“Blue-haired weirdo.”
“Guilty as charged.” She picked up the iced tea glass and handed it to me. “Now or never, Merit. She said you needed a pint every other day.”
“I’m kind of assuming that’s an average. You know—four pints a week, give or take, averaging to one every other day. And I probably had one before they dropped me off yesterday. So I don’t really need to open it until tomorrow.”
Mallory frowned at me. “You don’t want to even try it? It’s blood, and you’re a vampire. You should be ripping at the plastic with those sharp-ass teeth just to get to the stuff.” She held up the bag between two fingers, waggled it in the air. “Blood. Yummy, delicious blood.” The crimson liquid shuffled back and forth in the bag as she waggled it, making little waves in a tiny, self-contained ocean. And it was making me seasick.
I put a defensive hand over my abdomen. “Just put the bag down, Mallory.”
She did, and we stared at it for another few minutes until I looked up at her. “I think I’m just not hungry for it. Surely it would be more appealing if I really, really wanted it.”
“Are you hungry for anything?”
I scanned the library of cereal boxes on top of the refrigerator, the stash owing in part to Mallory’s preparations for the rumored vampire apocalypse. “Hand me the box of Chunkee Choco Bits. The marshmallow kind.”
“Done and done,” she said, and slid off her stool. She went to the refrigerator, reached up, grabbed the box, and walked back to hand it over. I opened and reached into it, grabbing a handful of cereal, then picking through it to get to the marshmallows, which I popped into my mouth. “None for you?”
“Mark’s coming over,” she carefully said, “if that’s okay with you.”
Mark was Mallory’s sweet but aimless boyfriend. I gave them two more weeks. “Fine with me. Make him bring Chinese. But if he annoys me, I’ll probably have to bite him.”
She rolled her eyes. “Vampire bitch.”
I shrugged and picked through another handful of cereal. “I’m just warning you, I’m probably going to be a total hard-ass vamp.”
Mallory snorted and walked out of the kitchen, calling out, “Yeah, well, you’ve got a purple marshmallow on your chin, hard-ass vamp.”
I peeled it away and, between my thumb and index finger, flicked it into the kitchen sink. Stuff like that was going to ruin my reputation.
At twenty-five, Mark Perkins decided he wanted to swim the English Channel. At twenty-six, he decided he wanted to climb Everest. Then it was Machu Picchu, base-jumping, ghost-hunting in New Orleans and racing the Utah salt flats. Unlike Mallory, who rarely planned, Mark planned with a vengeance.
He just never actually did anything.
Tall and thin with short brown hair, he blew through our front door like a tempest, arms laden with guidebooks, maps, and two paper bags with greasy bottoms.
“Chinese!” Mallory squealed, leaping to the door when he came in. She pecked his cheek, grabbed a bag of food, and headed to the kitchen. I’d been reading again, so I returned the book to its spot on the coffee table.
He nodded in my direction, dumped his own books on the love seat, and followed Mallory. “Merit.”
“Hi, Mark.” I gave him a little finger wave and rose from the couch, but I paused before following him to check his literature. On the couch, their glossy, mountain-pictured labels read: The Greatest Adventure Book Ever, Climbing for Dummies, and Your Big, Fat Swiss Adventure. The Matterhorn, apparently, was next on Mark’s list. Poor, sweet, dumb Mark.
“She’s gone fang, Mark,” Mallory called out. “So be careful.”
Halfway to the kitchen, Mark stopped midstride and turned to face me, grinning like an idiot. “Kick. Fucking. Ass.”
I rolled my eyes and snatched the remaining bag of Chinese. “Kick your own ass. Did you get crab rangoon?”
He frowned. “What do vampires need with crab rangoon?”
We moved into the kitchen. I put the bag on the kitchen counter and picked through it until I found the paper box of fried crab-and-cream-cheese-stuffed dough and a container of sweet-and-sour sauce. I popped them both open, dipped a wrap in the sauce, and bit in. They were still hot—and I groaned happily at the taste: sweet, salty, crispy, creamy. Everything a newly changed vampire could want.
