Vomit skittered up the back of my throat as I bent over the toilet and emptied my gut into it. With one final cough, I dabbed my mouth and flushed. A feverish anxiety had gripped my stomach from the moment of confrontation and lingered well-after the ginger-male disappeared through those school doors.
I hadn't been able to stop him. I'd failed. I'd let a thirsty tick walk-free.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, sweaty-faced, students were filing out of the classroom. Fear twitched along my arms; I'd have to confront the other two leeches. In this state.
I sagged against the wall just outside the bathroom, watching intently. What I saw, however, surprised me. Allie and Cat emerged first; Allie with my backpack slung over one arm.
"Hey, you doing okay?" Cat wondered, her brows bowing with concern as she examined me. "Do you want some midol?"
Allie set my backpack at my feet.
"Uh, yeah," I lied, bobbing my head.
"Dang, period cramps that bad on the first day of college," Allie shook her head, "That's some pretty bad luck. Do you wanna call it a day?"
I shook my head, "I have an online class next, so I'll have enough time to recover."
"We can head to the library," Cat suggested as I took a swig from my water bottle to wash down the painkiller she'd given me, "It's just a few blocks from here."
"We can take my car," Allie said quickly, glancing once-over at my ghostly facade again.
"Thanks," I mumbled, taking up my backpack and following.
"And here I thought you were chasing Mason Warde to ask him out," Allie chuckled as we stepped into the cool outdoors, "Shows how off my intuition is."
"What made you think that?" I wondered.
"Well... I just figured..." Allie blushed, then huffed, "I asked him out our senior year, okay? And he turned me down. Me!"
She threw both her hands out in front of her as if dumping the truth at my feet.
That was... probably for the best, I thought, Sorry, Allie.
She chuckled awkwardly at the memory, unlocking her car. I slid into the backseat and sweet-cashmere scent puffed into my face from the freshener. I swallowed back further disgust at the artificial scent.
"Whatever," she shrugged, turning over the engine, "I thought I saw you casting furtive, flirty glances at each other. My bad! You don't need to bother with them anyway. They're kind of cliquey."
Other students flocked to their cars as Allie backed out.
"Them?" I echoed, frowning, "You mean the three people in front of us? You got along with Kira just fine."
"Actually, that was the first time she's truly talked to me," Allie shook her head, confused. "Never really has before- hey!"
She slammed her palm on her car-horn, gritting her teeth at a powder-blue prius that had backed out directly in front of her. The driver, a blond woman, let her eyes rove carelessly over Allie's car as if it wasn't there.
"Speak of the devil," Allie scoffed, releasing the horn, "That's the rest of them."
"Rest?" I echoed weakly, then noticed how inhumanly beautiful the woman and her passenger, a darker-skinned male, were.
Two new vampires.
In the backseat, damn him, was the ginger. He stared evenly back as I glared at him through the windshield of Allie's suburban. The blond driver continued to ignore Allie's presence and simply peeled toward the exit.
"What's with them?" I wondered.
"Some clique from high school," Allie shrugged, drawing up the front of her car such that it nearly kissed the back bumper of the prius, "They thought they were better than everyone. Still do now. Guess some people never outgrow high school."
"I mean, we're only a couple-months graduated, if you think about it," Cat allowed.
"Well, they were weird even in highschool," Allie protested.
Their car, sans the other two vampires, peeled onto the main road. I puffed a sigh. Five vampires. How sinister. Other than the Theous - I cringed - I hadn't known any vampire covens to maintain a true grouping so large. Such endeavors usually ended in infighting. By my family's research, vampires were largely solitary creatures aside from occasionally taking mates.
As we got to and settled at the library, I sipped water. I needed that acrid vomit-taste gone as soon as possible. Needed to truly calm down and think straight. I had new targets. I needed to stay on-task: maintain a human facade and collect intel.
With clear, mint-free air and the chattering of a few school-children in the background, my earlier anxiety began to dilute.
