jessie said, “Your penmanship is quite good. Very legible. We get mail at the castle all the time that I can’t distinguish from chicken scratchings.”

“Who sends mail to the castle?” I asked, not revealing the gossip I’d heard at the post office.

Jessie blinked a few times. I could tell he wasn’t expecting my question. “Mostly crazy people who should know better,” he mumbled. He went immediately back to reading, so I didn’t push it. I wanted to focus on figuring out my dreams, not teasing him about his vampire fan club.

When he’d finished reading the entry of my first frightening dream, the first time I was running through the woods, he stopped. Lowering the journal, he said to me in a very serious voice, “Aurora, I want to believe you, but you have to be honest with me, did you write this before or after I told you about Lettie?”

I reached out of the window and squeezed his hand. It trembled slightly beneath my touch. “It’s all dated. I dreamed things when I dreamed them.”

“But,” he struggled to find words that made sense. “That...” he tried again, running his free hand through his hair repeatedly. “This... these are memories. Some of them, at least. These seem like Colette’s memories.”

“I know. And believe me, it’s been freaking me out, too,” I assured him. “After you left that night, when you told me about Lettie, I started putting it all together. I was going to tell you right away, but then you stopped seeing me, and I just assumed you were blowing me off. Then there was the whole Viktor thing, so I didn’t have a chance to tell you until now.”

“This is unbelievable,” he marveled, looking at my words and shaking his head slowly back and forth. “It’s just... it’s unbelievable.”

“I know,” I agreed. “But if you’d told me a few weeks ago that vampires existed, I would have said that was unbelievable, too.”

Jessie was suddenly clutching my hand in both of his. “Is it you, then? I mean, do you feel like Colette? Do you feel like... I don’t know, like somehow you used to be her?”

“Not really.” I could tell from his expression that he was disappointed, but I had to be honest. “But my grandmother told me that when I was a child, I used to pester her constantly about the castle. And then, when I saw you for the first time, in the library, I felt something. Something very strong. I mean, you’re gorgeous so there’s that, but this was different. I did really feel connected to you. Still, though,” I babbled, “I mean, people claim they feel connected to another person all the time. That’s why they came up with that whole soul mates thing, right?”

He nodded. “I guess.”

“But you have to keep reading,” I told him. I took the notebook and opened it to my dream about the inverted eye. “You remember the night you gave me this?” I indicated the Pools of Light pendant hanging around my neck, “and how I reacted after you had me look into it. Look through it into your eyes, I mean. Well, the night before, I dreamed this.” I tapped at the notebook.

Jessie bent his head and quickly read the page. “No wonder you reacted so strangely,” he said when he was finished. “I was wondering about that.”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about it, too,” I admitted. “I mean, you were never outside in the sunshine with Lettie, obviously, but what about the pendant? Was it hers? Or maybe you were planning on giving it to her?”

“No.” He shook his head. “She would have loved it, but I actually chose it especially for you.”

That little nugget of information was very gratifying, but it didn’t explain my dream any better. I unfastened the chain and dangled the bauble off my fingertips. The crystal became infused with moonlight, glowing and swaying gently in my hand. We both sat, staring at the orb, trying to ponder out its mysteries. After a few minutes, I observed, “It’s going to be a full moon soon. Almost time for the gloaming.”

“The what?” Jessie asked, his eyebrows narrowing in confusion.

“You know.” I felt suddenly silly, like I believed in old wives’ tales. “The gloaming.” He continued to give me a blank look, so I added, “Oh, come on. You must have heard of it. You’ve lived here forever. It’s that weird weather thing we get around here every fall.”

“Weird weather thing?”

“You know.” I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. “That weird howling noise that happens for a couple of nights this time of year. It’s a weather anomaly; that’s what everybody always says. It just sounds like someone is wailing for a night or two, and then it goes away. You know what I mean.”

Jessie closed his eyes as if trying to process some unpleasant news. “Yeah, I know what you mean. There’s a name for it?”

“Sure,” I shrugged. “Why shouldn’t there be?”

He ran his hand through his hair a few times. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.” He turned his attention back to the notebook. “Any other dreams I should know about?”

I felt a wave of panic. “No,” I said quickly, yanking my journal out of his hands and tossing it across the room onto my bed. I’d decided I really didn’t want him to see my latest entry.

Jessie stared at me for a second. “I should go,” he said, abruptly getting to his feet.

“Why?” I glanced over at my clock. It was just a few minutes past ten. “It’s not even that late.”

“Because there’s obviously an entry you’re not sure if you want to show me, and I’m trying to give you time to think about it.”

“No, I...” My brain had no excuse at the ready. He saw through me. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll show it to you, even though you’re not going to like it.”

I retrieved my journal from the bed, opened it to my entry from the previous night, and handed it to him. “Thank you,” he murmured, his eyes immediately falling to the words. I felt myself trembling but not with fear. Or to be clear, not fear for my well being. I was desperately worried though that the pages I’d written would hurt him, hurt him deeply. I fought the urge to grab the journal out of his hands and tear the paper to shreds.

When he was finished, Jessie closed the journal and handed it back to me. He was silent, so I stayed silent, giving him time.

