Chapter Five

The Deathtrap had a full tank of gas, and there wasn’t much traffic. Bonus: I only got lost once, when my GPS signal dropped up in the hills.

There were a few cars parked near the house where we’d met Travis, but none of them was Skyler’s little red convertible. Everything was quiet and still, except for the far-off sound of sirens, which wasn’t unusual in the city.

“No sign of life,” Vaughn said.

“We are dealing with vampires,” I said. The more times I said it aloud, the more I believed it. “They’re probably still sleeping.”

Musicians and vampires had a similar schedule—sleep all day, up all night—which was convenient if, like The Drainers, you were vampires in a band.

I told myself that maybe Skyler was already safe back in Huntington Beach. I told myself that, but I already knew it wasn’t the truth. Skyler had gone to find Travis.

But I needed to check anyway.

Vaughn and I got out of the car. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I knocked again, harder this time, and the door creaked open on its own.

Which wasn’t creepy at all.

Vaughn’s phone rang, and I jumped. “It’s my dad,” he said. “I’ve got to take this. Wait for me. I’ll be a few minutes.”

I’d forgotten I was supposed to work this week. “I have a shift scheduled on Thursday.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I’ll ask Dad for a few days off for both of us.”

I hoped it wouldn’t take that long to find Skyler, but it might take me a while to get the ingredients for the spell I needed to cast.

I fumbled for a light switch and was relieved by the sudden brightness. The house looked empty, but all the curtains had been closed to shut out the sun. A bra hung from the chandelier, and an overflowing bag of trash stunk up the kitchen, but there was no sign of life, human or otherwise.

There was a lot of conflicting information about vampires, but I was pretty sure they were creatures of the night, which again made The Drainers’ musical profession convenient.

A weird scraping sound, like someone was dragging something along the marble floor, startled me. A tall blond girl appeared, pulling a ladder behind her. She wore a halter top, denim cutoffs, and cowboy boots.

“Have you seen Travis?” I asked.

Her blue eyes narrowed. “Who are you? And why do you want to know?”

“He’s a…” I hesitated and then forced the words out. “Friend of mine.”

She snorted. “You need to get better friends.”

“More like a friend of a friend. My best friend is dating him.” I shuddered as the ladder screeched its way across the room.

“You should probably pick that up or you’ll scratch the floor,” I offered.

“I know,” she said with twangy satisfaction. Her Southern accent was slight but noticeable. “It’d serve him right. I hope he loses his deposit.”

“This is Travis’s house?”

“The band probably rented it while they were in L.A.,” the blonde said.

“When did they leave?”

She shook her head. “Bus pulled out at around three a.m.”

I wondered if she knew what the guys really were. “They travel during the day?”

“They sleep on the bus,” she replied. “Gary drives.”

“Who’s Gary?” I didn’t recall any of them having that name.

She stared at me. “He’s The Drainers’ roadie. Their human servant. He guards their coffins. They usually just call him Renfield—get it?”

“Renfield? Like in Dracula? So you know?”

“That they’re vampires? Sure do,” she said. “I also know they’re assholes.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I wondered how she knew so much about The Drainers. She didn’t have that vacant stare that some of their superfans had.

She stopped below the chandelier and propped up the ladder, then climbed it and snagged the bra hanging off a crystal teardrop.

“I wondered where this thing went,” she said with a cheerful smile, then climbed back down and took a seat on the bottom rung of the ladder. She stared off into space and twirled the bra idly. Not only was she built, she had a heart-shaped face and big blue eyes. She was definitely beautiful.

“I’m Tansy,” I offered.

Her hair was the shade of blond that let people underestimate her, but underneath all that gorgeousness, I saw fierce intelligence.

“Bobbie Jean,” she said. “I suppose you’re one of the rat bastard’s groupies?”

“Rat bastard?”

“That jerk Travis,” she said. “I wish I had my daddy’s hunting rifle about now, but they wouldn’t let me take it on the plane. Not that it would do any good to shoot him, but it would sure make me feel a little better.”

I inched away from her, but she didn’t notice.

“I tracked him from Texas,” she said. “Finally cornered him last night. He pretended to be glad to see me, but, afterward, when I fell asleep, he skedaddled.”

“Afterward?”

“After…you know,” she said. “Oh, honey, don’t tell me you fell for that soul mates stuff? Me too, at first.”

I felt like throwing up. Travis had had a busy night. Skyler was out there somewhere with a lying, cheating douchebag who used girls like they were his own personal blood bank.

