Heart of the Vampire (Vanderlind Castle) (12 page)

My question was met with silence.

I waited, listening. There was a rustling in some nearby trees. The wind was blowing gently, but I caught a snatch of a whispered conversation.

“Is that her?” a voice asked.

“Shhh,” was the reply. “She’ll hear you.”

Chapter 17

I froze, shivers running straight up my spine. There is nothing quite like knowing the undead are outside your house. As I started to close the window as casually as I could muster, I noticed a small dark mound very close to the sill. I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed them against the glass. The lump appeared to be some kind of satchel.

The trees weren’t rustling anymore, but I knew someone was out there, watching me, waiting. Taking a deep breath, I shot my arm out through the small opening in the window, snatched up the
bag, and yanked it into the house, shoving the window open just wide enough to wrench the bag in then slamming the window closed and throwing the latch.

Yanking the curtains shut, I hurried over to leap on my bed. It was a
childish reaction. A bed offers no more safety that the floor, but I was acting on impulse. I fought back the urge to pull the covers over my head.

The satchel was of a soft, brown leather and the initials J.A.V. were embroidered in a scrolling script on the flap. Jessie must have
put it there for me. I wondered why he’d left and if it had anything to do with the voices in the trees.

Suppressing my urge to freak out, I opened the satchel’s flap to look inside. The bag had a dark blue silk lining with small gold fleur de lis. It even smelled expensive. It wasn’t very heavy, but it was obviously filled up with a few things. The first item I pulled out was a large envelope of papers and a passport. I’
d always wanted a passport but figured I’d never have the need for one, so that’s what my fingers sought first. I flipped open the small blue book with a federal eagle embossed on the front to see my own image smiling back at me. I felt a small thrill that briefly made me forget that there were at least two vampires outside my window roosting in the trees.

“Let’s see here,” I said, eager to see my name printed on the pag
e. “Surname: Gibson,” I read aloud. “Given name: Colette.” I lowered the passport. “What the hell?” I knew Jessie was getting me a fake passport. I mean, there was no way he could have gotten me a legal passport overnight, and he did say he had to fake my age to say I was old enough to travel by myself and with a corpse and everything. I checked the age on the passport. He’d made me twenty-two. I slammed the palm of my hand to my forehead. No one was going to believe I was twenty-two. And of all the names in the world, why had he given me the name of Colette Gibson?

I tried to focus on my breathing and not spin out into a complete panic. After thinking about it for a
while, I decided he’d done it because I would respond if somebody said, “Colette?” I might not immediately think they were talking to me, but I would definitely look in their direction. Plus we were trying to convince the Bishops that I was the reincarnation of Colette Gibson, so maybe this was just another point in our favor. “Fine,” I grumbled to myself. I wasn’t thrilled with being Colette, but I did understand what I assumed was his reasoning.

The papers included a printout of my tickets. I was flying first class, apparently, from Cleveland to Budapest with two layovers
, and it was going to take me... I did a double take. It was going to take me sixteen hours to get there. Sixteen hours! I started feeling my head pulsate with my heartbeat. I literally wasn’t going to arrive there until the next day. My flight left Wednesday at noon, and between time changes, layovers, and everything else, I wouldn’t arrive in Budapest until sometime Thursday afternoon. “Oh, God,” I whispered to myself. Where the hell was Jessie to walk me through all this?

There was a thick, smaller envelope with the packet of papers. I tore it open to find a ridiculous stack of Euros. I had no idea what the conversion rate was, but there were at least twenty
-five hundred Euro notes along with a bunch of smaller denominations. I wasn’t sure what snacks Jessie thought I’d need during my layovers, but I was definitely covered. There was also about five hundred dollars in U.S. currency. A post-it on the bundle read, “For gas and incidentals.” Jessie seemed to have no idea what the minutiae of life cost.

The next piece of paper was a copy of a death certificate. Jessie’s death certificate. After taking a few swallows to try to fight down the bile I felt building in my
throat, I noted that Jessie was born in 1919. What the hell was happening in the world in 1919? I wracked my brain. There was World War I, I was pretty sure. And maybe some kind of epidemic. Influenza? Was that right?

It was a lot to take in. Jessie, who was hands down the most handsome boy I’d ever seen in real life
, was born in 1919 and was, in fact, a corpse.

Along with his death certificate was his passport. Apparently
, you need one to travel even after you die. The photo was of an extremely old man and looked nothing like Jessie, but I supposed no one would probably do a comparison with the corpse. There was also a burial permit for Hungary, an embalmer’s affidavit, and a letter from the county health office stating that Jessie had no contagious diseases. I knew there was probably a list of instructions somewhere in the packet, but I began to feel quite queasy and decided to not look at the rest of Jessie’s dead person papers for a while.

What was I doing? Nothing rammed home the fact that Jessie was a member of the undead like browsing through his official papers. He was beautiful and perfect and dead. I would keep growing older. I would become wrinkled and wizened and gray, but Jessie would still be beautiful and seventeen.

