“Hey, babe,” he said, squinting at me as he rubbed the back of his head.
“What the hell?” I shouted again.
“I was just gonna, uh, do some laundry,” he said, pushing up from the floor.
“In a building that you don’t live in? Without a laundry basket?”
His shoulders sagged. “Yeah, OK, that was a lame excuse.”
“What are you doing lurking outside my laundry room?” I demanded.
“I was . . . I just . . .” He paused, scratching his neck. “OK, I was trying to keep you from seeing that I was following you. I haven’t seen you in a while, and I kept expecting you to pop up or text or call or something, and when you didn’t, I got curious. One of the front-desk clerks said she saw you going downstairs with a laundry basket, so I gave you a few minutes and followed you, because I thought you might be—”
“Cheating on you?”
“No!” he swore, holding both hands up.
“Trying to kill Gigi again?” I asked. “Because, trust me, I learned my lesson there.”
“No!”
“General unspecified evil?”
Jamie waggled his head back and forth. “OK, that’s closer. It’s just, I’m not used to you being so ‘busy’ with anything except Council business. And you’ve been so unsure of your place here and us and whether we’re going to last. And I thought maybe I was a stressor and you could be planning something.”
“But me being unsure, that’s not because of you,” I protested. “I lied to you for most of the first few months we knew each other. Our whole relationship is based on a wrong first impression. I presented myself to you as this sweet little cardigan-wearing Sunday-school refugee. You became interested in me, thinking I was innocent and guileless and . . . Why are you smiling at me like that?”
“Do you really think I didn’t see that you were scary and a little bit nuts? No rational person owns that many sundresses. Also, Jane warned me about a dozen times about you. With visual aids and articles she’d printed off from various Internet forums. Did you know you have a subreddit composed entirely of people who feel victimized by you?”
My face went slack, and my arms dropped to my sides. “What?”
Jamie snickered. “I knew you were dangerous. I didn’t care. You were funny and smart, and I liked the fact that you could kick my ass if you wanted to. I’d had sweet little church girls chasing after me my whole life. I wanted someone different. I wanted you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m not an idiot. Well, OK, I’m an idiot who tried to sneak up on you in an enclosed laundry room, but I’m generally better at reading girls. I thought maybe if I backed off a little and let you see that we don’t have to be together every minute of the day, it would help you relax a little bit here. And then you didn’t contact me, and I got worried, but I didn’t want you to know I was worried. And then I followed you, and you were fine, and that made me worry more. Which I don’t think you should judge me for, because that’s basically how you started our relationship.”
“We are ridiculous people,” I told him.
He nodded. “Yes, we are.”
“Can we start this conversation all over again?” I asked.
“Yes, please.”
I cleared my throat and squared my shoulders, before kissing his cheek. “Jamie! What a pleasant surprise, finding you here in my basement under totally normal circumstances.”
“Hi, babe,” Jamie said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. He stepped back and caught my lips in a longer, sweeter kiss. “Where have you been lately?”
“Here and there. I am very busy and important,” I told him archly.
He smirked. “Of course you are.”
“No, really,” I protested lightly. “After my laundry, I was actually on my way up to see some friends and ask about their plans tonight.”
“On your way up to see some friends?” Jamie asked, peering at the ceiling. “As in, you have friends upstairs on the human floors?”
“Yes, I have several friends on one of the human floors. We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately. They made me watch The Notebook. That will never happen again.”
Jamie beamed at me. “Awesome! I mean, I don’t necessarily like the fact that you have less time to spend with me, but—”
My phone beeped as another message pinged its way into my in-box. Seriously, Ophelia, are you OK? Do you want to talk? —Jane.
I rolled my eyes at Jane’s signature mix of meddling and unhelpful stubbornness.
“Is that your ‘dealing with Jane’ face?” Jamie asked. “Why is Jane texting you?”
“It’s just some silly e-mail. Part of my ‘rehabilitation.’ ”
“Well, I’m sure she has her reasons,” he said. I grumbled, but he kissed my forehead, trying to distract me. “I’ve missed you. We’ve been so busy lately, I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Has it been that long?” I pursed my lips. “I’ve just been so occupied with classes, planning the mixer, and my many, many new friends in the residence hall that I haven’t noticed that you basically disappeared for a week.”
“OK, I deserved that,” he conceded. “But I do hope that these are real friends and not people that you’re recruiting to be your evil minions.”
The corner of my mouth lifted. “They’re very honest and sweet and noncriminal. Not an evil bone in any of them. And yet I still want to spend time around them. It’s so unlike me.”
I omitted any mention of Kenton and his flirtations, because Jamie didn’t need to know about that. For once in my life, I had behaved as I should, and I was going to reap the benefits of discretion.
“Aw, baby, I’m so proud of you,” he purred, locking his lips over mine. This kiss. It was why I risked all that I had to be with him. This feeling of peace and completion and acceptance. Jamie kissed me because he enjoyed kissing me. Not because he was angling for something more or because he was trying to manipulate me but because kissing was enough for him. He cupped my face in his hands.
