Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

  “Jessica’s parents only,” Lucius said, speaking right over me, in his most commanding tone. He clutched my hand so I couldn’t go.

  “I . . . I . . .” Faith started to say something.

  “Go,” Lucius ordered.

  Faith ran. I prayed that she would get the paramedics.

  “Damn this hurts.” Lucius groaned, face twisting as a wave of pain shot through him. He squeezed my hand. “Just stay here, would you?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, willing my voice not to quiver. I was terrified and struggling not to let Lucius see my fear. A trickle of blood seeped from his mouth, and I stifled the urge to cry out. That couldn’t be good. That could mean internal bleeding. I wiped the crimson liquid away with shaky fingers, and a tear fell on his cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

  “Please, don’t do that.” Lucius gasped, meeting my eyes. “Don’t fall apart on me. Remember: You’re royalty.”

  I squeezed his hand tighter. “I’m not crying. Just hang in there.”

  He shifted a little, winced. “You know . . . this can’t kill a . . .”

  God, was he still going to do that vampire shtick now? I didn’t believe for a second that he couldn’t die. “Lie still.” And hope that Faith ignores your commands.

  “This leg . . . Dammit.” His chest heaved, and he coughed. More blood. A lot of blood. Too much blood. It was coming from his lungs. Probably a puncture. I had taken enough first aid training at school to know a little bit about accidents. I swiped his lips with my sleeve, but that only smeared more blood on both of us. “Help’s coming,” I promised. But will it be too little, too late?

  On instinct I smoothed Lucius’s dark hair with my free hand. His face relaxed just a shade; his breathing calmed slightly. So I kept my hand there, resting on his forehead.

  “Jess?” He searched my face with his eyes.

  “Don’t talk.”

  “I . . . I think you deserve . . . a ribbon.”

  In spite of myself, I laughed, a ragged, clenching laugh, and bent to kiss his forehead. It just happened. It just felt like the right thing to do. “So do you.”

  His eyes closed. I sensed his consciousness was slipping away. “And Jess?”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Don’t let them do anything . . . to my horse,” he managed, through difficult breaths. “She didn’t mean . . . any harm. It was just the crop, you know . . .”

  “I’ll try, Lucius,” I promised. But I knew I wouldn’t succeed. Hell’s Belle’s reprieve was over.

  “Thank you, Antanasia . . .” His voice was almost inaudible.

  From around the side of the barn I heard car tires on grass. I exhaled with a small measure of relief. Faith had gone for the ambulance.

  But no. When the vehicle spun around the corner, it was a beat-up VW van with Ned Packwood at the wheel. My parents jumped out, fear on their faces, and pushed me out of the way. “Take me to your home,” Lucius begged, coming around a little. “You understand . . .”

  Mom spun around to face me. “Open the back of the van,” she ordered.

  “Mom—he needs an ambulance!”

  “Do it, Jessica.”

  I started to cry again then, because I didn’t understand what was happening, and I didn’t want to take part in killing Lucius. But I did as I was told.

  My parents lifted Lucius into the van as gently as they could, but he still moaned, even though he was now fully unconscious, the pain so bad that it must have ripped through even his insensate brain. I started to crawl in after him, but Dad stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder. Mom climbed in instead, crouching next to Lucius.

  “You stay here and explain what happened,” Dad said. “Tell them . . . tell them we took Lucius to the hospital.”

  I saw the lie in my father’s face, and my eyes widened. “You are taking him there, aren’t you?”

  “Just tell everyone he’s okay,” Dad said, not quite answering my question. “Then take care of the horse.”

  It was too much, what they were asking. What if they really didn’t take him to the hospital and Lucius died? They would be responsible. Maybe accused of negligence, or some sort of murder. Faith had seen that Lucius wasn’t okay. She knew he needed a doctor. And 4-H would check to see that he’d been hospitalized. Liability issues and all that. What the hell were my parents doing? They could go to jail. And for what? It made no sense to keep Lucius away from a hospital.

  But there was no time to protest, no time to ask for guidance. Lucius needed to get somewhere warm, at least. Hopefully someplace where people knew how to handle broken bones and bleeding lungs. As long as it wasn’t our kitchen, where Dad might attempt some herbal cure . . .

