B00AO57VOY EBOK (2 page)

3.
     
You know the really hot guy you just hit with your car?   The one who
makes you feel all woozy and tempts you to forget how embarrassing drooling
really is?  Yeah, that one. 
He’s
your vampire.  Your very own
obnoxious, arrogant, too hot to be real member of the bloodsucking undead.  And
you know vampires.  He’s going to bite you.  And, when he does, he
owns
you. 
Like, literally.  He’ll even leave you his vampy version of a cattle brand
right there on your neck to prove it.  Sounds fun, right?

Demons don’t like vampires very much, so he can be a real asset while
you’re trying to keep from becoming a soulless demon doll. 
But
, if you
choose to take that path, proceed with caution.  Falling for a vampire is so easy,
it’s almost as scary as the idea of becoming a demon’s one true love.

4.
     
The ability to lie?  Yeah, that’s about to become your best defense.  Because
you can’t tell anyone—not even your best friends—what you are.  You can’t tell
them you just sent a demon dressed in the skin of one of your oldest friends
through a portal leading straight to Hell.  You can’t tell them your boyfriend
is a vampire.  You can’t really tell them
anything
.  There are rules
against that kind of disclosure.  So if you don’t know how to lie, now is a
good time to start learning.

I bet you’re thinking, “Okay,
that sucks, but it’s doable.”

You couldn’t be more wrong. 

Sure, you’ll banish the bad
guy to some other realm for the rest of eternity with your mad witchy skills.  When
you turn your leg into something that would look perfect on a purple elephant,
your Grams will turn it back for you.  You’ll even learn to fight demons and do
some really cool witchy stuff.  But you will lose part of yourself in the
bargain.  A part you will never get back.  I’m speaking from personal
experience here, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

And that concludes our
lesson for today.  If you choose to run away, screaming in terror, I have to
admit, you’re making a smart move.  If you don’t…

Good luck making it out alive.

“Three murders in three
weeks!”

My best friend’s disgusted
shriek made every head in the Oakhurst Academy Library turn toward our table.
 I looked up from my Trig homework just in time to see Kim hurl a
newspaper at me, and I barely managed to duck out of the way.  Picking it up
and rolling my eyes, I settled back in my chair and unfolded the paper Kim had
been reading.  It wasn’t hard to find the story—it was taking up the whole
front page in gory detail.

“What the hell is The Donut
doing
?”
I muttered as I read the article, which prominently featured the picture of yet
another teenage girl who’d been found mutilated and murdered. 
"Seriously, Sheriff Martin needs to start looking into other career
options.  There’s no
way
he’s getting re-elected after this. 
Three murders and still no
suspects
?”

Sheriff Martin—better known
as Deputy Donut to the youth of Moonlight, Missouri—had never been my favorite
person, but I had at least thought he was semi-competent.  After reading
about the deaths of three girls my age, I was starting to lose that faith.  How
could there be no suspects when the guy kept dumping the girls in the same
place?  Hell, even
I
could see a pattern there!

I finally let my eyes drift
over to the picture of the latest victim of Moonlight’s very own serial killer
and felt a chill slip down my spine as I pictured the girls who had died before
her.  The three girls looked so much alike they could have been triplets.  They
had the same long curly hair, the same delicate bone structure, even the same
sweet, innocent smile.  And they were all dead, their lives cut short before
they even really got the chance to live them.

“They’re calling him
Blood
Red
?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from that young face that would never
get any older. 

“Yeah, because of the
hair.” 

I looked up just to in time
to see Kim’s perfect face go completely pale. 

“What about the hair?” I
demanded.  “Do they know who this guy
is
?”

“They’re not calling him
that because of
his
hair,” she mumbled, dropping her eyes.  “They’re
calling him that because of what he does to his
victims’
hair.”

Frowning, I scanned the
story in front of me again.  And then again.  There was nothing there that
would give me the first clue what she was talking about.  Actually, the article
didn’t really tell me anything, except that another girl had been found behind
the ruins of the creepy old church at the edge of town.  Despite the fact that
patrols had been set up to watch the crumbling relic, the killer had managed to
dump yet another body there. 

Nothing about the girl’s
hair was even
hinted
at.

“Let me guess,” I said
finally, tossing the paper back across the table between us.  “Adam?”

I knew the second she started
fidgeting that I was right and just shook my head at her.  Blake’s brother,
Adam, had recently graduated from the police academy and had taken a job with
the local Sheriff’s department.  Given the fact that he had never been able to
keep his mouth shut about
anything
, I didn’t see him making it a month
before they fired him.

“He only told me, and only because
he’s worried,” she whispered hurriedly, leaning across the table so we wouldn’t
be overheard by Mrs.  Fletcher, the Oakhurst librarian, who was shelving books
nearby—and shooting us vicious looks for trying to hold a conversation within
the sacred confines of her precious library.  “He’s worried about
you,
Em.”

“Me?” I repeated, frowning. 
“Why on earth would he be worried about
me
?”

Her eyes darted around,
taking in all the people around us.  The library wasn’t really crowded, but
there were enough people studying at the tables nearby to make her nervous—and,
of course, dear Mrs.  Fletcher had yet to move from her perch on the ladder
behind us even though there didn’t seem to be any more books in her arms to be
shelved.  Nosy old bird. 

Deciding it was too risky to
talk out loud, Kim pulled her phone out of her bag and her fingers started
flying over the screen.  A second later, my phone vibrated.  I pulled up the
message—and then just sat there staring at it, goosebumps rippling up my arms.

He’s dyeing their hair
red, Em.  Like yours. 

