Almost Everything (28 page)

“This is so fun,” I told him. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

He gaped at me, as if momentarily stunned. Then he asked, “Seriously?” When I nodded, he continued. “What did you do with Nikolai?”

“Mostly I
went to his concerts,” I said, conveniently leaving out all the bits where we practiced magic or chased after ancient vampire artifacts.

“Dude never took you out?” He still seemed flabbergasted. I shook my head. “Well, we’ll have to fix that.”

I liked the sound of that more than I could say.

We passed the rest of the evening in pleasant companionship. The food was good, even if Thompson’s dish looked like he was eating eight-inch-long meat-filled torpedoes. Mine turned out to be eggplant, which was not on my top-ten favorites list, but it tasted awesome. Only once or twice did our conversation lag. I found out that Thompson and I both liked weird, old horror films like
Halloween
, and secretly enjoyed the Harry Potter series.

When the bill came, I didn’t know what to do. If this had been an outing with my regular theater pals, I’d have offered to split the bill, but I had no idea what the etiquette was on an actual date. Did Thompson expect me to go Dutch?

Thompson, however, clearly had a plan. His wallet was out. When he saw the worry in my expression, he said, “It’s on me.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe no one has ever treated you right before.”

Treated me right? “What, like a princess?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Like a princess.”

I was really sad when the time came to say good-bye. We lingered in his truck, holding hands. We’d been silent for a long time, savoring the moment.

The sun
began to dip below the trees. Thompson squeezed my hand lightly. “Are you going to be okay tonight?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “We’re doing brand-new magic. It could be risky.”

“Risky? How?”

I looked him in the eye. I didn’t want to lie to him, not after tonight. “I could come back different.”

He seemed to think about this for a moment, and then a deep frown etched his face. “How?”

I looked into his face for a long time, trying to decide what I could say. I never heard back from the Igor, so I didn’t know if losing my witch soul would change me. What if the vampire-me dumped Thompson without any explanation? Would that be fair? I supposed the new me wouldn’t care, but the old me, the person I was right now, found that it mattered a lot. Thompson was a decent guy. I always assumed he couldn’t handle the truth about me, but what if I was wrong about that too?

Tonight seemed the time to try. After all, I might not be myself for much longer. If he freaked out and left—well, maybe it was meant to be. Perhaps I’d even be sparing him something worse from wicked vampire-me. I was sworn to secrecy about witch stuff, but I was sure there were contingencies in place for when the magic affected someone else—someone important.

In this
perfect moment, with our hands clasped together and our bodies leaning close to each other’s, Thompson was important enough for me to say, “I could lose my soul.”

“Isn’t that dying?”

I had to laugh. “Luckily, I have two.”

“Two what?”

“Two souls,” I explained.

“I think you lost me,” Thompson said.

I smiled at him. I had to give him credit for having gotten this far in the conversation, though I could see his brow beginning to furrow. “Never mind,” I said. “How about a kiss for luck?”

Our first kiss had been nice, but not earth-shattering. This one started out warm and grew hotter. By the time our lips parted, I was breathing hard and tingly in all the right places.

It was hard to let go, but the sky was turning pink. I saw my mom coming out to the porch to look for us. I looked deep into the soft denim of Thompson’s eyes and thought maybe sparks came with time, after careful tending of the embers.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I have to go.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, with another light kiss on my lips. “I had a great time. I’m looking forward to doing this again, so you’d better stay safe.”

Mom waited as I made my way slowly up the sidewalk to where she sat on the front porch swing. I sat down next to her. Together we waved good-bye to Thompson.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked.

Thompson
had put me in an honest mood, so I said, “Not really. And I’m going to be super pissed off if this doesn’t work and we end up having to do something else.”

“Well,” Mom said gently, putting a hand on my shoulder, “it’s hard to know what will happen. I’ll tell you one thing, though. No matter what, I’ll be damned if I’ll let your father hurt you.”

“What makes you think he would?” Dad had been acting so nice lately that I was actually surprised by her accusation.

“I found your jeans in the garbage. I nearly had a heart attack until I realized there was no way the blood could be yours.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. A shiver raced down my spine at the memory of the ghastly, barfing vampire. “I managed to forget about that.”

“Were you ever planning on telling me about what happened?”

I shook my head. Heck, I didn’t like thinking about it now. “No.”

Mom stared at me with her mouth open for a moment, and then laughed. “I guess that’s honest.”

“If it’s any consolation, Dad seems to regret giving that order.” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said anything more about it—especially not something light and flip.

Mom’s eyebrows knitted into a tight frown. All traces of the easy smile she’d worn a moment ago vanished. She shook her head. The words she spoke came out between thinly pressed lips. “I’m going to kill that man.”

The light
of the sun had faded to gray. In the grass, crickets started their nightly chorus. I wondered how long Mom planned to sit here, fuming about Dad.

Nikolai’s Toyota came rattling down the street, and Mom stood up. Clearly, some arrangements had been made while I was out. I followed her to the boulevard. Nikolai leaned across the seats and rolled down the window. “Are you ready?”

“I guess,” I said. I looked at Mom, but she opened the door and gestured for me to get in.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied, and impulsively gave her a great big hug. She seemed surprised, but she returned the hug and added a motherly kiss to the cheek when we parted. She waited until I was seated with my buckle on before shutting the door.

“See you soon,” she said to me, and then admonished Nikolai, “Drive safe.”

It was strange, almost as if we knew what we were doing. After we pulled away, I turned to Nikolai. “We need to swing around to the back. I have to pick something up.”

He shot me a suspicious look. “What?”

“Extra insurance,” I said. “Oh, and do you have duct tape?”

