My Immortal Playlist (The Siren Collection #1) (6 page)

“Yes, we’re all si
mpletons...but listen, Alexandra. Noah is using you. Somehow, he figured out that power is what you crave in a man, and he is acting accordingly. Think carefully, when he first became a vampire, was he the confident man you met today?”

“No, h
e was terrified. I think he cried a little before he ran off.”

“Precisely, because that is who he is. The fact that he decided to show up out of nowhere has bothered me greatly. Why now? Sure, it could be love, but if so, he wouldn’t have waited so long. Love, after all, is very painful when it’s unrequited. Therefore, the only explanation is that he wants something, and there you are, swooning and aweing over his masculinity while he is playing you like a fiddle. Why did he leave so suddenly?”

“He said he had to feed.”

“No…if his love was so intense, he would have stayed with you all night. He left, because he got the information he wanted.
”

“Bu
t why? What would he do with my music or knowing what I am?”

“I’m not sure.
Perhaps he doesn’t need to know himself. After all, he’s traveled the world and met many people. You said yourself your mother left you when you were young. She did not die. She left. And who’s to say your mother was the only Siren out there. Imagine, Alexandria, if Noah found another. One that knows how to properly use the music. One who could tell him how to change back into the man he was. That would mean he just confirmed his salvation tonight, and you are in incredible danger.”

I contemplated his words, thinking of the way Noah made me feel, the questions he asked, the way he left so abruptly once he got his information, and the kiss I received, to ensure I kept coming…
Elliot was right. There was more going on than I cared to admit.

“Hurry up and get on my back,” I said. “I have to check downstairs!”

“Right,” he said as I picked him up and slung the harness straps over my shoulders. “The subject of my legs didn’t get brought up, did it?”

“Didn’t think of asking.”

“You were too busy melting,” he said as I rushed to the Lyric room. I unlocked the dead bolts and pushed open the heavy steel door with all my might. And once we were inside, I nearly fainted.

The music was all gone
.

Still,
I glanced at my watch, the timer counting down steadily. I had a couple weeks left before I needed another victim or else I was doomed. Elliot whistled as he reached out and brushed a hand across a dusty wooden shelf.

“S
omeone was quite busy,” he said. “But what I’m wondering is how he could have gotten in here without us hearing him.”

“Maybe he can walk through walls,” I muttered. I felt like crying.

I had a lot of work to do and no time to get it done. If Noah was behind the break-in, then he had already thought up various scenarios I would come up with to get him back. And there was no guarantee that I could get every sheet of music either. He could be selling them for all I knew.

“Alexandra, over here,” Elliot replied, pointing to a bottom shelf. I looked down and saw one sheet of paper, but the writing was certainly in English. I examined the note:

Change of plans, Alexandra.

I’ll see you at school tomorrow.

End of
lunch, behind the gymnasium.

If you don’t show, bad things will happen.

-
       
Noah

“What do we do now?” Elliot asked as I thrust the note to the floor. I reached out and pulled a loose brick from the back wall and reached in, pulling out three large, wooden stakes.

“That’s easy, El
,” I said as I examined each one carefully. “We go hunting.”

Elliot
chuckled as I handed him one.

“Alexandr
a, I’ll have you know that hunting is a zombie’s favorite hobby.”

“Then get ready, my
backpack, we have a vampire to slay.”

I was sure that I could take Noah by surprise. If he truly was the nervous boy from before, and not the
seductive predator he appeared to be, then I had the advantage. All I had to do was put a stake through his heart before he caught wind of my attack. Simple enough, right?

But of course, like the rest of my life, things we
ren’t going to go the way I planned.

For even with all my determination to put down the vampire, I didn’t yet know that the next day...I was going to meet Lucas.

“First of all we want to thank Alexandra for taking time out of her busy schedule to join us today.” Margaret ended her condescending compliment with a fake smile and the other girls clapped excitedly. I closed my
eyes and rolled them from the cover of my lids.

“I’m so glad you made it,” Crystal replied, patting the large pink binder in front of her, filled with colorful tabs and scribbled on papers. I sighed as I heard my stomach growl. I really couldn’t deal with this right now. I had to grab some imitation chicken nuggets to get my strength up and then use said strength to plunge a stake through my ex-boyfriend before he started serenading the entire school. And it all had to happen within the next half hour.
The end of lunch? When was that exactly?

“We have a ton of stuff to talk about,” Theresa replied, flinging back her perfect black hair. No lie. It actually bounced when she turned her head, just like in the commercials.
She might have been born with that natural bounce, but my money was on Maybelline. :P

“If we’re going to decorate the cafeteria in time for the dance, we have to kick it into high gear,” Margaret said. The girls nodded profusely, but it was then that I noticed the glazed eyed boy sitting next to Crystal, staring at Theresa like she was one of those 3-D pictures you had to gaze at for a while before the real picture revealed itself.