“You think I might have killed Colette,” he said, not as a question, just as a statement.

“No.” I shook my head. “That’s impossible. I know how much you loved her. I know how much you still love her.”

“But your dream made you doubt me.”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to insist that I never doubted him. And in my heart, I didn’t. But in my head, I knew there was a chance that he had sucked the life from the person he loved most on the planet, and that was why her loss tormented him so much. Looking at him, being in his presence, I couldn’t believe it to be true. But when I was alone, I had to admit that a small part of me doubted. I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I hung my head, letting my tears fall onto the window sill.

Glancing up, I saw that he was gone.

Monday morning, I was in a daze. I just wanted to fold in on myself and get through the day, but people kept greeting me eagerly, kept smiling at me in the hallway. One kid even tried to get me to high five him, which I refused. He shouted, “Don’t leave me hanging,” but I don’t enjoy high fiving even under the best of circumstances.

I was grateful to see Blossom waiting for me at my locker. “What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice. “People are being extra weird.”

“Oh,” she snortled. “That was me. There was a rumor going around that you were a narc or something because you were looking for the cops at the Tib, so I started a rumor that you were actually trying to lead the cops in the wrong direction so everyone else could get away.”

Opening my locker, I stuffed in and pulled out assorted books, as needed. Blossom’s behavior had me mystified. “Why did you do that?”

She gave me an incredulous look. “I figured you’d rather be a hero than a narc. Although it really is pathetic how easily people will believe anything you tell them at this school.”

Someone walked up to us, on the other side of my locker from where Blossom was standing. I could tell by the expression on her face that it was a boy that she considered noteworthy. “See you at lunch,” she said, while simultaneously turning and walking away.

“Hi,” Fred said as I slammed my locker shut.

“Oh. Hi, Fred,” I replied, organizing my books in my arms.

“Are you doing your hair different?” he tilted his head slightly and gave me a little smile.

“Um, yeah.” I fought the urge to touch my hair.

“I heard what you did at the Tib. That was really cool of you.”

“Yeah, well... I wasn’t drinking so I figured... you know.” I started heading toward homeroom.

“You were drinking,” he said, keeping pace with me. “I gave you two beers. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah...” I’d forgotten about that. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing that there weren’t any cops. I’d be grounded for life.”

I kept walking, and Fred kept dogging my heels. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked.

“This weekend?” I was a little dumbfounded. Why did he want to know about my weekend? “I don’t know. It’s Monday. Way too early to start thinking about the weekend.” With that, I sailed into homeroom, leaving Fred in the hall.

Fred was tall, good looking, reasonably nice, and not the biggest lunkhead on the planet. He was the kind of guy I should have been pining for in high school. Instead, I was blowing him off because I was hung up on a vampire. I really needed my head examined.

I was so grateful I’d agreed to fill in a shift at Cup of Joe’s after school. It was something to keep me occupied. I’d already finished all my homework during my free period and worked on some extra credit.

At nine o’clock, I opened my bedroom window, wondering if I would ever see Jessie again, but he was already there, at the edge of the porch roof, with his legs dangling over the side. “Hello,” I said in a hushed voice, and he turned in his seat to look at me. “I’m really glad to see you. I hope you’re not still upset about yesterday.”

Jessie came closer and settled himself near the window. “Not upset, exactly, but our conversation did force me to do a lot of thinking.”

That didn’t sound good. I waited for him to go on.

“There’s obviously some kind of connection between you and Colette Gibson.” He ran his hand through his hair a few times. “I don’t know what it is, and I know you don’t feel like her reincarnation or anything, but you can’t deny that you have some of her memories. At least in your dreams.”

I nodded. He hadn’t made an open admission that he’d killed my aunt, but his statement did send a shiver down my spine.

Jessie sighed. “This is so hard. And especially now, this time of year.”

“Why now?” I asked.

“This is the time of year when Colette disappeared,” he said in a faint voice.

“You mean the day she disappeared?” I asked. “We’re coming up on the anniversary? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes and no. I mean... Not exactly. I always think of it as a feeling in the air rather than an exact date. There has to be a full moon. That’s one of the things I always remember about that night. That orange hunter’s moon hanging in the sky...” He became lost in his memories and stopped speaking for a moment.

“The point is,” Jessie said, coming back to the present, “that you are very much like Colette, but also very much your own person. And,” he sighed again, “I have to admit I think of you more than I should.”

My heart started beating again at a very rapid rate. “I think of you, too. All the time,” I admitted.

He looked deep in my eyes. “Do you?” he asked, his eyebrows lifting high on his forehead.

The yearning deep inside me was so strong it was painful. All I could do was nod.

“Thank you for telling me. That means a lot to me. That will help. That really will help.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I need to ask you to do something for me, and it’s going to be very hard,” he said, his handsome face grave and inscrutable.

My heart was hammering wildly in my chest. “What?” I asked. I knew I was being stupid. He was a vampire. He could very well ask for my blood, for my life. But that didn’t stop me from adding, “I would do anything for you.”

Jessie turned his eyes away from me, running his hand quickly through his hair again. And then, drawing in a deep breath, he said, “I need you to try to forget me.”