“Don’t look,” I told Nikolai as I pulled my dress off in the backseat. He’d found a roll of grimy duct tape in the trunk. The pints of blood were cold and awkward to handle as I strapped them over my chest like a suit of armor. I could tell he was having a hard time not checking the rearview as I struggled with the slippery bags and sticky tape. Getting my sundress back over the lumpy mess was pretty entertaining, but I thought the bags would hold.

Still, I had
two extra bags I hadn’t found a place for.

Nikolai, who had clearly been watching despite my protests, smiled and said, “You could stick them to your butt.”

I ran my hand down the twin bumps over my breasts. “I guess I’d finally have curves, huh?”

“Oh, you have plenty now.”

I whacked him playfully on the top of his head with one of the extra bags. “You’re a dirty old man. I told you not to look.”

“You were duct taping blood bags to your body. How was I supposed to ignore that?”

Grabbing what was left of the roll of tape, I carefully crawled into the front passenger seat. My sundress hung funny now, but it covered me well enough. “I feel kind of stupid,” I admitted, poking at the bags again.

Nikolai did laugh a little, but he said, “I think it’s actually kind of smart. I just hope they go for it, when there’s plenty of warm, exposed skin to choose from.” He ran a finger lightly along my bare arms, causing goose pimples to rise.

My heart jumped. “What if they don’t go for it?”

Nik turned his attention to the empty alley and considered. “They’re repulsed by magic. We can put a spell on your skin.”

“Like vampire bug spray? Does that even exist?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure your mom knows something.”

I hoped he was right.

The drive
out to the covenstead was a long one. At some point in the 1960s, our coven bought land about an hour or so out of the Cities. What had been completely undeveloped then had become an outer-ring suburb over the intervening years. Our property was now a conspicuous clump of woods surrounded on all sides by developed farmland.

I hadn’t been back to the covenstead since my failed Initiation, even though I’d learned to swim in the swampy pond at the edge of the land and had spent most summers of my youth playing in the ferns, wildflowers, and pine trees.

We passed neatly planted rows of corn. The phrase “knee high by the Fourth of July” flitted through my mind as I looked out at the tall stalks. The moon cast the broad leaves in ghostly silver light.

I turned to look at Nikolai. He hadn’t said much since we’d left my house. Shortly after we merged onto the highway, he’d switched on the radio to fill the silence.

I broke it now. “Is your dad coming?”

He coughed a surprised laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

I guessed not. “What about Bea? Or her family?”

“It’s going to be just us, baby,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “You, me, your mom, and a whole shitload of crazy-hungry vampires; it should be awesome.”

I understood his sarcasm, but Nik had never called me any kind of pet name before. Since when was I his “baby”? I gave him a sidelong glance. Was he still under the impression that our relationship was back on? I’d told him I was dating someone else after our kiss.

I opened
my mouth to clarify the situation with Thompson for him, but then I shrugged. If I lived through the next few hours, I’d let him down gently. If not … well, he and Thompson could fight it out with the new me. Maybe she’d be the sort to more successfully string several boys along. I seemed to be doing it now—just not very well.

I didn’t want to think about that, so I turned my attention to the problem at hand. “I wish I knew more about the Initiation ritual,” I said mostly to myself.

“Me too,” Nikolai said. We had gotten to a Stop sign in the middle of nowhere. Nikolai came to a complete stop and took the opportunity to turn and look directly into my face. “You realize we’re going to have to trust your dad completely. Your life, well, your soul, anyway, is literally going to be in his hands. Are you sure about this? About him?”

Given our history, even, say, twenty-four hours ago, I shouldn’t be. I nodded anyway. I couldn’t explain it in a way that would ever satisfy Nikolai, but I believed my dad when he said that nearly allowing me to be killed had shocked some sense into him.

Nik started back down the road. He shook his head. “I’m not sure I trust
my
dad that much.”

I kept my opinion of his dad to myself.

It would be easy to drive past the entrance to the covenstead if you didn’t know what to look for. There was little more than a mailbox and a tire track trail leading deep into the woods. Nikolai slowed as we bumped along the uneven road. I kept my eyes out for critters. Last time I’d been here, a deer had bounded out of the underbrush. Probably because it was the last natural wooded spot for miles, the place was overrun with rabbits, squirrels, and even the occasional coyote and red-tailed fox.

We made
it to the empty field used as a parking lot for big events without crushing any major wildlife. Nikolai parked his car beside the recycling and trash cans next to the cabin’s back door.

There were no outside electric lights, and I stepped out into a deep velvety darkness. The vast sky above shone with an infinite number of stars. I could even see the silky trails of the Milky Way.

Inside the shelter of the woods, the air felt cooler and smelled of pine needles and rotting leaves.

Nikolai was already at the back door, rattling keys. He held each one up to the light of his cell phone, trying to find the one that fit. Finally, I heard the latch click, and he swung the door open. He flicked on the interior light. Soft yellow illuminated squares of mosquito-filled grass. Brown bats swooped overhead as I made my way into the mudroom. Automatically, I slipped out of my shoes and stowed them under the bench that lined the wall.

In the great room, Nikolai knelt beside the stone fireplace and stared at the empty grate as if trying to decide whether to light a fire. Since the windows had been closed by the last occupant and the air was stuffy and humid, it was certainly warm enough not to, but I could understand his hesitation. It seemed there was always a fire going at the covenstead. It was a tradition.

I looked
around the huge, empty room. The kind of bar that was popular in houses in the 1950s and early 1960s took up the far end. I noted a minifridge and a wine rack, a polished Formica countertop, and cracked vinyl-covered stools. When I was a kid, Bea and I loved to sit on those and spin around or play pretend-bartender with Kool-Aid.