“Who is this?” I asked, pointing at him. He reached up from across the table and slapped my finger away. I scowled at him like he had bit me.

“That’s Justin,” Margaret said matter-of-factly, shaking her head.

“Where am I?” Justin asked, closing his eyes. He took a deep sigh, reached up and pulled his ski cap over his eyes. “It’s too bright in here.”

“He just sat here one day,” Margaret explained. “And we were going to tell him to leave but he started giving some really good ideas. I think of him as an integral part of this committee.”

“Geez, what did I miss while I was gone?”

“You weren’t gone,” Crystal giggled. “You were just busy. With the boys from what I hear.”

“Yeah,” Theresa said. “And sending them running in the process.” She turned to me. “What do you do to them anyways? Not that I wanted any of them. They were kind of beneath my league, but the way they transfer out after dating you…I have to know what it is about you. I can make sure I don’t do the same thing.”

“I have chronic bad breath,” I lied, with a big smile. I noticed that everyone took a scoot back on their seat except Justin who leaned in further and
began tapping a tune on the table.

“
We’re told to only serve punch at the dance,” he said abruptly, still with his eyes closed and his speech a little slurred. “But if we bring some soda secretly, we can charge for it like it was liquor. It can be a fundraiser. We can take the money…” he paused to reel his head back like he had caught a whiff of my imaginary bad breath. “We take the money…and we use it for our next project.”

“O
to the M to the G!” Margaret exclaimed, pointing at Crystal to write his idea down in the holy binder. “That is an awesome idea! Justin, you never cease to amaze me!”

“I want chicken nuggets,” he muttered, opening his eyes and giving a weak smile. Crystal wrote down Justin’s idea on a neon green sticky note and then got up to retrieve his treat.

“Okay, what else do we have to talk about here?” I asked, glaring at the clock. Twenty minutes until lunch was over. “I actually have somewhere to be.”

“Where do you have to go now?” Theresa asked. Based on the angry pout on Margaret’s face, I could tell she was curious to know as well.

“I have to meet up with someone.”

“A boy?”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters because he’s not going to last, Alex. They never do. What’s been your longest relationship? A couple weeks?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” I said, sticking up my nose and looking to Margaret. “After all, a lady doesn’t pry into another’s love life.”

“You can pry,” she replied back
. “Just when it gets too explicit in detail, that is when it’s proper to back away from the conversation.”

“In that case, allow me to tell you what Noah and I did –“I slappe
d my hand to my mouth. It’s official. I needed to buy a muzzle ASAP.

“Is that his name?” Theresa asked, tilting her head and giving me a leery smirk. “The Noah that went here?”

“He’s a vampire,” Justin yawned. All of us, especially me, glared at him with wide eyes. He yawned and rubbed his chest slowly, as if he was getting ready to take a nap.

“I don’t remember this Noah,” Margaret replied.

“Oh, he’s cute,” Theresa replied, pulling out a small violet purse from her lap and reaching inside for some lipstick and rouse. “If you’re meeting up with him, I would like to come along.”

“You can’t,” I pleaded, my voice beginning to crack. “We’re…doing stuff.”

“Oh stop your lies,” Theresa laughed. “We all know you haven’t even been kissed.”

“That’s not true,” I said, staring
up at the ceiling. Maybe it had been a while. I didn’t have to be so quick to devour my victim’s souls...I could always enjoy the moment. I don’t know. The last thing I wanted to do was get attached.

“Dude, I’m telling you. He’s a vampire.”

“Justin, go back to sleep,” Margaret demanded.

“Well, he sure had
me hypnotized,” Theresa laughed. Before I realized what I was doing, I grabbed the sides of her face and examined her eyes for signs of hypnosis. Once I came to and realized she was joking, I gave her a big fake smile and let the private bubble come back up between us.

“Alex is certainly on something,” Margaret muttered, looking around her. “Where is Crystal? She should have been back by now.”

“I’ll go look for her!” I shouted, jumping up to my feet. Because the seats were fastened to the floor, the chair didn’t move, and I ended up slamming my knees into the tabletop. I winced, and silently screamed, but I didn’t let it stop me from shuffling away from them.

“Say Hi to Noah for me!” Justin yelled
back at me, but I refused to turn around. Had he been friends with Noah? Long enough to learn his secret? Did he know about me? It seemed that I had a few questions to ask my ex before I stabbed him.

I headed outside, past
the two teachers standing guard and several other conversations from my classmates. It wasn’t a big school since it was such a small town, but there was something about lunch time that got lips moving. I hope Noah got that same feeling. No…I didn’t want to make out with him.

The cold air slapped me in the face, and it was already getting dark. It wasn’t like we were living in Alaska, but we still rarely saw sunlight. The daytime was still the standard twelve hours, but it was always gloomy and raining, or threatening to rain. It made most of the town moody and depressed. So many people spent their time inside
their houses that they began coming up with crazy ideas and theories about the quaint town of Casper. Theories like there were vampires in the shadows, or creatures of the night, or zombies walking among us. I keep telling Elliot to not go out in public during the day, but the only voice he often hears is his own.

