Birth of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm) Read online

  They all ordered water, which didn’t surprise me. They weren’t there for the Salisbury steak. I had a strong suspicion they were going to get an order of fries to share and then not leave me a tip. I didn’t know why people thought that if they knew their server, they didn’t have to leave a tip. The person was still doing a job, and tipping was expected in America. You were still taking up their time and their table that they could have been using to make money by serving somebody else. If I had a friend that worked at The Gap, I wouldn’t expect to not have to pay for my jeans just because she waited on me. But Ashley and her friends probably didn’t tip anywhere they went, so I decided not to take it personally.

  As I brought over a stack of plastic glasses and a pitcher of water, I felt my cell phone buzz in my pocket. I instantly became tense. That had to be Tommy texting me back. Finally! My instinct was to grab the phone, but my hands were full, and I really wasn’t supposed to take my phone out in front of the customers. Even so, the urge was very hard to resist. It was like a painful itch that you knew you shouldn’t scratch.

  “So, Haley,” Ashley began as I passed out the cups. “Are you going to Blossom’s big Christmas Eve party tonight?”

  One of her friends let out a burst of laughter and tried to cover it with a cough. I guess the thought that I might be invited to a party with the cool kids was pretty hilarious to her.

  “Are you all right?” I said in a sharp voice.

  “Fine,” she said, clearing her throat. “I just need a little water.” They all snickered as she held her hand out for a glass in a very expectant you-may-serve-me-now sort of way. I considered dumping the entire pitcher over her head.

  “So are you going?” Ashley pressed, not to be deterred from her mission. “Do you even have any plans tonight?” She made a fake compassionate face. “Because if you don’t …”

  “I haven’t decided if I’m going,” I said, cutting her off. “Have you decided what you want to order?”

  Ashley looked down at the menu like she was still deciding. “We’re just going to share an order of …”

  “Fries. Got it,” I said before spinning on my heel and walking quickly away.

  “Why didn’t you ask her?” I heard one of the girls say in what she thought was a quiet voice, but it actually carried halfway across the restaurant.

  “If I just come out and ask her then she’s going to say no,” was Ashley’s reply. “I have to be subtle about it.”

  I wondered if my half-cousin knew the definition of subtle. I doubted it.

  “Fries,” I said to Dino, the Darlene cook, as I wrote down the order on my pad and slapped it on the counter. Not that he couldn’t remember such a simple order, but Debbie compared all the orders with the receipts at the end of the night. Then I hurried into the break area and dug my phone out of my apron. There was a text waiting for me. And it was from Tommy. My heart started beating out a fast tempo in my chest.

  He’d written three words. Not the three words he’d used to get into my pants the previous night. That would have been too much to hope for. He’d simply texted, “See you there.”

  I stared at the screen. See you there? So he was going to Blossom’s party and he was meeting me there? Or was he going to Blossom’s party and he would nod at me from across the room? I had thought that he would come to pick me up, and we would go to the party together. That obviously wasn’t what he had in mind.

  I felt hurt and disappointed and angry all at the same time. He was trying to blow me off. I could feel it. We’d had sex, and now he was trying to act like it never happened. I had to fight back tears and resisted the urge to throw my phone against the wall. I felt like such an idiot. He’d told me he loved me, and I’d fallen for it.

  I kept shaking my head back and forth. It just didn’t make sense. Tommy was the one who had pursued me. We had Spanish together, and the teacher made us sit in alphabetical order. Both our last names started with “S,” so that meant we were pretty much at the back of the class. He’d asked if he could get the vocab words from me after he’d been sick for a few days, and things kind of blossomed from there. But it had always been him pushing the relationship. He was the one that had started passing me notes. He was the one that had asked for my number. It wasn’t like I was chasing after him.

  Tommy had recently broken up with some girl, so he said he wanted to keep things on the down low for a while. He’d said he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by having the entire school know that he’d immediately started falling for somebody else. I had actually thought he was being sweet. It wasn’t that often that a guy tried to be considerate after a breakup, as far as I could tell.

  The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. I’d been completely suckered by Tommy, and the guy wasn’t even that bright. But I guess he knew enough to say the things I wanted to hear. I’d been so wrapped up in the idea that I was dating a popular boy that I hadn’t really paid attention to anything else. I had thought being with Tommy was going to make my life a whole lot better, but I suddenly realized there was a good chance he was actually going to make it a whole lot worse.

  A noise penetrated my brain. It was the sound of a bell being rung. In fact, it was a small bell like they used to use at the front desk of a hotel. Dino always rang it when a food order was ready and he wanted me to come and pick it up. I must have not heard it the first two or three times he’d smacked at it because he was ringing it over and over again.

  I hurried to the kitchen window where Dino lined up the orders with their tickets. “What’s wrong with you today?” he asked as I grabbed the fries. “I thought I was going to have to deliver them myself.”

  “Sorry,” I told him, grabbing the fries. “I’m just …” I took a breath to swallow down my emotions, which were threatening to spill over into my voice. “I’m just having a bad day.”

  I stood up straight and held my head high as I walked back to Ashley’s table. “Here’s your fries,” I said, plunking them on the table along with ketchup, salt, and their bill. I didn’t want them calling me back a dozen times to play fetch.