“I didn’t fall for anything,” I said. At least I hadn’t fallen for Travis’s BS. The bite on my neck throbbed. “My best friend did.”

“I thought you looked too smart to be one of Travis’s Bleeders.” She studied me. “Or a Sundowner, either.”

“What are those?”

“His followers,” she said. At my blank look, she clarified. “The Bleeders are groupies. The Drainers have thousands of them. They follow the band, do anything they ask.” That explained some of the hashtags I’d seen.

“Why is their live music so amazing and the recorded stuff so terrible?” I asked.

She giggled but sobered quickly. “Don’t say that in front of Natasha,” she cautioned.

“Who’s that?”

“The president of The Drainers’ fan club. The number-one Bleeder,” she said.

Natasha? Could that be the “Natalie” who Skyler had taken off with? Maybe Gertie had her name wrong.

“I thought you said they were called Sundowners.”

“Sundowners are waiting for the final kiss,” she said. “The Bleeders are just…wannabe Sundowners.” She said it like it clarified everything.

“There’s a hierarchy for their band groupies?”

“Bleeders are more like…the band’s food source,” she said. “They follow them everywhere.”

“Gross.” But despite how disgusting all of this was, it started to make sense. It was like a fog was slowly lifting from my brain. “He’s using my best friend as an appetizer,” I said. “She keeps going back to him.”

“There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell she’ll leave him,” Bobbie Jean replied. “Once she’s under his spell, there’s not a lot you can do.”

“I have to try. She’s my best friend,” I said. “Did you happen to see her last night? Petite brunette with brown eyes.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. What’s her name?”

“Skyler,” I said.

She shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar, but there were a lot of girls here last night. I mean, I knew The Drainers were a gluttonous bunch, but hoo-wee.”

“Do you have one of these?” I craned my neck so she could see the bite mark.

She nodded. “But I can’t show you mine.”

Relief swept through me. “You mean it faded?”

She blushed. “It’s somewhere…private,” she said.

“Oh.”

Silence. We both stared at the floor.

“Some of The Drainers’ superfans seem into the whole vampire thing,” I said.

She nodded. “They want The Drainers to bite them. But it takes more than one bite to make a vampire, or you and I would be screwed.”

“Do you know what it does take to make a vampire?” I asked, trying to keep the trembling from my voice, hoping to confirm what Granny had told me.

“Travis would have to drink you dry and then give you some of his blood,” she replied. I made a face. So Granny was right.

“Why are you looking for him?” I asked her.

“Revenge,” Bobbie Jean said.

“Because he bit you without permission?” I asked. “I can relate to that one.”

She shook her head. “He took something of mine,” she said. “And I want it back.”

“I…get that one, too,” I said, thinking of Sky.

“What are you going to do now?” Bobbie Jean asked.

I shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m assuming you have the other symptoms, too?”

She nodded. “Daddy slaughtered a cow last week, and I knocked him over trying to get the blood.”

I thought about what she’d told me so far. “What will happen to you?”

“Travis left that part out when he was whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Like how I smelled so good and he was sure I was the one.”

“And how your love would be eternal?” I said with a shudder.

“Hello?” a girl said from the doorway, and I turned. She had pink hair and was dressed in a vintage floral dress and white gloves, which made her look like she was ready for a garden tea party. “I am Rose. Is this the residence of Travis, lead singer of The Drainers?”

She was asking about a vampire, but she looked human and didn’t have that weird decaying smell that Travis and the guys had. She must be human. Or at least not a vampire.

“Travis seems to be pretty popular today,” I replied. “But you just missed him.”

“A tragic loss,” another girl said, stepping in from behind her. Instead of pink hair, she had jet-black hair in a braid and wore a belted oversize white T-shirt over unicorn-print leggings. Some sort of weapon was strapped to one thigh in a Lara Croft–like holder. Her big blue eyes matched the other girl’s. Despite their different hair colors and clothing styles, it was clear they were twins. Probably a few years older than me.

Rose frowned at her. “What Thorn meant to say is that we have a message for him from the pack.” She may have looked eighteen, but she sounded eighty.

“The pack?” I asked.

Rose shook her head. “Not the pack, the PAC. The Paranormal Activities Committee. The people we work for.”

The girl beside her snorted. “Or Pain-in-the-Ass Creeps.” She definitely didn’t like her bosses.

There was a committee to govern paranormal activity? Of course there was. And I’d bet she was using the word “people” loosely.

“Let me guess,” I said. “A bunch of old white dudes making decisions for everyone.”