The library was an unexpectedly grand and spacious structure for a small town. The three of us had no trouble finding space to lounge across from large glass windows. Outside, triangular trees with fluffy green branches created a high horizon of prickly points. They nearly obscured the mountains. Behind us, natural, uncarved wood columns dotted the area, as if the trees outside had broken through the floor to reclaim the man-made space.
"So you two went to school in Homer?" I prompted, trying to get back on-topic.
"Yep," Allie confirmed, setting aside her computer in favor of gossip.
I turned mine on, logged into the virtual classroom, and muted myself. There wasn't likely to be anything of importance shared on day one of classes. Investigation of the supernatural took priority anyway.
"You recognized everyone in class this morning, then?"
Allie frowned, rubbing her lower lip, "Pretty much... there's some home-schooled kids, or folks from the rural villages that come in, though."
"Oh, yeah, I noticed a couple Alaskan native kids from Valley Point," Cat seconded, "That's just north of here. Though I'm not surprised: they've been engaging with the community here in Homer more often lately. I think they're improving their tourism programs and the like."
Well that didn't seem relevant. I needed info on the vampires.
"Who were those people who sat in front of us and why are they... weird?" I asked, then pivoted, "And, more importantly, what possessed you to ask that uppity asshole out? He kind of glared at me while I was headed out behind him."
"I mean, if you hadn't noticed, they're kind of attractive," Allie lifted her chin, but blushed furiously all the same, "It was probably a combination of pretty-privilege and newbie-jitters that brought all of them together. I mean, they all moved in within about six months of each other. When was that, again?"
She glanced at Cat, frowning.
"Our sophomore and junior year," she supplied.
"Right," Allie said, "Mason and Kira are from the same family, though I think Kira's adopted. They're both Wardes.
"Then there's Samuel Labelle. I call him Sam, but I think he hates that- " She shrugged "-I think his family was military or something. Could explain why he put up a freakishly weird defense of the Confederate army in history class that one year. His family left after he graduated but he stayed. I think he lives with the Wardes now since he's dating Kira. My mother would never allow that sort of thing."
"Confederate army," I narrowed my eyes, a bit clueless about that part, though I knew it was the States' history. He'd had an old scent; it's possible he might've been from that very era. "They're the American Civil War baddies from the late eighteen-hundreds, no?"
"Baddies is a mild word for it," Allie scoffed and I nodded aggressively, pretending to be just as outraged.
She didn't continue, however, and my lips puckered sourly. I'd have to research it myself later. Through my family's tourism-business facade in Italy, I'd had plenty of practice pretending to give a care about American politics. Bruno had liked to stare wordlessly at the more opinionated foreigners until they awkwardly wandered away. Maybe I should've paid more attention...
"Then the other two you saw in the car were Anne and Leo," Allie continued, snapping me out of my reverie, "They're engaged, though. I think she's pregnant."
Allie grinned conspiratorially as Cat smacked her shoulder.
"Don't be rude," Cat scoffed, then turned to me, "They already make the rounds of small town gossip due to their family situations. They don't need false rumors too."
Allie clicked her tongue disdainfully, "Anne deserves it. I was in math classes with her for two straight years and saw her roll her eyes every time someone answered wrong."
"I heard her mom was really strict," Cat fretted, "We can't be too hard on her..."
"Her mom never showed up for any school events, did she?" Allie mused for a moment, "Alright, Mommy issues are fair. But what was Leo's deal? Trevor told me that he literally flexed at his opponents in gym class."
Even Cat drew a blank on that front.
"I imagine he was successful at what he was trying to do," I almost chuckled, thinking back to the bulky male I'd seen in the passenger's seat.
What strange audacity these vampires had.
"Kira might not've talked to us too much, but at least she's nice," Cat chimed, "Once, she helped me pick up my binders when Micheal Fletcher booked me."
"Kira's a little off too," Allie said skeptically, "Last year, she suggested we have a French Revolution themed Prom where we'd only serve cake and, at the end, we'd decapitate a paper mache Marie Antoinette."