  My chest seized again with dread. If my parents were going to try some sort of “natural healing” on Lucius—they were so far out of their league. All of these things spun through my mind as I followed on foot behind the old van, staring helplessly as it bumped out of the grassy area and bounced through the gravel parking lot, as fast as Dad could drive without, presumably, arousing suspicion or jostling Lucius too much.

  I was still standing there watching a cloud of receding, drifting dust, when Faith reappeared at my side, more composed. Her eyes were rimmed red, but her shoulders were stiffly at attention again. Still, her voice caught, just a hitch, when she asked, “Do you think he’s going to . . . to be . . . ?”

  “He’ll be fine,” I promised, lying more smoothly than I’d thought possible. But I had to sound convincing. My whole family’s survival, not just Lucius’s, was at stake. “I don’t think his injuries were as bad as we thought at first,” I added.

  “No?” Faith shot me a skeptical look. But it was a hopeful look, too. I realized she wanted to believe the lie. After all, she didn’t want to be responsible for Lucius’s injury—or death.

  “He sat up a little,” I told her, forcing myself to meet Faith’s ocean blue eyes. “And made a joke.”

  The tension in Faith’s face eased, and I knew she had willed herself to believe me. She was so desperate to be absolved. “It must have just looked bad at first because it happened so fast . . .”

  “Yeah, probably,” I agreed. “It was definitely scary, at first.”

  Faith’s gaze drifted off toward the parking lot, as if she expected to still see the van driving away. I noticed then that she continued to hold the crop, and tapped it idly against her boot. I would have tossed that thing in the trash, ground it into dust. How could she have not seen the sign in our barn?

  The answer was so easy it was almost laughable. Because Faith Crosse didn’t see anything beyond her own small sphere of concern. That’s why.

  “Even if he wasn’t as bad off as we thought, why didn’t he want the paramedics?” she wondered aloud.

  I wasn’t quite sure myself, but I had a feeling it had something to do with Lucius’s delusions about being a vampire. That definitely wasn’t a suitable answer for Faith, though, so I ventured, “I think he’s too proud. Too brave to be carried off with a bunch of sirens and people watching.” Actually, knowing Lucius, that might have been true, too.

  Faith smiled a little at that, still gazing off in the distance. The crop beat a steady rhythm on her boot. She was completely calm now, almost at ease. “Yes,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Lucius Vladescu does not seem like he’s afraid of anything. And he does know what he wants, doesn’t he?”

  You have no idea, I wanted to tell her. But by then, a whole crowd of 4-H officials was marching in our direction, and I turned to face them, ready to tell more lies.

  Chapter 23

  IT WAS DARK by the time I got home, riding Belle the back way, cutting through empty cornfields and avoiding the roads as much as possible, almost like I was afraid I was being followed. I certainly hadn’t wanted to catch a ride home with any of the people who’d offered: Faith or the 4-H leaders. Especially the 4-H leaders, whose questions I’d already answered at least fifty times. They’d just keep harp
ing on why none of the local hospitals seemed to know anything about a boy who’d been injured by a horse. And then they’d want to talk to my parents, at which point they might just walk into our farmhouse to find Lucius Vladescu near dead—or dead, even—on our couch, my father trying to resuscitate him with herbs and infusions.

  I spurred Belle a little more quickly at the thought.

  Could Lucius really be dead? How would I feel if he was? Would I mourn him? Grieve? Guilt tugged at me. Would I be relieved on some level?

  And was I worried more for Lucius or for my parents’ role in this disaster?

  All of these questions roiled around in my mind like a stinking stew made from spoiled odds and ends as Belle and I picked our way home, stuck at a horse’s pace when I longed for a jet. Our progress seemed ridiculously slow. Einstein had explained that feeling, hadn’t he? Relativity. One’s perception of time was relative to one’s desire for its passage. Right?

  Time. Relativity. Science.

