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“Do you ever feel like you’re different since you were turned?” I ask Mav one night after we celebrate putting our first bit of cash into our cardboard savings box with bags of almost-not-expired blood.
“You mean other than going up in flames when I touch sunlight, needing to drink blood, superhuman strength, and a rocking bod?”
I sit up with false exasperation. “They must have forgotten to deliver my rocking body when I got turned!”
Mav laughs. “I guess you mean personality-wise?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
He shrugs. “Not really, no. I suppose I’m a bit more cynical.”
“You don’t ever feel like you have something sort of… evil inside of you?”
He pushes himself up on his elbow. “Why, do you feel like you do?”
I stare at the ceiling. “Maybe. It feels like the old Deni is still there but there’s also this other side of me that comes out when I’m near blood. Like I’m sharing my body with some kind of ravenous creature that I need to keep under control.”
“That’s not evil, Deni. It’s just part of being a vampire. Maybe it just feels that way because you’ve been fighting so hard against your transition?”
“Could be. So if there was someone who I feel like brings this part out in me, you don’t think I should avoid them?”
“Oh my god, I knew there was a secret lover!”
I cross my arms. “There isn’t.”
“Really? Because it sounds to me like you’re just horny and you think it’s evil because of your weird Christian upbringing.” He grins. “Do you know what horny means? See, when we get older and our bodies start changing–”
I throw my phone at him, finally accepting that it is probably more useful as a projectile weapon than as a mobile. “Shut up!”
The phone vibrates in pitiful protest as it lands on his mattress. He picks it up and looks at the screen. “Oooh!” he says, sitting up. “Your secret lover has a gift for you!”
I jump up from my bed and launch myself across the room, slapping the phone from his hand. “Don’t look at that!”
We wrestle, both trying to get to the phone first, laughing all the while, though I feel a mild sense of panic.Did he see who the text was from?He can’t know.
My panic is resolved when I finally see the text, which has been sent from a new number, as happens every few weeks when Celeste gets a different burner phone. “I have a gift for you – C.”
Sinking back onto my mattress while Mav pouts over having lost, I deliberate how to reply. “I don’t need anything.”
“I so disagree,” she answers. “But I understand if you don’t want to see me.”
With a frustrated grunt, I fling my phone onto my mattress and flop dramatically after it.That’s not what I meant!I think, even though reading my message back it certainly sounds like that’s what I meant. And it’s not true – I do want to see her and money is only about seventy-five percent of the reason why.
Mav throws me a knowing grin. I stick my tongue out at him.
“I do want to see you,” I type, just to then immediately delete the entire thing. Since the whole kissing situation was only a dumb accident that my stupid vampire brain caused, I don’t want to sound needy or give the wrong impression. “What is the gift?”
“Surprise.”
“Well, now I’m curious,” I reply. “How do I get this mystery gift?”
“Meet me at six at your fake address? And wear something nice, please, if you own such a thing.”
I grimace. Of course, she couldn’t just be nice. “Six-thirty?” I reply. “I need to walk there from my real address.”
***
Of course, Mel is here,I think when I get into Celeste’s car.What was I expecting?
