Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (18 page)

She shook her head.

“Hmm. I don't know anything about them, either, other than that a friend of mine thinks Tesla is one. Guess I'll have to ask him just what one is.”

Panna chatted for a little longer, then waved when a girl a little older than me called for her. “That's my sister, Jolan. She's coming to the Faire tonight, but says I can't because I'm too young. I don't think I'm too young, do you?”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Um . . .” I thought of the piercing tent, the dungeon room, the people crammed together dancing under the influence of the glamour. I might be only sixteen, but I sure felt a gazillion years older than her. “You know, it might be better if you waited until we come back next year.”

She made a little pout, but didn't have time to argue. Instead she pressed a slip of paper into my hand. “It is my address. You will write to me. I like to have a pen pal with you.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “I'll let you know how Tesla's doing, okay?”

“Okay,” she said; then her eyes filled with tears (again) and she hugged Tesla, hugged me, and ran off wiping her eyes.

I spent the next hour grooming Tesla, ate a quick dinner with Mom, Peter, Soren, and Imogen, then changed into my Gypsy wear for the evening. Imogen said I looked very mysterious in the skirt and blouse, and that people who had me read their palms would be more inclined to believe me if I looked the part.

“That's stupid,” I groused as I accepted the book on palmistry that she'd forced on me. “I could do an absolutely perfect reading wearing my jammies and bathrobe as long I was touching them, but no one will believe me unless I look like Esmeralda the Gypsy Vixen?”

“Not Esmeralda,” Imogen said as she tipped her head and eyed me when I presented my Gypsy-clad self to her for inspection. “Francesca the enigmatic. With your lovely dark hair and eyes, you very much look the part. The customers will adore you.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, not believing a word. I glanced toward the windows. The sun was going down, the sky streaked with the familiar peach and orange and brilliant red. “So . . . um . . . when does Ben get up?”

She smiled a “you like my brother, don't you?” smile at me. “If we closed the blinds, he could come out of the bedroom now. Would you like me to see if he's awake?”

“Naw,” I said. “It's not important. Maybe I'll see him later.”

“Don't forget the book!”

I made a face but grabbed it, waving as I toddled out the door. Mom wanted to introduce me to some of her Wiccan friends, so I made a brief appearance in our trailer, where everyone was gathered for precircle munchies. Mom held circles about once a month and often on the last night we were in a town, when she knew there would be a lot of witches to form a circle powerful enough to have an effect.

Okay, word to those of you who are at this very moment freaking out—just like everything else in this world, there are good witches and bad ones. Some call themselves Wiccans; some call themselves priestesses of the Goddess. They're all basically the same—witches. My mother, of course, practiced good magic—earth magic, they call it. Pagans are very big on that sort of thing. When she and her fellow witches/ Wiccans/ whatever get together, they hold circles to practice their magic. A witch by herself can do limited magic, but a circle . . . Well, let me just say that you don't ever want to go up against a circle if you've done something bad. There was a guy in Oregon, one of those religious-rights guys who thought all witches were bad and should be put in jail (or worse), who started physically attacking local witches. Mom and her gang formed a circle and took care of him pretty quickly.

I heard he still walks backward, seven months later.

So I did the meet-and-greet thing, smiled at all the Hungarian witches, and took myself off before they all wanted to start doing blessings on me (Mom's group is very big on blessings). As I was leaving, one of the witches—an older woman with tiny gray curls and really big, chunky jewelry—suddenly tensed and sniffed the air just like one of those hunting dogs does when it sees a bird.

She rattled off something to Mom, who looked confused. Mom's friend Zizi, who'd come in from Germany, translated for her. “She says she smells something foul.”

“That would be Davide. He gets gas when he eats too much fish,” I said.

Davide shot me a look that would have killed a normal person.

Everyone else ignored my little joke. The big jewelry woman said something else. Zizi's eyes got big as everyone in the trailer fell silent. “Bella says what she smells is unclean.”