I decided to focus on packing and not think about anything but small matters like what shoes would be appropriate for the streets of Budapest. Were they cobblestone? Should I pack a pair of heels? These were easier things to think about.

After two hours of piling clothes on my bed and then putting them back in the closet, I felt like I was packed for Budapest. Actually, I didn’t feel like I was ready for the trip at all, but it was the best I was going to be able to do with my limited wardrobe. I had two bags. One looked like something I would take to Lexington. That was the one I would let my mom see. And the other I would sneak into the car at some point before heading for the airport.

The last thing I had to pack was my carry-on. My stomach was feeling less queasy, so I thought I could face Jessie’s satchel again. Ignoring the pack of disturbing papers, I emptied the rest of the bag onto my bed. There was a guidebook on Hungary, mints, a pack of gum, and an avocado.

The first three things were self evident, but what the heck was up with the avocado? Was there something about vampires and avocados? Nothing came to mind. I warmed up my laptop and entered the two words in Google. There were a couple of vampire fans who went by the name
Avocado for some reason, but nothing else really made sense. I tried googling vampires in general and after briefly hunting around came up with a list of things that were supposed to ward off vampires. There was the usual stuff like garlic and silver, then more obscure items like mustard seeds and hawthorn branches. But absolutely nothing about avocados.

I sat down on my bed to ponder what Jessie was trying to tell me. I had the silver chain of my Pools of Light
pendant in my mouth, and I fiddled with the crystal orb. Suddenly, I realized something: the Pools of Light pendant was in silver with a silver chain. Jessie had given it to me. I’d seen him touch it with his own hands. It didn’t bother him at all.

What did that mean? Did vampires not have a problem with silver? I’d spent so much time wanting to be near Jessie, even though he was a vampire, that I
hadn’t asked him much about keeping vampires away. I unclasped the chain to my pendant and looked the whole thing over. There was a small stamp on the clasp of the chain that I thought was the numbers 750. That didn’t make any sense to me at all.

I pulled Jessie
’s photograph and the diamond ring out from where I had tucked them in my underwear drawer. I knew Jessie meant for me to bring the diamond with me to Budapest. We were, after all, pretending to be engaged. I slipped it on my ring finger and marveled at how the stone caught the light from my bedside lamp. My heart felt heavy. It was such a beautiful ring, but it wasn’t a real engagement. How would it feel to have him ask me to marry him for real?

I loved Jessie, completely and wholly. There wasn’t an ounce of sense in my loving him, but I couldn’t help that. And there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Jessie would sacrifice his life to protect me. But what I didn’t know was if that was because he loved me, Aurora, or because he believed a part of me was Colette. And how would he feel as I got older and older, wrinkling like a peeled apple left out in the sun?

I sighed, flopping back on my bed. The whole thing hurt too much to think about. And at the moment, I had bigger worries. I lifted up Jessie’s photo to look at it. Was it my imagination, or was his image just slightly more faded than it had been when we posed for the photo? I was there still crisp and clear, but Jessie looked more erased; I was sure of it.

I groaned and rolled on my side. It was late
; I was tired; there were at least two vampires waiting outside my bedroom window to kill me; and I had an international flight in the morning on a fake passport. I didn’t have the time or energy to worry about Jessie’s image possibly fading in a photo. I had to get some sleep.

As I lay under the blankets and tried to drift off, my brain kept plaguing me, wondering when the photo had started to fade. Was it when Jessie fully realized that one day I would be an old lady? That would have been my guess.

Chapter 18

I was having a dream. It was one of those situations where I knew it was a dream so I just went along with things, kind of like television but extremely interactive. Lily and I were getting ready for something. We had plans to go out for the evening
, and we were primping. We were joking around and fixing each other’s hair. Lily was young and pretty. In the dream, it just felt normal, but part of my brain kept thinking, “Wow, that’s Grandma Gibson!”

We were going to a dance. That was the best I could figure out. We both had on our best dresses. Mine was green
with little white flowers; hers was a pale blue, maybe, with some kind of bow at the neckline.

The doorbell rang
, and we were all aflutter, instructing our dad to answer it because we weren’t quite ready. Peeking at our dates from the top of the stairs, I saw two young men in dark suits enter the living room, their hair slicked back. One boy held a small box, which probably contained a corsage; the other had a bunch of wildflowers with a ribbon tying them together.

“Lily, Aurora,” Dad called, standing at the bottom of the stairs. He knew we were peering down
, but he was playing along.

“Aurora?”

The name didn’t feel right, but I knew Dad was calling for me.

“Aurora?” My mom was gently rubbing my arm. “I think you slept through your alarm.”

“Mwaaah?” was initially all I could manage. I cracked open a sleep-sealed eye and looked at my clock. It read 8:37.

“Oh, crud!” I yelped, leaping out of bed. “I’m late!”