“They are very old,” Thorn said solemnly. “And very white. But that is because most of them are dead. No blood flow, you understand.”

“What does the PAC do?” I asked.

“Each kingdom has a representative on the committee. They agree on policies,” she said. “Or, more often, disagree. Sometimes, they have to make executive decisions.”

“What kind of executive decisions?”

“Deadly ones,” she replied. “That’s where we come in. If the PAC feels threatened, we manage that threat.”

Politics, sheesh.

I wasn’t very impressed with the way regular old politicians treated women. Vampire politicians were probably a hundred times worse.

Thorn snorted again, louder this time.

“Thorn, please refrain from making that ungodly sound,” Rose said.

I gaped at her. “Your names are Rose and Thorn?” Though now that I thought about it, the names seemed to suit their personalities. Rose was soft-spoken and formal, and Thorn seemed outspoken and sharp as the dagger she had strapped to her thigh.

Suddenly, I was incredibly tired. I wanted to go home to the boring life I’d left behind in Orange County in all its beige glory.

“What do you want with Travis?” I asked.

“That’s classified,” Thorn said. Then Ms. Bossy Pants added, “You know, it is very likely you both were infected.”

“We know,” Bobbie Jean and I said in unison.

“It is more than likely that Travis has already fled the city,” she added.

“We know,” we chorused again.

“But do you know that there’s still a chance to save all those girls?” she asked. “And yourselves, too, of course.”

“Tell us how,” I said. I’d overheard Granny say we shouldn’t try to save Skyler, but I had to. Giving up on my best friend wasn’t an option. And there were other girls, too?

“If he has ingested their blood but they have not ingested his, there is still a chance to save them,” Rose said.

“And if they’ve had some of his blood?”

“It’s hopeless,” Bobbie Jean said.

Thorn made a scoffing noise. Rose frowned at her, but Thorn said, “It’s not hopeless, just almost hopeless.”

“What?” I asked her. “Tell me what can be done if Skyler’s already drunk Travis’s blood.”

“You can kill him,” she said. “If you kill the sire, all his progeny will return to human.”

I nodded. “Then that’s what I’ll do,” I said.

Skyler might not make it through the summer. I had to find her and save her from Travis now.

That seemed to deflate Rose a tiny bit, but she soldiered on. “What else have you determined?”

“We both hooked up with Travis,” Bobbie Jean said.

I shuddered. Oh hell no. “I didn’t hook up with Travis.” I shook my head for added emphasis. “He just bit me without permission.”

“Then what happened?” Rose asked.

“Then I kneed him in the balls,” I replied with satisfaction. “But my best friend was bitten, too. The Drainers didn’t want to let us leave, but we did.”

“I got bit at his gig in Austin and then again last night,” Bobbie Jean said.

“My friend had fangs,” I said.

“What color were her eyes?” Thorn blurted out. “All red and squinty like a rat’s?”

“Her eyes?” I asked. “Normal color. Brown.” I wasn’t ready to tell them my secrets.

“That is good news,” she said.

Rose fished a thick file out of her purse and scribbled madly. The pen had silver ink. I tried to read over her shoulder, but she blocked my view. “So what else?”

“Skyler was bit when we were at the party here last night,” I said. But then I thought of the weird way Skyler had been acting. “It’s possible it was more than one time.

“She’s my best friend,” I continued stubbornly. “I’m not going back home without her.”

“Perhaps there’s hope for her,” Rose said. “As long as she doesn’t drink any of the prince’s blood.”

“Gross,” I said, making a face. “Who’s the prince?”

I’d just started to get my head around the idea of vampires, and now Rose was telling me there was a hierarchy?

“He goes by the name Travis,” she said. “His father is the king of the vampires. California realm.”

“His royal blood is probably swimming with communicable disease,” I replied. “But my friend Skyler thinks she’s in love with him. And that he loves her.”

Thorn studied my face. “The prince thinks of women only two ways,” she said. “For feeding and for f—”

I interrupted her before she could finish that sentence. “I’ve no intention of staying here and waiting,” I said.

“You are a Mariotti witch.” Rose narrowed her eyes. “But you still do not know what you are getting yourself into.”

How did she know I was a Mariotti? Who were these girls?

Things were getting less clear the more I learned—but saving Skyler was more important than anything right now. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Skyler is my best friend.”

“Then be prepared to face the consequences,” she said.

I tried to ignore the dread pooling in my stomach at what I’d find when we finally caught up with Skyler. If that jerk had hurt her, I was going to find a spell that would make his fangs as useful as flip-flops in Siberia and see how long he survived.