“Orgasms, apparently,” Mallory snarked, and pulled out her own containers of food. She pulled one open, then broke open a set of chopsticks, stared into the container, pulled out a chunk of broccoli, and munched.
“So, how long have you been the walking dead?” Mark asked.
Mallory choked. I thumped her, ever so helpfully, on the back.
“I’m on day two,” I told him, and pulled out another bit of fried wanton heaven. “So far, it’s been uneventful.”
Famous last words, those.
We’d been eating about ten minutes when we heard glass shatter in the front of the house. Our heads snapped up at the sound. We stood simultaneously, but I motioned Mark and Mallory back down. Mallory’s eyes widened, and I guessed what she’d seen: My blood hummed with adrenaline, and I knew my eyes had gone silver.
“Stay here,” I told them, and walked across the kitchen. I flipped off the overhead light and moved into the unlit hallway. There were no other sounds in the house, and I didn’t hear anything outside—cars revving, people screaming, sirens flaring. Carefully hugging the walls, I crept into the living room. The living room window—a picture window made up of a single sheet of glass—had been shattered from the outside in. A brick lay on the floor, wrapped in white paper, a breeze fluttering one corner of it. First things first, I thought, ignoring the missile to pick my way across the glass to the front door and check the peephole. The yard was empty and quiet. It was dark out, so theoretically our attackers could have been hiding in the shrubbery, but I knew no one was there. I could kind of . . . tell. There were no sounds, no smells, no indications that anyone had been near the house beyond the light, acrid scent of car exhaust. They’d driven by, done the deed, and moved on.
I went back to the brick, reached down to pick it up, and pulled away the band of paper. In scraggly black script, it read:
Think UR 2 good 4 us, Cadogan bitch? Next time U die.
The threat was clear enough, and I guessed that I now qualified as the “Cadogan bitch.” But “too good for us” stumped me. It sounded like a choice—like I’d chosen Cadogan out of the catalog of vampire Houses. It was profoundly untrue, and a good clue—the vandal didn’t know me, at least not well enough to understand how inaccurate the statement really was. How little choice I’d had.
Mark’s voice rang out. “Merit?”
I looked up, found them huddled in the doorway, and felt my chest tighten protectively. It took me a moment—a surprising one—to realize that the tingle in my limbs wasn’t fear, but adrenaline. I beckoned them forward with a folded hand. “It’s okay. You can come in. Just watch the glass.”
Mallory stepped carefully into the room, tiptoed through the fragments. “Jesus. The window—what happened?”
“Holy crap,” Mark agreed, surveying the damage.
Mallory looked up at me, eyes bright with fear. “What happened?”
I handed her the note. She read it, then met my gaze. “You’re the bitch?”
I shrugged. “I assume so, but I don’t understand the threat.”
Mark walked to the door, opened it slowly, and looked outside. “Nothing else out here,” he called out, “just some glass.” He drew back in, his gaze moving between us. “You’ve got some plywood or something I could hang over the window?”
I looked to Mallory, who shrugged. “There might be something in the garage.”
He nodded. “I’ll go check. I’ll be right back.”
When the front door shut behind him, Mallory looked down at the note in her hands. “Do you think we should call the cops?”
“No,” I told her, remembering my father’s admonition. But an idea dawned. I took the note back from her and stuffed it into my pocket. “I think we should go to the House.”
Ten minutes later, Mark was balancing on the edge of the stoop, securing an old sheet of particleboard over the window, and Mallory and I were pulling the car out of the garage, Hyde Park address in hand. Mark wasn’t thrilled that Mallory was planning to visit a den of vampires in the middle of the night, but I think that stemmed mostly from the fact that he hadn’t been invited to tag along. His blusters about her safety didn’t read sincere given the awestruck expression on his face.