He snickered.
“What was in it?” I asked.
“I hand-copied about a year’s worth of Penthouse Forum letters into steno notebooks.”
“Ew.”
“In Serbian,” he added. “By the time they figure out what they have …”
“They’ll think you stole a bunch of notebooks from a perverted Serbian,” I said. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed with you or concerned. Where are the real notebooks?”
I could hear him rolling over on the bed, the sheets rustling against the phone. This called to mind images of Cal naked and barely covered by sleep-rumpled sheets, which was not good for my powers of stealth and concentration. He cleared his throat, as if he could sense my indecent thoughts through the phone connection. “Front bedroom closet, in a box marked ‘Receipts 2009.’ ”
“Vampires never save receipts.”
“So it should be easy for you to find,” he retorted.
I stepped into the hallway. I heard a strange sort of shuffling noise downstairs, then a light thud. I stopped.
“Iris? Your breathing’s changed. What’s happening?”
“Shh,” I whispered, listening.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his voice suddenly sharp.
The house was silent. When I didn’t hear so much as a creaking floorboard, I shook my head, stepping toward the bedroom. “Nothing. I thought I heard something.”
“Get out,” he commanded. “Get out of the house, right now.”
I listened for a moment, wondering what happened to “no emotional connections” and using me as a human shield if necessary. “No, it’s OK. It’s nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I said, approaching the closet near the front window of the bedroom. “I’m probably just being paranoid. B and E isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence for me.”
“If you feel uncomfortable, I want you to leave.”
“It’s fine.” I closed my fingers around the closet door and opened it. It was completely empty. Not so much as a dust bunny.
“Cal—” A hand closed over my mouth. I shrieked, inhaling an unpleasant combination of woodruff and lime that stung my nose. I was pulled back against a solid, hard body. The rough fingers stretched across my mouth, the taste of his skin making me gag.
“Iris!” I heard Cal’s voice yell from the earpiece, which was now dangling from my collar.
I took a deep breath, but before I could scream, the hand closed over my throat, cutting off my air. The earpiece clattered to the ground, bouncing across the carpet. The only sound I could make was a strangled croak. Another hand slipped down my ribs and pressed hard, squeezing me back against him.
“Sweet little thing.” The cold, rough voice slipped down the side of my neck. I tried to shrink away, but he just pulled me closer. He ground his hips against my butt, letting me know exactly how much he was enjoying toying with his food. Hot, humiliated tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.
“Iris?” Cal called, his voice small and far away. “Iris, answer me right now!”
I whimpered as his grip tightened on my mouth. Fangs dropped, sounding like a knife being unsheathed. I felt the points scrape against the flesh of my neck.
“What are you doing here, pretty thing?” he whispered, his lips clammy and wet against my skin. “You woke me. No one is supposed to be here.”
His voice slithered around in my head, constricting, smothering. My head felt so heavy, full and numb, like an overblown bloom on a weak steam.
“Do you work for him?” he asked. “Do you know where he is?”
“Wh-who?” I stammered, whimpering when he wrenched my neck.
“Don’t play stupid with me, pretty thing.”
“I work for Ophelia,” I whispered. “For the Council. I came to close up the house.”
“For the Council?” He chuckled. He sniffed my neck. “You’re untapped. No one’s ever taken a bite out of you?” I shook my head frantically.
Please, please, please, just let me get out of this “untapped,” I prayed. Gigi is too young to be left alone. I haven’t filled out her Free Application for Federal Student Aid yet. And she still doesn’t understand that the “check engine” light is more than just a sparkly greeting from her car.
His voice was flowing over me now, pulling me under an oily surface. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. He murmured, “I’m so hungry, and you smell just mouthwatering. I think I might keep you with me so I can drink you all up. You don’t mind, do you? After all, it’s the neighborly thing to do.”
The hazy brain-fog cleared enough that I found that I didn’t mind giving him my blood. It didn’t seem like such an unreasonable request. It seemed rude somehow not to offer him something to drink. I tilted my head so he would be able to access my neck. He chuckled, pressing a smacking little kiss over my jugular before sinking his fangs into me.
A stuttering gasp rippled through my chest as he broke the skin over my vein. Pain, a bright, hot, pulsating flower, bloomed through my nerve endings. I felt a trickle of blood soak through the neck of my cardigan. He moaned, making loud slurping pulls at my skin. I whimpered at the burning, tugging sensation of my blood being drained away.
His enjoyment of my blood was so complete that he wasn’t even bothering to hold my arms. My eyes rolled back, and I fought the need to pass out. Breathing deeply, I snuck my hand into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around the silver handle.
I inhaled sharply, jerking the silver pie server out and shoving it over my shoulder. There was a horrible screeching noise as the pie server met a little resistance, sinking into the vampire’s flesh. The pressure at my neck slipped away.
