Page 42 of Road Trip with a Vampire

“—but no. This time it was an accident. I was asleep, and I must have gone too long without doing any spells and… whoosh .” I threw my hands up in the air. “I woke up to an inferno.”

Reggie’s smile from remembering our wild year in Paris slid from his face.

“I don’t understand any of this.” He walked back to the kitchen table and sat down heavily in his chair.

“I’ve been so flipping glad to hear from you again, I haven’t wanted to pry into the reasons why you ran away.

But now that you’re telling me you’ve not only run away and assumed a new identity but are also suppressing who you are and endangering yourself in the process… ”

Reggie didn’t finish that thought, but he didn’t need to. His concern for me was written on his face plain as day.

It was time to tell him the truth.

“When I left,” I began, “something really bad had just happened, in part because of my magic. It was the wake-up call I needed to completely change my life.”

Reggie started talking again before I could get into all the rest of it.

“I understand what it’s like to wake up one day and realize, Shit, maybe I’ve been doing this immortality thing all wrong .

” He gestured to the beautiful apartment he now shared with his girlfriend.

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t had a similar wake-up call myself.

But how is suppressing who you are and hiding yourself away living ? ”

I gave him a wry smile. “Peter said something along those lines to me, too, when I told him.”

Reggie raised an eyebrow. “Did he, now?”

Before I could reply to that, the man in question burst unannounced into the apartment like a next-door neighbor in a ’90s sitcom. He held a scrap of paper in his hand and turned to Reggie. “This was taped to your front door. It’s addressed to me.”

The panic-stricken look on his face had Reggie and me on our feet in an instant.

“Let me see it,” I said.

“I suspect it’s from our mysterious correspondent,” Peter said darkly, handing it over.

Reggie’s eyes went very wide. “Who knows you’re here?”

“No one,” I said. “At least, no one I’m aware of.” I looked at the note in my hands. It was the same handwriting, style, and red ink as the note Peter got at the hotel the other night and the notes he received in California.

Peter!

My word. Your choices ! We cannot help but laugh.

You really are the master.

See you soon.

Signed,

You Know Who

I read the short note three times, thinking repetition might put the cryptic words into some sort of comprehensible order. It didn’t work.

“What does the note mean?” Reggie asked, mystified.

Peter’s expression darkened. “Other than the fact that someone is clearly tailing us, I don’t know.

Though I feel like I should.” He took the note back from me, then angrily stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

“It’s like those visual puzzles where you can only see the solution if you let your eyes go out of focus in just the right way.

The answer is right there but completely out of reach. ”

Reggie frowned. “When someone gets a series of mysterious notes in red ink, it rarely ends well.” He gave me a meaningful look. “Do you think these notes could have anything to do with…uh, that situation with The Collective I had to deal with last spring?”

My eyes widened. “Oh gods, I hadn’t even considered them.

” Those lineage-obsessed losers had been unhealthily obsessed with bringing Reggie to justice ever since I’d secretly started a fire at one of their parties ages ago.

He had been the chief suspect but had never ratted me out as having been the real arsonist. That’s what true friendship looks like.

At one point about six months ago, I’d actually thought one of those yahoos had finally found me in California. It turned out to be a false alarm in the form of one particularly stoned surfer.

“No idea if it’s them, of course,” Reggie continued.

“But The Collective loves sending bombastic notes in red ink. The handwriting is different, but the note otherwise looks like the ones they sent me.” He frowned.

“We never heard from them again after Amelia threatened to report them to the IRS for tax evasion, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. ”

My head was spinning. As far as I knew, The Collective had never managed to get their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that ’twas I who’d set their house ablaze.

But how much of a coincidence would it have to be for someone I was traveling with to get notes from this shadowy group, given my history?

“Let me ask you this, Petey,” Reggie said. “Did you get any notes before meeting up with Grizzy—Zelda, sorry—in California?”

Peter glared at him. Whether it was because Reggie had called him Petey or because he’d just asked him to recall something despite knowing he had amnesia, I wasn’t sure. “I can’t remember,” he muttered.

“Hmm.” Reggie sat down heavily at the kitchen table, a thoughtful expression on his face. “What did the other notes say?”

“The ones I got in California told me to come to Indiana,” Peter said. “Couldn’t make sense of the one at that hotel.”

“Neither could I,” I said. Though, now that I thought about it…

Hadn’t the last note complimented Peter on his choice of travel companion? Meaning me?

Another awful thought occurred to me. What if Peter had done something in the past to land him on The Collective’s bad side?

They were so petty and self-important they likely had an enemy list a mile long.

If Reggie was right—if these notes were from The Collective—and if Peter couldn’t remember what he might have done to piss them off, he could be walking into a trap.

The Collective might be idiots, but they could be irritatingly lethal idiots when given the opportunity.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to take several deep breaths.

I was letting my imagination get the better of me.

