Fate of the Vampire (5 page)

“The usual,” she said. I couldn’t tell if her indifference was feigned or genuine. “How’s Grandma Gibson?”

“In the hospital. She had a bit of a meltdown,” I explained.

Blossom sipped her soda contemplatively. “I don’t blame her. And how are you doing?”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug. “Seeing the body was pretty scary. She really did look like me.”

“They let you see the body?” Blossom practically choked on her drink. When I nodded, Blossom added, “Whoa.” And a little bit after that she asked, “Were you even tempted to call Fred for a little male comfort?”

“Not really.” Even though Blossom was my best friend, she knew nothing about Jessie
and me. I felt like a lousy BFF for keeping it a secret, but my relationship with Jessie had been pretty tumultuous up to that point. But seeing that Jessie had met my mom, I felt like I had to fess up to my best friend as well. Not about the vampire thing, obviously, but that I was seeing someone. “Actually,” I began. “I am kind of seeing someone new.”

Blossom did a double take. “Who?” she demanded. “Is it that Lenny kid from history? Because if you’re dating him over Fred, I am going to strangle you.”

“No. He doesn’t go to Tiburon,” I told her. “But you have met him.”

“Aurora, tell me right now,” she said, almost sounding angry. “Don’t make me beat it out of you.”

I took a deep breath and then blurted, “Jessie Vanderlind.”

Blossom’s mouth literally fell open. She stared at me for a good ten seconds, completely speechless. Finally, she managed to say, “You’re kidding. Dreamboat?”

I couldn’t help but crack into a broad smile. “Yeah. He is pretty dreamy.” The first glimpse I’d had of Jessie was at the library with Blossom. That was back in the fall. She’d started referring to him as dreamboat, and it was a pretty darn apt description.

“How did this all happen?” she wanted to know.

“The library,” I told her. “I ran into him again at the library, and we started talking.”

“The library?” Blossom wrinkled her nose. “That’s like meeting your future husband at the
Laundromat.”

I was a bigger fan of books than Blossom was. “Anyway, I ran into him one night and then again the next week
, and things kind of took off from there.”

Blossom scowled at me. “Why didn’t you tell me? Are we best friends or not?”

“I didn’t want to jinx it,” I told her. “I mean, who would have guessed that the hottest guy I’ve ever met would be interested in me?”

After a bit more frowning, she said, “I guess I understand. I mean, it’s kind of like seeing a unicorn or something. You’re afraid if you tell anyone, you’ll scare it off.”

I had to laugh. Blossom was being weirdly understanding. “Exactly.”

Leaning in all confidentially, Blossom asked, “So, are you dating dating? I mean, like, have you kissed him and everything?”

“More than that,” I told her, a devilish laugh escaping my lips.

“Why you little sneak. No wonder you wanted to ditch Fred,” she exclaimed. “And here I was, telling you to get back together with him.”

The rest of lunch I spent giving her what details I was willing to share. Nothing of vampires or anything like that—basically, the information I’d already told my mom with a few more details about his expertise as a kisser and how I was ready, willing, and eager to fling my virginity out the window.

“I don’t blame you,” Blossom said with a heavy sigh that came out as a light whistle. “He’s movie star good looking. And you say he’s nice? Geez! I’d fork over my virginity for that in a heartbeat. I didn’t think there were any guys like that alive on the planet.”

I swallowed a sip of my soda the wrong way and had a bit of a coughing fit.

It felt good to tell Blossom the truth. Or at least, part of the truth. I hated keeping secrets from the people I was close to
, and Jessie had been the biggest secret of my life.

Back at school, I was sitting in my next class when one of the office ladies came in and had a whispered conversation with the teacher. They kept glancing in my direction, so I wasn’t surprised when I was told to go with the lady back to the school offices. “You need to call your mom,” she told me, then left me alone at her desk for a few minutes so I would have a bit of privacy.

