Eternally Blue (Sunset Cliffs Vampire #1) (Paranormal Teen Romance) (10 page)

So that is how I wound up with a hot chocolate with frilly whipped topping on it, with a chocolate stick in it and caramel drizzled on top. Wow. I tasted it and had to sit down. Again, why would the council say my senses would be dulled when everything seems so much clearer? Granted I cannot hear every person’s heartbeat in the room, or tell you how many people were on the second level of the bookstore from hearing them individually, or even tell you what the clerk at the café had for breakfast by smelling it on her. I could not tell you all of those things, but what I could tell you was that I could taste this hot chocolate, and I could see the whipped cream stuck on Noah’s nose, and I could feel myself reaching out to him with my finger to wipe it off and I could hear my laughter mixing with his, and I could sense the rest of the room becoming a blur, and I tell you my senses seemed as sharp as I would ever need them to be.

The rest of our morning went by relatively quickly. I picked out a fiction novel, a story about an unlikely princess stuck on a farm, which Noah laughed and said must be relevant to my past. Pretending to study it hard, I said “Eureka! Your right, what am I doing traipsing around in bookstores with mere commoners? Good sir, I must go”. I bowed and tried to duck out of line, but he caught my wrist and pulled me close to him.

“
Not so fast woman” he half whispered half growled in my ear, but then he pulled away, ruining the mood.

“
What?” I asked self consciously.

“
Nothing, I just forgot about your ear, I don’t want to hurt you”.

“
Oh” I said, touching my ear carefully, “I didn’t even notice, it feels fine, you must have the magic touch”.

Chapter 6

We got some food from a drive-thou of my choice, Noah was hoping, like always, that it would bring about some memory of my past, if I chose my ‘favorite’ place. It didn’t of course, but I admired him for being so diligent and caring. We took our food and new books to the beach (Noah got a book on computer circuitry – not that he was interested in repairing computers he said, but just that it was something else to learn) and set up shop on his blanket from his trunk and dug into our bounty.

Side by side we sat watching surfers complete their route repetitively while we ate, it was hypnotic really and I fell back on the blanket to look at the sky with a contented sigh after I finished eating. Who knew clouds could be something worth looking at? Lots of people I suppose since I have read lots of books where they are brought up, but looking at the night sky my whole life, I thought I had seen all I needed to of clouds. I was wrong of course, like I am about a lot of things relating to daytime. There are so many more shades of white in daytime clouds than night clouds, and they aren’t nearly as ominous looking. (Yes even someone who lives in the dark can still think clouds have an ominous quality if I try to sike myself out and scare myself). I see a head above me and my eyes try to focus on the face, and I smile. “Hi” I say.

“
Hi!” Stacey looks smug as a bug, and I sit up and scoot over for her. “I see your non-concussion is feeling better” I panicked, was she mad that I didn’t go to school and instead spent my afternoon on a beach blanket with Noah?

Noah spoke up “Yeah thanks to me she felt better, and then I took her out and we got a little wild and now she feels bad again”.

“
What?!” Stacey shrieked.

“
Notice anything different about me?” I laugh and mock pose.

“
OH.MY.GOSH! You did NOT get your ears pierced today while I was at school… without me! They look so good, but… we were just at the mall the other day, why didn’t you ask me?” She pretended to pout.

Okay so she wasn’t mad. What a relief. Unless she was hurt that I got my ears pierced without her, which I could understand since we were supposed to be bonding. “I’m sorry Stacey, I didn’t think of it until this morning spur of the moment.”

“
Aww its ok I was just giving you a hard time. Noah, you had some chick poking around your house while I was home earlier”.

Now I was all ears, and it seemed Noah was too since he practically jumped to an upright position, “Who?”

“
How should I know? She doesn’t go to school with us and she didn’t look familiar”. Stacey shrugged, looking through our takeout bag for any leftovers.

“
What did she look like?” He still looked a little alarmed. Good, he should, if he is kissing on me during school and having girls show up at his house the same day. I am probably being too hard on him I thought. I could imagine girls not wanting to retract their claws out of him when he was done with them, I wouldn’t want to. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and see where this went.

“
She was… she was like 5’1, looks like she’s been on an air diet, blonde hair to her waist, and carrying an umbrella, but it doesn’t look too cloudy to me” She squinted up at the sky, rotating her head back and forth as if daring one of the clouds to look overcast instead of puffy and white.

Noah for his part, looked disturbed, but when I looked at him questioningly he shook his head slightly and smiled.

“
Anyways,” Stacey continued, “Mom is glad you’re feeling better but she needs you home soon so you can go to the school with her tonight, they want to just go over some paperwork for your enrollment”.

“
I can drive her home, you just got here” Noah said as Stacey stood. She checked her watch and looked to me for confirmation. I nodded.

“
Yeah you might as well drive her, I’ll see you tonight ok Blue?”

We packed up the blanket and books and food awkwardly. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to read with you; that was a really sweet thing you did, planning today out”.

“
Hmmm?” Yeah he definitely was lost in the clouds of his own thoughts. “Yeah sure, I’m glad we could do it too”.

On the way home I tried to pry for information about the door knocker but he said he didn’t know who it was and the way he said it did not allow for any more questions. He seemed almost angry, shifting gears as he drove, aggressively, so I stayed quiet. Maybe it was a family member he hadn’t seen for awhile that was estranged, maybe it was an ex-girlfriend he told to get lost too many times, or maybe it was for his little brother. I liked that idea best. No, the idea I liked better than some petite blonde hanging out at his house for any reason, even for the reason of hanging out with his brother, was the idea of her being a solicitor! Everyone hates solicitors. She was probably trying to sell them discount tickets to Disney or something.

