The Witch Is Back (7 page)

“Perhaps, although I do not care much for merpeople as they are quite underhanded.”

I felt a laugh escape my lips and I nodded. “Yes, you can have a do-over.” Feeling uncomfortable under his scrutiny, I pushed away from him and turned around to attend to my dinner preparations again. “I found three places I think you might like.”

He made no move to back away and, instead, continued hovering over me like my long-lost shadow … my long-lost sexy shadow that I now desperately wanted to jump.

“Three places?”

I turned around and smiled in an embarrassed sort of way, realizing I hadn’t exactly been clear, that my change of subject had been abrupt. “Sorry, I meant three places to live.” At the expression of pleasure on his face, I felt myself suddenly develop diarrhea of the mouth. “I got a real estate agent like I told you the other night, and for the last few days we’ve been looking at lots of places. I narrowed the search down to three and I have pictures of each of them to show you.” Then I took a breath. “Two are houses and one is a condo. The first house is three stories and the other is a ranch-style, but it’s huge and has vaulted ceilings. The condo is a two-story. Well, it’s really more of a town house, I suppose—”

“Poppet,” he interrupted with a shake of his head. “All very good,” he said and nodded, pretending to be interested. “Thank you for your help, love.”

“You’re welcome.” I paused and then smiled up at him. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

He chuckled and shook his head as if he just didn’t understand me. I turned back to the task of cutting the sausage and felt a shiver run up my spine as he began playing with my hair, which was pulled back into a low ponytail. He shifted his finger from my hair to my neck, and I felt my skin tingle in response.

“I hope you like spaghetti with meat sauce?” I asked, my voice coming out breathy as I searched for anything to concentrate on other than the feeling of his fingers running on my skin.

He sighed and stilled his movements. “Ordinarily I love it, yes. But my stomach is a bit … upset this evening.”

I couldn’t help my disappointment. I’d slaved over dinner and now I’d be the only one to eat? If I’d known that was going to be the case, I would have just heated up a Healthy Choice. What a bummer. I lifted the knife over a piece of sausage, ready for my next bout of chopping,
but I paused first and glanced back at him with a smile. “I understand.” As soon as I turned back around, I pushed the knife down and felt a surge of pain well up from my index finger. I pulled it back immediately, the knife clattering against the cutting board. “Damn!”

I glanced down at my injured finger and noticed blood welling up from the shallow slice. Even though it hurt like a bitch, it didn’t appear to be very deep. Blood started pouring from it, though, beading down my hand.

“Are you all right?” Sinjin asked in a voice that sounded tight, almost pained.

“It looks worse than it is,” I mumbled as I raised my eyes to look at him. He seemed completely transfixed by the sight of my blood. He was staring at it as it dripped from my hand and landed on the floor, forming a small puddle. “Can you hand me that dish towel next to the oven?”

But he did nothing of the sort. Instead he just stood there, eyes penetrating my wound. Eyes that were now … white?

“Sinjin?”

“Yes, yes,” he said absentmindedly, and his mouth formed a line as he tightened his lips in the same expression he’d had during that awful horror movie. He must have had a real aversion to the sight of blood.

“The dish towel?” I prompted when he continued to just stand there, as if my request had gone in one ear and out the other.

But he did exactly nothing, seemingly immobilized. I watched as he clenched his eyes tightly shut, his hands turning into fists at his sides. “Are you okay?” I asked as I sidestepped him and reached for the towel myself. But I never made it. Instead he grabbed me in a split second and pulled me to him, his eyes wide and most definitely white.

“Your eyes,” I started.

And then fear took hold of me. I pulled away from him and was surprised when he released me.

“I … I must go,” he said and headed for the door without waiting for my response. I wasn’t so much concerned that he had to go as I was with the state of my sanity—because I could have sworn his incisors were lengthening before my eyes—they were long enough to indent his bottom lip when he spoke.

I said nothing, just watched him as he sprinted to the door. He pulled it open at the same exact moment that Plum came inside. Once she recognized him, she reared back and hissed, her ears pressed to her head and her fur and tail standing on end.

“I … I am sorry,” he muttered as he sidestepped the cat, closing the door behind him. Once he left, Plum looked up at me with her green eyes and meowed, as if her outburst had never happened, as if she were happy to return to her role of lazy house cat. But I couldn’t say I was so easily relieved. No, I was wondering what the hell had just happened—and more important, what the hell was Sinjin Sinclair?

It was two hours later and I still couldn’t stop thinking about my bizarre evening. The spaghetti stood uneaten in the pot, now cold and sticky, and the sausage still sat on the cutting board. The only thing I’d managed to do was bandage up my finger and clean the blood off the floor.

And it was impressive that I’d been able to accomplish anything given what had happened with Sinjin. It made me doubt my own mental faculties, and even to question reality as I knew it.

Why? Because I was convinced that Sinjin Sinclair was a vampire.

I shook my head at how completely inane it sounded—how Halloween and storybook idiotic. But every time I tried to find another explanation, I came up empty-handed.
And if it looked like a vampire, acted like a vampire, and felt like a vampire … it most probably was a vampire, right?

