Sixteen Going on Undead (5 page)

Someone burst out laughing, and we both turned to glance in the direction it came from. My heart seemed to stop dead in my chest. There next to Ronnie where he was still sitting in front of the catalog computer was the girl who had been with Lorcan the other night. She leaned down to rest her arms on the desk and giggled while somehow giving Ronnie a good view of her big old boobs. Jealousy rose in me. Not because I was interested in Ronnie that way, but because he was my friend, and I didn’t want to share him with bimbo vamp girl. Crap, I was taking this vampire stuff in stride way too easily.

I started over to them, but the boy next to me grabbed my arm to hold me back. I couldn’t have pulled away if I wanted to. “Hey, they’re having their fun. We can too.”

“Not in this lifetime, homeboy.”

He glanced around as if checking to see if anybody was close by and lowered his voice, while playing with one of his nose rings. It had the effect of looking like he was picking his nose. My stomach turned.

“You want to know about the undead right?”

I frowned. “The what, now?”

He whacked my arm with the back of one hand, making me wince in pain. I think he was joking around, but he didn’t know his strength. “The undead, dude, the undead.”

“What is that? Dead people that came back to life?” I wanted to get away from him, but if he knew anything that could help me fight Lorcan, then I was all for it. I wasn’t sure if he was with Skanky over there with Ronnie, but I took a chance. “Why don’t you explain it better?” I suggested.

The boy in purple took my arm, more gently this time, and led me over to the children’s section. Why here, I didn’t know. Maybe it was because if the kids overhead him saying crazy stuff, they’d think he was telling me a story. Okay, that made zero sense, but it was the only thing I could come up with at the time to settle my fears. Because it was for sure, I was freaked out.

After we sank down to those little colorful squishy animals that decorated the children’s section, he held out his hand to me to shake. “I’m Blake, by the way.”

I just stared at him at first, and then I shook his hand before resting my palm against my leg. When he turned his head, I scrubbed it along my shorts. “So why should you help me? And how do you know I wanted to know about vampires?” I looked back over my shoulder toward Ronnie. The girl was still there, but this time, she looked up at me, and her face grew dark and threatening. I felt a chill pass over me. Something told me if I crossed her, she’d get real ugly, and all that cutesy stuff would disappear.

Blake smirked. “You think we don’t know?” He wagged a finger in my face, and I got to see the dirt caked beneath his nail up close and personal. “We’re like a hive.” He paused seeming to think about it. “No, like a collective. You know, Star Trek? Stuff like that.”

“Whole lot of idiots, but one brain?” I suggested. I waited for him to be offended, but he just laughed, a nice easygoing sound to my surprise. I found myself smiling, liking him despite that fact that he was a bloodsucker. “So what did you mean about undead?”

“Okay, well, vampires have died once, and for whatever reason have come back to life, or what translates to life for them. We suck blood to keep moving, but we never die.”

“Never?”

“Nope.
Rad
, right?” He grinned.

“So not,” I told him.

“Anyway, some call us”—he made quotes in the air—“‘the undead.’ Sometimes it’s the walking dead.”

“Got it. You’re dead.”

I wanted to ask him how to defeat them, if it was steaks and garlic and all that stuff, but I was too scared. After thinking about it half the night and jumping at every sound outside my window, I had remembered some facts or what I assumed was facts. I hadn’t closed my eyes until four in the morning. And then my mother had made Ronnie and me spend most of the day helping her with home improvement projects that would never be finished if her past record was proof. I’d just remembered that I needed to call my doctor and make an appointment before her office closed. After a run to the store for Ronnie’s brother, we had headed over to the library. It had been a good thing that the library opened late. Maybe not so good since at least two vampires had taken advantage of the dark to hunt me down.

“Can you only go out at night?” I blurted out.

He glanced down at his pasty skin on his arm and rubbed it. Funny how neither the
skank
nor Lorcan looked like vampires, but if lack of color was a factor to pick them out, Blake was so it.

“Well I could if I wanted a wicked suntan.” He chuckled. “Seriously though, the older you are, the stronger you are, and some of the elders in our Coven can tolerate the sun a little longer. An hour or so.”

“Coven?”

I waited for him to answer, but his eyes grew glazed. He frowned and shook his head. I turned around to look over at the girl, but she seemed deep into Ronnie. In fact unless I was crazy, she looked like she was about to bite him right there in the middle of the library! I jumped to my feet and ran over to them.

I shoved her. “Back off!” I turned to Ronnie. “Are you nuts playing around with her?”

Ronnie blinked up at me looking like he was coming out of a daze. “What?”

“Calm down,” the girl on her butt told me with a sneer. Her teeth were normal now, and I wonder if I’d made a mistake. Maybe I was crazy. “We were just getting to know each other, right Ronnie?”

She purred it in the most disgusting way. I cringed.

Ronnie surged to his feet and bent down to help her up. “What’s the deal, Tanesha? You okay, Adrianne?”

She poked out deep rose lips and clung to his arm. Where was her boyfriend? That reminded me I hadn’t asked about Lorcan.

