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“Oh,” I say stupidly, trying to figure out if I should stay or leave now that my one mission has been foiled.
“You want to take a seat?” the woman asks politely, noticing that I’m clearly having trouble deciding.
I look around the diner as if grasping for something to hold onto, something to help me make up my mind. And I seehim. In one of the shaded booths, I see the neighbor and his friend sitting opposite him.
I hardly know if this is a sign to stay, or a sign to run home immediately and not look back, but I don’t really get the chance to figure that out.
The neighbor’s friend catches sight of me, and a huge grin spreads over his face as he waves me over. It’s not the kind of wave that I can pretend not to have seen, either. There’s nothing subtle in the over-enthusiastic gesture, and my chest tightens knowing I’m going to have to go over there.
If ordering orange juice and tuna salad was nerve-wracking, I can only imagine how this is going to go. As nervous as I am to stay here in this crowded diner, I know the only thing more suspicious than staying here now is leaving.
“Uh, sorry,” I say to the woman at the counter. “Just a second.”
I approach the booth with as much confidence as I can muster, smiling with what I hope is the ease of a perfectly friendly, normal woman. Not someone who’s running from the people who tried to kill her.
“Uh, hi,” I say, greeting the friend who’s still grinning up at me.
The neighbor is finishing the last of what looks like a strawberry milkshake, and he looks up. Clearly, he hadn’t even noticed his friend gesturing.
When our eyes meet, I can feel my cheeks grow red, and I desperately hope he doesn’t notice. Since he’s presumably a vampire though, I can’t imagine he’d have trouble recognizing a rush of blood in a human’s face.
I suddenly realize that’s probably not a strawberry milkshake.
“Sit down, sit down,” comes the admonition from the friend, and before I know it, I’m being bundled into the booth beside him and staring straight across the table at the neighbor who, despite being a vampire, is drop-dead gorgeous. Literally, I suppose.
He immediately smiles uncomfortably and drops his gaze. But his friend more than makes up for the obvious awkwardness descending upon the table.
“I’m Marcel,” the friend says, still grinning. “I’m a friend of Emile’s.”
He gestures to the hot vampire, who looks up from the napkin at the sound of his name.
“Nice to meet you, miss,” he says, holding out his hand.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was cringing at his own greeting, but I’m too worried about my own role in this conversation to really pay much attention.
“Clarissa,” I reply, grasping his hand. I'm trying to say it as if I’ve said that name every day for the duration of my life. “I’m Clarissa.”
This time it’s my turn to cringe and hope the others don’t notice.
“So you moved into the house next door to Emile,” Marcel says, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the woman beside him isn’t sure of her own name.
I breathe a sigh of relief and try to remember the well-practiced backstory Marshall Todd has run me through over and over again.
“Yeah, I just moved over from, well, everywhere, really,” I say with a self-conscious grin that I’ve also practiced. “I’ve been traveling around pretty much my whole life and figured I’d try to settle down for a while. Put down some roots, you know.”
Marcel chuckles, but it’s Emile’s laugh that makes me smile. I hate to lie to either of them, but I have to admit there’s a huge wave of relief that washes over me when I see they’re buying my story.
“You still want lunch, honey?” comes a matronly voice from above me, and I look up to see the woman from the counter hovering over our table. She’s holding a glass of orange juice and a plate of tuna salad.
“Oh, sorry,” I tell her. “Yes, please.”
“Good,” she says with a smile of mock chastisement before setting my food down in front of me.
I feel a little rude for eating after Marcel and Emile have already finished, but I’m also relieved at the interruption. If I’m eating, I can’t be talking, which means I can’t be accidentally giving myself away.
“How about you two?” I ask, hoping to shift the conversation away from me. “Are you both from here?”
“Well, I am,” says Marcel. “Born and raised. But Emile’s a little more exotic.”