I scouted the area around me as I walked along the brick walkway. Once I was sure I wasn’t being watched by anything human, I sprinted over to a cluster of dead bushes
nearby and rummaged amongst the brittle branches and sticks. At the bottom, hidden amongst it all was my partner in crime.

“It’s cold,” he said flatly as I untangled the straps on his harness.

“You can’t feel the cold.”

“I didn’t say I could feel it. I said it’s cold. My body was beginning to freeze up.”

“I swear, a complainer is what my song turned you into. You were probably a zombie from the beginning.”

“If that was true, I would have had money a lot sooner.”

“HA!” I exclaimed, as I placed him onto my back. “I knew you killed someone to get rich.”

“First of all, I’m not Henry. I don’
t eat people, and especially not for selfish gain. I’m a gentleman even in death. I merely snuck into the houses of the wealthy and retrieved what I needed while they were asleep. Given that time is not a factor, I can scout out a place and then steal at my leisure. Second, I’m appalled that you’re not horrified at the idea of someone being killed.”

“I am,” I said, making the straps tighter
around me. “I’ve just been trying to figure out how you got rich all this time. I was kind of high off the mystery being solved.”

“You could have asked.”

“You can’t just answer questions straight out,” I sighed, taking a deep sigh and heading behind the gymnasium. “But if you want to prove me wrong, you can tell me what you do eat.”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you eat? You said you don’t eat people.”

“I am on
a diet of lean chicken and an array of vegetables.” I couldn’t help but giggle at hearing that one. “Is there something the matter, Alexandra?”

“I just find it funny that you’re watching your diet.”

“Now we don’t know for sure what affect it could have. Maybe if I maintain a certain equilibrium in my consumption, I won’t fall apart so easily.”

“Or maybe eating someone is the answer to staying together.”

“Alex! You’re impossible today! How can you say such things?”

“I was just saying,” I said. “It can’t be too bad eating what you need, can it? I mean…it’s not much different than what I do. How can I judge Henry for what he does?”

“We can’t change the past, Alexandra,” Elliot replied after a pause. “But we can change our future.”

“What are you saying? I sho
uld find another way to survive?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. I
could feel him put a hand to his chin. “You may be right that eating people will keep me whole. But the thought of it disturbs me to no end. Not to mention that finding the right individual would take an eternity. I believe that we may have a nature about us, but that doesn’t mean we have to obey it like a slave. We can fight our urges if we so choose.”

“Do you think that I’ve been lied to
by my own mother? That I don’t have to devour souls?”

“There is no telling without excessive research,” he replied. “It’s possible that in the beginning you were simply sick for another reason. You might not have been dying.”

“The ordeal was pretty intense,” I nodded. “I can’t see how I wasn’t dying.”

“A heroin addict gets damaged both physically and psychologically when they try to remove themselves from their habit, but that doesn’t mean they will die if they suffer through the cleansing.”

“Do you think I should just let this death process take its course and see what happens?”

“Again, I’m unsure. After all, we have
documented proof that a heroin addict can go cold turkey. Sirens are certainly not the norm.”

“So again, we’re back to step one,” I sighed as I leaned my head back. “Do you have your stake?”

“It’s frozen to the palm of my left hand.”

“Before we try to kill him,” I whispered. “I have to ask him a couple questions.”

“Then you might as well give up on your chances of success. He could hypnotize you.”

“But you won’t be.”

“I’m hardly in a position to brawl with a vampire. It’s like a cat…battling a roll of toilet paper.”

“I believe in you.”

“Do you even know if a stake will work?”

“No, but it certainly would
on most people.”

“How macabre.”

“Okay, shush now. We’re pretty much there.”

Elliot obeyed as I straightened my shoulders and walked casually behind the gymnasium, into an alley that had no wa
y of escape except for where I came from. There was certainly no exit through the windowed door at the end of the alley, for Noah immediately stepped out from it like he had just finished shooting a movie.

His face and hair was glamorous. So perfectly smooth and chiseled and…I shook my head and blinked my eyes as he laughed at my reaction.

“Surely I don’t have that kind of reaction over you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself
,” I muttered. “It’s because you’re a vampire that you look that way.”

“That’s cold,” he chuckled, closing the door behind him. I examined the brick walls to my left and right. Yep, no escape.

“How does Justin know you’re a vampire?” I blurted out. Noah’s eyes widened in surprise and he folded his arms in response. “Well?”

“You hav
e your allies,” he nodded to someone behind me, “and I have mine.”

I turned to see the last person I ever expected
to appear. Henry.

“Are you following me?” I screamed, but Henry held up his hands in surrender.

“I’m not here to hurt you. And neither is Noah.”

“Here we go,” Elliot muttered. Noah’s head swiveled back to me.

“What was that?”