  I was turning to speed walk away from their table when Erika called after me. “Haley, if you’re going to Blossom’s party anyway, we might as well all go together. Don’t you think?”

  I paused. Me showing up to the party all by myself made me look pathetic and desperate. But me showing up with a group of popular girls was a different story. Then I had an excuse to be there. If Tommy was actually blowing me off, then at least I didn’t look like a desperate freak showing up all by myself. “Okay,” I said, turning back toward the table slowly—but quick enough to see my cousin making a what-the-hell face at her friend. “But do you mind if I drive?” I figured if they were going to be my cover story, then I might as well cut to the chase as to why they were actually in the diner.

  “Sure, that’d be great,” Erika said, all smiles. Then her eyes flicked up and down as she took in my appearance. Her smile faded a little, and I could almost hear what was going on in her brain. Showing up to a party with a loser like me had the potential to damage her reputation. “You know what?” she said. “Why don’t you come over to my place early? I have a sweater that I bet would look great on you. And while we’re at it, I’ve been practicing to be a beauty guru for YouTube.”

  “You are?” one of the other girls said, scrunching her eyebrows. “Since when?”

  “Yes,” Erika told her. “And since forever. It turns out I don’t tell you everything.” Directing her attention back to me, she added, “So anyway, I would love to try some different makeup looks on you. If you don’t mind.” She gave me her best attempt at an encouraging smile.

  I was a little stunned. I had no idea if she was concealing being a jerk or actually was attempting to be nice. “Um …” I thought about it. What was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like she was offering to cut my hair. If I hated what she did, I could always wash my face. “Sure. Sounds fun. Where do you live?”

 
; Just then the door chimed as more customers came in. It was two moms with toddlers, so that was definitely a call to action. Toddlers needed things to immediately keep them occupied so they wouldn’t trash the place. I had to get them crayons and papers. Stat.

  “I’ll text you my address,” Erika said, realizing I had to get back to work. “Ashley can give me your number.”

  Ashley made a face. “I don’t have it,” she said, as if assuming cousins who lived in the same small town would have each other’s contact information was an outrageous thing to do.

  I quickly scribbled my number on a sheet from my order pad and thrust it at Erika. “What time do you want me to be there?” I asked.

  “Six-thirty,” she told me. “That should give us plenty of time.”

  As I hurried over to the moms with crayons and kids menus in hand, I felt strangely excited. It was almost as if Erika was being nice. All I had to do was find someone to cover the end of my second shift, get home, shower, do my hair, and convince Uncle Kevin that I wasn’t going out to have sex with the entire football team. How challenging could that be?

  Chapter 7

  Dorian

  I’m embarrassed to admit that I was more excited about the teenage mortal party than I was willing to reveal to Jessie and the rest of my family. Daniel was his usual breath of stale air about my attending the event, remarking cleverly, “Oh. Will we all be taking on mortal charity work for the holidays?”

  The trouble with vampires—and I speak from over eighties years of study in the field—is that we’re all so damn convinced of our own superiority. But is a man dying of malaria convinced he is better than his fellow men because he was bitten by an infected mosquito? Most vampires are no better at being the undead than they were at being the living.

  I was at a bit of a loss as to what to wear for the festivities. The undead spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about their wardrobes. It was strange that when you had eternity at your fingertips you could get so bogged down in the minutia of life.

  How did one dress to fit in at a party of modern mortal teenagers? I really had no idea. I think it was sometime in the late 1960s that well-tailored clothes seemed to fall out of fashion. At first it was just in America, but then it quickly spread to the far corners of the globe. I didn’t know whether to blame it on laziness or modern fabrics, but I missed the days when men had their collars starched and women knew how to properly lace up a corset.

  I knew if I showed up in something baggy, I’d feel more out of place than I would in any ridiculous costume I could don for a fancy dress ball. Why did young men want to wear clothes that were large enough to conceal a conjoined twin? Modern fashions made little sense to me. I had to wonder if young women enjoyed the look of baggy trousers. Not that I was planning on luring a mortal female into anything more than innocent conversation, but it was interesting to ponder.

  In the end, I decided to just wear whatever struck me from the wardrobe I had available during my visit. I wasn’t trying to impress the children, after all. I was just trying to not cause a commotion.

  I found Jessie unusually anxious about attending the party. He was convinced that his precious girl was in danger and that she, or any other guest at the party, could be attacked by a member of the undead without any warning. And that, in my opinion, was the problem with mortals. They were so fragile. Their very lives were always hanging in the balance from numerous activities that they participated in every day yet paid little attention to while doing. The fact that most adult humans drove around in cars always fascinated me. None of them seemed to realize that they were hurtling toward very solid objects at great rates of speed. And rather than paying attention, they chose to talk or sing or do numerous things on their phones, all the while blithely assuming that their mortality was postmarked for a much later date. It was absolutely bizarre behavior for beings who didn’t even have a protective shell.

