Vampire Blood (20 page)

“No,” Jenny responded apathetically. “Nothing.” She could finally look away. She yawned, and hung her head. “I’ll be back to work tomorrow, Mister Michelson, I promise. I’ll finish what my dad and I started. I left you a note,” she added at the last second.

“Oh, no, Jenny! I’m not here to drag you back to work. I was worried about you, that’s all.”

“Well, I want to come back. I need to do something. This waiting is driving me crazy.”

Remorse flickered across Mister Michelson’s countenance. “If you insist. If it will help, but take your time, Jenny. Don’t come in until you’re ready.” He was backing towards the door.

Outside the windows, Jenny glimpsed the faint tint of approaching dawn.

“I’ll go now. I only wanted to be sure you were all right,” he mouthed so low that she could barely make out the words. “Jenny?”

“Yes?”

“Lock this door behind me this time, you hear?”

Jenny got up, dizzy, and stumbled to the door, ready to lock it after he’d left. She felt that strange vertigo again.

“And Jenny?”

“Yes.”

“Be very
careful,”
an ominous whisper. “Stay in at night.
Remember. Stay in at night. You are in danger. I cannot stand watch outside forever. Be vigilant.”

She nodded, puppet like.

Then he was going through the door. Gone.
Through
the closed door.

Jenny shook her head. This must be another one of her crazy dreams. She locked it. Then she turned off the light and sank back onto the couch. In seconds she was as deep asleep as if no one had disturbed her.

The next thing she was aware of was someone pounding at the front door, and it was bright morning. As she went, groggily, to answer it, she wondered about that weird dream she’d had.

Imagine, Mister Michelson coming by in the middle of the night. To
warn
her. About
what?
Locking her doors or something like that. She couldn’t remember all of it, but even what she could recall filled her with unexplainable dread.

It must be the strain she’d been under lately. She was dreaming disturbing stuff and imagining things that weren’t there.

Seeing the clock in the kitchen, she cursed under her breath as she unlocked the door. It was only seven-thirty, and she felt like she’d been run over by a Mack truck. Could be it was Joey or the sheriff with news about her dad and her fingers trembled as she cracked the door an inch.

Chapter Eleven

September 1

“Jeff?”

“Yes, it’s me, Jenny.”

Speechless, she had to cling to the door to keep from fainting dead away. In the first few heartbeats after she’d laid eyes on him, her heart had frozen, as the last ten years rushed past her like speeding cars on a crowded track.

Ten years.

He had the same blue eyes, long lean face, shaggy hair curling around his collar. His tall, lanky frame was clad in a cotton shirt and faded blue jeans.

Then she looked harder. There were slivers of gray in his coal black hair, and his eyes were no longer laughing. A large knapsack hung from one shoulder, a smaller raggedy bag clutched in his other hand. He looked weary, road-filthy. Half a cigarette hung from his lips.

At first all she could think about was how dreadful she must look: uncombed hair, wrinkly clothes and no makeup. At first. Then she let her face go hard.

“What the hell are you doing here, and what do you want?” she asked coldly. How dare he just show up one morning on her doorstep, like a starving kitten. How dare he look at her like that. How dare he intrude into her present life.

His face noticeably fell an inch at her open hostility, but his eyes lingered on her and grew warm.

“I wanted to see you, Jenny. Please. Don’t close the door!” he pleaded urgently as she tried to do just that. “Didn’t you get my letters?” That old little-boy-lost look tore up her heart as it always had when they were eighteen.

“Yes, I got your letters,” she snapped, trying to shut the door again. He wouldn’t let her. “I tore them up. I don’t want to see you, Jeff, much less talk to you, you bastard
.
You disappeared on us over ten long years ago. You
left
me for another damn
woman.
For years, not a word. Zippo. Now she’s dumped you and you come crawling back?”

“She didn’t dump me, Jenny. I dumped her.” He frowned. “Years ago.”

“Well, if you wanted to see me, you sure took your time about it.”

“I needed to sort things out ... and I was afraid—”

“Of what?”

He evaded her eyes. “That you wouldn’t see me,” was all he’d say.

She laughed cynically. “After what you did to me, would you blame me?”

“No.” Now his eyes were smoldering. “I only kept away from you this long because I thought you were happily married to that rich lawyer in St. Augustine. I came as soon as I found out you’d divorced him. I couldn’t stay away from you any longer.”

“So? I don’t care. Go away! I only want to be left alone. Do you understand?” her voice was rising. Her ex-husband showing up after all these years and the anguish of the last few weeks collided, and everything blew up in her head.

It was too much. Too much.

“I don’t
need
you anymore. Go away
.”

“Jenny, just
listen
to me, please! I’m
sorry!
I made mistakes. Haven’t you ever made a mistake in your life?” His face turned pathetic, his expression desperate. He still knew how to touch her, after all these years. Jenny experienced the old guilt.

Haven’t you ever made a mistake?
Of course, she had. Too damn many to count. It made her hesitate, enough for him to get his foot in the door. Literally.

“Just let me talk to you; that’s all I ask. Besides, I don’t have any other place to go, Jenny.” He looked up, but there was mischief in his eyes. “I’m broke.” He dropped his luggage, flicked the butt of the smoked cigarette into the gravel driveway in a well-remembered gesture, and with a clownishly pathetic smile, pulled out his pockets for her to see there was nothing in them.

“What happened to your job?” Jenny feigned exasperation. She had to pretend or she would have fallen apart. This was the stuff of her sweetest dreams. Jeff coming back and begging for her to take notice of him. After all these years. Jenny’s head was spinning.

“I quit it and left. I wanted to see you. Had to see you.”

