Thicker Than Water (The Briar Creek Vampires Book #2) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (13 page)

It didn’t open. Her aunt had locked her
in.

Lexi knew the reason was because Gabe was back.
It had nothing to do with her running away. If her aunt had been
that pissed off, she would have punished her earlier. Violet was
probably afraid that Lexi would talk to Gabe and he would remind
her about what had happened the night of the accident.

Deciding that there was nothing else she could
do right now, Lexi laid her head on her pillow and fell
asleep.

****

Chapter 16

“Lexi,” her mom said, softly touching her
cheek. “You have to wake up. You have to find a way to get out of
here.”

“Mom?” Lexi asked, her voice merely a whisper.
She had seen her mom’s ghost before, but somehow it felt stranger
each and every time.

“Yes, Lexi,” Eileen laughed. “It’s me. And as
your mother, I’m telling you…get out. Please.”

“I don’t know how,” Lexi replied, trying to
shake away the tears that were forming behind her eyes. “I was
going to leave with Justin, but then he died. I was going to run
away with Gabe, but he tried to kill me, I think. I tried to run
away, but Mayor Lawrence caught me. I don’t know how to get out of
here. Tell me what I need to do.”

Eileen sat down on the bed next to where Lexi
was sitting and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Trust Gabe.
He did try to kill you, but please hear him out. Once you know why
he did what he did, you’ll understand his reasoning. As your
mother, I am able to forgive him because I know that his intentions
weren’t cruel.”

“Can’t you tell me why he did it?” Lexi
asked.

Eileen shook her head. “No, I can’t tell you
why. It would be breaking the rules, and I wouldn’t be allowed to
come back to see you again. Just trust me, even if you feel angry
and hurt when he tells you why. You have got to find it in your
heart to forgiven. Gabe really does love you.”

“I know,” Lexi replied, feeling relieved to
hear that she wasn’t the only one who believed it. “I miss
you.”

“I miss you, too,” Eileen said, a sad look in
her eyes. “I’m always here, though – even when you can’t see
me.”

Lexi smiled. She had always figured as much,
but it felt good to actually hear her mom say it. Actually, it felt
really good to see her mom at all. In a way, she sometimes wished
that Gabe had been successful on the night of the accident so that
she could be with her mom again.

“Is Austin always here with me,
too?”

“Yes, in a way.” A strange expression crossed
over her mother’s face. “Listen to me, sweetheart. You can’t give
up. People in Briar Creek are counting on you. You’re more
important than you realize.”

“How am I important? I don’t get it,” Lexi
said, feeling frustrated. “I know you can’t tell me, but I wish you
could. It sucks because I’m so clueless.”

“I can tell you that you’re going to find out
the answers real soon. Let me give you a tip of advice. Any time
you want to see Gabe, just think about him…and open your
window.”

Before Lexi could ask her mom any other
questions, she had vanished, leaving behind a pile of sparkly dust.
Deciding that she was going to test her mom’s theory out right now,
she opened the window and thought about Gabe. Lexi
waited.

After a few minutes, she glanced out the window
and realized that Gabe wasn’t anywhere in sight. She wasn’t sure
why her mom (she had really seen her mom’s ghost again, hadn’t
she?) had lied, but it was obvious that Gabe wasn’t going to come
to see her. Lexi wouldn’t be surprised if she had hallucinated
seeing her mom’s ghost. No sane person would believe that she had
seen her, anyway.

Sighing, Lexi closed the window and crawled
back into bed. As she tried to fall to sleep, she listened to the
sound of a single bat clanking against her bedroom
window.

*

When Lexi woke up the next morning, her bedroom
door was unlocked. Violet didn’t have much of a choice, considering
Lexi had to go to school. School was the last place she wanted to
be, of course. Between the incidents with the punch being spiked,
Craig making out (or more) with Mary-Kate, and Violet locking her
in her room for the night, this had undoubtedly been the weekend
from Hell. The only good thing was seeing Gabe, even if it only was
for a few seconds and had left her feeling confused
afterwards.