I plucked at the buttons on his shirt, because that always let him know that kissing wasn’t enough for me at the moment. He grinned against my lips, a pleased noise rumbling through his chest.
Never breaking the seal between our mouths, he slid his hands along my thighs and hitched me up, wrapping my legs around his waist. He turned, propping my butt against the top of a nearby washing machine. His arms, warm from the toasty temperature of the room, slipped around my back, pressing me close, making me feel loved and safe and close, so very close to the man I adored completely.
“We don’t have to do this here, you know. My roommate has basically abandoned our room. We can take advantage of my tiny, extremely lumpy single bed.”
“Oh, come on, babe, where’s your sense of adventure?” he asked, kissing my neck and toying with the snap on my jeans. He lifted my hips and tugged at the denim, then the plain cotton panties I’d taken to wearing since I’d ruined a series of expensive French silk underwear in this very room.
“I’ve danced on the Great Wall of China drunk on the blood of an empress. I’ve jumped over Niagara Falls. I took Georgie to Chuck E. Cheese before vampires came out of the coffin,” I said, my voice husky as his hands danced over my bare, spread thighs.
“That’s not adventurous, that’s insane,” he informed me, sliding his fingers over my flesh, stoking the pressure building there.
I gasped, a happy little moan against the shell of his ear.
“See?” he rumbled, rubbing his thumb in those tight little circles he knew worked best for me. “Nice and warm, the pleasant scent of fabric softener. Hell, if you don’t listen too close, the tumbling of the dryer sounds like the ocean.”
I whimpered. “The fabric softener is repulsive.”
“I like it. It reminds me of my mom.”
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I jerked my head back from him. “This is your idea of setting the mood?”
He looked sheepish and redoubled his efforts, making me forget all about the reference to his mother. “Can you honestly say that you’ve ever had sex in a college dorm laundry room?”
“No. And I’m not going to have sex in a laundry room now.”
“But it means I’ve finally found something to do with you that you’ve never done before.”
I laughed, so distracted by his kisses and caresses that I barely noticed the rasp of his zipper. He gingerly pulled my hips forward, rubbing against me, reminding me of the first time we were together, all that tentative gentleness that had made me feel almost shy.
Oh, good grief, I was actually going to have sex in a laundry room.
Those tight little thumb circles got a bit sloppier, but they still had the desired effect. He slid home, and I cried out, arching against him, propping myself up against the washer lid.
Laundry-room sex wasn’t so bad. The dryer did sound a little bit like the ocean. I could feel a sort of thrum of energy around me, sliding along my skin in cycles. Ripple ripple ripple. The machines in the room, the cooling system next door, the circuits in the breaker room down the hall—they were all humming, and I could feel them together. Ripple ripple ripple. Building inside me, feeding the pleasure I felt from Jamie’s touch, and making it grow, throbbing and flaring.
Jamie ground against me, hitching his hips in just the right way, and those ripples grew into a wave of pleasure that contracted and spread through me. I threw my head back and thunked it against the wall. Jamie pressed his forehead against my sternum, breathing hard and unnecessary breaths as his knees buckled under him. All that pressure and energy raced through me in one delicious pulse. Then, behind Jamie, the entire bank of washers and dryers roared to life, lights blinking and buzzers blaring like something from a carnival ride.
Jamie stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “What the—?”
My eyes went wide. The machines stilled, all except for dryer number six.
“A ghost?” He panted, looking around the room.
I shook my head. “I don’t see one. I don’t feel anything. Well, I mean, I felt something. But I think . . . maybe . . . I think maybe I did that.”
Jamie laughed. “What?”
“I think maybe I made that happen. I could feel the energy pulling through me, all around me, and then the dryers started.”
“But you always said you didn’t have a gift,” he said, still holding fast to me.
“I’ve never shown any signs,” I said. “Some vampires don’t get a talent at all, you know? And I was capable in so many other ways that it didn’t seem to matter.”
Jamie snorted, kissing my neck.
Could it be that after all these years, I’d finally developed my vampiric gift? I didn’t like to admit it, but I had always been the slightest bit ashamed that I’d never developed a talent after I’d been turned. Hell, even Jane had a powerful talent, which she used to her advantage. If mine had something to do with electricity, it definitely made sense that I hadn’t immediately developed the gift. After all, I’d lived without electric power for the first three hundred years of my life. If manipulation of electrical energy was meant to be my gift, I would have needed to wait for technology to catch up.
The question was, why had my talent waited to show itself until now? Maybe that anxiety I’d felt fading had blocked off my abilities?
I’d always been hungry for power, after all. It sort of made sense that I could manipulate it now. I grinned at him as he said, “Well, I think we’re just going to have to repeat the experiment to be sure.”
5
* * *
* * *
Involvement in campus activities is the best way for vampires to feel connected to their new community. Some areas to avoid: blood drives, sunrise yoga clubs, bake sales, and bird-watching societies. Not because there’s anything dangerous to vampires in bird-watching, but because other students will make fun of them.
