Bad Blood (3 page)

“Yeah, who the hell are you?” Rayne demands, looking as if she’s ready to kick the crap out of whoever this is. I smile a little. She may be a freak, but at the end of the day she can be a good sister.

The girl smiles. But not in a sweet kind of way. I so don’t like her already.

“Who am I?” she repeats in a voice that sounds sly and catlike. “Why don’t you ask your fearless leader, Magnus?”

Something’s wrong. Really, really wrong. I feel like I’m going to throw up, though I’ve no idea why. “Magnus?” I manage to choke out. “Who . . . is this girl?”

Magnus swallows hard, running a hand through his hair. When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse. “Sunny, this is Jane Johnson,” he says. “The vampire council has ruled that she is to become my blood mate.”

3

I stare at Magnus, then at the girl—Jane—then at Magnus again. My heart has pretty much bottomed out at this point, hovering somewhere around my kneecaps. The council assigned Magnus a blood mate? My boyfriend is getting a blood mate? My boyfriend is getting drop-dead gorgeous Jane Johnson as a blood mate?

I guess in the back of my mind I knew this could happen someday. After all, Magnus is immortal. He’s going to live thousands of years on this planet while I, if I’m lucky, probably only have about seventy or eighty left. Many of which I’ll be spending growing old while he remains the spitting image of a hot high school student. At first, people will start calling me a total cougar, saying I’m robbing the cradle and stuff. Then they’ll ask if he’s my son. Grandson eventually.

At some point we’ll have to break up ’cause it’ll just be too weird for us to be seen together. Either that or go into solitary confinement for a few years. Until, you know, I die. Of course, I sort of always figured he’d be so heartbroken about the whole thing he’d go around wringing his hands and swearing he’ll never love again for all of eternity as he could never find anyone as perfect and wonderful as me.

But evidently he’s not even going to wait ’til I’m cold in my grave to find someone new. Or, you know, in my grave to begin with.

“Magnus,” I say through my clenched teeth. “Can we talk alone for a second?”

Jane frowns, sticking her full lower lip out (totally collagen-injected—I’d bet my life on it) into a full blown pout. “You know,” she whines, “anything you have to say to Magnus can be said in front of his blood mate.”

I’m about to remind her that technically she’s not anyone’s blood mate yet, least of all my boyfriend’s, and, if I have any breath left in my body, she’ll never live to become one either, but suddenly Rayne chooses that moment to butt into the conversation.

“Oh my God, Jane. What fabulous nails you have. What
is
that color?” she asks, grabbing the interloper’s hand.

I stare at my sister. Can Rayne really be that fascinated by the lesser known shade of this fall’s Opi color collection at the worst moment of my life? But then I take a look at the nails in question. Hot pink. A color my Gothy sister wouldn’t use to paint the nails of her worst enemy. She must be trying to distract the girl to give me a word in edgewise with Magnus. I seize my opportunity and drag him a few feet away from the group. Out of Jane’s multipierced earshot. I can see from the corner of my eye that the bitch is struggling to follow, but my sister’s got her black polished claws into her—

literally—and isn’t about to let go. Sometimes it’s good to have a twin. I turn to my boyfriend. “Magnus,” I hiss. “What the hell is going on here?”

He shuffles from foot to foot, staring at the ground and refusing to meet my eyes. “Um, well, I don’t know,” he stammers.

“Bull. You do know.” I put my hands on my hips. “You totally know. And you didn’t tell me.”

“Okay. Fine,” he admits. “I knew the council was putting some feelers out, looking for a potential blood mate. But I had no idea they’d settle on someone quite so soon. I only learned this afternoon that she had passed all the background checks and was flying in. And I felt it was a bit harsh to break the news to you over the phone. Not to mention it would totally ruin our evening.”

My stomach lurches. Our evening. In other words he wanted to make sure he got some hot sexual action before filling me in on the fact that our entire relationship was suddenly going to change, big-time. I see how it is. Love me and leave me. Bang me and bounce. Screw me before screwing me.

“Don’t you think it’s information I’d probably prefer to know
before
we did what we were planning to do this evening?” I demand. “I mean, a blood mate?

Does this mean we’re . . .” I swallow the lump back down into my throat. “Are we breaking up?”

Magnus grabs me, cupping my cheeks in his hands so I’m forced to meet his eyes. “Sunny, calm down!” he commands. “Stop jumping to crazy conclusions. Of course we’re not breaking up. Don’t be ridiculous. I love you. And that’s not going to change. Everything will be as it was before, except that I’ll have a blood mate.”

