The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

I open the door a crack and peek out, but I don’t see anybody from our group. The rooms are all in a row and we’re on the end, so I lead Cali out, sticking close to the wall as we slip around the corner and down the side stairs. And easy as that, we’re free of my family.

JEREMY

The shadows from the buildings are long when we hit the sidewalk, the early-evening wind stirring up little whirls of dust and discarded grocery bags in the alleyways.

She fills me in as we walk, telling me how she met Stefan and Damon, how she tracked them down and ended up using a Taser on them, and then the whole story with Elena coming after her at her grandma’s house. I can barely stand to listen to that part, because I can imagine just how terrifying it was for Cali, but I also know how much my sister would have hated playing the villain.

I switch my bag to the other side so I can take Cali’s hand, and she falls silent for a moment, then squeezes back. Abruptly, I realize we should probably take a more inconspicuous route. We’ve only seen one human out during the day that was allied with the Augustines, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have more. And so far, they’ve been shockingly good at finding us no matter how random our route.

I check the map on my phone and lead her onto a side street instead. By the time we get to the bus station, she hasn’t spoken in a while and I’m starting to wonder if she regrets bringing me along after all.

Because she’s easier to recognize than I am, I leave her with our luggage on a quiet bench out back of the bus station where the un-used busses are all parked, and go inside to buy tickets. The next one doesn’t leave for a couple hours, so I linger in the gift shop, trying to think of what we’ll need. Finally I buy some crackers and a bottle of water and head back outside, nervous for about three reasons I can name and about ten that I can’t.

She’s on the bench where I left her, elbows braced on her knees, toying with the latch on the guitar case between her feet.

I take a seat next to her.

“Stefan was convinced it would ruin my life,” she says without looking up. “Knowing about your world.”

“I don’t think it’s the knowing that’s the bad part.” I lean my elbows onto my knees too, dropping the little plastic bag at my feet as I clasp my hands loosely together. “It’s when you refuse to see what’s actually there. My friend Vickie got turned into a vampire, and she just didn’t get how dangerous it was, how careful she needed to be. And Bonnie…” I duck my head, my throat squeezing when I say her name. “Bonnie was my girlfriend, and a witch, a very powerful one. She tried so hard to make everything okay for everyone else, she just couldn’t accept that there were things she couldn’t fix.”

“Magic, huh?” Cali says. “No bullshit. I guess after all that fog and crap I should have known there were witches.” She tugs her ponytail holder out, combing her fingers through her hair absently. “Stefan said that Elena lost her brother because of vampires…” She shoots a sideways glance at me. “She doesn’t have another brother, does she?”

“Nope.” My foot is jiggling now with nervous energy, and I clamp my teeth together. I never think about this without wanting to run for long, hard miles. “I was dead for weeks and Bonnie used magic to bring me back. Too much magic.” I shake my head. “Magic isn’t what people think. It’s not free. Nothing’s free.”

I'm not sure what to think of the way she’s looking at me, but it makes my skin prickle. I don’t like people knowing what happened to Bonnie. I wish I wouldn’t have said anything.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

I nod, swallowing as I watch the lines of the buses blur before my eyes. I blink once, firmly, because there’s no way I’m going to cry right now.

Cali lets out a low whistle and shakes her head. “That is a
bitch
of a guilt trip.”

I choke on my next breath, turning to look at her and I’m not really sure I just laughed until I feel the smile on my face. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

She snorts, jostling me with her elbow. “How do you think I feel? I’m sitting here feeling terrible that I’ve been spooning with the morning wood another girl died for. I’m like, the other woman or something really icky.” She shudders and busies her hands twisting her hair into a spiky little knot at the base of her neck and digging in her messenger bag until she comes up with a chopstick carved of dark wood.

I grimace. “I don’t think she died for my dick, Cali, jeez.”

She purses her lips, peeking up at me through her eyelashes as she slides the chopstick into her hair. “What, you think she died for your brain?” She bumps me playfully with her shoulder and I just shake my head, smiling in spite of myself.

“That’s just…so wrong.”

“Yeah, well, when I get stressed I get snarky and inappropriate,” Cali says, and makes a face. "It's a personal failing."

"So, while we're being inappropriate, can I ask you something?" I say, sneaking her a sidelong glance.

"You already know my breasts are real and that my socks never match," she says. "That's pretty much all my deepest and darkest, so shoot."

"And you make bunny noises in your sleep," I add.

She smacks me in the arm. "Bunny noises? Is that some kind of dirty joke?"

"It's all snuffly..." I demonstrate, making the soft sniffy and sighing noises, and her cheeks turn pink.

"Ew, let's never talk about that again." I grin and make the sound one more time and she glares at me. "What were you going to ask? Why I sound like a rooting hog while I sleep? Next question."

My smile fades and I scratch the back of my neck. "Maybe this isn't the time, but I've been meaning to say...you know they could heal your grandma, right?"

Cali tips her head back against the wall behind the bench and sighs, her cheekbones slanting exotically in the fading evening light. "Can we go back to talking about your supernaturally perfect ex-girlfriends that I can never live up to?"

My eyebrows pop up and I'm momentarily distracted.
Cali Jameson
is intimidated by my ex-girlfriends? Seriously?

