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“Uh, thanks, but no. I’m so sorry.” Fiona was so embarrassed her cheeks had to be brilliant red. She said she was sorry one last time, and hurried over to a trash can, threw out her empty soda cup, and went into the clothing store, wanting to disappear, thinking what a catastrophe that had been!
* * *
Arman and his friends watched as the girl tore off.
“She was cute,” Ruric said.
“She’s human.” Arman headed for the men’s room. His friends followed him. “You could wait for me outside the men’s room.”
Levka said, “We’re going to, unless you need help or direction.”
Arman shook his head. Levka often led their little band of princely vampires.
“Not me,” Stasio said. “I’ll go get you a new shirt.”
“Thanks.” In the meantime, Arman took off his shirt in the restroom, planning just to rinse it out and dry it under a dryer if Stasio couldn’t find anything in a hurry. But Stasio used the vampire way to move—disappearing and reappearing before Arman had even finished washing the soda out of his shirt. At least his pants and shoes only had a little bit of the soda splashed on them.
“Here,” Stasio said. “It’s not black, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.”
“Did you appear in front of anyone?” Arman asked him, eyeing the pastel pink shirt. “Pink? Really?”
Stasio smiled, then was serious. “No one saw me. I was careful. I appeared behind a rack of clothes. And then I grabbed the first shirt I could find.”
Arman tossed the sticky soda-covered one away and pulled the new shirt over his head. “You know as long as we live…” He quickly washed away the soda splatter off his pants and shoes.
“Yeah, yeah, karma, and all that.” Stasio laughed and they headed out of the men’s room.
Ruric and Levka smiled.
“Looking good,” Ruric said.
They watched as Fiona came out of the shop with a package and saw her glance in their direction, her eyes widening when she saw Arman had changed into a pink shirt. She smiled. Arman smiled at her.
But then some guy joined her. An older teen. He was carrying a package from the phone store and led her to the food court.
“Do you think it’s a boyfriend?” Stasio asked.
“Brother,” Ruric said.
“Why do you think they’re related?” Arman asked Ruric. “They don’t look like they were at all.” Not as dark-haired and eyed as the young man was, and as fair as Fiona was.
“I heard her talking to him about spilling a drink on a guy and her brother said that he’d never known his sister to be that clumsy. Was it on purpose? Then she poked at him with her package in a humorous way.”
Arman had seen her poke at him. He didn’t know why, but he felt drawn to her. There was just something that…well, he couldn’t pinpoint what intrigued him so much about her.
Stasio slapped him on the back. “She’s not one of our kind.”
Levka smiled. “Come on. Let’s grab some lunch, but not at the food court, and then we’ll get what we need and head out of here.”
“To the vampire club tonight in the warehouse district?” Ruric asked.
“Yeah. To the club tonight,” Levka said. “But we don’t want to get into any trouble this time.”
Arman hoped Levka hadn’t just jinxed them.
1
Two years later, Scotland