I squirm away. “A blood mate is like a freaking soul mate, Magnus,” I remind him. “What, are you going to be like a Mormon vampire? Have two wives or whatever?” As soon as the words leave my lips I regret them. It’s not like Mag and I have ever discussed marriage. I’m still in high school for goodness’ sake. And I don’t think vampires usually get married technically anyhow. Especially since they’d literally catch on fire from setting foot in a church. But still? A blood mate
and
a girlfriend? I’ve never heard of such a thing. From what I understand, in the vampire world, you can mess around with girls, boys, whatever, while you’re a newly reborn undead, but once you turn one thousand, it’s time to commit to the vampire you’ll spend eternity with. Your blood mate. And then it’s time to put away childish mortal romances.

“A blood mate fills a very different role than that of a wife,” Magnus insists.

“It’s more of a civil partnership. Sure, sometimes that partnership is a romantic one—like Rayne and Jareth’s is—but that’s not always the case. And it won’t be with Jane and me, I promise you. She’ll simply aid me in running the affairs of the Blood Coven.”

“I could do that!” I cry. “I could help you run the coven just as well as she could.”

Magnus shakes his head. “Don’t be silly, Sunny,” he says. “Jane has been handpicked from a large pool of potentials for her advanced intelligence and expertise in diplomacy and political science.” He ruffles my head in that patronizing way I hate. “You haven’t even graduated high school yet.”

I squeeze my hands into fists. This is so unfair. Back before Magnus was Blood Coven leader—when everyone assumed Lucifent would stay alive and in control of the coven forever—I was selected to be Magnus’s blood mate. Okay, technically Rayne was, not me, but we’re twins, which is close enough in my book. If only I hadn’t freaked out about the whole vampire thing and forced Magnus to turn me back into a human. Then I’d still be his blood mate and Jane wouldn’t even be a blip on anyone’s radar. Sure, I didn’t have the stupid polisci degree, but I could have helped the coven in other ways. For example, I make a damn good vegetarian quiche.

Oh, who am I trying to fool here? The vampire council doesn’t want a qualified vegetarian quiche-maker as their Master’s partner in crime. Unless I could somehow make it out of blood. Which would totally ruin its consistency. Not to mention its vegetarianism.

I feel the tears well up in my eyes. I so have to get out of here—before I lose it in front of everyone. Especially stupid Jane. The last thing I need is for that tacky vampire wannabe bitch to see me cry.

“I’ve got to go,” I mutter, pushing past Magnus and walking as fast as possible without breaking into a run.

“Sunny, wait!” Magnus calls after me. “Come back.”

I almost turn around. Almost. But then Jane’s voice cuts through the crisp October night.

“Mag-nus,” she whines. “I’ve flown all the way from England today and have killer jet leg. Can you take me to my hotel room already?”

Sure he can. In fact, he’s already got a great one reserved. 4

It’s nine o’clock on a Friday night and I’m supposed to be having the best night of my life, snuggled up with my perfect boyfriend under luxurious five hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and a feather duvet at a five-star hotel. Instead I’m squashed in my own not-so-luxurious, not-so-thread-counted, flannel-sheeted bed next to my sister, Rayne. Instead of the cries of ecstasy I’d imagined I’d utter tonight while in Magnus’s arms, I’m just plain crying. My face is blotchy, my eyes are red, and I’m wearing an oversized, black T-shirt, courtesy of Rayne, that claims
Zombies Make Better Boyfriends
—which, while may be true in theory, isn’t exactly all that comforting at the moment. Nor is my dear sister.

“Sunny, you’re probably totally overreacting,” she tells me unnecessarily for what seems the thousandth time tonight.

“I don’t care,” I reply, for the thousandth and first. “This was supposed to be the best night of my life. Now it’s turning out to be the worst.”

“Only if you let it.”

“Please don’t. You sound like Mom,” I grump. “What would you be doing if Jareth suddenly told you he was hooking up with some random trashy redheaded chick?”

Rayne thinks about it for a moment, then smiles evilly. “I’d claw out his eyes. Slowly and painfully. I mean, he’d probably grow them back, you know, being an immortal vampire and all. We’re so good at regeneration. But I bet it’d really hurt at the time.”

“Exactly.”