What were the odds that The Collective, who had never managed to find me before, were the ones sending these?

More to the point: If it had been The Collective tailing us all this time and they had it out for one or both of us, why wouldn’t they have just nabbed us at some point on this trip rather than mess around with notes?

And yet…

“Maybe we shouldn’t go to Indiana tomorrow,” I said.

“I have to go,” Peter said. He pulled the latest letter from his pocket again and waved it in the air. “If I don’t, these notes will keep coming.”

“Who cares?” I asked. “You don’t know what you’re walking into. What if it isn’t safe for you to go?”

“I don’t care if it isn’t safe for me,” Peter said, eyes flashing. “I have to know—”

“Well I care! ” I shouted.

Silence so complete you could have heard a pin drop followed my outburst. I was trembling—both from strength of emotion and from the shock of realizing for the first time just how strong my feelings were when it came to this man.

I was dimly aware of Reggie smirking at me from his end of the kitchen table. I ignored the shit out of him.

Peter’s mouth hung half-open, his eyes round with surprise.

“Zelda,” he said, clearly at a loss for words. His throat worked. “I…”

Reggie leaned in close and clapped him on the shoulder. “This is the part where you tell her you care, too,” he whispered sotto voce. “Trust me.”

If a look could burn someone to ash, the glare Peter gave him would have done it. “Thank you,” he muttered through gritted teeth, sounding anything but appreciative.

“Don’t mention it.” Reggie’s eyes darted between the two of us. “I…just remembered. I have to go to bed.”

I barely noticed as he scurried down the hallway and into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Peter’s eyes were a tempest of emotion. On instinct, I took his hands in mine.

“I hate the idea of you putting yourself in danger,” I said.

He shook his head. Stepped closer. “Likewise. Which is why I think you should stay while I go.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said flatly. “I was getting myself out of dangerous situations before you were even born.”

That earned me a reluctant smile. “I knew you’d play the age card sooner or later.”

“It was inevitable,” I agreed, barely resisting the urge to trace the shape of his smile with my fingertips. “It’s true, though. I do have more experience with this kind of thing than you do. I also have magic.”

“I have fangs,” he countered.

“Which won’t help you against other vampires,” I pointed out.

A muscle feathered in his jaw. He looked away. “Right.”

“I have magic,” I said again very quietly. “You need me tomorrow, Peter. Even if you don’t want to admit it. In fact…”

I bit my lip. I had never told anyone about the cache of magic-enhancing supplies secreted away in my suitcase. But if telling Peter about them now would convince him I’d be more than able to take care of both of us tomorrow…

“What is it?” he asked, concerned.

I took a deep breath. Peter could be trusted with this. “I have more than just my magic with me,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

Another deep breath. “My natural powers are tied to, and limited by, the elements,” I explained.

“I brought some items on this trip that allow me to do things beyond my ordinary abilities.” I began ticking them off on my fingers.

“Two magically enhanced metal daggers tipped with removable wooden stakes that can kill both vampires and nonvampires. One magic powder that can incapacitate opponents for a solid five minutes if it’s thrown directly into their faces.

And another powder that can teleport any object, or person, wherever you wish them to go.

” I smiled at him. “I also brought a groovy plastic ring that does nothing but looks really cool.”

He huffed a laugh at the last part. “Those do sound useful.”

“They are.”

Peter’s brows knit together as he considered his next words carefully. “Why did you bring them with you on this trip in the first place, though?” He reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Were they to help you with your experiments, or was it something else?”

I could lie and tell him that yes, I’d brought them to help me experiment with my magic. But he would see through the lie as soon as I said the words. “I…didn’t trust you at first,” I confessed very quietly. “Not completely. I decided it was better to be safe than sorry.”

If this upset him, Peter showed no sign of it. He nodded, as if this had been the answer he’d expected. His eyes showed only understanding.

“Do you trust me now?” he asked.

“I do.” I smiled at him again. “So much so that after owning most of these things for centuries, you’re the first person I’ve ever told about any of them.”

Peter’s eyes blazed at my admission. His throat worked. “Zelda…

“All of this is to say,” I began, feeling tears prick the backs of my eyes, “I’m coming with you tomorrow. End of discussion.”

I braced myself for him to argue with me again. He didn’t. Instead, he merely reached out and cupped my cheek in his hand.

“Thank you,” he breathed, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “My brave, incredible girl.”

I lost track of how long we stood there like that, his cool hand cradling my cheek, the only sounds the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of a wall clock somewhere in the room. It felt exactly like the moment it was:

The calm before the storm.

“Will you let me use one of the daggers tomorrow if necessary?” he asked, breaking the silence. “Seems like having two armed people could be better than one.”

Relief flooded me. We’d be walking into that warehouse and facing whatever waited for us together.

I focused on the way he was looking at me—like I was the only thing that mattered—to find my voice. “Of course,” I said. “Two is definitely better than one.”