Liar, Liar...

“Some of them are saying you did it in the name of a vampire god. That’s my personal favorite. But most of them are saying you were casting a spell to kill the entire school and it went awry.”

I laughed out loud, loving the rumors that were going around about me while I was suspended. Dodging a tree that seemed to jump out of nowhere, I looked ahead and saw the dark outline of the little wooden houses where the vampires lived. Chase had insisted they wouldn’t mind when I came by, but I was wary. When I suggested using the telepathic bond to ask Miles, he’d laughed as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, saying it wasn’t just Miles’s home.

“But I’m curious,” said Chase thoughtfully, “about what really happened.”

When I looked at him, he was looking straight ahead, but he slowly turned his head to look at me. Somehow, I knew that he knew the reason. I just didn’t understand his motive for wanting to hear it directly from me. I was mad at you for playing me, so I destroyed school property and got suspended. Right, because that didn’t sound stupid at all... I didn’t want to lie, though. That was never something I was good at.

“Actually,” I said, deciding I’d just turn it into a joke, “I was gonna go with the vampire god story. You know, play it cool.”

He nodded, appreciative. And, thankfully, he let it go. But this could be partially due to the fact that we had arrived in the shady clearing, and the first one to notice us was his mother. Her look was cold, and it made me feel like I was doing something wrong. When I turned to Chase to ask him about it, he shook his head slightly, like he knew what I was thinking. After a few moments, she looked away from us, walking briskly in another direction.

“Why did she look like she wanted to kill me?” I asked in a nervous whisper. Being powerless at night around a strong vampire who apparently hated me didn’t make me feel too good, whether I was an ally to the coven or not. “Wasn’t that your mother?”

“Yes,” said Chase. “Hey, let’s go hang out at my house. I don’t want...I don’t want certain people to see us and get the wrong idea.”

Without another word, he put his hand on my shoulder and started guiding me toward the back row of wooden houses. I got the random image in my head of him sliding his hand down my arm and linking his fingers in mine. It was so unexpected and so bad that my mouth dropped. Luckily I remembered to keep moving my feet, or Chase would have noticed and asked what was wrong. Suddenly I noticed we were walking up the steps to his cabin, and then he was holding the door open for me. I walked inside and held my arms out slightly in front of me so I wouldn’t bump into anything; I had been inside his house before, but that wasn’t at nearly ten o’clock at night.

The sound of the door closing came from behind me. Then I heard Chase laugh, seeing me struggle to walk in the dark. “Here,” he said, letting me hear the smile in his voice. Both of his hands came to rest on my shoulders, steering me away from unseen furniture. All of a sudden his hand on my right shoulder slid down to my hand, so much like the obscene image that had popped into my head before. But our fingers didn’t lace together. Instead, he picked up my hand and put it on what felt like the stair rail.

“You okay? Can you get upstairs alright?” he asked. His hand was still over mine. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would drop dead in my chest. What’s the matter with me? I could most likely manage to get up the dark stairs with the help of the stair rail. But it took several moments before I said anything, and Chase didn’t prompt me to hurry up.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “Yeah, I can do it.”

I slowly climbed up the stairs, surprisingly without tripping at all. Chase, behind me, who could see perfectly, didn’t complain that I was taking too long. At the top of the stairs, I felt his hand again, except that this time it was on my back and it was brief. I followed his silhouette, bumping into him when he stopped at a door. I muttered an apology, to which he responded with a little laugh.

“Don’t you have a light in here?” I asked incredulously when we went inside the room. I noticed with an odd, unrecognizable feeling that he’d left the door wide open. It shouldn’t provoke any feelings. All that meant was that we wouldn’t be doing anything inappropriate. I dropped down onto his bed and folded my legs. Aaron usually made a dirty joke when I sat on his bed. Chase just looked at me.

“Nope,” he said. “Sorry.” But he didn’t really sound sorry. “So, have you ever actually used a love potion on someone? A mortal?”

I straightened my back and gave him a “you’re crazy” sort of look. “No,” I said primly. “Love potions are for the desperate. And even the most unattractive witch has her charm if she needs to resort to it. But immortals do that all the time.”

Chase looked skeptical. “So why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

I rolled my eyes. Eliza was always saying that to me. I took off my shoes and laid back, stretching out on the bed and staring at the ceiling. Chelsea seemed to think I was holding out for Aaron, but I always easily pointed out that I didn’t need to wait for Aaron to come around—he’d already been hovering over me for years. Eliza said I was just picky, which was actually very true. It was hard for me to fall for a guy. I had this really terrible habit of finding every little thing that was wrong with him, and I’d dwell on it until I couldn’t understand why I’d ever given him the time of day.

“I don’t need one,” I told Chase. “They’re not worth the trouble.” After several moments, I turned my gaze away from the ceiling and looked at him. “So how did you meet Jenny? What do you like about her?”

Chase shook his head, an annoyed look on his face. “Let’s talk about something else,” he suggested, making me raise my eyebrows. I couldn’t understand why he’d change the subject whenever I brought up his girlfriend. What was the big deal? “So what have you been doing while you’ve been suspended? Did your parents do anything?”

“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, sitting up and looking at him resolutely. “C’mon, spill. Why don’t you want to talk about her? She’s your girlfriend, you’re supposed to think about her constantly. What gives?”