“
God!
Okay. Come in, you bastard,” she surrendered, throwing the door open and padding back into the trailer. Jeff followed, slump-shouldered.

Jenny went into the kitchen. At the sink, she turned and peered over her shoulder as he settled with a grunt of exhausted relief on one of the chairs.

She still couldn’t believe he was there. In the flesh. Real. Oh, boy.

Outside, the sun was blazing and she could smell the heady summer through the open window. Inside, her heart was aching for her dad so badly, she could barely stand it. Where was he now? Was he hurt? Frightened? Alone? Dead? Oh, God.

“You want coffee?”

“Please, Jenny.” His voice saying her name sent shivers through her heart. “Could I talk you into fixing some bacon and eggs if you have any? I’m starving. Please?”

She turned and stared at him, her eyes finally seeing him as he really was. Thin. His face was thin and his eyes fevered. A three-day beard shadow on his face. He looked like a man obsessed. Unhappy. He looked fifty, not forty.

“Jeff, what
happened to you?”

She continued to watch him, but didn’t move. Her hands and coffeepot were suspended in mid-air, the water running.

“Bad times, Jenny Penny,” his words were a struggle and so husky she had to strain to hear them. “My job went sour for me a long time ago. My life. I realized after I left you that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I’d been so stupid. To throw away someone who’d really loved me for selfish reasons I no longer can even remember.” He put his face into his hands. He was shaking. Apparently he was saying what he’d wanted to say for a long time and had practiced saying it. “I missed you more every year, I couldn’t stop it. I missed your mom and dad. Joey. Our friends. The life we had, the one I destroyed. The way you loved me and now ...” He was gazing off into space as if he were seeing something she couldn’t. “I want you to forgive me. I want—”

“Stop it, Jeff.” She looked away.

The silence rang in her ears.

Why are you doing this to me?
she thought, panicking. After all this time. What
was
he talking about?

She recalled how much pride he’d had once and knew how hard this must be for him. When he’d left her, his job had meant so much to him. He’d had these pie-in-the sky dreams. He was going to be a wealthy broker and travel around the world, wine and dine his new yuppie wife. He was going to be rich. Have a different life than the poor one that they’d had; the one that he’d run away from a decade ago. The one he felt he’d failed in.

Jenny remained silent. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. She wasn’t sure she could stand digging up the painful past and exposing it to the light. Jeff seemed to understand how she felt, as he’d once been able to read her moods. When they’d been married. They’d been that close. It had made the betrayal that much worse.

She made the coffee. “Sure. I was going to make breakfast for myself anyway. You timed it perfect.” She frowned at the sink, reflecting on other times and places. “You always did have uncanny timing.”

She got the bacon and eggs out of the refrigerator and started preparing breakfast. A large one. It felt nice cooking again for someone. The idea struck her as funny in the middle of everything. She was tired, her head fuzzy from all that had happened. She expected to turn around any moment and find Jeff gone and everything an hallucination, like that crazy dream about Mister Michelson last night.

“I stopped by your mom and dad’s house before I came here, Jenny. That’s how I knew where to find you,” Jeff confessed. “Your mother told me about the Albers and about your dad being missing.” There was a painful edge in his voice.

Jenny froze at the sink, reality dragging her heart from exhausted numbness back down into hell.

“I’m so sorry, Jenny. I know how much you loved him. How much you cared about the Albers. Nothing could have kept me away once I’d learned that, not even your hatred.”

“I don’t,” she told him coolly, “hate you anymore.”

Jeff had been very fond of her mom and dad. He’d known them since he’d been an awkward boy of sixteen. His parents had neglected him terribly, so wrapped up in their own marital and money problems. When she’d met him, he’d been lonely and hungry for a real family.

“I’ve come to help you find them. No matter how you feel about me, Jenny. I loved your dad, still love him, and I really want to help. I’m going to help with or without your consent.”

Jenny swung around from the stove where she was frying bacon, and when her eyes touched his, it was she who was crying silently this time.

“Oh, Jeff, I’m so scared,” she breathed. “I don’t know what the hell is happening or how to fight it. Where to look. Our horses were butchered.
People have been disappearing. Something is so wrong, but no one seems to know what. I feel so helpless.”

Jeff nodded, sympathetically, and patted the seat to the right of him. Jenny came over and sat down.

“It’ll be okay, Jenny,” he consoled her. “I’m here now. I won’t let anything happen to you.” His eyes were glimmering with emotions he wasn’t speaking.

Jenny wanted to believe him, but she sensed he wanted something from her, she just hadn’t figured out what it was yet. She wanted to trust him, but he was the one who’d abandoned her and Samantha. He’d let her down before, so why did she think he wouldn’t do the same thing now? She didn’t.

What she’d said before was true; her old eat-out-the guts hatred was waning. Maybe they’d never be lovers again, maybe not even friends, but she could no longer hate him. She’d made plenty of mistakes in her life, too. Finally letting go of all that baggage felt good.

“All right, Jeff, I’ll accept your help. I need it. I’ll call a truce until we find Dad and the Albers.”

Jenny wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, got up, and finished making their breakfast. Too much had happened too swiftly, and she had to have time to think.

When she had breakfast on the table, she excused herself and took a quick shower and got into fresh clothes, while he gulped down his first plate of food. She could hear him eating from the other room. Little sighs of pleasure. Munching sounds.

When she settled back in her chair, they ate together. Her first plate, his second. She felt a hundred percent better, clean and scrubbed, nearly human.

“You know, Jenny, you haven’t changed at all.” He waved a hand at her. “It’s amazing. I look in the mirror, see this gray coming in, and the wrinkles, but you’re still as lovely as the day I married you. A little skinnier, but I like that. Basically though you look the same. Swear to god.”