Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend

I sat up slowly, as if I had been feeling dizzy and was liable to pass out at any moment. I wasn’t the least bit dizzy, but I was very sick to my stomach.

Someone wants to kill Ben!

Ben squatted next to the chair he’d led me to when I pretended to collapse inside the tent. I took a few deep breaths of fresh air, air not polluted by hundreds of bodies, and looked around me. We were outside Tallulah’s tent, which was the farthest point away from the main tent. The music was a dull throb in the back of my head, like a headache that wouldn’t go away. I didn’t remember walking all the way here, and wondered if Ben had carried me. Wouldn’t I remember that?

Someone wants to kill Ben!

I shook my head and closed my eyes again. Thinking was too hard to do with the music pounding away in my brain.

“Is she better? Does she want water?”

Someone wants to kill Ben!

“Shut up,” I growled to the shrieking inner Fran.

“Did she just tell me to shut up?”

“I’m not sure. It sounded like it.”

A shadow fell between us, on top of my hands, which were clutching Ben’s as if I had been drowning. It must be Tallulah. She hated the bands; she always stayed away from the tent when one was playing.

“Someone wants to kill you.” I didn’t think I had said the words, but I did. It was my voice, and Ben’s fingers tightened around mine.

“Someone always wants to kill me,” Tallulah said very matter-of-factly. “That’s no reason to tell me to shut up. It’s because I can contact those who have passed on, and tell things the living don’t always want made public. Once, a lady in Amsterdam who had suffocated her elderly father tried to kill me with a hatpin. A hatpin! Naturally, I knew she was coming. Sir Edward told me.” Sir Edward is Tallulah’s boyfriend. He’s dead, but they still hang out together.

“I don’t think that Fran is talking about you,” Ben said, not looking in the least bit surprised or worried or freaked or any of the ways I would feel if I were told that someone wanted me deader than a squashed bug. He was just looking at me, a little concerned, true, but his eyes were back to honey oak with gold flecks.

I glanced up at Tallulah and gave her a feeble smile. “I wasn’t telling you to shut up, and I’m glad you have Sir Edward so you’ll know whenever someone wants to off you, but Ben’s right. This is about him, not you.”

“Someone wants to kill Ben?” Tallulah stepped back and stared at him. Mom says Tallulah is related to a Gypsy queen, and I have to admit, she looks like it. Her skin is the color of a double-tall latte, but her eyes are bright, bright blue. She has long black hair with a big white streak on one side, and she always wears her hair in a big blobby bun on the back of her neck. She’s older than Mom, but it’s hard to tell just how old she is, because there’s not a single wrinkle on her face, and even Mom has a couple of lines around her eyes. “Why would anyone wish to kill Ben?”

They both looked at me. “Don’t stare at me like that; I don’t know why. I don’t even know who it was; there were too many people pushed up around us. All I felt was someone wanted Ben sta . . . um . . . dead.”

I know what you’re thinking. There I was a few hours after telling Ben I could handle my own problems without his assistance, thank you very much, and what did I do? I spilled everything. The thing is, I’m not stupid. I know I can handle my own stuff—dealing with Mom’s demands, pinning down the likeliest person to have taken the money—but this was different. This was Ben’s life at stake. (Ow! Pun not intended.) He needed to hear it so he could get the heck out of Dodge before the staker got to him.

My hands shook in his. I knew he felt them shaking, but he didn’t say anything. He just gave my fingers a little squeeze, then let go of my hands and stood up, pulling my gloves out of his back pockets. I put them on, mentally swearing an oath that I was never going to take them off again.

Yeah, okay, I knew it was an oath I wasn’t going to keep, but it felt good there for about ten seconds.

“Can you walk, or do you want me to carry you again?”

Rats! He had carried me to Tallulah’s and I had been too weirded out to notice it. “I can walk. I’m okay, just a little freaked. Thanks for letting me sit here, Tallulah.”

“You know you’re always welcome, Fran.” She gave Ben a long look as I got to my feet. “I believe I shall contact Sir Edward and ask him what he knows about this.”

Ben made a graceful bow to her. She inclined her head, and for a moment I could see why people thought she was related to royalty. I waggled my fingers at her and started off toward our trailer, Ben at my side. He didn’t try to hold my hand, which was okay, except I kind of wanted him to.