“I’ll talk to you another time, Ronnie.” She cut her eyes at me. I set a hand on my hip ready to take whatever she brought, but she turned away again. “When we aren’t rudely interrupted.”

“What are you talking about, Adrianne?” Blake cut in. “You told me it’s time to get out of here.”

So that was why he’d gotten that weird look on his face. She’d been speaking in his head.

Adrianne released Ronnie, who said not another word, and turned to sashay toward the exit. Before Blake could join her I rushed up to intercept him. “Hey, Blake...uh...can you tell me anything about Lorcan real quick?”

A slow grin spread over his face. “That I can’t.”

“What!”

“Sorry, dude. We were to scope you out a bit, see why he’s so obsessed with you, but that’s it. No talking about the L man.”

The L man? Give me a break. “Please, can’t you tell me something useful?” I pleaded.

Adrianne stepped up to his side and grabbed hold of a couple of nose rings. She tugged, and he cried out. “You keep your mouth shut, Blake. Nobody even told you to tell her what you did. They’re going to come down on you, and you’ll be lucky to see the beautiful night for a month!”

She pulled Blake away, and from the looks that passed between them, I knew they were arguing in their heads. What I wouldn’t have given to have that trick again, this time longer, to know what Adrianne had meant by “they” and more about covens. What I desperately needed to know was why Lorcan was obsessed with me and how to stop him. Something told me if I could get Blake alone, he’d spill it, but I had no idea where they lived or if it would be safe to visit.

Who was I kidding? Of course it wouldn’t be safe! I needed some help from someone before I became the undead.

* * * *

“Tanesha, I have the results of your test,” my doctor told me. “I’m not sure why you felt you needed this done, but from the looks of things, you’re healthy. Your blood count is a little low, which concerns me.” She flipped through her reports.

I glanced up from studying my feet. “My blood’s low? I have less? B-But I feel fine. Strong and healthy.” I’d wanted to know if Lorcan sucking my blood had some bad effect on my body, but now that I was here, I wanted to deny everything, to pretend none of it had happened. I hadn’t seen any of them in a couple
weeks,
this being the soonest my doctor could squeeze me into her busy schedule. Was I ever happy that once you hit a certain age, your parent did not have to know anything about your medical
sessions.

If my mother knew I had requested blood tests, she would have freaked and suspected the worst. Not that I could blame her. This experience was worse than anything I’d learned in health class.

“Nothing to worry about, Tanesha,” Dr. Morgan told me. “It’s probably your menstrual cycle that’s the culprit. Your body will compensate and make new blood.”

Yeah, but what if more is siphoned off before my body does that? I wondered. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. Most of all, I wanted to kick
Lorcan’s
butt. Well, right after I had one more kiss. Just one more. How could any of the boys at my school compare to that? Easy. They couldn’t. I sighed and closed my eyes.

“Nothing at all to worry about. You’re fine.” She marked my chart. “I will see you back here in six months for your annual checkup.”

Still worried, I hopped off the table and prepared to leave after my doctor had shuffled on to the next patient. A few minutes later I was out on the bus stop squinting in the sunlight because I’d forgotten my sunglasses. I glanced down at my bare arms and was relieved that I wasn’t burning in the least. I was not
undead
.

When a 1982 Camry with one yellow rusted fender on the right side pulled into the grocery store parking lot beside me, I thought about Mrs. Knowles. That looked like her car, and I knew for a fact that she came all the way out here near my doctor’s office to get food rather than the Stop and Shop near us.

I waited to see if it was her, and sure enough she shuffled out of the car in a big floppy straw hat and a dress that covered all parts of her body, her arms and her legs. For a minute, I thought maybe she was a vampire, but I remembered it was broad daylight, and they would burn. Then again, she could be one of the older ones.

My heart hammering in my chest, I decided to follow her into the store, and if nothing else, I could ask her about the other night and what was up with her going in the house watching TV like nothing happened.

I slipped into the grocery store not a minute behind Mrs. Knowles, but when I stopped just inside the doors and glanced around, she was nowhere in sight. Strolling along the front of the store, I looked down every aisle but still didn’t spot her. I began to wonder if maybe I’d been wrong about seeing her in the parking lot, but a quick glance out through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the front of the store showed her ugly eyesore of a car still there. She was here somewhere, and I’d find her if I had to take over the intercom and yell out for her. I laughed at, thinking she’d be as embarrassed as Ronnie was that time we took off for the gaming section in
Wal
-mart, and his
brother’d
had someone call for him that way. You’d have thought we were three instead of thirteen at the time. I ribbed him about it for a week until he found a way to get me back.

While I stood there near the registers with people moving past me to get to the shortest lines, I started getting this funny feeling, like someone was watching me. Considering where I was, I dismissed it and started back along the aisles, but the feeling refused to go away.

Trying to be nonchalant, I scanned the area around me and began thinking maybe Mrs. Knowles had seen me following her in here, and she was hiding while watching me look for her. I mean the woman was strange after all. That steel wool-like bluish hair, frumpy clothes, and penchant for ignoring knocks on her door, didn’t put her in the normal category, in my book.