Page 20 of Vampires Don't Give Hickeys
My face heated. So Jacek knew? Of course he did. This was his house, too. Still, Eddie didn’t seem to mind that Jacek was holding my hand. He knew I needed comfort. They all did.
Eddie shook his head, the corners of his lips turning up into a secret smile. “Go to hell, Jacek.”
“Pretty sure they don’t want us there, buddy.”
“Enough,” Sawyer told them, his voice ringing with finality, then turned back to me. “Do you think you could write it down?”
“I don’t know.” I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could magically make the words jump ship from my head out onto the table. “Even thinking about the words but not the words themselves is causing the static sound.” My eyes popped open again as I was struck with a horrifying thought. “What if I say them and they have the same effect on you?”
“I don’t see any stakes around here,” Jacek said.
“Then don’t say them.” Eddie reached across the table for one of my pens and a crumpled receipt that had fallen out of my backpack and handed them to me. “Write them.”
I took the pen and receipt, grateful to have the three of them by my side. Without them, I would be forced to figure this out on my own, which terrified me even more than Paul. Writing a letter saying just that would be easy, weaving in Paul’s words that made me want to crawl inside myself and hide for eternity. I clicked the pen and started writing on the back of the receipt:
Lovelywas thenightI met you three,forI didn’t realize how lonelyaslayer’s life could be, justwalking through the graveyard all the time.Isn’t itfunny how one moment can affect you so completely that you end up blubbering at a kitchen table?Thank you.
The hidden message ratcheted up the static with each emphasized word, but the swell of warmth floating up through my chest helped to distract me from it until it softened to a dull whine. The words bared the truth on all counts, and I didn’t feel an ounce of doubt or embarrassment because I knew they wouldn’t be met with scorn. If I’d learned one thing about these vamps, it was that they were honest with others and themselves. They didn’t hide behind lies, and I was 99.9 percent sure they would appreciate the same from me.
“It’s not Pulitzer worthy, but here you go.” I angled it toward Sawyer, but it was Eddie who picked it up and read it aloud, adding emphasis to the highlighted words.
When he finished, the four of us stared at each other for a moment, as if expecting the apocalypse. Then finally, when nothing happened, we relaxed.
“You’re welcome,” Jacek whispered into the shell of my ear.
A pleasant tingle rolled up my spine as I glanced at Eddie. Maybe it was just me, but Jacek was being pretty brazen holding my hand and whispering in my ear when he knew Eddie and I had slept together last night. Yet Eddie didn’t seem bothered by it. None of this should’ve been important at the moment, but my brain. It goes where it wants.
Sawyer leaned toward Eddie. “Read just the emphasized words.”
I crushed Jacek’s hand even tighter and gaped at Sawyer, my breath hanging somewhere near my throat, but he only nodded at Eddie.
“Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?” he read.
I stilled, watching all of them closely for any signs of distress. Seconds ticked by. But nothing happened. Not even a shrill bit of static or blurry vision inside my own head. They were just words coming out of Eddie. Nothing more.
I sat back in my chair, somewhat relieved by this even though it didn’t really change anything. “This is some kind of mind control directly from Paul, then, and it’s linked with me. He wants me to kill myself, preferably before I take the devil up on his marriage proposal, and definitely before my twenty-first birthday.”
“But...” Jacek shook his head. “Why go to all the trouble of making you kill yourself when there are a hundred easier ways to kill a slayer.” He glanced past me at Sawyer on my other side. “So I’m told.”
That was rather...weird. I ticked my gaze between the two of them. “Maybe you’ll fill me in on those hundreds of ways.”
“Why not just kill you, Sunshine?” Eddie cupped his jaw and frowned down at the receipt. “According to that ancient Sumerian book I translated, the darkness kills slayers before their twenty-first birthday. It didn’t say anything about them killing themselves.”
“Because he wants inside my head,” I said simply. “I mean that literally. He wants to see what I’m made of, how far he can push me, what my weaknesses are.” There was quite a selection to choose from.
If I didn’t die by my own hand before I turned down the devil’s marriage proposal, I would spend the next year of my life running from Paul, attempting to turn all those weaknesses into strengths,surviving. Did I have it in me to do that when only one brush with Paul had nearly been it for me?
Once again, someone wanted to control me, to steer my life in a direction I didn’t want to go, especially if it meant death. That had happened too many times—when I’d become the world’s only slayer at the tender age of nine, when cancer had ripped my mom away from me, when the devil insisted I marry him, and now this. How about someone ask me my thoughts and feelings about what I wanted to do instead of taking advantage? Did everyone think I was an empty-headed blonde who couldn’t think for herself? Better not, because I liked to get stabby. Just not, you know, with myself.
“You could be right,” Sawyer said. “He wants inside your head. Or he’s not at full strength and wants to see if you can do his work for him before he gains in power.”
Not exactly what I wanted to hear. If that was Paul not at full strength, then I had a lot of work to do at surviving this next year. Would I be able to deal? After last night, I wasn’t so sure.
“How did you three find me?” I blurted, desperate to end the maddening whirl of my thoughts.
“Uh, well...” Jacek started. “It wasn’t hard since you’re sitting at our kitchen table.”
A chuckle tripped out of my mouth, surprising me with how light and happy it sounded under the heavy circumstances. “No, I meanhere. In Podunk City. It seems like an awfully big coincidence you moved to the same place the slayer lives. Did you smell me or...?”