Okay, because
that
wasn’t creepy or anything, right?  My eyes drifted from my phone to the picture
of the girl still smiling at us from the paper on the table between us, trying
to picture what she would look like with red hair.  Unfortunately, it was just
a little too easy to imagine her looking just like yours truly. 
Disturbingly
easy, in fact.

“He’s sending a message,
Em,” Kim whispered.   She looked as tense and nervous as I suddenly felt.

“How do they get that?” I
asked, frowning at her.  “I mean, did Adam say anything else?”

“About the killer?  No,” Kim
said, rubbing her forehead like she was getting a headache.  “But he did say
they’re looking for Jack again.  It’s kind of suspicious, ya know?  He comes up
missing, and all these girls start showing up dead?  Given how weird he was
acting before he disappeared, I can’t really blame them for thinking it might
be him.”

I kept my eyes trained on
the paper, so she wouldn’t see the flash of sadness and guilt in my eyes at the
mention of Jack.  They could look for my old friend all they wanted, but they
wouldn’t find him.  There were only four people on the planet who knew what had
happened to Jack, and none of them would ever tell.

Including me.

“It’s not Jack,” I told her
in a whisper, damning the tears in my eyes.  I couldn’t say Jack’s name without
remembering the way I’d last seen him.  Being sucked into a portal to spend the
rest of his miserable existence on the lost plane.  A portal
I
had
created.  And every single time, it broke my heart.

But that wasn’t Jack,
I
told myself for the millionth time. 
Jack was dead long before you sent that
demon into the void.  You know that, Em, so stop beating yourself up!

I might have been able to
make myself believe that if it hadn’t been for the dreams.  They had started
exactly one week after I’d sent the demon to the void.  The only problem was,
they didn’t seem like dreams.  They seemed too vivid, too real.  And in every
single one of them, Jack was begging me to help him.  Not the demonic version,
but the real Jack.  My friend, the guy who had annoyed me and made me laugh and
drove me crazy. 

But I couldn’t help him.  Nobody
could.

 “How do you
know
it’s not Jack, Em?” Kim asked, studying me through narrowed eyes.  “I mean, you
seem pretty sure.  What?  Is he still sending you Candygrams or something?”

“No, I just know it’s not
him,” I mumbled, going back to my Trig homework.  Even when I sensed she was
still staring at me, I didn’t lift my eyes from the hieroglyphic-like equation
before me.

“Like you just
knew
where
my grandmother’s cameo was in the fourth grade?” she asked quietly. 

“Yeah, something like that,”
I said on a sigh, pretending a fascination with my homework I was never
actually going to experience. 

She was quiet for so long
that I thought she was going to let it go.  So when her hand slammed down on
the table between us, I was nearly startled out of my chair.  I looked up to
find her glaring at me, her dark eyes full of tears and hurt. 

“That’s it,” she hissed
between her teeth, completely ignoring the way everyone had turned to stare at
us again—and the irritated shushing noises Mrs.  Fletcher was making behind us. 
“I want to know
who
the hell you are, and what you’ve done with my best
friend!”

“Kim—” I began, but she cut
me off.

“Don’t, Ember!” she snapped
as a tear rolled down her cheek.  “I don’t want to hear any more lies.  And
that’s all you’ve done since you mysteriously disappeared last month!  One lie
after another after another!  And do you know how I know you’re lying to me,
Em?  Because you
suck
at it!  And do you know how I know
that
? 
Because I know
you
better than anyone on this planet, that’s how!”

“I explained about that,
Kim,” I said, sighing again as I prepared myself to lie some more—and feeling
like shit because I had to.  “I went to Washington because Grams needed me.  I
didn’t have time to call you, and I didn’t realize I didn’t have my phone until
I was already on the plane.”

“And yet, you had time to
pick up your new
boyfriend
on the way,” Kim sneered, her expression hard
as stone.  “What?  Was he on sale in the airport gift shop?”

“Wait!” I said, returning
her glare.  “Aren’t you the one who was always telling me I needed to find
someone?  And wasn’t it
you and Blake
who left me on the side of the
road with a perfect stranger?”

“Well, I never thought you’d
move in
with him!” she practically snarled. 

“That didn’t happen until I
got back,” I defended myself, glad that I could at least tell her one thing
that was true.  “I told you, Mom and I had a fight because I went to Washington
without telling her.  It got ugly, and I moved out.  I ran into Nathan again at
that nasty-ass coffee shop on Oak.  We got to talking, and he offered to rent
me a room.”

“Uh-huh.  His?” Kim asked
with a bitter laugh.  “And before you lie to me again, don’t.  I’ve seen the
two of you together.  I
know
that relationship is not platonic, Ember.”

She had me there, and I knew
it.  There wasn’t anything platonic about my relationship with my vampire
kidnapper.  ‘Passionate’ might have been a good descriptor.  ‘Maddening’ would
have worked, too, seeing as Nathan exemplified the three P’s—Possessive,
Protective, and Paranoid.  It had taken an all-out fight to get him to let me
go back to school after what had happened with Jack. 

Mostly, though, I would have
just gone with ‘complicated’ as the word to best describe our relationship.  Yeah,
complicated was a
very
good description.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want
to give Nathan my heart.  Given that he looked like a Greek god or something,
with his dark hair, mesmerizing hazel eyes, and tall muscular body, he was
really hard to resist.  And there had been
so
many times in the last
month when I was close to giving him what he wanted and completing the soul
mate bond Demon Jack had interrupted.  But in the end, it came down to trust.  And
there was part of me that just couldn’t take that leap and trust him.