He looked extremely uncomfortable suddenly, but I didn’t back down. After a few moments, he pushed off from the wall he was leaning against and came to sit where my feet were, pushing them out of the way so he could kick his shoes off and put his feet up. I backed up against the wall at the head of the bed to give him space, and so I could still stretch out my legs a little. Then I focused on Chase’s face. He looked like he really didn’t want to talk about it.

“In my defense, I’m picking from a very small pool,” he said, making his voice light. I laughed, and then waited for him to explain. “This is the only vampire coven around. Jenny came here about two years ago, alone. She was born a human and turned a vampire, but she couldn’t stand the vampire that sired her. So she ran away, and eventually she found us. She liked me, she always has. And eventually, I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I asked her out.”

“But...” I squinted at him, not understanding. “Don’t you like her at all?”

He shrugged, looking me in the eye and seeming guarded. “I will eventually.”

“How long have you been with her?”

“Three days.”

My mouth dropped. Three days? So they got together...on Thursday. Thursday was the day Chase had said he’d kiss me again. When I looked at him, I could tell that he saw what was going through my head. Why would he say that to me and then ask her out? I mean, if he was interested in me—and he was, according to Jake—why would he then go out with someone he didn’t even like?

“Oh,” I said quietly. For some reason, I couldn’t make myself ask why he’d never asked me out, even though I’d practically told him to. Especially when I saw in his face that he was waiting for me to ask. “So...you only date vampire girls?” I asked delicately. It wasn’t exactly what he’d expected, but it would let me know if the reason was that I was a witch.

Again, Chase shrugged. It was starting to bother me. “Most vampires are like that. We can’t produce viable offspring with any other species, so we’re taught that we shouldn’t bother.”

Oh. That was why there were no vampire hybrids at Rosser. It wasn’t possible. I nervously twisted the loose material of the uniform shirt I was wearing. “I guess you want kids then, huh?” I said softly.

“No,” he answered. “But I’m assuming you do.”

There were some unspoken words there. Subconsciously, I knew what those words were, but my conscious mind couldn’t fathom them.

“It’s happened,” said Chase, sparing me from having to answer. My tongue was temporarily unable to function. “When I was younger, one of the girls from our coven wanted to be with a pixie boy she loved. It was right after she graduated from Rosser. Her parents were really strict, though, and they told her that if she continued to see him, she’d have to leave and wouldn’t be allowed to come back. And when the coven is the only family you’ve ever known, you can’t imagine not having it. So she abandoned the pixie.”

“Would your parents disown you if you were with someone who wasn’t a vampire?” I asked curiously.

Chase’s smile was slow and made me want to melt. “So what else have you learned while working at that store, Kara?”

He wasn’t going to answer me. I didn’t know how to interpret his smile. Instead of lingering on it or trying to pursue the subject, I leaned back and started describing to him the kinds of powerful illusions you could conjure with certain supplies, like human fingernails or various dried claws. It wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, but Chase seemed interested in it.

Just as I was describing a spell to cast the illusion of a murderer’s last victim, there was an abrupt tap on the open door. Chase and I both quickly turned our heads in that direction. In the doorway was a man who looked like he was in his thirties—but then, you can never trust appearances with immortals. The man looked at me closely, and then he looked at Chase with a what-did-I-tell-you look. It was easily recognizable to any teenager.

“Dad,” said Chase, surprised. “I thought you’d be...not here.”

The man raised his eyebrows. “I can see that.” He looked back at me. “Kara Troy?”

I nodded, feeling very self-conscious. At the same time, both Chase and I stood up from the bed. Like when Chase’s mother had been looking at us, I felt like we’d been doing something wrong. “Yeah, that’s me,” I mumbled. “I should probably start heading home now,” I said to Chase awkwardly.

Chase looked like that was exactly what he was about to say. He nodded and walked past his father out of the room. I followed, throwing a wary glance at the older vampire as I went by. Chase’s room had a window, so there had been a little moonlight that I could see by. In the hallway, though, it was once again too dark for my unimpressive vision. I put my hands on the wall to feel my way to the staircase. There was a little table somewhere along the hall, and I didn’t want to crash into it. I didn’t even hear Chase walk to me, but then I felt his hand on my arm to guide me to the stairs. I mumbled my thanks and carefully went down the steps.

Once we were outside, the moon provided enough light for me to see adequately. As we walked away from his house and through the clearing where the other vampires were hanging around, I looked at Chase. “I guess I know what your parents would think about you being with someone who wasn’t a vampire,” I said with a nervous, high-pitched laugh.

He just gave me a little forced smile. I didn’t say anything for a while. We soon left the clearing and were under the dense cover of the trees in the woods. After about five minutes it was driving me crazy. “Chase,” I said. “Your parents. Why do they look at me like that? They make me feel like I’m doing something dirty.”

It was too dark to see his expression, but I saw his head turn to look at me. He laughed a little. “Ignore them. It’s because they know I like you. They hate that.”

I frowned. “You like me?”

Chase stopped walking suddenly. Being unable to see and unable to find my way out of the woods without him, I stopped too. I wished I could see his face clearly. His expressions were so hard to read, but I might be able to see something of what he was thinking if there was a little light.

“I lied,” he said after a few seconds.

About liking me? My heart sank. “Lied about what?” I asked apprehensively.

“When I said it wouldn’t happen again.”

I had a whole second to process that before I felt him kiss me.

His hands on my waist were the only thing that stopped my buckling knees from dropping me to the ground.

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