“You want to tell me what happened? What really happened, not the Tallulah version. Everything, from the time you walked into the tent to when you felt sick.”

I chewed my lip, deciding on a little judicious editing. “I didn’t feel anything other than the glamour, and I didn’t even feel that at first. To tell you the truth, I thought the music was kind of bad.”

A smile flickered across his face. “It was bad. Hence the need for the glamour.”

A glamour, for those of you not hip to the latest magic lingo, is a form of magic used to change the perception about something, usually from bad to good—in other words, someone in the band was using a glamour to make everyone think they were wonderful, giving them the overpowering desire to dance to their music. Lots of people can do glamours—witches, demon lords, vamps . . . It really is pretty common stuff. I’d just never experienced it before, since I’d always stayed away from Mom’s weirdo friends.

“Then you asked me to dance, and everything started to be fun.” I slid a glance at him to see if he thought I was enjoying myself because I was dancing with him as opposed to the glamour starting to affect me, but we were walking behind Elvis’s trailer, and Ben was in the shadow. “And then the next thing I knew, I was being swamped by people’s minds. Then I touched him.”

Ben stopped. “Him? It was a man?”

I stopped, too, chewing my lip as I tried to remember (okay, so chewing my lip is a little nervous habit I have; I never said I was perfect). I closed my eyes and sorted through the emotions I remembered feeling. With the exception of the girl who was worried because she thought she was pregnant, it was impossible to tag the fleeting images by the person’s gender. “I’m sorry; I can’t tell. It was over so quickly, just a flash in my mind of someone who was filled with thoughts of staking you. Someone cold and black and”—I shivered and rubbed my arms—“extremely evil inside. Whoever it is, Ben, they mean business. You need to be careful, because this person really wants you dead.”

“Hmm.”

He started walking again. I followed, rolling my eyes. He was back to his tough-guy macho routine.

“You know, I read a lot of mysteries,” I said.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, so I know all about someone wanting someone else dead, and detectives in the books always say that the who isn’t important; it’s the why. If you know why someone wants you dead, it’ll tell you who it is. So who wants to see you staked?”

He waited for me to catch up to him, then walked beside me with absolutely no expression on his face. “Quite a few people, I imagine.”

I goggled at him (something I’m not proud of, but hey, it had been a stressful day). “You’re joking. Why would someone want you dead? You haven’t, like, accidentally killed someone when you were having dinner, have you?” I couldn’t imagine Ben doing something bad enough to make someone want to kill him. I’d been inside his mind; I knew what sort of person he was—tormented, in a lot of pain, yes, but he wasn’t bad. He didn’t like to hurt people.

“I’m a Moravian Dark One. Many people think we’re the evil creatures of vampire legend, preying on the innocent, changing people to our own kind, damning them to eternal hell. Most vampire hunters don’t bother to find out what we are; they lump us in with demons, ghouls, and the like. Such people kill us simply because we are, Fran. They don’t need any other reason.”

“But that’s wrong! You’re not evil; you’re just a little different from anyone else. For that matter, I’m different, but I don’t see anyone trying to knock me off.”

He didn’t say anything to that. I was starting to figure him out—what he didn’t say was often as important as what he did. “You know, this thing where you can’t lie to me makes me nervous. Does your not saying anything mean that you think someone is trying to kill me?”

He put his hand on my shoulder. I had to point out to my inner Fran that it was just a nice, comforting gesture, not a romantic one. “No, I don’t. But your mother is a witch; you must know the history of witches through the ages.”

“Yeah, I know about witch hunts and all that, but people don’t do that anymore.”

His silence filled the air between us.

“They do?”

“In some places, yes. But you have nothing to worry about. Your mother protects you, as does your own desire to blend in, and . . .”

“And what?”

He didn’t say anything, but he pulled his arm off my shoulder. I had an idea of what he was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t even want to think it, because then I’d get mad at him and his macho attitude.

So I didn’t say anything either, and we both walked along in silence until Ben broke it. “Will you be all right alone until your mother comes back?”

“Sure, I stay by myself all the time.” And usually I enjoyed being left alone, but tonight I wanted Ben to stay. I tried to think up a reason to keep him with me. “Are you hungry? Would you like a cup of tea? We have—Oh.” I am so stupid! Duh, Fran, he’s a vampire; you were just talking about that. “I’m sorry; sometimes I forget that you’re a . . . Sometimes I forget.”