She apparently takes my shocked silence as a prompt because she closes her eyes and starts to talk.

"It's not that I haven't thought about it. I know they'd do it. Your crazy sister especially. But what if it didn't work, or it made Gram worse? Have you ever tried it on a stroke victim before?"

I blink, trying not to be sidetracked by her comment about my exes. "No, but I've never seen it
not
work. It won't make her immortal, though. It'll just heal what's wrong with her now."

"Yeah, but what if it heals her to being young again? If it fixes everything, it should fix the damage age does to the body, too, right? Gram might love that. But she also might not want to start over again. She was proud of her life." Cali tips her head my way. "She was at the original march on Washington, did you know that? For civil rights. I know she has regrets, mostly about my mom, but...I don't know. Gram didn't mind being old, before she got so sick. I just don't feel like I can make that choice for her. And you just said it yourself, there's always a price. Nothing's free."

“Yeah, but something good ought to come out of all of this, you know?” I shrug, my shoulders feeling bulky and too heavy, and say the thing that’s been playing through my mind nonstop since Damon came in and dropped this bomb on us. “I can’t believe
you
were in the basement for three days while I was right upstairs.”

Cali smiles, her eyes opening as she looks up at the sky, dark enough now that street lights are starting to come on. I love the way she looks when she smiles, and I love that after everything that’s happened, she still wants to.

“You’re going to think this is crazy but that actually makes me feel
better
,” she says.

“Yup, that’s crazy,” I decide, and chuckle when she elbows me.

I like that she doesn’t treat me with kid gloves. Elena’s too gentle now, every time she hugs me or touches me, since Bonnie sent me back. It’s weird, so different from the way she used to be with me.

“I mean…” Cali toys with one of her rings. “I was stuck in this weird ass little cell but the whole time you were just upstairs, probably playing Xbox and listening to music, showering and eating breakfast…I don’t know. It makes it less scary somehow, safer.”

I tilt my head, watching her. I
should
have made it safer for her, should have opened my eyes for five freaking seconds to what was going on around me instead of how miserable I was being stuck in high school all day. I should have realized something was wrong, that my family was lying to me, every one of them. I could have saved her.

The thought hurts, but not as much as it should. I guess because of the way she’s sitting, slouched almost comfortably on the bench behind the bus station, teasing me. I keep trying to picture her in that cell, scared and in the dark but all I can see is her smirking face as she makes jokes about Bonnie and my penis. I’ve seen Cali scared plenty of times, I guess, but it never lasts more than a few seconds before she does something about it. It’s one of the things I admire most about her.

“The worst part,” she says, “is that I liked them. I liked them and then it turns out they kidnapped me and they’re your…” she heaves a breath. “Shit, Jeremy, they’re your
family
. You can’t go with me.” She throws me a look that’s nervous and resigned at the same time. “Look, you may be mad now but they’re still your family.”

“I know that,” I tell her, squeezing my hands in my lap until my knuckles ache. Thinking about Matt, and Ric, and how guilty and freaked out Elena’s going to be when she realizes I’m gone. “But I just can’t be around them. Not right now.”

“What are we even thinking?” Cali gestures at the empty lot and laughs. “We have bus tickets and no plan. We’ve got what, a hundred bucks left? Plus a debit card I can’t use without risking the Augustines being able to trace it. And frankly, that’s going to be all but tapped out once the automatic bill pay goes through for this month’s power and water bills.”

“More like sixty-two bucks,” I admit, and she snorts and shakes her head. “Hey, we’ll figure something out, okay?”

Cali pokes me in the side, laughing. “What are we going to do, Jeremy? Live on love alone?” My heart jumps involuntarily and I have to clear my throat to cover as she goes on. “Be street musicians? Homeless, starving artists?”

“Sure. You can draw chastity belts and I’ll play House of the Rising Sun for quarters.”

She smiles, her eyes twinkling with mischief, and opens her mouth to reply.

It happens so fast it must have been planned. A man steps out from the lines of buses, staring straight at us. He moves like a human but the way he watches us is eerily confident, like he’s not at all worried about how we might react.

A car screeches around the corner, lurching to a stop as people pour out all four doors and head straight for us. I grab Cali, shoving her ahead of me as we sprint for the front of the bus station.

And then they’re on us, two people’s hands closing around my upper arms so that when I see them take her, there’s nothing I can do.

*
              *              *

DAMON

Fucking kids.

Jeremy and Cali are sitting on the bench out back of the bus station as the light fades ever closer to Vampire Thirty, chatting away like they're at a goddamn picnic.
What I can't figure is if Jeremy did this to spite me because I told him not to do anything stupid, or if he really, honestly thinks that the Augustines won't find him as long as he's on foot.

I mean, what the hell is his working definition of "something stupid" if it's not running off to the nearest bus station with his girlfriend, a pouty sense of having been wronged, and no backup for the inevitable appearance of vampire super soldiers? That guitar case better be crammed with bear mace and crossbows or that boy and I are going to be having a long talk when I drag his under-prepared ass back to the hotel where his sister is still sleeping, oblivious to the growing disaster that is this day.