—Big Vamp on Campus: Strategies to Successfully Integrate the Undead into Postsecondary Education
The party was in full swing. I had transformed the main lounge on the second sublevel into a club that any vampire would . . . well, not be completely embarrassed to walk into. Huge (rented) leather lounges flanked a dance floor, providing enough room for everyone involved to camp out and pretend they weren’t watching everybody else. The walls had been temporarily papered over in black, giving the professionally choreographed light show somewhere to reflect. While black lights turned our clothes, smiles, and drinks a neon rainbow of colors, accent lights threw abstract blue shapes against the walls.
The DJ, a willowy blonde imported from Iceland, kept the music at a low, constant throb, fast enough to dance to but not so loud as to prevent conversation. Jamie, delightful goof that he was, hovered over her shoulder, staring at her playlist as if he could will some Flo Rida songs onto her laptop. The caterers were serving a respectable array of imported donor bloods. Nothing synthetic, nothing blended. Living students sipped meticulously crafted “mocktails,” because Tina had insisted that I wasn’t allowed to serve alcohol in a campus building.
And, as predicted, the girls flocked to the fruit bouquets and spent much of the evening wrapping their lips around melon balls in a provocative fashion.
“You did all this with the budget we gave you?” Tina asked me, her eyes wide behind her thick glasses.
“Some services were donated,” I admitted. I rolled my ankles, one after the other, still adjusting to the new high-heeled sandals I’d bought online. I’d gone “coed casual,” on the advice of Keagan and Meagan—dark skinny jeans and black halter top, with a charming beaded chain that stretched across my back, tinkling against my pale skin. Apparently, the black cocktail dress I had picked out was “cute but too intimidating” and would make it more difficult for my floormates to figure out that I was not, in Morgan’s words, “a psycho bitch as advertised.”
“And Galadriel helped?”
I jerked my head toward my wayward roommate, who was wearing a full-length black lace Stevie Nicks ensemble, claiming half of the credit while her human flunkies hovered around her, tittering moths flinging themselves at a dim bulb.
“She was very helpful in winnowing away ideas that didn’t work,” I offered carefully.
Tina frowned, creating tiny lines around her thin lips. “You do know that she’s filed to move to a different room next semester, right?”
It took all of my skill to school my features into a surprised pout. “No! Oh, and just when we were starting to get along.”
Tina’s frown deepened as she tried to suss out whether I was lying. Honestly, I’d found out about Brianna’s transfer days before, thanks to Morgan, who worked part-time in the student-housing office. Morgan, without any prompting from me, had managed to assign Brianna to room with Tricia, a vampire who spent much of her time having screaming arguments on her cell phone with her boyfriend, whether she was in her room, the hallway, the elevator, or the bathroom. This assignment would also place Brianna in the room next door to Alannah, who was prone to loud animalistic sex noises on nights ending in “y.”
And even better, the semester abroad in Romania that Brianna had been planning so smugly for the summer? Well, thanks to a few careful words from Keagan to one of her friends in the campus international affairs office, Brianna’s preference on her application had been changed to Egypt, one of the sunniest countries on earth. And she was going to be staying with a family of enthusiastic evangelical missionaries.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth Ophelia.
I wasn’t sure what was more pleasing about this turn of events, the fact that I couldn’t be linked to these final acts of revenge or the fact that I hadn’t had to bribe or blackmail Morgan or Keagan into doing them for me. They’d just
done them, out of loyalty to the Girl Code. I liked the Girl Code very much.
“Yes, well, I’m sure this is for the best for both of you,” Tina said. “Maybe with a fresh start and a new perspective, you’ll have better luck getting along with your new roommate.”
“I hope so.” I smiled, knowing full well that a “computer glitch” was preventing anyone from filling the empty spot in my room, so I would have a private assignment next semester. But Tina didn’t need to know about that. Hail to the Girl Code.
“I’ll have you know I submitted a very complimentary report to Ms. Jameson-Nightengale this month. It was a refreshing change. I hope to repeat the experience very soon.”
“Oh, you can count on me,” I promised. “I will be an exemplary student from here on out.”
Tina gave me one last smile, and her frizzy cloud of hair disappeared into the mass of dancing students.
I surveyed the room, pleased that Tina’s close observation of me was at an end, at least for now. And I had managed to do something nice for my fellow students, which would make life a little easier around the dorm. I’d even invited Kenton to the party, in hopes that he might find some other target for his ardent pontificating. But he’d been so horrified by the idea of attending a party on campus in a dorm that he’d stopped messaging me altogether and had been avoiding eye contact during class. So really, another conundrum had taken care of itself.
For the moment, everything was right with the world, and most of the people in my range of vision looked happy. With the exception of Ben Overby, who sat alone on one of the plush blue lounges, drinking some blue concoction and looking like someone had recently informed him that Santa was just a creepy old burglar in a red suit.
I chewed on my pink-glossed bottom lip and watched him stare off into space. I really didn’t have time to placate him. I had an event to run, and you couldn’t expect the quarterback to spend her time keeping the water boy from having a crying jag. Then again, having a guest who looked like a beaten-down basset hound could suck the energy out of a party very quickly.