Page 17 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

Jesus Christ, I think. I almost say it, in fact.

And the only thing that stops me is how awestruck I know it will come out. I have to take a second, calm myself down. I can’t let her know how giddy she’s making me, how much I want to take her by the shoulders and say she is the best person I’ve ever known. She and Cassie both—that Sanctuary Cassie has made, that brightness they’ve brought to this town.

I’m so grateful to them.

And I hate that I have to stay skeptical.

“There is no way you’re going to cut anyone’s head off, Nance. I once saw you get upset because you stood on a snail. And that snail didn’t even sloop back together right after in a big swirl of bloody goo.”

“Oh gosh. Vampires really do that, huh.”

“They do. Or at least he does. He’s ancient; I don’t think he can be killed. Or contained. Or turned into something else, like a turnip with eyes or a sentient motorbike. He’s still always him and he still always wants to get me,” I say, but now I’m not so sure if I’m doing it to dissuade her at all.

After I’m done, I hold my breath.

Like I’m just waiting to see what she will say next.

“All right. Then we stop him wanting to,” she tells me.

And I know, I know, I know, even as I ask, that she has something in mind.

It’s the reason I speak. “Oh, and how do you propose we do that?” I say with just a hint of the sassiness I’m so used to relying on. Then I watch as she blows even those last shreds away.

“We erase every trace of you from his mind.”

CHAPTER SIX

I try to tell them both that this is all a terrible idea. But then they threaten to do it anyway, when I’m not even there. And there is just no way I can let that happen. All kinds of nightmare shit might befall them both. They’re still baby witches. They could slip and fall and fuck up their own memories. Or get murdered by him, because he somehow sees it coming.

I can well imagine turning up one morning and finding their dismembered bodies strewn around Cassie’s Sanctuary. And not even just theirs. They have boyfriends. They have familiars. One of them is a talking raccoon, with a name. There is no way in hell I’m signing up to find the bloody limbs of a tiny creature called Pod. No. Nope. Not a chance.

And that is how I find myself in Cassie’s Sanctuary—really just a cute cottage in the middle of the woods with a sign out front that only supernatural beings can see—on a cold Friday evening, sans Phone, of course, who is still not speaking to me for leaving her in the closet, being fussed over and reassured by two witches, a werewolf, a demon, a talking dog, a talking raccoon, and a talking microwave.

Though that last one is more of an insulter than a fussy reassurer.

Her hair looks evil, its little digital readout says, as Cassie flies between us with a great pile of ingredients in her arms. Her knack—the thing that facilitates her magic—is baking and cooking, and so she’s always throwing things in pots and getting flour in her hair and down her front.

I vastly prefer my own, which technically is dancing.

But as I’m a terrible dancer, and in every single life stumble back on my magic by making a movement-based ass of myself, I rarely tell people that. And I’m not going to tell anyone here, now, either, because the microwave is really starting to hurt the feelings I don’t have. Don’t you tell me to be nice, it says to Cassie, when Cassie insists. Look at her bangs, something horrible lurks under there, I can feel it.

I almost get up and bonk it one.

But Seth, Cassie’s incredibly handsome man, gets there first. He squirts it with what looks like glass cleaner, and the little readout says, Cough splutter cough cough.

“Sorry everything is so weird,” Seth says. Though he has to know that this is nothing compared to the things I’ve gotten used to over the centuries. Even with my sometimes foggy memory, you don’t soon forget finding your home infested by fairies or accidentally making a potato talk.

Wait until I show you what my phone can do, I almost say to him.

But in the end I just do my best to smile in a way similar to Nancy and Cassie when they do it. Cassie gets dimples. Nancy scrunches up her cute little nose. Their whole faces light up in a way I’m not sure mine is capable of. I have these super dark eyes that turn down at the corners, and lips like a coil of wire, and skin so pale it’s almost colorless.

I look haunted, not happy.

A silent movie star, still.

And now one surrounded by so much sound. So much vibrant life. Nancy is chattering away to her demon boyfriend, spells spilling out of the end of her talisman: a pen that writes silver threads onto the air. And as she does her demon lover—a man so tall and broad and blazing it hurts the eyes to look at him—is fuming about the danger she’s putting herself in.

He shoves his hands onto his hips.