Okay, so how can you prove it, Jolie?
I asked myself.
Well, let’s see:

Any way I looked at it, I couldn’t escape the inevitable. Sinjin was concealing something—a huge secret.

And that secret was that he was not what he appeared to be. No, he was something far more sinister.

I felt like a zombie over the next few days, because I just couldn’t seem to sleep. I mean, how could I sleep when all I could think about was Sinjin? I knew in my heart of hearts that he wasn’t what he appeared to be. Nope, as much as my logical mind still refused to accept it, I was convinced he was a vampire. After replaying our every moment together, what else could I think? And his claim that he had Raynaud’s disease? It didn’t match up—Sinjin possessed too many vampiric traits that had nothing to do with Raynaud’s. Nope, Raynaud’s was just a handy little way to explain why he was so cold. It was an excuse and nothing more.

“Okay, what’s going on with you?” Christa asked as she leaned against the front counter in our store, busily texting one of her many boyfriends. It was a wonder that anything ever got done around here.

I hadn’t exactly decided whether or not I should tell her about my little hunch about Sinjin, but I figured I’d really lose it if I didn’t tell someone soon. Aside from my cat, who already knew that Sinjin was otherworldly, the only other person in my small circle was Christa. And if you couldn’t tell your best friend your innermost secrets, what good was having a best friend?

Sitting on a stool next to Christa, I stared at the cursor as it relentlessly blinked on my laptop screen. I couldn’t
even remember what I’d been doing. I eyed Christa, debating over whether or not I should tell her about Sinjin. I mean, she usually didn’t react well in times of panic. ’Course, this wasn’t really an instance of panic, but I also didn’t expect her to be rational about it. On the other hand, what was there to be rational about? We were talking about vampires!

She placed her phone on the counter and faced me with an expression that read:
Spill the beans, pronto
. There was something inside me that desperately wanted to tell her while urgently hoping that she wouldn’t think I’d completely lost my mind. I just needed some kind of validation that I wasn’t headed for the loony bin.

“Okay, Chris, if I tell you something, you have to promise me to have an open mind about it,” I started, already regretting it.

“You finally had sex with him?” she asked as a slow smile spread across her face. “I know you probably feel like you shouldn’t have, but this was a long time coming, Jules. So was it good? Did he totally rock your world?”

I shook my head and couldn’t help but feel irritated. God, if only my problem was as simple as feeling like a floozy ’cause I’d had sex with Sinjin too soon. “No, that isn’t it at all,” I answered and then shushed her when she started to say something else. I took a deep breath and faced her again, wondering where I should even start. “What I’m about to tell you is going to make you seriously question my sanity.”

She frowned, puffing out her lower lip. “Jules, I would never question your sanity.”

I laughed, but there wasn’t anything happy about the sound because I’d been questioning my own judgment for the past three days—three days, I might add, during which I’d completely ignored all of Sinjin’s phone calls
and messages on my answering machine. “Remind yourself of that in a few minutes.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, what do you have to tell me that could possibly be so bad?” Her eyes widened. “You didn’t kill someone, did you?”

“Oh my God, no!”

“Well?”

“Maybe you should sit down?” I asked, pointing to the couch in the corner of the room, which served as our waiting area. I walked over and sat myself down, patting the open space next to me encouragingly.

“This has got to be pretty big news,” she said, her eyes beginning to brighten with interest. Christa loved gossip above all else, and I could just imagine how she was eating this up.

“Huge,” I muttered and waited until she was sitting beside me before I took another deep breath and faced her. “Chris, you have to keep this to yourself, okay?” I couldn’t imagine Sinjin would want any of this out in the open. Furthermore, there
was
the question of my own safety. Shoot. I hadn’t actually thought about self-preservation in all my many hours of brooding about Sinjin. Mostly because I hadn’t felt threatened by him at any point. Even when he’d grabbed me after I’d cut my finger, he’d restrained himself. I’d never felt like he might become out of control or … dangerous. That was probably just as ludicrous as believing he was a vampire, because what do vampires do?

They eat people.

“Do you believe there are things out there that defy explanation?” I started.

She frowned at me. “Of course … I work with you! Hello?”

That was true: She did believe in psychic abilities as well as ghosts. We were off to a good start. “Okay, good point,” I started. Then my voice trailed away as I tried
to think of how to broach the topic without sounding like a total whack job. “Um, Chris, what do you think about witches, vampires, and werewolves?”

She shrugged. “I think they’re cool, I guess. I mean, I really liked the
Twilight
movies. Edward is super-hot, but Jacob’s body …” She started fanning herself. “Someone call the fire department because I think I’m
en fuego
.”

Okay, she wasn’t getting it. I obviously needed to be more direct. I grabbed her hands to get her to stop daydreaming about Jacob’s chest, never mind the fact that he was like twelve or something. “Chris, I’m not talking about
Twilight
.”

“What are you talking about then?”

I sighed. “Do you believe that those … creatures could possibly exist?”

She was quiet as she thought about it, tapping her red fingernails against her lips. Then she cocked her head to the side and shrugged. “I mean, I guess they could. I don’t really see why they couldn’t if things like ghosts are real, you know? And my cousin who lives up in the mountains swears that she sees Bigfoot every year right around Christmastime. She even knitted him a scarf once.”