Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (23 page)

“Fate weavers. OK. Um . . . why are you giving me this?”

He smiled. Imogen sucked in her breath again. “I need it kept safe for me tonight. You can wear it under your shirt while you read palms. It won't interfere with your reading. In fact, it may even help you.”

I touched the pendant again. Imogen made an envious sort of noise, so I held it up for her to touch, as well.

“It's lovely,” she said, stroking one of the points. “Is it old?”

“Very. It was my grandfather's, and his before him on back for as many generations as my family has existed. And now, I must be on my morning run, or I will not have time to prepare the hallowed ground for the
blot
.” He stretched both arms above his head. Imogen froze, clutching my arm, her eyes huge as she watched him.

“You're going to prepare a bloat?” I asked, glancing at Imogen. Her mouth hung open a little. I elbowed her until she closed it.

“Yes. A
blot
is a ritual sacrifice we in the Asatru make as an offering to the gods.” Tibolt did two hamstring stretches that had Imogen gurgling, and me clutching the side of the trailer.

“Um,” I said, desperate to distract myself from him. I knew the Asatru religion honored ancient Nordic gods. But I'd never heard of a
blot
. “Don't ritual sacrifices involve killing sweet little innocent animals?”

“In the old days, they did,” he said, nodding as he did calf stretches. “But now we use mead instead of blood. It is much more pleasant that way. See you later.” He took off before we could ask him how you ritually sacrificed a glass of wine with honey.

Imogen and I stood together, our eyes glued to the figure of the blond hottie as he trotted around the line of trailers and headed to the other side of the island, toward the ruins of a Viking fortress.

“He is the most gorgeous creature I have ever seen,” Imogen said in an awestruck voice.

I dragged my eyes from the disappearing figure of Tibolt (which wasn't easy) to look at Imogen, and giggled at the googly-eyed look of utter besottedness on her face, even though I had a horrible suspicion I wore the very same expression. “Yeah, he's pretty all that and a bag of chips, but as Soren says, he's just a guy, you know?”

“Soren?” Imogen said, making a ladylike snort. Everything Imogen did was ladylike. Even now, having just gotten up and accepted the latte that Peter, Soren's father, had brought her, she looked gorgeous. Long curly blond hair, a fashion sense that made me feel like I was forever wearing a garbage bag, and delicate, pretty features would probably be enough to make me hate her on sight if she had been a normal person, but Imogen was anything but normal.

Which more or less described everyone here at the Faire.

“Yeah, I know, he's only a kid, but sometimes he sees stuff better than other people.”

She released my wrist, smiled, and patted me on the shoulder. “Soren is only a year younger than you, Fran. That hardly makes him a little kid.”

I lifted my chin and gave her one of my “I'm confident” smiles that I've been practicing when I'm alone in our trailer. “Yeah, but there's a big difference between fifteen and sixteen. I've killed a demon, and figured out who an international thief was. Not to mention that whole vampire business.”

“Dark One,” she corrected automatically, taking a sip of her latte as she turned back toward her trailer.

“Sorry, Dark One. Anyway, I doubt that I could have done all that last year without having a major panic attack. Fifteen can be so, you know . . .
fifteen
.”

“Mmm.” She didn't look impressed. In fact, she changed the subject. “Speaking of Benedikt, he should be here soon.”

I had started walking toward the field beyond the horse trailer, where Bruno, the horse that Peter used in his magic act, and Tesla, my bought-on-a-whim elderly horse, grazed. But at Imogen's words, I spun around. “What? You've heard from him? Where is he? What happened to him? Why did he leave so quickly, without any explanation, just a note saying there was something important he had to do, and he didn't know when he'd be back? And why didn't he tell one of us where he'd gone?”

Imogen shrugged and kept walking. “I haven't heard from him directly, but I can feel that he's near. I'm sure he'll answer all your questions once he returns.” She gave me an amused glance over her shoulder. “You are, after all, his Beloved. He can't lie to you.”

“Hrmph,” I answered to no one in particular, heading back to where the horses grazed, pausing long enough to snatch up the nylon lead. “I'm beginning to believe that whole Beloved thing is more trouble than it's worth. If Ben really thought I was the only person on the face of the earth who could save his soul, you'd think he'd be a little more chatty about where he's been for the last three weeks, and what he's been doing, and why he hasn't called or sent a letter or anything.”

Tesla wickered softly and shoved his big horsey nose against my stomach as I approached, looking for a treat. I undid the leather hobble that connected his front legs and kept him from wandering. Not that I seriously thought he'd run off. I had rescued him from a knacker while we were in Hungary, and though I didn't know much about his history, I knew he was too old to go far. But Peter insisted that the horses be hobbled while they were grazing at night. “Yeah, yeah, hold on a moment, will you? Here. Apple. It's the best I could do.”

Tesla's gray whiskers tickled my palm as he snuffled the apple that lay across my hand. He decided to accept the offering, carefully plucking it off my hand, munching it happily while I snapped the lead on his halter, and led him toward the trailer. As we walked, I slipped my hand under his mane and touched the raised marking on his neck. Ben had said it was a brand and that all Lipizzans, a very special breed of horse, had them. Since Ben had lived for more than three hundred years, and learned a lot about horses during that time, I figured he had to know what he was talking about. “Although that doesn't mean he's not the most irritating guy in the world,” I told Tesla as we halted behind the horse trailer. “Going off without a word to anyone like that . . .”

“Talking to yourself?” Soren limped around the trailer, two buckets of grain in his hands. I tied Tesla next to Bruno, a glossy white Andalusian, and made yet another mental promise to give Tesla a bath. It wasn't that Tesla was dirty, but next to Bruno's glossy coat he was more of a grayish color than pure white.

