CHAPTER 12
Even though Jenny’s blog entry totally rocked—a neurological disorder! I loved it!—the blog had not inspired any revenge ideas, which meant I was right back where I started.
I swiveled in my desk chair and glanced out my bedroom door. I have a great desk chair. My parents gave me an Office Depot gift card after breaking the divorce news, and I bought the best. It swivels and has rollers and I can move anywhere in my bedroom on it. Right then, I used my toes to push me and my chair closer to the door so I could see down the hall and into the kitchen.
I didn’t see my mom, but I saw her shadow, moving around in there, probably making a snack or getting some coffee as she prepared to stay up working on briefs again. Have I mentioned my mom’s a lawyer? Maybe she could sue Stephen for me. That was something, right? Of course, I’d have to tell her what happened, but maybe I ought to do that anyway. After all, don’t moms want to know this kind of stuff? When their kids are made undead, I mean?
I blinked and realized that even though my stomach was all knotted up and my throat felt thick, I wasn’t actually crying. Another side effect of vampiness. I couldn’t even wallow in a good cry.
And as clueless and absent as my mom is, right then I wanted her anyway. I wanted her to hug me and tell me it was gonna be all right. And I wanted her to tell me that she’d help me figure out a way to get back at Stephen Wills. I needed help. As much as I hated to admit it, I clearly couldn’t figure this one out on my own.
I got up and went into the kitchen. I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to tell her (I mean, we never even officially had the talk). But I figured I’d wing it.
In the kitchen, I found mom hunched over the table, LexisNexis and Westlaw printouts spread out all around her, and a legal brief so edited with red pen that it looked like someone had opened a vein and bled on it.
Honestly, the thought made me a little hungry.
She looked up sharply when I walked in. “You look better. More.” She held out her cup. I poured.
“Um, Mom?”
“Damn it!”
I jumped back. “What?”
She looked up as if she’d totally forgotten I was there. “These damn first years. Why do they let them out of law school if they don’t even have a basic grasp of the law? Not to mention how to write a sentence.” She pointed her pen at me. “If you ever give a partner a brief this sloppy, you will never hear the end of it from me.”
“No worries,” I said, since I never intended to turn any legal briefs in to anybody. “Um, Mom? There’s, uh, something I want to talk to you about.”
She looked up again, and I saw irritation in her eyes. Then I guess she remembered that at home she’s not just a lawyer, because the irritation vanished and she smiled. I had the impression for a second that her face was going to crack (my mom doesn’t smile a lot), but at least she was looking at me.
“Right. Yeah. Well. You see, the thing is that I—”
“Elizabeth, I know what this is about.”
“You do?” She couldn’t possibly.
“I do, and I’m sorry.” She got up and moved across the kitchen for her purse. “I can’t believe I had to go out of town on your birthday.”
I blinked. Considering everything that had happened, my birthday wasn’t exactly a priority. Still, she had a point. It was my sixteenth birthday. She was totally supposed to have been home.
“I got you this, though.” She held out an envelope. I took it and opened it. Inside I found a Barnes & Noble gift card for two hundred dollars. The credit card receipt was in there, too. I recognized my mom’s secretary’s name. So much for the personal touch.
“I know how much you love your books. Forgive me?”
I nodded, numb. “Sure. Thanks. This is great.”
“Was that it?” she asked. “What you wanted to talk about? I have to file this brief tomorrow and it’s in terrible shape.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “That’s all it was.” And, yeah, maybe I’m being a little overly sensitive, but I figured if my mom couldn’t take ten minutes to buy me a birthday present herself, I really didn’t expect she could find the time to deal with any more of my problems.
I blinked again, suddenly really glad about that whole no-crying thing.
“Anything else?” She tapped her pen on the brief. Apparently, I was cramping her style.
“No. I’ll just get something to drink.” All of a sudden, I was incredibly thirsty. I mean ravenously thirsty.
Mom grunted and went back to her brief as I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a jug of milk. I poured a tall glass and then took a big gulp. It was cool, refreshing . . . and made me completely sick!
My stomach cramped worse than I’ve ever felt during my time of the month. I dropped the glass and it shattered on the wooden floor, sending milk and shards flying everywhere. I didn’t care, I was on my knees, hunched over, vomiting my guts up.
The pain didn’t let up until every tiny bit of milk had been purged, and then I leaned back against the cabinet and tried not to totally freak out.
“Beth! Are you sick?”
Hello? This is the reasoning ability of one of the greatest legal minds in the country? “Um, yeah.”
“Well, then off to bed.” She got up and patted my shoulder. “Go on, now. If you’re sick, you need sleep.”
Escape was more like it, and I was just about to go hide out in my room when the phone rang. I snatched it up out of habit, then immediately froze when I heard the voice on the other end. “Elizabeth? Good. You made it home.”
“Stephen.” I glanced at my mom and refrained from screaming at him like a raving lunatic. It wasn’t easy, though. I wanted to move out of the kitchen, but the kitchen phone is the old-fashioned kind, and I was tethered there by a yellow curlicue cord.
“How are you adjusting?” His tone was completely blah, like he was talking about a change in my schedule, rather than a change in my life.
“Oh, just peachy,” I said, gritting my teeth and trying to smile casually at my mom.
“Glad to hear it. Listen, I need you at the bleachers tomorrow at sundown.” Totally normal. Like nothing bad had happened at all. Was this guy mental?
“That sounds like oodles of fun, Stephen. But I think I’ll be busy.” I was using my sickly sweet voice. The one that I use when I want people to know I think they’re a raving idiot. “In fact, I’m busy now. Gotta go. Bye.”
“Wait.
I was about to hang up when his voice came through. So loud, in fact, that my mom looked up, too. I smiled sheepishly and shoved the phone back against my ear.
“What?”
“I don’t think you understand,” he said, all of that false nice-boy tone now gone. “I made you. When I say jump, you ask how high.”
“Excuse me?”
“You can try it the other way, but I don’t think you’ll like the results. Bad things happen to vampires who don’t follow their master’s orders.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Master. Stephen Wills was my master?
Suddenly, I really wanted another shower.
“So, I’ll ask again. Where are you going to be at sundown tomorrow, Elizabeth?”
“The bleachers,” I said. “Thanks so much for the invitation.”
As comebacks went, it was pretty lame, but he laughed. “You’re going to work out just fine,” he said. “And I think you’ll even like it, once you get used to it.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. Then he hung up. I stood there a second, staring at the phone.
What the freaking hell just happened?
I mean, this was getting worse and worse by the minute! Stephen didn’t pick me to be on the cheerleading squad! He didn’t even pick me to be his date!
He didn’t even really want a date. He just wanted a minion.
How’s that for sick irony? The creep who killed me was now the head vampire in my personal vampire hierarchy. And the rules of my new little community of fiends—excuse me, friends—required me to do his bidding.
He ruined my life, screwed up my plans for college, and completely botched my birthday. And now he expects me to lift a finger just because he says so?
Um, I don’t think so.
Stephen Wills was dead meat. Literally and figuratively. Him, his idiot jock cohorts, and those uber-bitches, Tamara McKnight and Stacy Plunkett.
What’s that saying? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Maybe so. But believe me, it’s also true that hell hath no fury like a valedictorian screwed out of a chance to go to college.
Trust me on that.
They were going down, and somehow I was getting my life back.
I didn’t know how exactly, but I wasn’t worried. I’m smart, remember? And as it turns out, I had all the time in the world.