Lexi slipped into a pair of dark wash jeggings
and pulled a red quarter-sleeved sweater over her head before going
downstairs.

Violet was sitting at the kitchen table with a
red marker in her hand, grading the stack of tests that sat in
front of her. She looked up over the rim of her silver glasses.
“Good morning.”

Lexi scoffed. “It would have been one if I
wasn’t locked in my room all night.”

“It was necessary for you to understand that
you’re not to run away again,” Violet replied, taking a gulp of
coffee. “I’ll be driving you to school today.”

“Why can’t Mary-Kate take me?” Lexi
asked.

“Unfortunately, Mayor Lawrence doesn’t feel
that you’re a very good influence for Mary-Kate right now. He
doesn’t want her driving you to school or spending any time with
you after school hours until you have proven that you’re in a
better place.”

Lexi gritted her teeth. That meant that not
only would Violet be driving her to school today, but she would be
driving her every day to follow. She should have known that Greg
Lawrence was going to do something like this after all of the
questions he had asked when he caught her running away. Not only
had he prevented her from starting a new life for herself, but he
also was going to make her life even more Hellish than it had been
before. She also couldn’t help but wonder how he could blame her
when Mary-Kate had run away from home only weeks earlier. Maybe
Lexi had more in common with her half-sister than she had ever
realized.

*

When Lexi got to school, she decided that she
didn’t want to participate in gym class so she skipped getting
changed in the locker room. After the whole entire weekend and
everything that had happened with Craig, Lexi felt that she
deserved to sit this one out.

Craig came into the gymnasium, bouncing a
basketball. Glancing around to make sure that they were alone, he
walked over to her. “Lexi, I’m really sorry about the other night.
I promise you that I don’t have feelings for Mary-Kate.”

“It’s okay, but it made me realize…I don’t
really have feelings for you. I’m sorry.” Lexi wasn’t completely
lying. She didn’t have feelings for Craig, but it wasn’t catching
him making out with Mary-Kate that had made her come to the
realization of it. In fact, she had been more upset when she had
caught them together than she thought she would have been. Seeing
Gabe again had caused a whole new range of emotions for her,
though. Lexi had realized that she didn’t want to be someone who
she thought was just okay; she wanted to be someone who she felt
completely and totally in love with.

“I see,” Craig replied, looking down at the
ground. “I…I think that it might be best for everyone if you
switched into a different gym class. I’ll see if Ms. Heckler has
room for you in her class. I think it will be too weird for me to
see you every day because I’m not kidding, I really do have
feelings for you.”

“Craig, I don’t know how you can have such
strong feelings for me. You barely know me. I’ve met you, like,
three times or something. If you feel it’s best for me to switch
classes, though, that’s fine with me,” Lexi replied, tossing back
her dirty blonde hair. “I don’t want things to be awkward, so I’ll
understand if that’s what you really want.”

“I do,” Craig answered. “In fact, why don’t you
take a walk with me over to her class right now? She’s in the
auxiliary gym.”

Lexi grabbed her backpack and followed Craig as
he led her out of the gym and into the basement. He took her to the
auxiliary gym, which was much smaller than the main gym. That
didn’t say a whole lot about it, since the main gym was probably
half the size of the gym at Lexi’s old school. There were a lot
less students in Ms. Heckler’s class, which made Lexi somewhat
annoyed. She hated small gym classes, because it meant that the
teacher and all of the other students would be watching her more
closely—she couldn’t slack off as much as she normally
would.

After he talked to Ms. Heckler for a few
minutes, Craig came back over to her. “Look, I told her that you
were having a conflict with someone in the class. I just didn’t
mention that it was me, so don’t tell her. She said it’s okay for
you to be in her class.”