My hands were shaking so badly I was having trouble dialing. We were supposed to go see about springing Grandma Gibson from the hospital when I was done with school
, and I had the horrible feeling it was no longer necessary.

“Mom, it’s Aurora,” I said, clamping the phone’s receiver way too tightly to my ear. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Aurora,” Mom said, sounding entirely too stressed but not all that tearful. “I need you to drive over to the hospital to be with Grams,” she said. “Something bad has happened.”

“What?” I asked, feeling my stomach lurch.

Mom cleared her throat to steady her voice and then finally said, “Somebody stole Aunt Colette’s body.”

What is wrong with people? That was the question I found myself pondering over and over again as I drove to the hospital. Mom couldn’t get away from work, and she wanted someone to be with Grandma Gibson, so I was let out of school early.

Who breaks into a morgue and steals a body? It had to be some kind of sick prank. Someone must have thought it was hilarious. As if a person who died eighty years ago doesn’t deserve the same respect as a person who died eight hours ago. It made me think of that outlaw, Elmer McCurdy, whose body was discovered, sixty-five years after his death,
being used as a prop at an amusement park. He’d been exhibited for so long that no one even remembered he was human anymore. His corpse had been unwittingly spray painted neon and hung from the rafters. The idea that some jackholes had stolen Colette’s body and that she might one day end up as a Halloween decoration brought tears to my eyes. People could be so sick.

When I pulled into the visitor’s lot
at the hospital, I was surprised to see several news vans parked there with camera crews scurrying about. For a minute I wondered, “What’s going on?” but then I felt my stomach drop, and a slight sense of foreboding came over me. “Please, don’t be here about Colette,” I whispered to myself.

In the lobby, I approached the information desk and said in a low voice, “Hi, I’m here to visit Lillian Gibson. Can you tell me which room she’s in?”

The lady at the desk gave me a very suspicious look. “What’s your relationship to Ms. Gibson?”

“I’m her great granddaughter,” I told her.

The woman’s face softened a little. “What’s your name?”

“Aurora Keys.”

She scanned a list that was sitting on her desk. I could see there were only a few names on it. When she looked up again, her face had become kind. “Of course, honey. We’re just trying to keep things from becoming a circus around here.” After checking my identification she covertly wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it, and then handed it to me. “Go to the top floor,” she said in a whisper, leaning forward in her seat. “Then switch elevators to come back down to the correct floor. That’s her room number,” she said, indicating the piece of paper she’d just handed me.

My stomach twisted into a triple knot. The camera crews were at the hospital
about Colette. I guess her discovery and then disappearance was too tempting of a story for the entertainment media, purporting to be news, to ignore. As I headed for the elevator, a blonde news reporter stepped into my path. She shoved a microphone in my face and said, “Hi, I’m Stacey Coogan with News Channel Five. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Who do you think stole your grandmother’s body?”

Right behind her was a guy wielding a camera that he had been concealing under his coat. The camera had a very bright light on top of it that blasted my eyes, making me see big blurry spots. I threw a hand up in front of my face to shield me from the light, shoved the microphone from my mouth with the other hand
, and snarled at the reporter, “Get away from me, you cockroach.”

Security showed up and quickly ushered the news crew out
of the lobby. “Who let them in here?” someone in a police uniform barked. “Sorry about that, young lady,” the man said, his voice much kinder when addressing me. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I told him, blinking back tears as I stabbed at the elevator button. “What the hell do they want, anyway?”

The officer shrugged. “They’re just hungry for a story. Never mind about all the wars and shootings and white collar crimes that happen. I guess they think it’s more important to harass some poor old lady in the hospital.”

“Well, thanks for getting them out of here,” I said, hoping the elevator would arrive soon. I was grateful but also desperate to get away from the prying eyes of the lobby.

“Thank you for the best line I’ve heard in a long time,” he said with a smile. “I’m going to tell my daughter that you called her favorite reporter a cockroach.” He glared after the departing news woman. “She deserved it.”

