Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend

“Yes, it is. You’re his older sister; if you hadn’t let him brainwash you into thinking that you couldn’t do things by yourself”—Whack! Screech—“he wouldn’t be so Mr. ‘I’m the Dark One; I will fix everything’ with everyone, and we wouldn’t be here now, having to beat up a demon.”

“That is totally unjustified!” Imogen lowered one end of the board she was using to beat the demon on the head, and glared at me. “I never said I couldn’t do things myself; it’s just easier to have Benedikt take care of them for me. He knows perfectly well that I could have taken care of Elvis if I wanted to.”

The demon started to snarl out a curse that would damn us both to hell as it lunged for Imogen, its hands dripping from where it had attacked Ben. I walloped it on the back with the tire iron I’d pulled from Imogen’s trunk. “Oh, yeah, right. I am so not believing that.”

The demon spun around and jumped at me, a wicked knife suddenly appearing in its hand. I gave myself a quick mental lecture about not paying attention and jumped out of the way just as it swung the knife toward me. Imogen did a fabulous martial arts kick that sent the knife spinning helplessly away. The demon screeched again. “I could have! I just thought it was more expedient to have Benedikt do it. He enjoys doing those sorts of things.”

“Expedient?” The demon jerked the tire iron out of my hands, throwing me into the car parked nearby. I shook the stars from my eyes as it hurled itself at Imogen. Without waiting for common sense to kick in, I threw myself on its back, and slapped my hands over its eyes. It hurled oaths at me, invoking the name of its demon lord as Imogen avoided the spikey end of the tire iron. She walloped it across the knees with a board, yelling at me to get out of the way. The demon crumpled up into a little ball. “How expedient is it for your brother to be lying in the field over there with more than half of his blood drained out of his body?”

“Correction,” a tired voice said behind me. Ben limped into the circle of light cast by the streetlamp, one hand over his chest. The wound no longer dripped blood, but he looked awful. “I’m no longer lying in the field. I’m here to get rid of the demon. Stand aside, both of you.”

I made a face at Imogen. She raised her eyebrows at me. “Oh, very well, I will take a modest amount of the blame for his being the way he is, but not”—she swung at the demon with her hunk of wood, connecting with its shoulders. It screamed and tried to cut her with a broken piece of glass it picked up from the side of the road. I kicked the glass from its hands, my whole body hurting from the battle. The demon finally must have had enough, though, because it just lay there on the ground, a quivering, stinking mass of evil intentions and demonic power—“not for everything. Dark Ones are naturally arrogant. You’re just going to have to deal with that particular trait as best you can.”

“Imogen! Fran!” Ben snarled, or tried to snarl. It came out kind of a really mean whimper. “You must leave, both of you. I will deal with this situation.”

“Will you just let us take care of this, please?” I waved toward where Imogen was jumping up and down to avoid one last attack by the demon. “If you’ll notice, we’re doing a pretty good job of taking care of ourselves—and you.”

“Fran does have a point, little brother. We are quite capable of taking care of this evil one, although I do appreciate your desire to protect us.” She whomped the demon upside the head with the board. It fell over, moaning and twitching a couple of times before it finally gave up trying to kill us.

“Fran doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Ben said, pushing himself away from the car. “She’s never even seen a demon before, let alone know how to fight one.”

“I know now,” I said, setting down the tire iron I had reclaimed to tick off the items on my fingers. “I know that demons don’t like steel. It burns them.”

“Steel?” Imogen drew a ward over the demon that made it arch up backward, scream twice, then disappear into a plume of really nasty-smelling black smoke. She dusted off her hands and walked toward us. “Not steel—silver.”

She brushed her hair back over her shoulder and smiled at us both. She didn’t look at all like someone who had just beaten a demon to a pulp. “I suspect he’s lied about a great many things.”

“Hmm. I guess that means he’s the thief, too.” Something nudged my mind, a thought that wanted attention, but I had something more important to do.

“Oh.” I smiled back at her. “Well, let’s see . . . there’s also the fact that when a demon takes a human form, it’s bound by the strengths and weaknesses of that form, so if you can run it down with a car and break its legs—”

“Even then you have to weaken the body significantly so the demon is forced to leave it and return to the fiery pit from which it came.”

We didn’t get back to the Faire for another half hour. Ben had to replace some of the blood he’d lost. I worried that he was going to need me to play blood donor—and I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain to him that although I didn’t want him to die, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be bound to him for all eternity, either—but luckily Imogen offered him her wrist. It was the first time I’d seen Ben . . . drinking. His teeth flashed as he bit her wrist, giving me a brief, momentary glimpse of two long canine teeth before his mouth closed over her flesh.

“Wow,” I said, watching him, feeling like an intruder on something private, and yet unable to look away. “That’s pretty wild. Does it . . . uh . . . hurt?”

“No,” Imogen said, stroking Ben’s hair with her free hand. She kissed the top of his head. “It brings me pleasure to give him life. Just as it will you someday.”

While Ben sucked down some much-needed blood, I went out to round up Tesla, who was happily grazing now that the demon was gone. “You were pretty impressive there for an old guy,” I said, patting him on the neck. He walked along quietly, nuzzling me now and again as if he hoped an apple might magically appear. “You can have two when we get back home,” I promised.

We had a brief skirmish when Ben, looking a bit better, insisted that I ride back with Imogen in her car while he led Tesla, but in the end I settled the matter by scrambling onto Tesla’s back and nudging him off toward the Faire while Ben was still tossing out orders.

He caught up with me a few feet later. Imogen’s car zipped by us, giving me enough light to see the furious scowl on Ben’s face. “Maybe you should ride and I should walk. You’re the one who’s been injured.”