I stumbled out of the closet and toward the window, pressing the button that released the sunproof shades. The room was flooded with sunlight, temporarily blinding me as the vampire screamed in rage. I turned to face him, a canister of silver vampire spray in hand. I couldn’t make out his face, just the smoking outline of a very angry vampire.
The smell of burning popcorn sizzled through the air as the combination of silver and sun burned his flesh. Wrenching my shoulder, he shoved me back toward the open closet, cursing and sputtering. I pressed the spray button, aiming for eye level. He screamed, growling viciously as I added another layer of pain to his suffering. Howling, he threw me back into the open closet. Flailing, I caught the doorknob with my sleeve, inadvertently slamming the door behind me.
For a second, I panicked, thinking he might be in the closet with me. I kicked and struck out, swinging at nothing but air. Lunging for the rattling doorknob, I held it in a death grip as he yanked on it from the outside. Although the strain on my arms burned, exposure to the sunlight had obviously weakened him. I held on, despite the guttural stream of graphic, anatomically impossible death threats he threw at me.
The growling and shaking stopped suddenly, but I kept my grip on the door for another minute. I only let go when my legs gave way. Slumping against the wall, I sucked in huge, gulping breaths, closing my eyes and willing the panic to die down. My stomach rolled, and I pitched to my knees, praying that I wouldn’t vomit on the floor in Cal’s closet.
Though, clearly, I owed him a few yarks.
I pressed my fingertips into my eyes, willing myself to wake up if this was a nightmare. Because this couldn’t be the way Iris Scanlon departed this earth, huddling in a closet, waiting for the angry, weakened vampire outside to recover enough to swoop in and devour her. At this sad point, my options were:
1. Go charging out of the closet, screaming Xena-style, and hope that the vampire was weakened by the sunlight or doubled over laughing at my weak attempt at overpowering him.
Likely result: Death or, at the very least, humiliation.
2. Duck out of my closet just long enough to grab for my purse, hoping that the vampire didn’t catch me, and then call 911 … and carefully explain to the police what I was doing in a vampire’s home where I had no legitimate business.
Likely result: Three to five years for breaking and entering. Which was inconvenient, because I looked really washed out in orange.
3. Hide in this closet overnight until sunrise.
Likely result: Being yanked out of the closet and drained as soon as the vampire recovered.
I split the difference between options 1 and 3, waiting until I had the nerve to crack the door open and scan the room for Gropey Groperson. All was quiet in the bedroom. I couldn’t see the silver pie server. I wondered idly whether it was still stuck in the vampire’s chest.
From the other side of the door, I could hear the faintest impression of Cal’s voice calling. I waited several long minutes, listening for any sound of the injured vampire. I grasped the can of silver spray firmly in front of me and kicked open the door. The well-lit bedroom was empty. And my mom’s silver pie server was gone.
I was so glad she wasn’t around to ground me for this one.
“Iris!” Cal yelled, his voice tinny and remote from the earpiece on the floor. “Answer me!”
“I’m fine.” I wheezed, putting the module back in my ear. “I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
“I, uh, I just got spooked,” I told him, carefully poking my head into the hallway and flicking on the light switch. I didn’t see any evidence of a smoking vampire’s trail, but there was no way he had gotten out of the house in broad daylight. I went to the window and pushed the button to lift the shade. A breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding rushed out of my chest.
“I heard the growls and your screams.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted as I blazed a path through the house to the door, turning on lights and opening windows until all of the rooms were sunlit.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re frightened. I can hear it in your voice,” he insisted. “What happened?”
“There was someone in the house, but I’m fine,” I said, bolting for the front door. My car was down the street, untouched. I jumped in and pulled out into the street without bothering with a seat belt. I did, however, manage to find the lemon drops in my center console.
“What do you mean, someone in the house?” he demanded. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe you.”
I didn’t answer, crunching my teeth through the citrusy hard candy instead. A few houses down the street, I forced myself to pull over. I took a few deep breaths, leaning my head against the steering wheel. I had nothing against the guard at the booth. I didn’t think it would be nice to run him down. “I’ll be home in a few minutes. I’ll explain then. Just let me get out of here. I just can’t—I can’t talk right now.”
Breathing. I focused on breathing, on keeping my hands steady on the wheel and distinguishing the gas pedal from the brake. My losing track of the pedals would surely upset the other drivers.
“Start talking to me,” Cal said, his voice like a gentle caress against my ear.
“About what?” I asked. I sniffed, wiping at my eyes and pushing the car back into gear.
“Anything. It occurs to me that I’ve entrusted my entire existence to you, but I know very little about you. What’s your favorite color?”
I scoffed. “Really?”
“It’s to get your mind off of your state of panic. So, favorite color?”
“Blue.”
He prompted, “What kind of blue?”
“The kind that’s not red or yellow,” I deadpanned.
“There are hundreds of different shades of blue.”
“Cobalt.” I huffed. “My mom had this vase when I was a kid, cobalt glass. I used to sit on the floor and watch the sunlight coming through it.”