Thankfully, the elevator chimed and the door opened. I stepped in and hit the top button, sparing a smile
for the cop before the doors closed again. Once the elevator started moving, I opened the scrap of paper the lady at the desk had given me. Grandma Gibson was in room 444. When I arrived at the correct floor, I knew which room she was in immediately because there was a security guard standing out front. I guess someone had radioed up to him to tell him I was coming because I didn’t have to say a thing; he just stepped to one side.

I tapped at the door before walking in. “Hi
, Gran. It’s Aurora,” I said, tentatively poking my head in the room.

I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t to see Grandma Gibson sitting up in bed watching an old episode of
Friends
. “Hello, Aurora,” she said to me as if a guard outside her door was how things normally went when I dropped by. “Shouldn’t you be at school? It’s not even three o’clock.”

“Mom got me out early so I could come see you,” I told her. “She was worried that
… um … well, she just thought you might like some company.”

“You mean because of what happened to Colette’s body?” she asked, almost matter-of-factly.

“Well, yeah ...” I said, taken aback by her frankness. “I mean, it’s not like anyone expected that to happen.”

“I did,” she said, turning her eyes back to the television screen.

“You expected someone was going to break into the morgue and steal your sister’s body?” I asked, a bit incredulously.

She nodded. “I saw it happen. And I saw who did it,” she informed me, nodding toward a deck of cards on the nightstand next to her bed. Cards were how Grandma Gibson tried to read the future. She must have persuaded someone on staff to get her a pack from the hospital gift shop.

Oh, no
, I thought.
Not future-predicting great grandma.
Of all the different flavors of Grandma Gibson, the fortune-telling version was the one I liked the least. I really, really didn’t want to know but couldn’t help myself from asking, “Who do you think took Colette?”

“You know who did it,” she said, not bothering to look at me. “I saw him break into the morgue. He took her body to hide the evidence of his crime.”

“He wouldn’t,” I stammered. She didn’t have to say his name for me to know who she was talking about. “He loved her.”

“Sometimes people kill what they love,” she said, steadfastly staring at the television screen but not really watching it.

“Grandma, I know you’re upset, but I’m sure it’s not him,” I said, trying to keep my voice as soothing as possible. “It’s probably just some heartless prank by some frat boys or something.”

“You should ask him,” she said
; then she blew a little air out of her nose in a snort of disgust. “See what he has to say for himself.”

“I know you don’t believe me, but he’s devastated by all of this,” I told her. “It’s tearing him apart.”

“Good,” she said, folding her arms. “He deserves all the suffering he can get.”

I spent over three hours with Grandma Gibson before my mom showed up. I had thought being there would be hell, but we mostly just watched television. She’d said what she wanted to say, and I had no plausible argument to back my denial. While we sat there, I had lots of time to think about Grandma Gibson. Before I got involved with Jessie, she had been slipping further and further into dementia, but recently she had become much more lucid. Somehow, my being with a vampire had cleared her mind. She usually played it pretty smart. I think she knew that if she started telling people my boyfriend was a vampire, she would end up on some pretty heavy medication, and that would take her out of the fight. As it was, she kept her knowledge of Jessie from everyone but me.

Mom had better luck getting through the lobby than I’d had. Either security had been increased or the reporters had knocked off to go to dinner. Either way, I snuck out the back of the hospital through a staff entrance that a friendly orderly was kind enough to tell me about. The hospital had decided to keep Grandma Gibson for another night, but I think they were just being kind because of all the press.

I made myself a sandwich for dinner and sent a couple reassuring texts in response to messages I’d received from Blossom and Fred. Previously, I had been trying to minimize contact with Fred as much as possible. Not because he wasn’t a great guy, but because I didn’t want him to think there was a chance we might get back together. He thought he was competing with Jessie for my affections, but there was no competition; I was Jessie’s
—heart and soul. I wondered if there was a way for me to promote a relationship between him and Blossom. He had proven without a doubt that he was a guy worth having.