  I could tell that my cousin was constantly thinking about his mortal love. He’d always had a knight-in-shining-armor complex, even back when he was a human. And I couldn’t blame him, in a way. He’d lost the first mortal he’d loved in some sort of wretched tragedy, so I was sure that made this second mortal all the more precious.

  Still, I wanted to enjoy my evening, so I was really hoping Jessie would lighten up.

  Chapter 8

  Haley

  Finding someone to cover the end of my shift turned out to be surprisingly easy. There were barely any customers, so Debbie said she could just handle the end of my shift. I think she was excited that I actually had something to do that involved other kids my age.

  Uncle Kevin wasn’t even home when I got there. I had no idea where he was, and I didn’t care, just as long as I could get back out of the house before he returned. My luck stayed with me, and even by the time I was scrawling a quick note saying, “Going to a party with Ashley. Shouldn’t be home too late,” he still wasn’t around to give me the third degree.

  With each additional piece of luck, I began to feel better and better. There was still the Tommy weirdness, but I had to remember he was a teenage boy. And that, apparently, was a bizarre state to be in. He probably didn’t even realize he was being an inconsiderate jerk. Wasn’t that one of the symptoms of teenage-boy syndrome—complete obliviousness to other people’s feelings. I decided I was just going to go to the party with a positive attitude and see what happened.

  Erika lived in one of the nicer houses in Tiburon. It wasn’t the biggest, but it was still about three times larger than the one I shared with Uncle Kevin. It had a manicured lawn and a three-car garage. I had left the house feeling pretty cute, but by the time I climbed the front steps to ring the bell, I felt positively shabby.

  “Hey,” Erika said, yanking open the door almost the exact second after my finger left the button. Her father was Korean and her mother was German, which left Erika looking like some fabulous blue-eyed manga character. The rumor was that she modeled in Asia over the summers, and I could believe it. She was really pretty in an unusual way.

  There weren’t a lot of families with Asian heritage in Tiburon. I was pretty sure if she hadn’t been so damn gorgeous, she would have been ostracized for being different. It was that kind of town. But it was hard to snub a girl who looked like she’d just fallen out of an animated movie. “Come on in,” she said. There was a brief flash of apprehension across her pretty face as I stepped over the threshold. She glanced around the street before shutting the door. I didn’t know if that was because there had been some problems in Tiburon in the last few weeks or if she just didn’t want anyone seeing me walk into her house.

  Erika’s house was a cool blend of European and Asian art. Silk pillow covers in rich colors adorned couches and chairs, made even more vibrant by the whiteness of the walls. Many pieces of the furniture were a dark carved wood that I knew I would be afraid to sit on for fear of scratching an antique. On one wall were several framed photos of a very pretty model who looked like Erika, but a really sophisticated version of the girl. I had to assume the rumors of her modeling career were true.

  “Do you want anything to drink before we head up to my room?” she asked. “That’s where all my makeup and stuff is.”

  “Um … A glass of water would be great,” I told her, trying to conceal my excitement that she was actually treating me like a real guest.

  I followed Erika into the kitchen, where she filled two glasses with water out of a pitcher and then put a plate of carrot sticks and celery on a tray. “I always like to snack before a party,” she told me. “If I show up and I’m too hungry then I always end up eating a bunch of junk.”

  “But you’re so skinny,” I said, a little surprised that she ever thought about those kinds of things.

  She nodded her head a little. “Yeah, but I work at it.”

  I wondered if Ashley and the other girls knew that bit of information or if it was something that Erika only felt comfortable saying to me because I wasn’t part of her g
roup.

  Erika’s room was colorful chaos. By the multitude of beautiful silk robes and curtains and pillows, it was obvious that she had been to Asia numerous times. I tried to suppress a wave of envy I felt wash over me. Some day, I really wanted to travel.

  She had a vanity table that was literally covered in makeup. She had three different tackle boxes on the floor. They were all open, displaying stacks of various little trays, and those were all filled with makeup, too.

  “Okay,” Erika said as she munched on a celery stick. “Let’s get started.” She turned on a bright light that she shined directly in my eyes. Peering into my face, she asked, “Do you know what kind of look you’re going for?”

  “Uh …” I really hadn’t thought about it. I was too busy trying to manage work and thinking about the party and worrying about Uncle Kevin and fretting over Tommy. “I have no idea,” I admitted. Uncle Kevin would have a fit if I came home dunked in makeup. Ashley wore a ton, but that didn’t seem to faze him. “Something natural, I guess.”

  Erika nodded, her eyes never leaving my face. “I can see that,” she said. “A lot of girls our age overdo it with the makeup.” Then in a more confidential tone, she added, “Sometimes I just want to shout at them, your face is not a coloring book.”

  I had to laugh. Her criticism of our classmates was so unexpected. “Or maybe you could just tell them to stop coloring outside the lines.”

  Erika smiled back at me. “I like that one. I might write that down to use in my blogcast.”

  I blinked at her a few times. “So you’re really going to do a video makeup blog?”

  “I think so,” she said. Then she sighed, her shoulders visibly lifting and lowering. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s a lot to put out there.” She turned away to pick through some brushes she had on her vanity. “I just don’t want people to be all critical. You know what I mean?” She gestured for me to sit on the small stool that matched the vanity.