Page 6 of Road Trip with a Vampire

I hesitated, not sure how to reply to that. I didn’t age at the same rate other people did. In fact, I seemed to have stopped aging altogether around my thirty-second birthday. But was I immortal ? The way Peter and other vampires were?

I didn’t know.

“Not quite like you,” I said, offering him as much of the truth as I had.

“But not quite like everyone else, either.” It wasn’t a question.

I shook my head. “No.”

I didn’t know why I was over four hundred years old yet looked like I was in my early thirties.

I didn’t know if there were others who lived as I had.

My earliest memories were just images and feelings, though I was fairly sure that I’d been raised by people like me.

Fiery and passionate, full of life and a raw kinetic power that could not be contained.

I sometimes wondered what had ultimately become of the people who’d raised me.

Were they out there somewhere, as long-lived as me?

Or had they died centuries ago? The sense memories I had of people who had loved and cared for me when I was small were too visceral to be false—but their names and faces had long since been lost to me.

Trying to recall them was like trying to see through a thick layer of mud.

I’d stopped trying a long time ago.

I left my chair and walked into the kitchen to signal that this line of questioning was over.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, picking up on my discomfort. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“As for what I remember,” he said, returning to my earlier question, “I remember nothing about my life before waking up, alone and with an excruciating headache, sprawled on the floor of an empty bank.”

That was odd. “Why were you sprawled on the floor of a bank?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes looked troubled.

“My splitting headache suggests I was attacked by someone.” That made sense.

The Chicago vampires were notoriously petty and vindictive assholes, often attacking each other over pointless disputes.

“I found an ID card in my wallet and a set of keys. And in my bag, I found this.” He pulled a leather-bound journal from his duffel and placed it on the coffee table.

It was very nice, and monogrammed with the initials P.E.

“The entries match my handwriting, so I assume it’s mine. But I don’t remember writing them.”

My heart twisted. As much as I wished I could erase certain parts of my life from my memories, I couldn’t imagine not being able to remember anything . To have no sense of self beyond the urges stemming from biological needs.

“Another thing I remembered when I woke up,” he continued, “was that I wanted to visit California.”

That surprised me. “California?”

“I don’t get it either,” he said. “California’s weather is straight out of my worst nightmares. But when I mentioned California to Reginald, he suggested I find you.” He shrugged. “I knew of nothing that might be keeping me in Chicago, so I left. The rest is history.”

I supposed it was. “Now that you’re here, do you plan to stay in the area?”

He thought about that a moment. “I have nowhere else to go,” he said. “And it took days to get here. So I might as well. Do you know of any spare rooms for rent? Sleeping in a casket isn’t the worst thing in the world but sleeping in a bus terminal might be.”

Fair enough. “The town is small, so there aren’t a lot of options,” I said, honestly. “It’s also expensive. You’ll have trouble finding something unless you have, like, a lot of money.”

He dug through his bag and fished out a wad of cash three inches thick. “This enough?”

I gaped at him. “Are those hundred-dollar bills?”

Peter gave the money in his hands a quizzical look. “Seems that way.”

I huffed a laugh. With that much money he’d have no problem finding lodging. At least in the short term. “Where did you get that?”

“No idea,” he said, stuffing the money back into his bag. “After I woke up, I went to the address on my ID. There was a garbage bag full of cash on the kitchen counter. This here is only some of it. The rest is stashed in my coffin at the bus terminal.

My eyes went wide. “Listen, I know you have amnesia. But you seriously left a bunch of cash unattended in a bus terminal?”

He blinked at me in confusion. Then his eyes went very, very wide. “Oh, shit.” He stood abruptly. “I better go there right now and get it.”

To the bus terminal. Which was full of humans unprepared for a thirsty vampire in their midst.

What I was about to suggest was almost certainly a bad idea.

A vampire was the last thing I needed in my life, even for one night.

But I thought of all those times Reggie had helped me out of trouble over the years—and how welcoming Becky had been when I’d first shown up in Redwoodsville, adrift and alone.

I’d needed help plenty of times during my too-long life. Letting Peter stay here for one night was probably the least I could—and should—do.

I took a deep breath. “After you get your money, do you want to crash here tonight?” This had nothing to do with how handsome he was or the way he smelled. Nothing whatsoever. He was simply a person in need. I could at least offer him this much.

And besides, I was far more capable of handling a thirsty vampire, should he turn bitey, than anyone at the freaking bus terminal might be.

His eyes widened. “I don’t mean to burden you.”

“It’s no burden. You can sleep on the couch.” I didn’t mention that the couch I was offering was the tiny love seat he’d been sitting on, which was so small his legs would likely hang off the edge. He’d realize that soon enough.

He swallowed. “You’re certain?”

“Yes,” I said. I held up one finger. “For one night.” My generosity had limits. There was no room for vampires in my new life. He could figure out his next move in the morning and be on his way.

“I’ll be gone first thing,” he agreed. His eyes went to the door. “I need to go now, though. To get my money, and…um.” He trailed off, a hand scrubbing anxiously at the back of his neck. “To feed.”

Just as I’d thought. “So you are thirsty.”

I took his one-shouldered shrug as an admission.

Ugh. Great. Being new here, he’d have no idea where the closest blood bank was. Then again, I didn’t know where the closest one was, either. I hadn’t interacted with any vampires since moving here, and the magical whatever-it-was in my bloodstream made being a blood donor myself impossible.

I pulled out my phone. “I’ll find a blood bank for you.”

He looked at me in disgust. “A blood bank?”

“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes and bracing myself for the argument I knew we were about to have.

I’d spent enough time around vampires to know exactly what the look he was giving me meant.