This time, he pulled into my driveway almost sadly. He turned the car off, but didn’t say anything or make any motion to get out of the car; he just turned slightly to look at me. I felt like all the air in the car was being sucked out as I looked at him, like something horrible was about to happen. I licked my lips to say something to stop him from ending my newfound happiness as he was surely about to do, but he stopped me, with a finger to my lips.

“
Shhhh, don’t say anything” he whispered. “I want to remember you just like this”. At least I think that’s what he mouthed because by that time his lips were on mine, and I kissed him back, trying to make him feel every ounce of my sadness, because in that moment, I knew, that the girl that came to visit him was trouble for us and he believed we were over, possibly even told me so much in not as many words. How can a heart fill to the breaking point in such a short period of time? I pulled my fingers through his hair with my hand, and tried to pull him even closer to me. If I could suck his whole mouth, or head even, into mine, it would not be close enough to fill me up enough to heal my breaking heart. I entertained the idea of turning back into a vampire and changing him so that he would have to stay with me.

He pulled away first, to look at me, and I swear, his eyes looked like a puppy that has been kicked, leaving me to believe that even he felt the sadness of this moment. I flopped back in my seat, and tried to collect myself without looking at him. If he was going to hurt us over some girl that showed up at his house unannounced then I didn’t want to show him any more of my frustrations over him. I opened the door and tried to get out but he grabbed my wrist. “I’ll see you later ok?” he asked, but his voice was strained. I nodded, not trusting myself to talk, barely able to suppress my sob, and yanked my hand away and managed to get out of his car halfway gracefully.

I heard rather than saw him back out of our driveway and swing his car around to pull it into his. I wouldn’t let myself look, I didn’t want to see.

“
Oh
there
you are darling!” I cringed as Noah’s car door slammed across the street. I couldn’t hear his reply to the girl, but I walked more quickly to the house and with eyes blurry with tears barely managed to get my key in the lock and get in the house without my legs going out from under me. As it was, I closed our door, and not being brave enough to look at the scene across the street from our window, sagged against the back of the door to the floor and put my head in my knees, until even that made my ears hurt and I screamed, throwing my key across the floor.

After I screamed, I got kind of alarmed, oh my gosh, I hope I am the only person home right now or I will literally die of embarrassment. After a silent moment except for the sound of my heart beating outside of my chest, I calmed down realizing I was the only one home.

I pulled myself together and went upstairs to kill time before Sue came home to take me to school. Funny how you can avoid school during the day but school is like karma and ‘someone must pay what is due!’ and thus, I was being dragged there in the evening since I didn’t bother showing up during the day. Accurate? I think so.

I didn’t think I’d be able to nap in the interim because of my sore ears and the knowledge that some fiery little tinker bell was across the street stealing my happiness out from right underneath of me, but sleep came easily and soon I was in an equally excruciating dream. In this one, Elder Victoria from the council was in it lecturing me about Noah. She mentioned how I was stupid to get my ears pierced voluntarily and put out my pheromones like that, I still retained my natural vampire blood smell, and while the council was doing all they could to protect my whereabouts to any known assassins, they couldn’t protect me from any lone vamps in the area who just happened to put up on my smell from me just putting it out in the open like that, and in such a public place as a mall. I groaned in my sleep, Elder Victoria was always such a hard-ass even in my dreams.

I woke up sweaty and panicked to a dark room. Why didn’t Sue wake me up? I looked all over the house for anyone, but nobody was home. I couldn’t find my cell phone anywhere, and I groaned when I realized I must have left it in Noah’s car. Ughhh why me?! I did NOT want to go over there right now, but I needed it in case Sue had tried to get a hold of me.

I ran upstairs to freshen up, and then headed slowly across the street. Noah’s car was in the driveway and there were lights on inside, but I saw tiki torches lighting up the backyard, so I headed back here. I hate to admit that I was eavesdropping but when I heard voices I paused. Maybe I wasn’t intending to eavesdrop and I was just startled into becoming a statue. I couldn’t hear well enough though so I crept slowly closer, until I clearly heard that girls voice, the one I heard this afternoon, speaking annoyed “Honestly Noah, my pet, I didn’t go through all the trouble of begging daddy to make you human, or immortal or whatever, so that you could pick
another freaking vampire
! Why Noah? I did it for you because I love you and the other option was watching you slowly kill yourself because you were so unhappy with us, but I just can’t please you can I? I should have never let you leave Europe. This country is younger than I am, what could you possibly see in this place? And now you have some strange vamp sniffing around you, in addition to the girl; this is a threat I don’t take lightly. It is my duty to protect you since I have left you and your brother both weakened”.

“
I didn’t know what she was” he said quietly.

“
You had NO idea Noah? Don’t give me that rubbish, I could smell her on you, and I can smell someone else all over the woods behind your house, do you mean to tell me you no longer retain any of the perks of my blood?”

“
Well, I kind of thought something was off about her, I just hadn’t been able to place it yet” he sighed.

“
You’re protecting her. Fine, have it your way”. She pouted, “Now that I am here though I have to do something about this mess you are in. I have to contact the local council and find out what they know about any stray vamps snooping around your house. I don’t think it would be someone on the inside doing it. Probably a power hungry stray seeing an easy energy source”. She sniffed, either in disdain or sadness I don’t know, because at that moment I felt a wet nose in my hand and I gasped. I must have let Sam out by accident. Oh no. I tried to hold her still by her collar, but when I looked up, Noah was staring straight at me wide eyed, and so was his little, and very obviously – now that I saw her features up close, vampire princess.