  I tried to focus on those concepts instead of pointless worrying, but my mind kept wandering back to the blood on Lucius’s shirt. The blood spurting from his mouth. The red, red blood. By the time I reached the end of our lane, I had Belle at a recklessly full gallop, and I dropped the reins, sliding from her back, as I caught sight of my parents’ van parked in front of the house. There was another car, too. An unfamiliar but equally decrepit sedan. The house was mainly dark, but a few muted lights glowed from deep inside.

  Abandoning poor Belle, knowing I should cool her down and put her in her stall, I stomped up the steps and ran inside.

  “Mom!” I hollered at the top of my lungs, slamming the door behind me.

  My mother emerged from the dining room, shushing me with a finger to the lips. “Jessica, please. Keep your voice down.”

  “What happened? How is he?” I pushed past her toward the dining room, but Mom caught my arm.

  “No, Jessica . . . not right now.”

  I searched her face. “Mom?”

  “It’s serious, but we have reason to believe he’ll pull through. He’s getting good care. The best care we could give him, safely,” she added cryptically.

  “What do you mean ‘safely’?” Safe care came from hospitals. “And whose car is out there?”

  “We called Dr. Zsoldos—”

  “No, Mom!” Not Dr. Zsoldos. The crazy Hungarian quack who’d lost his medical license for using controversial folk “remedies” from the old country, right here in the United States, where people had the good sense to believe in real medicine. I should have recognized the car. Long after the rest of the county had shunned him, old Zsoldos and my parents had remained friends, huddling around the kitchen table and gabbing into the night about fools who didn’t trust “alternative therapies.” “He’ll kill Lucius!”

  “Dr. Zsoldos understands Lucius and his people,” Mom said, taking me by the shoulders. “He can be trusted.”

  When my mom said “trusted,” I got the sense that she wasn’t just talking about whether the quack should have a license. “Trusted with what?”

  “Discretion.”

  “Why? Why do we have to be discreet? Did you see the blood coming from his mouth? His smashed leg?”

  “Lucius is special,” Mom said, shaking my shoulders a little, like I should have realized this fact a million years ago. “Accept it, Jessica. He would not be safe in a hospital.”

  “And he’s safe here? In our dining room?”

  Mom released my shoulders and rubbed her eyes. I realized how tired she must be. “Yes, Jessica. Safer.”

  “But he’s bleeding inside. Even I can tell that. He probably needs blood.”

  My mom looked at me strangely, like perhaps I’d finally just grasped some important truth. “Yes, Jess. He needs blood.”

  “Then take him to a hospital, please!”

  Mom stared at me for a long moment. “Jessica, there are things about Lucius that most doctors wouldn’t understand. We can talk about this later, but right now, I need to return to him. Please, go upstairs and try to be patient. I’ll tell you as soon as I have news on his progress.”

  Turning her back on me, Mom opened the door to the dining room, and I heard soft voices come from inside the darkened room. My father’s voice. Dr. Zsoldos’s. Mom slipped in to join their secret cabal, and the door clicked shut.

  Furious, scared and frustrated, I ran upstairs, forgetting poor Belle entirely. I’m ashamed to admit that she spent the whole night in the November cold, wandering around the barns and the paddock, her saddle still on her back. I was too unhinged to think about the horse that had carried me to a measure of personal glory just a few hours earlier. Instead, I climbed onto my bed and stared out the window, trying to figure out what to do.

  As I debated calling a real doctor myself, I caught sight of my father slipping out the door and hurrying across the yard toward the garage. The light went on in Lucius’s apartment, but only for a few moments. It snapped off again, and seconds later, Dad was back, striding across the lawn. I could see, in the moonlight, that he carried something in his hands. Something about the size of shoe box but with rounded corners. Like a paper-wrapped parcel.

  I waited until Dad’s footsteps passed through the house and the dining room door snicked shut before creeping downstairs, avoiding all the squeaky spots that might give me away. I practically crawled up to the dining room door and turned the knob, opening the door just a crack. Just enough to see inside.

  The fire in the fireplace had nearly guttered out, and the dimmer switch on the iron chandelier had been spun to its lowest setting, but I was able to make out the scene.

  Lucius was laid out on our long plank dining table, the one we used only for big occasions. He was bare-chested, the bloodstained clothes gone—cut away, I supposed—and his lower half was covered with a white sheet. His face was completely placid. Eyes closed, mouth composed.