“You feed directly from the source. Right? You think drinking blood from bags is gross.” None of the vampires who chose to drink their meals that way liked it better.

They did it out of scruples, not taste preference.

Peter winced at my blunt language but didn’t deny it.

I was having none of it. “I’ve built a respectable reputation for myself here. The last thing I need is for some vampire to leave a trail of bodies leading right to my front door.”

He looked affronted. “When I feed, I am in complete control.”

Bullshit. For vampires—especially new vampires—feeding directly from a human was euphoric. Sexual. Vampires who were new to the business tended to be at their most out of control during—and right after—feeding.

I didn’t know how long Peter had been a vampire. But if he was suffering from amnesia and had no memories from before a few weeks ago, it was safest to assume he fed like a newborn.

“If you’re staying here tonight,” I said, “you will get dinner from a blood bank. My house, my rules.”

“But—”

“If you don’t like it, you can sleep in your coffin.”

He paused, considering. Then he nodded. “Fine,” he said. Was he pouting ? “Tell me where to go.”

After a minute of internet sleuthing, I found that the nearest facility was less than three miles away. I held up my phone, showing him the address.

“I’ll see you later tonight,” he said.

Without another word, he opened the door to my apartment and left.

After I no longer heard his quiet footfalls going down my stairs, I sighed and collapsed against the back of my chair.

Just when I’d thought I was rid of vampires for good, here I was again, stuck with one.

For one night, anyway.

Gods, it had been a day.

It was barely ten, yet I could barely keep my eyes open.

I stumbled into my bedroom and forced myself to stay awake long enough to do my candle ritual.

Peter showing up when he had had kept me from noticing the telltale shaking hands and jittering nerves I’d come to associate with twenty-four hours without magic.

Now that he was gone, though, I realized I felt exactly the way I had right before accidentally setting that greeting card display on fire a few months back.

That wasn’t good. I needed to start cataloguing my symptoms at the end of each day so I’d be forewarned if my magic was about to spontaneously burst out of me again. Right now, though, my racing heart and sweaty palms were so bad I couldn’t have even held a pencil.

By the time I lit the final candle, the relief from expelling some magical energy and the fatigue from my too-long day had me already half-asleep. Moments later I was properly in bed, with the covers pulled up to my chin and the candles on my nightstand the only source of light.

My front door opened and then closed again. Peter’s footsteps were ghostly quiet across the wooden floor of my living room, which normally creaked in half a dozen places.

He hadn’t been gone long. Maybe he had a car and that’s how he’d gone between the blood bank, the bus terminal, and my home so quickly. Then again, most vampires had unique abilities that set them apart. Perhaps he could run really fast. Or maybe, like Reggie, he could fly.

It didn’t matter. All I hoped was that he’d been discreet enough that none of his blood bank activities could be traced back to me.

I heard him rummaging around in something—his duffel bag, probably—and then there was the unmistakable creak of the springs in my old love seat as he sat down.

A moment passed. Another.

There was nothing but silence from the living room, and we were physically separated by more than twenty feet of space and a closed bedroom door. But I was as aware of his presence as if he were in my room with me.

It had been months since I’d last had another person in my apartment. It had been years since someone had spent the night. The mental and physical relief from my candle ritual was gone now, replaced with an uncomfortable hyperawareness that had nothing to do with magic.

I needed to distract myself or I’d never fall asleep.

With a shaking hand, I summoned a small whisper of power and created little eddies of nearly undetectable wind that fit neatly within the half inch of space beneath my bedroom door. That would soundproof things should Peter make noise in his sleep.

Then I reached out with my senses to double-check that my just in case equipment was still in its box in my closet. The special items I’d always kept secret from everyone. When push came to shove, they let me extend my magical abilities beyond the elemental and into the truly badass.

I hadn’t touched any of it once since moving to Redwoodsville.

Even still, my ritual of checking for it before bed had been ingrained in me over a period of centuries and was now as much a habit for me as breathing.

It didn’t matter if I was sleeping on a hard-packed dirt floor in a Brazilian jungle or in a comfortable bed above a yoga studio in California.

No matter where I was or who I was pretending to be, this routine was the only real security blanket I’d ever had.

I could feel my mind and body unspooling as I reached out and found my stash exactly where it always was.

There was my set of wooden stake–tipped daggers, gifted to me in Philadelphia during the American Revolution by a handsome vampire whose name I’d never known.

I loved those daggers beyond reason, not only because they were exactly as long as my middle finger—which was awesomely meta—but because they were so versatile !

The wooden stakes could be taken off and put back on as easily as a Barbie doll’s head, which meant you could use them to fight frisky vampires as well as any other nonvampiric asshole who might get in your way.

Then, of course, there was my special set of velvet bags, each with its own treasure inside.

A sprinkle of the powder from the red bag, thrown at just the right angle in an enemy’s face, could incapacitate them for up to ten minutes.

Adding a pinch of powder from the blue bag to an object—any object at all, including a person—allowed me to teleport it (or them) to any location of my choosing.

My favorite of the bags was the tiny green one, though, because it contained something extra special: a luminous gold-colored ring topped with three bright red crystals.

The ring was probably plastic, as were the crystals.

It had found me one day in the mid-1970s at a thrift shop in San Francisco’s Castro District.

As far as I knew, the ring had no real magical properties, despite what the probably stoned shop’s owner had assured me.

But it looked extremely cool on my finger when I fought my enemies with things that could actually kill them. And that’s what mattered.

Looking cool, I had long since learned, was its own sort of magic.

Thus comforted, I pulled my covers up to my chin and closed my eyes.

I was asleep in seconds.