“For what?” Mom asked. “Your dad doesn’t have you on a schedule, does he?”

“No,” I stammered, trying to get my bearings. I had to be at the Cleveland airport by ten o’clock
, and it was at least a fifty-minute drive if I didn’t hit traffic. “I was just going to stop by work on my way, and also I need to pick up a few things,” my voice trailed off.

“Okay. Well, I’ve got to get to work.” She walked over and gave me a kiss on the head. “Have a good Thanksgiving
, and be careful driving down there. No texting.”

“I won’t,” I assured her, madly trying to think of what I had to do before I left.

Mom started heading for the door. “I love you, honey,” she said.

“Mom!” I called after her, a little more urgently than I intended.

“What?” She turned around, slightly startled.

It was possibly the last time I would ever see my mom. There was a good chance I was never coming back from Budapest
, and she would never know what had happened. I felt a painful lump in my throat. I dashed up to her and threw my arms around her. “I love you.”

“I love you
, too, Aurora,” she said, returning my squeeze. “Please don’t feel bad or anything silly. I’m happy you get to spend Thanksgiving with your dad. Maybe this means he wants to be more a part of your life.”

After a bit of frantic scrambling, I was on the road and headed for Cleveland by ten after nine. I wasn’t showered
, and my hair looked like I’d been standing in a strong wind, but I wasn’t actually behind schedule. “This is good,” I told myself as I accelerated past some cars whose drivers obviously weren’t trying to catch a flight. “Everything’s fine. This is good.”

I made it to the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and pulled into the long
-term parking lot just as my cell phone read ten o’clock. I had to grab my bags and get checked in. I knew that. But for some reason, I couldn’t get out of the car. In my mind, entering the airport meant I was really doing it; I was flying to Budapest with a corpse in a coffin to face a vampire tribunal. It sounded insane even to me, and I was the one living it.

The minutes were ticking past. I knew I had to get out of the car, but my butt felt glued to the seat. If I stayed in Ohio then eventually vampires would hunt me down and kill me. Jessie
, too, for that matter. But going felt like willingly entering the lion’s den. I just couldn’t make myself do it. I closed my eyes and tried to slow the frantic beating of my heart.
Jessie will protect you
, I whispered to myself.
You have to believe that. No matter what happens at the tribunal, Jessie will protect you.

A large hand rapped on my driver’s side window. “Gah!” I let out a small shriek.

“Are you ready, Miss Aurora?” Viggo asked. He had to practically fold in half to look in at me.

“Viggo!” I exclaimed, leaping out of the car. “Jessie didn’t tell me you were coming.” I wouldn’t be nearly as terrified with Viggo standing next to me.

“No.” The giant shook his head. “I cannot go back to Europe. Mr. Wanderlind asked that I make sure everything is okay for you at the airport.” He hauled my bags out of the passenger’s seat of the bug. “And that I bring his coffin.”

“Oh
.” I gulped, mentally pushing away images of Jessie lying motionless in a wood box. “Why can’t you go back to Europe?” I shouldn’t have asked. I knew I was probably being rude, but the question was out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

Viggo started walking toward the terminal, both my bags easily tucked under one arm. “It is better for a young girl not to know these kinds of things.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes, me taking three strides for just one of his. “Miss Aurora, may I ask you a small favor?”

I turned my head to look at him, but he didn’t look at me
; he kept his eyes facing straight ahead. “Of course,” I told him. Viggo had been very good to me on a couple of occasions. “You could probably ask me a dozen favors.”

He reached into the breast pocket of his charcoal gray suit with his free hand, retrieving a small envelope. “Vhen you arrive in Bud
apest, vill you please give this to my Gloria?”

“Okay,” I said, accepting the envelope. “How do I find your Gloria?”

“She will find you,” he informed me. It sounded a bit menacing, but Viggo was over seven feet tall and had a thick accent—almost everything he said had the potential to sound menacing.

As we entered the actual airport, I asked, “Where is Jessie? I mean, where is his, you know...” I avoided saying the word coffin.

“I have checked him early,” Viggo said. “Maybe he is already on the plane.”

“I thought I was in charge of all that. How did you check him in without me?” It was so weird to be referring to Jessie as if he were a piece of luggage.

The giant glanced in my direction. “I have done this many times before. I have friends here that Mr. Wanderlind asked me to contact. He thought this vay would be easier on you.”

“Thank you,” I told him. “I’m really glad I don’t have to... I mean... This is better and...” I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say. “Easier?” It came out more like a question. I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. “I’m sorry. I’m just nervous. And I’m really glad I don’t have to deal with the whole Jessie situation right now. Thank you, Viggo. I really appreciate you being here.”

We stepped up to the first class United Airlines counter. There was a long line for coach but no one in front of us for first class. The woman behind the counter gave me a pleasant smile and shot Viggo a nervous glance. “Good afternoon. Where are we headed today?”