He was moving a bit easier now, no longer hunched over like his chest was hurting him. I remembered how quickly he’d healed his blisters, but even so, the size of the hole that had been punched through him was awfully big. I let Tesla amble along at a slow pace, glancing down at the man who walked silently beside me.

Tesla dropped his head to graze. I slipped off his back and touched Ben’s arm. “I bet all your other girlfriends have seen your fangs.”

“They have not.” Ben turned to me, his black brows drawn together. His hair was loose, a dark curtain of silk around his face, his eyes a beautiful oak with tiny sparkly gold bits. “I do not make it a habit to show . . . other girlfriends?”

I smiled and slid my hands over his shoulders, into the cool length of his hair. “I thought maybe since I saved your life and all, we might try this boyfriend/ girlfriend thing for a bit. Just to see how it feels.”

His arms went around my back, pulling me toward him. I leaned against him very, very gently, not wanting to harm his healing wound. “You’re going to drive me mad, aren’t you? You’re going to torment me for years while you try to decide whether or not you wish to fulfill your destiny with me.”

His lips moved over mine, encouraging me to investigate. I did, hesitantly, unsure whether or not I really wanted what he offered, but in the end I allowed him to tease me into tasting him. The tip of my tongue slid over his front teeth, curling under to feel the points of two long, very sharp canine teeth.

Elvis disappeared. When Ben and I walked Tesla back to the Faire, it was business as usual . . . with the exception of Mom and her gang running around trying to force amulets on everyone. We dragged Absinthe and Peter (and Soren) from the band tent, collecting everyone in Mom’s tent to give an update on what happened.

“Well . . .” I chewed on my lip and glanced at Ben. He sat in the shadows, a large, black shape that oddly enough exuded comfort and support. He had faith in me, even when I didn’t. That gave my mental processes a little boost. “I think his plan was to push the Faire into a desperate situation, then offer to buy it himself with the money he’d stolen.”

“I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either, but he was desperate to have you. I think he felt in some weird way that if he owned the Faire, he’d own you, too.”

I took a deep breath. Mom and the other witches were sitting on the ground, clutching their amulets. Mom gave me an encouraging smile. It was kind of weird being the focus of so many people’s attention, but at the same time, it felt good. Kind of like they accepted me, as though they valued what I had to say. It wasn’t the same as when I tried to blend in at school, but it was . . . all right. Good, even.

“He didn’t get into your safe,” I said, the final pieces of the puzzle sliding into place. The thing that had been bothering me all day finally came into focus. I turned to Peter. “You must have known that Elvis knew magic, right?”

Absinthe’s eyes narrowed. She still looked at me suspiciously, but ever since I’d come walking back into the Faire with Ben’s arm around me, she’d given me a wide berth. “I took the money from Peter and counted it, tallying it against the slips from each employee.”

She said something that even in German I understood. “That pig! I will roast his guts! I will cut out his heart and eat it! He stole from me!”

“Sleight of hand,” I said to Soren, who looked puzzled. “Elvis was a master at taking an item and switching it with another one. I bet he had some of those money pouches all made up with newspaper, so all he had to do was switch them when Absinthe was looking the other way. Then she’d tuck them away in the safe, never knowing that she’d been robbed.”

It was Peter’s turn to swear. Everyone left a few minutes after that, Absinthe promising dark vengeance on Elvis’s guts, Peter muttering about calling the police, Mom and her gang to hold another emergency circle to see if they couldn’t bring down Elvis, or at least blight him with boils or a really nasty rash.

Soren gave me a pitiful look just before he followed his dad out of the tent. “You were supposed to let me help you find out who was the thief. I’m your sidekick.”

“Tomorrow we shall be on our way to Budapest, where I will be able to shop until I drop.” Imogen slid off the table she was sitting on, stretched, and blew a kiss to Ben. “I will need a new silver dagger. I shall buy you one as well, Fran. Thank you for what you did. I believe I will go and see if Jan is still here. He has many qualities I have not yet investigated. . . .”

She drifted off. I looked at Ben, gnawing on my lip. I’d kissed a vampire, survived Absinthe’s attempt to get into my mind, and helped beat up a demon—surely I could do this, too. “So, um . . . are you . . . uh . . . you know, going to be hanging around with us in Budapest, or do you have to do stuff somewhere else?”

He stood up and cupped my jaw in his hands, pressing his lips to my forehead. Mom gasped in the background. “I must go hunt down Elvis, but once I have found him, I will return.”

He stared into my eyes for a second, then left. Just walked out of there and left. I stood there with my jaw hanging around my knees for a moment, then realized what he’d done.

I ran out of the tent, grabbing the back of his shirt as he strode down the center aisle. He ignored my tugging and marched onward. “Hey! Didn’t we just have a talk about you being all macho and feeling like you have to save Imogen and me all the time? No one says you need to hunt down Elvis; Peter is going to call the police—”

“I am a Dark One. He is a threat to Imogen, and now that you have identified him as the thief, he is a threat to you. I cannot tolerate that threat.”

“Do you know what you are? You’re just a great, big chauvinist pig; that’s what you are. My mother’s told me about guys like you.”

“I never was in danger, you pigheaded boob! I had the ward to protect me. You were the one lying on the field with his guts spread out all over—”

“‘I am a Dark One; I am a Dark One. . . .’ Of all the hooey! You are so full of it. You know what? My next boyfriend is going to think I can do anything. He’s going to worship the ground I walk on.”

You know, I have to admit, I’m kind of looking forward to the rest of the summer. I may still be Fran the Freak Queen, and I may still not fit in anywhere but with a bunch of fellow freaks, but somehow that doesn’t seem quite as bad as it used to be.