  He looked like death. Like a corpse. I’d never been to a funeral before, but if someone could look more dead than Lucius did at that moment . . . Well, I couldn’t imagine how they’d manage it.

  Is he dead?

  I stared at his chest, willing it to rise, but if his lungs pumped, it was too weakly for me to discern in the darkened room. Please, Lucius. Breathe.

  When Lucius’s chest still didn’t move, something cracked open deep inside me, and my entire body felt like a vast cave with a frozen wind surging through the empty spaces. No . . . he can’t be gone. I can’t let him go. I struggled to calm myself. If Lucius was dead, they wouldn’t be hovering over him, caring for him. They’d stop treating him. Cover his face.

  My mother paced near the fireplace, one hand over her mouth, watching as my father and Dr. Zsoldos conferred in hushed tones over the package that Dad had retrieved from the garage.

  Some decision must have been reached, because Dr. Zsoldos retrieved a knife—a scalpel?—from a black bag. Is he going to operate on Lucius? On our table?

  I almost turned away, too sickened to watch, but no, the Hungarian quack didn’t slice into Lucius. He simply cut the strings that bound the package and tore open the paper. He lifted out the contents, cradling it as if he was delivering a baby—a wobbly, slippery baby that almost escaped his grasp. What in the world?

  I leaned closer, pressing my face against the crack and fighting to control my breathing so I wouldn’t be caught. No one was focused on the door, though. Mom, Dad, and Dr. Zsoldos were all staring at that . . . thing in Dr. Zsoldos’s hands. It looked like . . . what? Some sort of pouch? Made of a material I couldn’t identify. Something pliable, though, because the package slipped around in Dr. Zsoldos’s grasp, like Jell-O in a plastic bag.

  “We should have realized he’d have this, hidden,” Dr. Zsoldos whispered, nodding so his white beard bobbed. “Of course he would.”

  “Yes,” Mom agreed, moving forward now, toward Lucius. “Of course. We should have known.” At a nod from Dad, they both slid their forearms under Lucius’s shoulders and g
ently lifted him, almost to a seated position. Lucius made a sound then, half a moan of pain, half the roar of an angry, injured lion. My damp fingers slipped off the doorknob at that sound. It wasn’t quite human and not quite animal. But it was completely chilling, reverberating off the walls.

  I wiped my hands on my riding breeches, squinting harder at the scene in front of me.

  Dr. Zsoldos leaned close to his patient, holding out the pouch like an offering in front of Lucius’s face. The firelight glinted off the doctor’s half-moon eyeglasses, and he smiled a little as he urged, softly, “Drink, Lucius. Drink.”

  The patient didn’t respond. Lucius’s head lolled sideways, and Dad shifted to catch him, steadying him.

  Dr. Zsoldos hesitated, then grasped the scalpel again, using it to pierce the pouch, right under Lucius’s nose. The eyes that I feared had been extinguished fluttered open, and I yelped then.

  Lucius’s eyes, always dark, were pure black now. Deep, deep ebony, as though the pupils had consumed the irises and most of the whites, too. I’d never seen eyes like that before. You couldn’t look away from them.

  He opened his mouth and his teeth . . . they’d changed again, too.

  My parents must have heard my cry, but it was too late. What was happening was happening, and they, too, were transfixed as Lucius tilted his head, sinking his fangs into that pouch, drinking wearily but with obvious hunger. A bit of liquid dribbled down his chin and ran across his chest. Dark liquid. Thick liquid. I’d seen liquid just like that before, not too many hours ago, staining that same chest.

  NO.

  I closed my eyes, disbelieving. Shaking my head, I tried to think straight. To banish the image of what I thought I’d seen. What I was fairly sure I’d seen.

  There was a smell, too. A pungent odor that I’d never smelled before. Well, I’d smelled it faintly before, but now . . . now it was so strong. And getting stronger. I opened my eyes and forced myself to watch again. That aroma—it wasn’t like I was even sensing it with my nose. I felt it, somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach, or in the farthest reaches of that primitive part of the brain that we’d talked about in biology class. The part that controlled sex and aggression and . . . pleasure?