“But Magnus didn’t say he was going to hook up, Sun,” she clarifies.

“No, he’s going to do something much, much worse. He’s going to make her his blood mate. That’s like freaking marrying her under vampire rules. They’ll be bonded together forever—just like you and Jareth.” I stare down at my hands, feeling the tears well up in my eyes again. “They’ll be side by side, staying ridiculously beautiful forever, while I wither up and prepare to die.”

“Please. Even as a white-haired granny, you’ll still be hotter than that white trash ho. Do you know she had acrylic fingernails with little pink bats painted on them?” Rayne snorts. “How tacky. And here she’s supposed to be some Rhodes scholar or some crap like that.”

I look up at my sister. “Really? That’s weird, right? I mean, her whole outfit was weird. Not to mention how she talked.” The more I think about it, the stranger the whole encounter with Jane seems. At the time I’d been so pissed at Magnus that I hadn’t really given it much thought. But now that I’m running tonight’s events through my head again, I’m realizing that something just isn’t adding up. Why would this supposed political mastermind, hand-selected by the Blood Coven to become their Master’s blood mate, dress only half a step up from a Miami hooker? And why had she shown up now, just days before the big vampire consortium in Vegas?

“Hmm,” Rayne says thoughtfully, “maybe she’s an evil plant, sent by a rebel vamp coven to infiltrate the organization and destroy it from within.”

I stare at her. “Oh my God! Do you really think so?” I imagine Jane, seducing Magnus and then staking my poor helpless boyfriend in his sleep. Blaming it on a slayer (maybe even my sister!) and then taking control of the Blood Coven and manipulating it for her own evil purposes—which may or may not include taking over and/or destroying the world as we know it. “We should warn Magnus.”

Rayne rolls her eyes. “Please.” She snorts. “I was totally kidding. I mean, conspiracy theory much, Sun? Trust me, bad taste in fashion does not an evil vampire make. You should have seen the vamp chicks from the English coven. Then again, they were a bit evil, I suppose, throwing us out in the cold and making us sleep in a barn, just because of that whole pesky vampire slayer thing ...”

I glare at her. So much for sisterly support.

“Fine. But I still think there’s something fishy about her,” I mutter.

“I’ll admit, she does
smell
a bit fishy,” Rayne says brightly, still evidently determined to make light of my desperate woe. I throw a pillow at her and she dodges it.

“Don’t you have some kind of secret slayer mission or something to go on tonight?” I grump, lying down on my side and turning so my back faces her. A hint, if there ever was, to get out of my bed and leave me alone. I’m done with her brand of cheering me up.

“Nope. I’m here for you, Sun. All night, if necessary.”

“Awesome. Lucky me.”

Rayne tries to put her arm around me, but I shrug away. All I want to do now is curl up in my bed—alone—and fall into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep. Trying to forget that my boyfriend, the love of my life, is currently hanging out with another girl. Another girl who might very well be evil, no matter what anyone else says.

I roll over and look at my sister, who’s already fallen fast asleep, her breathing easy and her face completely relaxed. I sigh. If only I were a vampire like her. Or a slayer, even. I could kick Jane’s ass from here to Oxford and demand she never set foot in Oakridge again as long as we both shall live. But no, there will be no ass-kicking. No demanding she leave my boyfriend alone. Because at the end of the day, I’m not Rayne. I’m just helpless, little old Sunny—a completely mortal girl, without any superpowers to help me prevent a potentially evil vampire from stealing my boyfriend away. This bites big-time.

5

When I wake up in the morning, Rayne is still sacked out on my bed, instead of her own cot, which Mom installed after David took over her bedroom. I like to think it’s because she doesn’t want me to feel all alone in my suffering, but I know for a fact she just doesn’t find the cot gives her enough lumbar support. Not that she needs any—seeing as she’s an immortal vampire and all. They tend to be immune to back problems. Or any health problems whatsoever, for that matter.

I, on the other hand, feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I spent the night tossing and turning and getting very little actual sleep. Thank goodness it’s Saturday and I don’t have to go to school.

I notice my cell is blinking and I flip it open to check my missed call list. Magnus. Like a dozen times. And just as many messages. I smile a little. At least now I know he wasn’t out with Jane, forgetting I even exist. I crawl out of bed, careful not to disturb Rayne, and tiptoe out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Mom and David’s doors are still closed, so I pad downstairs and curl up on the couch to call him back.