I thought Jessie would come by, but I didn’t know if he’d use the door or the window. I was kind of expecting window, so I was mildly surprised when, at nine o’clock, there was a light knocking at our front door.

My impulse was to fling the door open so that I could be in Jessie’s arms all the faster, but I forced common sense to prevail and actually pulled back the curtain and peeked through the window first. There Jessie stood with a festively wrapped, square box in his hands. He looked out of place on our front porch, like when you see a photograph of a lynx lounging at the gate of a foreclosed mansion. I actually preferred it when he floated out of the sky to land on the back porch roof, descending like cherry blossom petals from a branch in the spring.

“Hello,” Jessie said as I yanked opened the door. I could tell he was miserable, but he still had a smile for me.

“Come in,” I said, opening the door wider.

He only hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold. It was obvious that it gave him some struggle, but he did it gracefully. All of his movements were
those of a lithe jungle cat. “I brought you some chocolates,” he said, handing me the beautifully wrapped box.

“Thank you,” I said as I accepted them. Noting that the package was from a local chocolatier, I asked, “Did you send Viggo out for them?” Viggo was the tallest man I had ever met. He worked at the castle and was particularly loyal to Jessie.

“No,” he said with a small smile. “That’s the beauty of winter. I can actually go out before the shops close.”

I wondered at the thrill some clerk must have felt
, having Jessie show up in the store. I know I would probably have tripped over myself to give him excellent customer service. “Thank you,” I said again, running my hand over the thick plum and gold paper. “The box is beautiful.”

“My pleasure,” he said, still keeping himself at a polite distance.

“By the way,” I told him. “My mom isn’t home.”

“Oh. Well, in that case
…” Jessie stepped forward and swept me into a low dip. His one hand supported me at the small of my back, and the other was behind my neck. He bent and let his lips brush lightly across mine before pulling back a few inches, making me gasp, teasing me for a moment before bending again to encompass me in a passionate embrace. There is the expression “swept off her feet,” and that’s how Jessie made me feel, both figuratively and literally.

For those few passionate moments, I forgot about my great grandmother and the crazy reporters and the disappearance of Colette’s body. Hell, I practically forgot to breath
e. I just let myself fully relish the moment.

H
e set me on my feet again, and I regained my equilibrium. My troubles immediately resurfaced when he asked, “How is Lily?”

It was weird that Jessie had known my great grandmother when she was a young woman. It was something that I didn’t think I would ever get used to. “Not great,” I told him. “They’re keeping her another night. I don’t know if you noticed, but there are a lot of reporters in town.”

“I did notice,” he told me, keeping hold of my hand as I led him into the living room so we could sit on the couch. “And that’s all because of Colette?”

I shrugged. “I guess it’s a slow news week.” That wasn’t the truth. I was sure there were plenty of disasters going on in the world that deserved more attention tha
n our tiny slice of misery did, but the discovery, and then subsequent disappearance, of Colette’s body was the type of “news” that brought out the gawker in people. But while we were on the subject, I screwed up my nerve and asked, “Did you go to the morgue last night?”

We both took a seat on the couch
, and Jessie pulled me close so I was sitting snugly next to him. “Yes,” he said simply. “I didn’t think I was strong enough to see her, but in a weird way, I’m glad I went. Even though it’s been almost eighty years, seeing her body made me realize that she is truly gone.”

His face looked so sorrowful that all I wanted to do was kiss him and tell him everything was going to be al
l right. But I had to be smart. I couldn’t let my passion for him overthrow my brain and sense of self-preservation. “What do you think caused her death?” I asked, feeling terrified but forcing myself to form the question.

“A vampire,” he said with conviction. “She was killed by a vampire. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

“But how?” I asked, my voice just above a whisper. I knew Jessie would never intentionally hurt me, but something had obviously gone horribly wrong in the woods all those years ago.