I hurried forward, trying to pretend I didn’t have a mouth as big as Colorado.

“Thank you, Fran.”

“For what?” I asked miserably. “Putting my foot in my mouth . . . again?”

“For not letting it matter to you what I am.”

I shrugged, but allowed the warm glow of his words to beat back some of the freaked-out feeling inside me. “I’ve never understood why people blame someone for what they were born being. It’s not like they have any choice, is it? I mean, I don’t have a choice about being a psychometrist any more than you have a choice about being a Dark One. We just are. So why get bent out of shape over something we can’t change? My mom always says it’s not who you are, but what you do that matters.”

“Such words of wisdom from a girl who thinks of herself as a freak.”

I glanced at him to make sure he wasn’t laughing at me. He wasn’t. “Yeah, well, it’s not so much that I think I’m a freak, but other people do, and, you know, it gets old really fast being different from everyone else.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, stopping in front of our trailer. “You’ve lived with being different for only four years; I’ve lived with it for three hundred and twelve.”

“Wow, you really are old,” I said, awed by the thought of living so long.

He smiled, then leaned forward and gave me a little tiny kiss, probably an Iowa’s worth of a kiss. “Yeah, I’m old, but not so old that I don’t know a good thing when I see it. Go on in. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow night.”

It took me a couple of seconds to shut the inner Fran up (she was squealing over the kiss). “Where are you going? Back to the main tent? You’re not going to go back there with the psycho who wants to stake you, are you?”

“I’m not afraid, Fran.”

I stared at him, my eyes all big and googly. “Well, you should be! Ben, I’m not joking when I say the person who wants you dead is bad, really bad. Grade-A evil, in fact. You don’t want to mess with him or her, whoever it is. Trust me; this person’s thoughts were lovingly dwelling on the joy of watching you die a horrible, painful death.”

He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ears. “Go inside, Fran. I’ll be all right.”

“Argh!” I yelled, wanting to strangle him and shake him and kiss him all at once. “You are the most frustrating guy in the whole wide world! Fine! Go back and get yourself killed. See if I care!”

I stomped up the stairs, slamming the door to the trailer behind me. Davide looked up as I threw my bag onto the chair and stormed down the narrow aisle. “Stupid Ben. Stupid, stupid, stupid Ben. Oh, he’s so friggin’ tough, no one can kill him. Ha! Well, who needs him? I sure don’t. If he wants to get himself killed, that’s just peachy keen with me. Just means I don’t ever have to redeem his soul, however you do that. He doesn’t matter to me, not one little bit. Him and his long hair and his nummy body and the motorcycle and that wonderful way he kisses—none of it matters! Not one stupid iota!”

Davide made a face that looked remarkably like he was pursing his lips at me.

“And you can just stop looking at me like that! It’s not my problem!”

I swear he raised his eyebrows at me.

I pointed my finger at him. “Not one word from you, cat. I tried to warn him. I told him flat-out that he was stupid to tangle with whoever it is who wants him dead, but he’s all ‘I’m a Dark One. I can do anything’ to me. Dark One—Dork One is more like it.”

Okay, so that was unfair—there was nothing dorky about Ben—but I wasn’t about to admit that to a cat.

Davide stood up, arched his back in a stretch, then sat down and curled his tail around his feet while he gave me a yellow-eyed look that spoke louder than words.

“I did everything I could!” I said, yanking the closet open to get my pillow and blanket. “There’s nothing else I can do!”

He just kept staring at me. I peeled off my gloves and threw them on the floor. “Gah! All right! Stop it! I’ll go save Ben’s butt. Are you happy? Everyone will probably find out about me because of this, and then someone will do a witch hunt on me, and I’ll end up dead, and then who’ll give you the good tuna, huh? It’s on your head now, buster!”

I snatched up my keys and stomped out of the trailer, muttering to myself as I headed toward the loud pulse of music. This far out, the glamour was too diluted to work, and my original opinion about the band was justified. They really did suck.

The area outside of the tent was absolutely devoid of people, which was unusual even when a band was playing. Usually people wandered out to use the portable toilets, or to have a smoke, but not tonight. There wasn’t a single person to be seen all the way down the main aisle; all the smaller tents were black and closed up. Even Tallulah’s was shut down. A few chip wrappers and empty cups were kicked along the ground by the slight breeze, but other than that, nothing moved.

