Vampire Beach: Initiation (20 page)

"Thanks." Jason took a seat across from her.

"Where's Tyler? Passed out in the car?" Bianca asked. Her voice was relaxed, but there was a steely glint in her blue eyes.
She's dangerous,
Jason thought.
And not just because she's a vampire, but because there's something hard and cold and calculating inside her.

"I took him to Starbucks to pump some coffee into him after we left Zach's," Jason explained, making sure to look his aunt in the eye. "But he got a call from his dad when we were there.
Got ordered home.
I guess he didn't exac
tl
y have parental clearance to come
out here.”

"Tyler went back to Michigan?" said a voice behind
him.

Jason looked over his shoulder and saw Dani standing in the doorway, dressed in her monkey paja
mas.
"Yeah.
He needed to get home," he told her. "He said to tell you good
-
bye."

"His father wouldn't even let him come back and get his things?" Bianca asked, and Jason could hear a note of suspicion in her voice.

"He didn't bring anything with him," Jason explained. "Like I said, he didn't really have permis
sion to come visit in the first place."

"Is he okay?" Dani joined them at the table. "I'm worried about him."

Bianca reached out and covered Dani's hand with her own. Watching his aunt with his sister put Jason on edge.
She'd never hurt Dani
-
or any of us,
he told himself firmly, trying to believe it.

"Tyler's always seemed like a boy who knows how to take care of himself," Bianca told Dani. "I'm sure he'll be fine."

So she'd leave him alone? Was that what she was saying? There was no way to ask Bianca that without revealing that he knew the truth about her.
And
that
wouldn't be smart,
Jason thought as he headed upstairs for a few hours' sleep before school.
At all!

Jason wrote out a check to cash for seven thousand dollars. His hand shook a little as he signed his name.
His parents would implode when they found
out he
'd withdrawn a major chunk of his college fund.

No other choice,
he told himself as he got in
line for
the cashier. No way was he taking more money
from
Zach. Jason had brought Tyler into the
Lafrenière
house. What had happened was his responsibility.

A bell dinged. Jason checked the lighted
number
on the monitor in front of him,
then
headed
over
to Window 3. He half expected the cashier to
refuse to
cash the check
-
even though he was at his own
bank.
But she just asked to see his driver's license,
then
had
him sweep his ATM card through the machine
and
enter his PIN.

Not much more than a minute later, he was
walk
ing back out into the afternoon sunshine,
carrying
seven thousand dollars in cash. He went directly
to
the pawnshop. Maybe there were people
in the
Heights who routinely walked around with
that ki
nd
of money on them, but Jason just wanted
to get rid
of it.

The pawnbroker with the ponytail
buzzed him
inside with a wide smile. Why shouldn't
he be smil
ing? He was about to make a two
-
thousand
-
do
l
lar
profit for jack.

"Do you have the chalice?" Jason asked.

"If you got the money, I got the
chalice,"
the
man
replied evenly.

"Plus more than a twenty
-
five percent profit," Jason muttered.

The guy shrugged. "If it's too much, I'll keep the thing. I'm sure I can sell it again."

They stared a
t each other. The man knew exactl
y how desperate Jason was. Jason had made the mistake of revealing that on his first trip to the pawnshop. No point trying to negotiate now. Jason pulled out the wad of cash and shoved it across the glass counter to the pawnbroker.

The man counted it, fast and efficient. Then he reached under the cash register, pulled out a paper bag, and handed it to Jason. Jason peered inside. The chalice was there. It almost seemed to glow, even in the dim light of the shop. And it
pulled at
something in Jason. He wanted to take the chalice out of the bag and just hold it for a minute. But he closed the bag and hurried back out to his car. The chalice wasn't for him. The safest thing was to get rid of it as soon as possible.

Jason slid behind the wheel
-
and froze. A man was watching him from across the street. He tight
ened his grip on the chalice. Did the man know what was in the bag?

A truck rumbled down the street. It blocked the man from Jason's view for a few seconds. And when the truck had passed, the man was gone. Jason glanced
up and down the street; there was nobody to
be seen.

He fired up the bug, telling himself that
he
was being paranoid, but the desire to get the chalice
back
where it belonged had just got stronger. So
he didn't
pass Go, didn't collect two hundred dollars.
He drove
straight to Zach's.

Zach met him in the driveway before Jason
could
reach the front door. "I wasn't expecting to
see you
here again
...
so soon," Zach said.

"Hello to you, too."
Jason thrust the paper
bag into
Zach's hands. "Something I think you'll be
happy
to
see.”

Zach opened the bag, and raised one
eyebrow.
"Y
ou
keep coming through for us, Freeman."

"Now
we're even," Jason told him.

Zach gave a reluctant smile.

"Don't expect any more favors," Jason
added, and
Zach's smile widened into a grin.

Jason swung himself back into his bug
and headed
for home. Things were back to normal.

As normal as they ever got in
DeVer
e
H
eights.