"Weren't the idea submissions anonymous?" Cat countered.
"It was written in her swirly-handwriting!"
"That does sound kind of fun, though," I admitted with a sigh.
The French revolution had been a bit before my time, but my father had told me stories about the ghost and demon possessions that had taken place.
Our chatter directed attention away from the online Writing Fundamentals lecture, although Cat took fleeting notes every once in a while. I learned more names belonging to both human and vampire. I mentally catalogued each away.
A familiar tickle in my chest ignited when Allie talked about some high-school boy named Trevor. It sounded as though she had affection for him, her tone softening a bit. And I greatly enjoyed local gossip. Cat, on the other hand, was more guarded. Given enough time, I could crack her, too: find out who she liked. Have a little fun playing matchmaker while I was undercover.
Focus, I warned myself.
But this was focused. In a way. Befriending the girls meant I'd have decent company and cover. If this vampire coven were attempting a permanent settlement, as attending high school and subsequent college suggested, then formulating group hangouts using locals to incorporate them would be essential.
Just track and kill them.
I frowned at that thought.
Normally, yes, I would've initiated a killing strategy. Immediately. But the aberration I'd seen in the ginger's eyes, that silver gave me pause. Silver was a deliberate color. Impure things, vampires themselves for instance, were warded off by silver. So why had it appeared in his eyes in place of red?
I wanted to know.
But researching that question might extend the deadline of their deaths. How many human lives would be sacrificed while I sated my curiosity? Bitterness soiled the back of my throat. Forget my curiosity, I had another problem: I'd frozen up at a critical moment, earlier. Perhaps I needed a little more time - research or not.
Two weeks, then, I decided.
I'd study them for two weeks before killing them. I'd need time to study their habits, anyway. To determine when they were most spread out and vulnerable for picking off one-by-one.
I keyed back into the conversation.
"Ask Trevor out already," I demanded of Allie with a cheeky smirk. "I've just met you and you've brought him up, like, five times."
"Have not," she argued, "That time doesn't count! I was just... passing on a recommendation on where to get good winter-weather gear."
"Oh, and because it's got Trev's stamp of approval it's good quality?"
"Ugh," Allie flopped back in her seat, "You're awful!"
"It's high-time you met your match," Cat chided her good-naturedly.
"Whatever," Allie huffed, then frowned, "And you know, I've been trying to hint to Trevor that I want to go on a date this weekend. He's just not getting it."
"Ask him straightforward," I shrugged
"No way!" she protested and even Cat went wide-eyed.
"Well... I guess you're not getting that date, then," I said with mock wistfulness, "And here I thought we'd have a couple of high school sweethearts whose wedding I could go to one day. Pity."
"You're so mean," Allie huffed, though Cat giggled with me at her expense. Allie's expression dimmed, then. "It didn't work out so well last time, why would it now?"
"Trevor's not a jerk," Cat supplied, "He's just a little... dense."
"You'll get an answer at the least," I shrugged, "If the answer's no, you and I can have a date. Sounds good, right?"
"Can I complete the throuple?" Cat asked.
"Yeah, sure," I agreed.
"Whether yes or no, we should have a sleepover," Allie insisted, glancing over excitedly, "What about your place? You said your dad's overseas, so, we could probably even throw a party, right?"
"Oh, uh, maybe just sleepovers."
"Don't be a wet blanket!" Allie scoffed.
Wet blanket? I wondered. Maybe this was an American idiom?
I shrugged for her benefit, "Sleepovers are fun enough. Dad put security cameras up anyway, so it would be difficult to throw a party."
"Ugh, what a bummer-"
"It's actually really smart," I snapped, glaring meaningfully at her before guilt trickled in. I backpedaled, "Back at our last place, our house was broken into, so... it's really important."
Allie and Cat glanced at one another. I backtracked further.
"But, like I said, sleepovers are fine. What about your place - have you had parties there? May I come?"
Cat rolled her eyes good naturedly as Allie's chatterbox switch flicked on. The tension dissipated.