“No, I'm talking to Tesla.”

Soren's eyebrows scrunched up as he handed me a bucket. “Same difference. I bet you were talking about
him
again.”

I fed and watered Tesla, waiting until Soren was done pampering Bruno before grabbing his sleeve and tugging him toward the blue-and-gold trailer I shared with my mother. “Come on, my mom is cooking breakfast.”

“Really? She's cooking?”

“Yeah, I know, a miracle, huh? Think I should call the newspapers or something?”

Soren snickered. We both waved at Mikaela and Ramon as they emerged from their Circus of the Darned RV looking sleepy.

“Why is she cooking?” Soren asked. “You didn't cast one of her own spells on her, did you?”

I laughed. “Mom is the witch, not me. I'm just . . .” I held up my gloved hands, the black lace outer gloves hiding the fact that beneath them I wore, a thin, flesh-colored pair of latex gloves. “She's making breakfast as penance.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding his head wisely. I fought to keep a smile from curling my lips. Soren was the only one near my age in the whole GothFaire, so we tended to hang out together a lot. Besides which, he was my friend. He helped me with Tesla, and he tried to teach me the magic tricks he was learning from his father, although I didn't seem to have his knack for it. “She lost her keys again?”

“Cell phone,” I answered. “The new one she just bought to cover all of Europe.”

“Ah,” he said again, and this time I did grin. I thought he'd grin back, but instead he shot me a serious, half-wary look from beneath the thick brown lock of hair that hung over his forehead. “What did you say to Tesla?”

“What did I say . . . oh. Just now? Nothing important.”

Soren sucked on his bottom lip for a moment, before saying quickly, “You were talking about
him
, weren't you?”

“Him who?” I asked, knowing exactly whom he was talking about.

“Benedikt.” He rolled his eyes as he hurried alongside me. I slowed down a hair, remembering that he couldn't walk as fast as I could. “He's the only one who makes you get that look on your face.”

“What look?” I touched my gloved fingertips to my face.

His brows pulled together in a frown. “The one you get around Benedikt—kind of dreamy, kind of annoyed.”

I laughed out loud. I couldn't help myself—Soren's description of my expression just about perfectly described my reaction to Ben, vampire of my dreams. Or so he wanted to be. I still wasn't sure about the whole girlfriend to a Moravian Dark One thing. “I wish you'd lighten up on Ben, Soren. He's not really as bad as he looks.”

“He has a motorcycle and long hair,” Soren said darkly, his freckled, fair-skinned face going red with embarrassment. He refused to meet my eyes as I socked him gently on the arm. “And earrings and tattoos. And he makes you angry sometimes.”

“A lot of people have long hair, motorcycles, earrings, tats, and make me angry,” I said, caught between the desire to tell Soren the truth about Ben, and the urge to tell him there was nothing going on between us. Because of his physical defect (one leg was a few inches shorter than the other), Soren tended to be a bit touchy sometimes, especially concerning Ben. I don't quite know why he'd taken such an instant dislike to Ben, but I did my best to keep him from getting too bent out of shape. “He just happens to be one of them. And before you say it, I know he's dangerous, you don't trust him, and he means only trouble for me. Heard it before, got the T-shirt, Soren.”

He made an angry sniffing noise as we rounded the long metal trailer that Mom had let me paint when we arrived at GothFaire two months before. Everyone's trailer had been customized to reflect their personality, and ours was, I thought, a particularly nice arrangement of gold stars and moons on a midnight blue background. I admired it for a moment before I realized that Soren wasn't saying anything.

I sighed to myself, knowing that I'd inadvertently offended him. “I'm sorry, Soren. I didn't mean to make you mad. I appreciate you being all concerned about Ben, but honest, there's no reason to be. We're just friends. And he's not going to do anything to hurt me. He can't—he's . . .” I closed my mouth over the words that would spill Ben's secret. As far as I knew, only two people in the GothFaire other than Imogen and I knew what she and Ben really were. I wasn't about to go blabbing around to everyone that they were part of an immortal race that most people thought of as vampires.

“I'm not mad,” he said stiffly. “I don't care what you do.”

I stopped Soren as he was about to walk past the door to our trailer, my hand on his arm. He looked down at my gloves, his eyes stormy. I gritted my teeth for a moment, then peeled off both the black lace glove and the latex one, gently touching my fingertips to his wrist. Instantly my head was filled with his emotions, anger roiling around with frustration, a smidgen of jealousy, and something soft and warm, a squidgy feeling of . . . I gasped and jerked my hand back. Soren's cheeks fired up even redder than they had become with just a few days in the strong Swedish sunlight, but his eyes didn't leave mine, almost belligerently daring me to say what I'd felt within him.

“Oh. I . . . uh . . .” I stammered, not knowing what to say. I slipped my gloves back on, waving toward the trailer door. “We'd better hurry to breakfast while Mom is still in the cooking mood.”

He stiffened for a minute, and I thought he was going to say something, but instead he gave a sharp little nod and swung open the door to the trailer.

I blew out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding and followed him, wondering how it was that just two months ago I'd wanted to blend into the crowd, praying that no one would notice that I was different from everyone else in my high school. Big, gawky, and uncomfortable around the kids in my school because of my weird talent, I had few friends and not much of a life. Now here I was traveling all over Europe with a job—palm reader in training—a horse that depended on me to earn his feed and vet bills, a drop-dead gorgeous vampire claiming I was the person he'd waited three hundred years for, and Soren crushing like mad on me.

Life is sometimes too weird for words.