Lexi nodded and watched him walk out of the
gymnasium. She told Ms. Heckler that she didn’t bring her gym
clothes and sat down on the bleachers.

“Really, Lexi?” a hurt voice asked next to her.
“A teacher?”

Lexi looked up and realized that she was
sitting next to Gabe. The only thing that could possibly be worse
than being in Craig’s gym class was having gym class with Gabe –
and having him know that there had been something going on between
her and Craig. She wondered how he even knew. Did she really wear
her heart on her sleeve that much? Lexi decided not to say
anything, though. Her relationship (or lack of relationship) with
Craig and how Gabe knew about it was the least of her worries right
now.

“Umm, hi,” Lexi replied, unsure of what else to
say. She wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but she also had
no idea where to begin.

“Look, you have every reason to be mad at me,”
Gabe said, looking down at the floor.

Remembering that her mom had told her not to be
mad at him, Lexi shook her head. “No, I’m not mad at you. I’m
just…hurt. And disappointed…and confused.” Her mom hadn’t said that
she couldn’t be any of those things.

“I understand,” Gabe replied. “I have a lot
that I need to explain to you, but I can’t really tell you any of
it here. No one else can know. Otherwise, I’m going to be in big
trouble.”

Lexi remembered that on the night of the
accident, Dan had said something along those lines. What was it
that he couldn’t tell her? She was beginning to get impatient.
“When can you tell me?” she asked. “I’m grounded, and I don’t mean
that I’m grounded like I was before. Violet literally has been
locking me in my room at night to make sure that I don’t go out to
see you.”

“Okay,” Gabe said, tapping his hand against his
knee. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. “I’m not staying
with my mom. When you saw me, I was just stopping in there to tell
her that I was back in town if she needs anything.”

“Why aren’t you staying with your mom?” Lexi
asked, confused. “And where
are
you staying?”

“I’m not staying with my mom because it’s too
risky for me right now,” Gabe replied. “I was hoping that your aunt
and uncle wouldn’t even see me so that they wouldn’t know I’m back
in town, but it’s too late for that. I can’t tell you where I’m
staying, though. If someone found out that you knew, it would put
us both in grave danger.”

“I’m getting really sick of all this
secret-keeping,” Lexi protested.

“Tell me about it,” Gabe muttered. “Okay, how
about this? Leave your window open tonight around nine o’clock.
I’ll come to you.”

“You have to be really careful,” Lexi replied.
“Wear dark clothing so that my aunt and uncle won’t see
you.”

“Consider it done.”

****

Chapter 17

When nine o’clock rolled around, Lexi put an
ear against her locked door to make sure that no one was outside
her room. She didn’t hear anyone.

Lexi strolled over to the window and opened it.
She sat down on the bed and stared out her window
impatiently.

The night was eerily quiet. As she scanned her
eyes over the yard, she didn’t see Gabe. Lexi decided that she
really was going to be mad at him if he didn’t show up tonight. She
wanted answers, and she didn’t think she could wait another day to
get them.

Moments later, Lexi saw a black creature flying
into her window. It was a bat.

As Lexi shrieked and ran to her bedroom door,
the bat grew larger and transformed into a person, who fell to the
floor.

A pair of steel blue eyes stared up at
her.

“Oh my God,” Lexi whispered, cupping her mouth
with her hands. “You’re a bat? Why didn’t you tell me that you’re a
bat? I thought you were planning to climb up the
lattice.”

Gabe shook his head. “It’s way too risky to
climb up to your room. Your aunt and uncle would probably spot me.
I’m also sorry to surprise you. It’s one of the things that I had
wanted to tell you about tonight.”

“Tell me why you crashed the car,” Lexi said,
quickly changing the subject to the first question that she had to
know the answer to.

Gabe looked into her eyes, and she felt her
heart skip a beat. “It was to protect you.”

Lexi raised an eyebrow. “How is killing me
protecting me? Wait, you were trying to kill me, weren’t
you?”