Unclean? I don't think she was talking about someone missing their morning shower. I glanced at Mom. She was looking very worried. “Unclean how, Zizi? Unclean as in impure, or unclean as in”—Mom waved her hand around—“damned?”

Bella made a show of sniffing the air again.
“Kárhozott,”
she said.

Everyone gasped.

“Damned,” Zizi whispered.

“Erp,” I said. And meant it.

 

“What are you doing?”

I stopped sniffing the air and turned. Ben was leaning against one of the posts holding the main tent up. “Trying to find something damned. You look gorgeous, as usual. You've probably never have a bad hair day in your whole life, have you? I bet you've never even had pimples. You're too handsome for pimples; they're probably afraid to come near you.”

One ebony eyebrow zoomed upward. “Thank you. I think. You look . . . nice.”

I crossed my arms. I looked as good as I was going to get, and we both knew it. “Nice? Just nice? I was lovely the other night.”

“Yes, you were, but then I'd never seen you in ‘girl stuff' before, and now I have.”

My nostrils—of their own accord, I'll have you know—flared in anger. “Well, too bad, so sad; this is it as far as my girl stuff goes.”

He smiled one of his wicked smiles, the one that makes me forget that I don't want a boyfriend, especially one who thinks of relationships in terms of centuries. “I have something for you.”

I looked at what he held out to me. “That's a ring.”

“It is.”

“It's pretty.”

“I like it. I hope you will, too.”

I took a step forward and peered into his hand. “What kind of a stone is that?”

“A ruby.”

“Oh. Those are kind of expensive, aren't they?”

His hand never wavered. The ring sitting on his palm glowed a warm red at me. The stone was set into a dark gold band, words in a fancy script wrapping around it.

“That's the same as the tattoo you have.”

“Yes, it is. Are you going to take it?”

I kept my arms crossed and considered him. “That depends. It looks old. Did it belong to someone else?”

“Yes. My mother. I want you to have it, Fran. The ring won't give you any pain, I promise you.”

Of its own volition, my hand reached out to take it. It was heavy and warm, a soothing warmth. A woman's face flashed before my eyes, her hair dark like Ben's, a laughing woman, a happy woman. “Your mother was pretty.”

“I thought she was.”

I kept my eyes on his, the ring pulsing with remembered life in my hand. “She loved your father very much.”

He said nothing, just watched me.

“But she died. I thought Moravians were immortal?”

“They are. My mother wasn't a Moravian.”

I glanced down at the ring. I liked it. It was nice. He was right: touching it didn't bring me any pain. “She wasn't your father's Beloved?”

“If she was, I wouldn't be what I am.”

“Huh?”

He stepped forward, taking the ring from my left hand, sliding it over my thumb, then over my forefinger, then over my middle finger, where he left it. The ring grew warmer for a second, then tightened around my finger until it fit securely. “
Now
you look lovely. Dark Ones who find their Beloveds are redeemed. Their sons aren't born bearing the sin of their fathers.”

“Oh, I see. But your mom loved your dad. How could she do that if she wasn't his Beloved?”

A flash of pain darkened his eyes for a second. “I couldn't tell you why; I know only what was. She loved him. And she was happy with him. She would want you to have this ring.”

I looked down at my hand where the ring sat. It felt right, like it was meant to be there. “This doesn't mean we're engaged or anything, right? That weird finger thing you just did isn't some strange Moravian ceremony, is it? 'Cause if it is, I can't keep it.”

“No, it doesn't mean we're engaged.”

You'll notice he didn't answer my second question. I noticed, too. “It doesn't mean we're dating?”

“Nor dating.”

“A friendship ring, that's all it is, right?”

He tucked my hair behind my ear. I decided not to push the point. He leaned forward, just a smidge, just a tiny little lean forward.

“Are you going to kiss me?” I asked, unable to keep my mouth from blurting out everything I thought.