It was really very eerie.

I slipped into the back of the main tent, pressing against the canvas wall, trying to keep myself out of the way of the people, and as far away from the power of the glamour as was possible. What I really needed was a way to—

“Imogen!”

A few feet away Imogen stood swaying to the music, Elvis and another guy arguing violently next to her. That was a common enough sight—Elvis got really jealous when Imogen danced with other guys. Usually she ignored him. “Imogen!”

She turned and smiled at me. I motioned her over. “You’re just the person I want to see.”

“Isn’t that sweet of you, Fran! Why aren’t you dancing?”

I waved her question away. Already I could feel the glamour working, making me want to drop everything and join in the happy dancing throng. “No time for that. Is there a ward that can protect you from a glamour?”

She smiled at the guy who was now threatening the much smaller Elvis with two big fists. “I hope he knocks him out; Elvis has been so persistent tonight. Yes, of course there is a ward; there is a protection ward for everything.”

“Can you show me how to do it? If it’s not a Moravian secret, that is. Something I could use specifically against this glamour?” My toes started tapping against my will. My legs wanted me to plunge into the crowd.

She turned to me with a slight frown between her brows. “Why would you want to be protected against this glamour? It’s not a harmful one, and the band sounds much better with it.”

“Please, Imogen, I don’t have time to explain. Could you just show me the ward?”

She gave me a curious look, then turned so her body was blocking the view of anyone who might glance our way. I had a hard time paying attention to her instructions; the music was so persuasive that everything in me cried out to go dance, to have fun, to let it fill me and wipe away all my worries.

She drew the ward on me, then showed me how to draw it. The thing with wards is not actually in drawing the symbol correctly; it’s the belief you put behind it. That’s the way it is with all magic—believe, and it works. Doubt, and the power of the magic weakens. I had no doubt of my own abilities—such as they were—which helped me draw the ward. The second my finger traced the last curve, the symbol glowed into life in the air in front of me, a bright gold shimmering that immediately dissolved. The feeling of protection remained, however.

I had done it! I had drawn a ward, and it worked! “Ugh!” I yelled, and clapped my hands over my ears, “Man, they are so bad!”

Imogen laughed and turned back to the music, holding out her hands for the guy who stood over the crumpled form of Elvis. Evidently the guy had heard Imogen’s wish, because he rubbed his knuckles before taking Imogen’s hands and dancing off with her. I went over and prodded Elvis with my toes, but he didn’t move. His chest rose and fell, though, so I knew he wasn’t dead, just knocked out. “Sorry. I have more important things to do,” I told him as I turned toward the dancing crowd, skirting along the edges as I looked for Ben. For a moment my ward flared to life, an ugly black, but just as quickly the image of it dissolved. I figured whoever was making the glamour had added a little power to it, but as long as my ward held, it didn’t concern me.

I hesitated as I watched everyone dancing, hating what I had to do, my mind squirreling frantically for another option, but there was none. Ben thought he could take on the person who wanted him dead, but I knew the truth. Whoever it was, man or woman, was cold with desperation, wholly committed body and soul to seeing Ben dead. You don’t get that sort of determination in your average vampire hunter. At least, I didn’t think you did.

“No pain, no gain,” I told myself and, taking a deep breath, plunged into the crowd. I let my hands touch everyone, not trying to guide them, just allowing myself to be jostled around randomly. People, images, objects, emotions, moments in time, thoughts, wishes, fears—everything that people carry around in their subconscious filled my brain until I thought my head was going to burst, pain lancing through my entire body with the effort to hold it all. I couldn’t breathe; there were so many people pressing in on me, filling me, so many of them they pushed me aside and took over. There was nothing left of me, not one little bit left; it was all them. Just as I was sure my mind was fracturing, at the exact moment when I knew I was stepping over the line of sanity to insanity, blackness filled me, a soft, warm, velvet blackness. It shut out the voices, the images, the people who filled me. The blackness covered me, protecting me in a soft cocoon, slowly separating me from the crowd until I slipped into a long, dark, inky pool that seemed to welcome me with a warm embrace and a whisper that all would be well.