Page 28 of Vampire Bachelor Games

‘Please let it be the restaurant.’

“Hello?” My voice shakes and I clutch my throat like an actress in a Hammer horror as I wait to hear who’s on the other end of the line.

“Angelina,” Isabel’s mother says firmly, “send a photograph of the vampire.”

She hangs up.

Without pause I take a photo of the prone Caroline and forward it.

A long, long minute passes where a million scenarios go through my mind. Everything from the police breaking down the door to Caroline springing up and sucking me dry.

Finally, the phone rings again, and the voice on the other end of the line causes me to cry out and choke up immediately. There’s no mistaking it. We’d spent many hours talking and joking during The Games before that fateful night.

“Isabel?”

“Yes.”

“How? Why? What?”

“Listen. We needed to know you were serious. You’ve given the vial to the blonde, and now I’m ready to offer my help.”

“I thought you were dead. I felt so guilty, even though, even though…”

“Even though I was trying to kill you,” she half-laughs. “Ifeel guilty about that, Angelina. I told you then that I didn’t want to do it. But we don’t have time for this. Your vampire is on his way. He’s just landed. I can’t get you out of there, Angie. You’re going to have to go back with him and wait for our instructions.”

‘He’s coming here?’

“Oh, God. No!”

“Yes.”

“He’s going to get me pregnant and then kill me, Isabel!”

“What?”

“He thinks I’m a spy. He thinks I’m working with Count Spider Dartlore, the Free Men, and the fucking Guardians of the Galaxy for all I know. He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t want me. He’s going to KILL ME!”

“He won’t kill you. He loves you.”

“Isabel,” I breathe out slowly and deeply. “Vampires don’t love humans. You and The Free Men must know that; your institution has been fighting them for centuries. He literally told me he’s going to arrange for an accident after I’ve given birth. He told me the day he married me. Please, please, you have to get me out of here.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a long, long time, and my nerves eventually get the better of me.

“Isabel?”

She sighs.

“We’ll do what we can, but you have to sit tight, play the wife. It isn’t going to be easy.”

“That’s a fucking understatement,” I squeak as tears well. “I’ve been playing wife. I can’t, I just can’t do it any longer, Isabel.”

I start to cry in earnest as my feelings begin to overwhelm me. Relief that she’s alive, self-pity that I can’t escape, and fear for the future. But as pathetic as this is, my brain is also furiously buzzing as I try to think of another way,anyway, to have her help me get out of the mess I’ve put myself in.

“Phil,” I eventually gulp. “Phil’s part of your group. Can he put me in touch with Yin?”

“Yin pretty much broke every bone in Phil’s body when she found out about his role in The Games,” Isabel snorts. “So, no.”

“But,” I speak quickly, my words tumbling over each other as they come to mind, “she can help me. She will, I know she will. She just needs to know my predicament. Please Isabel, just get word to her, please.”