“Do you want me to?” he asked, his breath fanning my face.

My inner Fran started turning cartwheels of joy. I told her to take a Valium and call me in the morning. “Yes. No. I'm not sure. What was the question?”

He leaned forward another smidge. Inner Fran threw a party, complete with balloon animals and ice-cream sundaes.

His lips were warm and soft on mine, teasing me, begging me to accept them, to caress them, to yield to their seductive heat. He kissed me until my head started to swim; then when he was done kissing me, he held me up while I tried to get my legs to support me.

“Boy, you sure can learn a lot about kissing in three hundred and twelve years,” I said once I got my breath back.

He smiled. It was one of those smug male smiles, but I let him get away with it. Any guy who kissed like he did deserved to be a little bit smug.

“What happens to your fangs?” I asked. “Oh, geez, I didn't say that out loud, did I?”

His lips quirked. “Yes, you did.”

“I'm sorry. I'm an idiot today. You'll have to forgive me; I'm not normally such a boob.” I glanced up at him. “Um. What does happen to them?”

“What happens to them when?”

“You know, when you're not using them. Do they fold back like a snake's? Do they pop up into your gums? Do they grow when you need them?”

“Does it really matter?”

“No, I suppose not. I just kind of wondered.”

“When I need them, they're there. Does that answer your question?”

“Not really, no, but I suppose it would be rude to push it, huh?”

His look said it would. “I have a question for you: what were you trying to accomplish last night?”

“In the crowd, you mean?” He nodded. I took a couple of steps away, just because inner Fran gets all swoony when she is too close to him. “Ah. I kind of figured you'd ask about that. You got a few minutes?”

“As many as you need.”

I told him about the deal I had made with my mother and Absinthe. I didn't, however, explicitly tell him I was thief hunting in the main tent. I decided that if he couldn't lie to me, it wasn't nice of me to lie to him. So I just
implied
that I was thief hunting.

Unfortunately, Ben wasn't stupid. “You were looking for the thief when you returned to the main tent last night?”

I tried on his silence policy to see how it felt.

“Fran, what were you doing in the main tent last night?”

Guess I didn't do it quite right. I gave a little sigh. “I think the thief and person who wants to kill you are the same person. I was looking for him. Or her. Whichever.”

His eyes went absolutely black—not a shiny black like when he kisses me, but a majorly annoyed, ticked-off, so-black-no-light-escaped-from-them black. “You were trying to find the person who wants me dead.”

I turned my back on him and strolled off a few steps, looking up at the stars like I didn't have a really pissed-off vampire behind me. “Maybe.”

The pissed-off vampire was in front of me all of a sudden, moving so fast I couldn't see him, his hands hard on my arms. “You are
not
to protect me, Fran. That's my duty.”

I squirmed out of his grip. “Look, you may think there's something between us, but there's not. And if there were, I didn't agree to it—got that? So you can just cut out all of this macho bull about big strong you protecting weak little me. In case you haven't noticed, I'm neither little nor weak. I can solve my own problems. I can take care of myself.”

“You don't know what you're talking about—” he started to say.

I interrupted him. “Oh, so now I'm stupid as well as being weak? Thanks, Ben. No, really, thanks bunches.”

I turned and walked in the other direction. His voice stung my back like a lash, making me stop. “You
are
weak, Fran, weak when it comes to the dark powers and those who use them. You have
no
concept of how dangerous this person is. Whether or not you like it, we are bound together, and I will protect you as best I can, and that includes making you stop this investigation into the thefts.”

“Ha!” I marched back to where he stood all stiff and glowering. One part of my mind—the inner-Fran part—was swooning to herself about how powerful and deadly he looked; the other part—the sane part—commented to itself that it was odd that no matter how menacing Ben was, I felt perfectly safe with him. “You can't make me stop anything, fang boy! I made a deal with my mother and Absinthe to investigate, and that's just what I'm going to do.”