Page 13 of Road Trip with a Vampire

At the bottom of the note, the sender had scrawled Warehouse #2 and an Indiana address that meant nothing to me. The note’s threatening tone gave me flashbacks to my past life, a life in which I had frequently been on the receiving end of notes like these—and occasionally sent them myself.

I shook off the unpleasant memories.

“Blossomtown?” I asked, sliding the note back to him. “Where’s that?”

Peter rummaged through his duffel bag and pulled out one of those fold-up road maps you can get in gas stations. It said INDIANA on the front in bright red letters. He put it on the table between us, then quickly unfolded it, spreading it out.

“There,” he said, stabbing at a spot of road a bit south of Indianapolis with the tip of an index finger. As though anticipating my next question, he added, “I don’t know how or why I know where this town is. I just do.”

If memory served, the last time I’d been to Indiana had been years ago for a college basketball game. All I remembered now was a sea of red jerseys, drunk college students, and an asshole coach who threw chairs. The experience hadn’t been a pleasant enough one for me to revisit the state.

“Do you know who this JR person is?” I asked.

“No idea,” he said, agitated. He tried refolding the map but quickly gave up, opting instead to crumple it up and shove it back into his bag. “I don’t remember anything about who I used to be. But I have a bad feeling about what might happen if I ignore their note.”

Me, too , I thought, but didn’t say. There was no missing the misery in his voice. My heart went out to him despite myself.

“What are you going to do?” I nearly put a hand on his arm—just to be reassuring—but thought better of it. No need to complicate matters by introducing comforting touching.

“What can I do?” he asked. “I’ll go to Indiana, I guess.”

Alarm bells went off in my mind. If my own personal history was any guide, complying with bombastic requests to show up somewhere when you didn’t know who the requester was rarely ended well.

“I get why you feel like you have to respond. But it seems dangerous to go there without remembering who JR is or why you’re being summoned. ”

“I don’t disagree. But I don’t think I have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” I pointed out.

He shook his head. “This is the third note I’ve gotten from JR,” he explained in a low voice, as though worried other Perky’s patrons might overhear.

“All three have been sent to my apartment with no return address. I ignored the first two. That may be why this note included a threat to come find me if I didn’t reply. ”

And if they knew his address, that seemed like a not-so-empty threat. I could tell by the tension radiating off him that he realized this, too.

“Is there anything you can think of that might help recover your memory first?” I pointed to the envelope. “Seeing the name of that town…I mean, you at least recognize it as a place you’d once known. What else can you think of that might help you remember?”

He huffed in frustration. “I’d hoped my journal would help. It hasn’t.”

An idea struck me. “You’ve tried reading your journal. Have you tried visiting the places mentioned in your entries?”

A beat. “I haven’t.”

“Do you think it might help?”

He scratched at his chin, considering. “I have no way of knowing, but…” he began. He chewed on his bottom lip, lost in thought. Despite the current circumstances, my eyes fell helplessly to his mouth. To the scar just above it. Was this JR person somehow responsible for him getting it?

“But what?” I prompted.

“It might help,” he admitted. “It certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

“Maybe you’d find someone in those places who knows you,” I suggested. “Someone who could fill you in on the missing pieces.”

He shook his head. “Most of the places in my journal are too remote to access without a car. I don’t own a car. I don’t even know if I know how to drive.”

I have a car , I thought.

I can drive.

Wait a minute.

I forced myself to count to ten before speaking again. Because the beginnings of a plan I would almost certainly regret later were taking root.

Zelda—the mild-mannered yogi, the person who didn’t leap into anything without thinking it through first—would never suggest something like this.

But the person I’d once been would have jumped at the chance for adventure.

Peter peered at me, his brow furrowed in confusion over my sudden silence.

The words just slipped out. “I could take you.”

Whatever Peter had expected me to say, it wasn’t this. “ What? ”

“I could take you,” I repeated.

Unlike most half-baked plans, this one made more sense after I said it out loud.

This could work.

For both of us.

We both needed to leave town for a while.

I had a car, and he needed transportation.

And while I could take care of myself if trouble arose while I was away, I couldn’t tear out someone’s throat with my teeth if the occasion called for it.

The handy thing about traveling with a vampire was that they could.

And as much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, the idea of someone being totally cut off from who they used to be, suffering all alone as they traveled towards an unknown and potentially dangerous destination…it didn’t sit right with me. Not if I could travel with them and lighten the load.

“But why ?” he asked, confused. “I’m a stranger to you.”

I hesitated. Opened my mouth, then closed it again.

Showing vulnerability had never come easily, and I was tempted to deflect with snark. To tell him I was overdue for a vacation and his huge wad of cash would let me stay in fancy hotels if I traveled with him. As Peter looked at me, though, it felt like his warm brown eyes saw straight through me.

He might have amnesia, but he noticed everything . He would definitely know if I was lying.

Maybe that was why I told him the truth.

“I’m…having some trouble with my magic.” The words wanted to stick in my throat. I forced them out anyway. “It’s been too long since I’ve used enough of my powers, and that’s causing…problems.”

He looked thoughtful as he processed this. “Like this morning’s fire?” Peter’s question was curious, not accusatory.

“Like this morning’s fire,” I confirmed. “No one was hurt, but…” I shook my head. “I need to do some experiments to see how much magic I can safely use going forward. I can’t do those experiments here.”

I expected Peter to have a barrage of questions. Why wasn’t I using my magic now? And why couldn’t I conduct these experiments in Redwoodsville?

He asked nothing, though. Said nothing. Simply took what I told him at face value and accepted as much of the truth as I was able to give.

“Well,” he said after a long moment. “It would be nice to have some company.”

We sat in silence, the ambient sounds of the coffee shop filling up the space where our conversation had been.

Before I could talk myself out of doing it, I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine.

He flinched a little in surprise but did not pull away.

His hand was so cool to the touch. It was always a little unsettling just how cold vampires were.

No matter how many times I’d touched them over the years.

I looked down at our hands, my fingers curling around his. A gesture of affection from one lost soul to another. I squeezed gently, fingertips brushing against the calluses that ringed his palm.

Our hands looked good together. To anyone seeing us, we probably looked like two people on an early-morning date.

It was that thought that had me retracting my hand.

“I…need to talk to Becky and Lindsay,” I said, flustered. “They’ll need to run the studio while I’m gone, so I have to get their okay before we set out. But once I have…”

The look of gratitude Peter gave me was so genuine, so full of warmth, the rest of my thoughts skittered away.

“Thank you,” he said. The hand I’d just held flexed once, twice, at his side.