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I squinted up at the still-sealed cellar door and saw that the scant light around the edge had gone pink. The sun would be setting soon.
I scooted off the bed, no small feat with Collin’s arms wrapped around my middle. It was a “coyote ugly” situation, except that my partner was quite attractive but technically dead. After tugging and pulling for nearly ten minutes, I finally managed to pry myself loose and rolled off the feedsacks and onto my face. I slid into my creased, soiled jeans and shirt, wincing as I made my way up the cellar stairs.
Clearly, the next time I had sex with a vampire, I was going to need to stretch first.
Outside, I heard a truck engine gunning. I removed the ax handle and lifted the cellar door just a fraction. Peeking out, I saw the farmer’s truck ambling down the gravel driveway.
The neat little yard was bathed in dusky twilight. I eyed the little champagne-colored sedan enviously, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to take it. Particularly with those cheerful little garden gnomes glaring at me from the neglected flower beds. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t a thief. And even if I’d only been guessing the night before, and the good farmer’s wife had run off with the mailman, I wouldn’t be able to stand the idea that I’d taken a reminder from the man who owned this house.
In the picture I’d formed in my head, they’d been happy together. They’d lived a long life filled with happy holidays, grandchildren, and long chatty breakfasts, and now the farmer was patiently biding his time until he could see her again.
When I got home, I’d have to remove The Notebook from my Netflix queue. Clearly, the repeat viewings were messing with my head.
I looked back at Collin’s sleeping form. I was cautiously optimistic about what had happened the night before. I enjoyed Collin. I enjoyed spending time with him. And he seemed amused, if not intrigued, by my ability to sow destruction wherever I went. Maybe he would be interested in pursuing some sort of relationship when this was all over. Was I in love with him? Not yet. But I wanted more than a “friends with benefits” arrangement.
I wanted to know that if I came home at the end of a long day, I could call him and laugh with him over my latest misadventure. I wanted to tell someone how I really felt, not just the things my family and friends wanted to hear but my real fears and desires … things I’d already shared with him after knowing him for only three days.
For the first time in my life, I wanted someone I could really share my life with. I hadn’t had that with Jason. I couldn’t let him see what I was really like, the hair that took two hours to straighten, the clothes I’d ruined with darkroom chemicals, the gecko tattoo that I’d let my freshman roommate give me on a dare. But Collin would probably find those stories funny as hell.
I plucked at the chain around my neck and suddenly knew how we were going to get home.
After clicking on the camping lamp I searched the shelves for breakfast. As delicious as they were, I didn’t think I could handle another jar of spiced peaches. I selected what looked like a jar of apple-pie filling and popped the top, carefully sliding the contents into my mouth. It was ambrosial, especially when paired with the lovely domestic distilled water. I ate half the jar while I tried to make out the rest of the dimly lit room. It seemed to be used strictly for feed storage and storm supplies. The only boxes I could make out stood in the corner. I took up the camping lamp and edged closer to them. In neat block print, the box was labeled, “MAEVIS, CLOTHES, GOODWILL.”
I glanced down at my wrinkled, stained clothes and wondered whether Maevis would begrudge me a fresh outfit. With my luck, stealing a dead woman’s clothes would result in a hell of a haunting. But I balanced that against the thought of wearing these jeans another day and decided that I was willing to risk it. I opened the box to find an array of church dresses, housecoats, khaki pants, and mom jeans. There was a beautiful bottle-green double-knit suit in my size, but the idea of taking what was probably Maevis’s best dress in her prime shamed me. I picked a more casual red-and-white check dress with a wide, pointed white collar. It was the sort of dress I could see Maevis wearing to a Sunday picnic. Unfortunately, I had to wear my boots with it, which ruined the effect.
I reached the bottom of the box and had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. The farmer was also donating some vacation clothes to Goodwill. I cast an evil glance my vampire’s way. From the looks of them, they’d fit Collin perfectly.
“Come on,” I called from the farmer’s front door. “We have to get moving before he comes back!”
Collin’s muffled voice came floating up from the cellar. “I look ridiculous.”
“I look like Lucille Ball’s manly cousin,” I yelled back. “It can’t be that bad.”
I opened up the little mailbox labeled “McGregor” near the door. Despite the fact that it was the only cash I had on hand, I left my last remaining twenty-dollar bill inside, where Mr. McGregor was sure to find it. It eased my conscience a bit for helping ourselves to his food and clothes.
Collin emerged in an orange and blue Hawaiian shirt, his long swimmer’s legs sticking out of blue plaid Bermuda shorts. I ruthlessly pinched my lips together to keep my braying laugh from escaping. He looked like a pale, pissed-off tourist. “Do you have any idea what happened to my clothes while I was sleeping?”
Currently, his pants were at the bottom of the burn barrel near the garage. And the scarecrow had received a brand-new hand-tailored shirt. “I couldn’t find them when I woke up,” I said, my eyes as wide and innocent as a baby seal’s. “Maybe a barn cat took them?”
“A barn cat?” he repeated, raising his eyebrow. “A barn cat that managed to get through the barred cellar door, take my clothes—my clothes only, mind you—and then escape unnoticed while we slept?”
“A very strong, very selective barn cat,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “We’re just lucky I found these clothes in the Goodwill box.”
“Hmph.” He sniffed. “A vindictive little kitten who is still angry about an obliterated car, more like.”
I grabbed his hand and led him down the gravel drive toward the highway. “Don’t be silly. What sort of kitten has a car?”
The walk into town was long and arduous, but the sky was clear and the moon full. Collin told me stories about his marches with the king’s army, trekking through what the British soldiers saw as the ends of the earth. We made good time, with Collin carrying me on his back for the last two miles. He was worried about me being too tired and insisted that it was payment for drinking my blood the night before without express permission.
“We haven’t talked about the events of last night, by the way,” he said, tickling my knees a bit while he adjusted my weight over his back.
“I don’t think I’m ready to,” I admitted. “I’m not saying I regret it, because I absolutely don’t. But I’d like to wait until we’ve finished this before we tackle something as heavy as the Talk.”
“Why do I get the feeling that, in your head, that’s ‘Talk’ with a capital T?”
“Because you’re psychic,” I said, grinning cheekily. “And a discussion involving words like ‘feelings’ and ‘commitment’ deserves a capitalized title.” He shuddered beneath my hands. “I felt that.”
We arrived on the outskirts of a town called Hader’s Knob, which, it turned out, was in Missouri and only three hours away from the Hollow. We were fortunate to find just what I was looking for in the seedier part of said outskirts. In a town called Hader’s Knob, there were bound to be seedy outskirts.
