"Catlyn."
He had grown up speaking Romanian and Russian and a bunch of other languages I didn"t know, and while he spoke perfect English, his accent added an extra syllable to my name, changing it into something strange and exotic. Despite everything we had been through, seeing him still occasionally made me feel as if I were dreaming. That at any moment I would open my eyes and find myself in my bedroom, and he would be gone.
"Jesse."
"You"re late." He held out his hand.
"Better that than never." I curled my fingers around his, shivering a little with how good it felt to touch him. "I"ve missed you."
"How long have you missed me?" he asked as he drew me inside.
"Nine days, three hours, ten minutes and I made myself stop counting the seconds." It didn"t matter how long we were apart; I could feel him every night, almost from the moment he woke. "I got the job in town."
Jesse picked me up like I weighed no more than a kitten and whirled around, laughing with me.
"I never doubted you would," he said as he set me back down on my feet. "But I am glad it is decided."
Getting the job at the bookstore had been the simplest solution to our problem, namely of trying to see each other without my brothers or Jesse"s parents finding out about it. Our families regarded each other as natural enemies, and because of that felt they had the right to keep us apart. My brothers and Jesse"s parents had taken extreme measures to do just that, too. They hadn"t just erased my memories of moving to Lost Lake, meeting Jesse and falling in love with him; they"d made everyone in town forget me, Jesse, and almost everything that had happened since my brothers and I had moved to Lost Lake.
They didn"t understand who we were, or why we were together. It didn"t matter to Jesse that I was a Van Helsing, the granddaughter of a family of vampire hunters. It didn"t matter to me that Jesse was only one step away from becoming a vampire himself. We both knew, almost from the moment we first met, that we were meant to be together. The world might have wanted us to be monsters, but when we were together we were just a girl and a boy who were crazy about each other.
"There is one thing," I said to Jesse. "Either Trick or Gray will be waiting for me at the bus stop every night I work. So you won"t be able to drive me home." Which had been part of our original plan when Jesse told me about the job at Mrs. Frost"s.
"We will still have thirty hours every week for ourselves." He smiled and touched my cheek. "I think by the new year you will be completely bored with me."
"Oh, sure, that"s going to happen." I rolled my eyes. "I have to recite Shakespeare"s twenty-ninth sonnet about a hundred times a day just so I don"t think about you when Trick is around me."
We knew my oldest brother had the power to make me forget things; what I still didn"t know for sure was if he could also read my thoughts whenever he wanted. I suspected he couldn"t, because he would have known about me meeting Jesse from the beginning, but I wasn"t a hundred percent positive yet. And it wasn"t like I could ask my brother about his weird Van Helsing ability, so to be safe I never let myself think about Jesse around him but instead thought of the sonnet.
"I found out something else today that might help us," I told Jesse. "Mrs. Frost told me that she just bought a huge collection of rare books from the estate of a guy who was into the occult. I think we should look through them and see if we can find out anything else about vampires and the Van Helsings." Something occurred to me. "Did you or your parents know Julian Hargraves?"
"We knew the family, of course, but after they came to Lost Lake they kept very much to themselves," Jesse admitted. "Julian never married or had children, and after his parents pa.s.sed away he inherited their home. Toward the end of his life he became quite reclusive. What are you hoping to learn from his books?"
"I want to know if there"s a cure for this. Not just for you," I added. "For me, too."
My ability, which I still didn"t quite understand, somehow gave me the power to attract and control cats. Not just the pet-type of cat, I had discovered, but any feline. Before erasing my memory, Trick had told me that all cats responded to my thoughts, but that was the sum total of what I knew.
Paul Raven, Jesse"s father, had told me that all the Van Helsing children were born with special abilities that helped them hunt and destroy vampires. He thought I would use mine on Jesse, but we"d already pa.s.sed that test. Wounded, desperate for blood and nearly out of control, Jesse had begged me in the boathouse on Halloween night to kill him. Instead, I"d given him my blood. At the time I hadn"t cared about the consequences-drinking human blood was supposed to be the final step that would transform Jesse into a vampire-but then we"d learned that my blood wasn"t altogether human.
My father had been infected with vampire blood, just like Jesse and his parents. And because vampire blood also ran through my veins, drinking it hadn"t pushed Jesse the rest of the way into becoming a full-fledged monster.
My heritage meant nothing to me. I didn"t want to be a vampire, a vampire hunter, or anything else besides a normal human girl. Jesse wanted to be human again, too. So if there was some way for us to be normal again, I was going to find it.
Do you have to find it tonight?
No, I thought back to him. Since Halloween night, Jesse and I could read each other"s minds. Part of a bond that formed between two vampires, it was just one more thing we were not supposed to be able to do.
It also still scared me, so I said out loud, "Let"s take a ride over to the lake cabin."
Four.
Jesse"s parents had given him the land we were riding
on, and hundreds of acres surrounding it, which contained dozens of old riding trails, overgrown pastures, empty barns and grain silos and even some abandoned old houses, like the cabin we found by one of the four lakes on the property.
Prince and Sali preferred racing to exploring, but once we took them on the narrow trail they fell into our usual riding positions, Jesse and Prince in the front and Sali and me following behind. Nothing ever bothered us, but sometimes my presence attracted some feral cats, lynxes and other felines to trail after us, so I kept my thoughts clear and calm. Once I had even drawn a Florida panther and her two cubs that lived on Jesse"s land to me, and while the horses didn"t spook easily, I didn"t want to disturb the big cat.
Not that any other, non-feline critter would bother us. Predators instinctively avoided vampires, Jesse had told me, and since I"d never had a run-in with anything I guessed they were the same with half-vampires. Then there was the connection we shared. Sometimes when Jesse and I were together I could almost feel it in the air, as if the two of us being close to each other generated a kind of unseen energy. He had many of the same powers that full vampires possessed, and I had my Van Helsing abilities, which Jesse"s father had once told me were still developing.
Into what, I didn"t know. Thinking about it only made me dread finding out.
The trees parted away from the trail, and over Jesse"s shoulder I saw the sagging roof of the old lakeside cabin, and reined in Sali.
The little lake was hardly more than a pond, but it had an interesting spiral shape. Strips of earth sprouting water gra.s.ses curved around the edge and formed some cl.u.s.ters in the center. It reminded me of a creek that had gotten tired of running and curled up for a long nap.
Jesse dismounted and tethered Prince to one of the remaining fence posts, and reached up to help me down. I could swing off by myself, of course, but I liked holding his hand. Once we tied up Sali we walked down by the water. The moonlight lit the surface of the murky water, turning it into silver-white crystal.
"In the spring it won"t be this quiet," he predicted as he put his arm around my shoulders. "There will be birds and crickets and frogs, and after dark they become quite loud."
"I don"t care." I leaned my head against his shoulder. "I like the sounds they make."
He glanced down at me. "I will remind you of this when the frogs begin their mating season."
We walked over to the cabin, which Jesse had told me had been here since before his family had come to America in the late nineteenth century. Whoever had built it had used enormous oak trees, notching each end before stacking the trunks like Lincoln Logs. More split trunks had been stacked against a V-shaped frame to form the roof. While the walls of the cabin were still st.u.r.dy, the split trunks had slowly rotted over the years; many looked to be on the verge of collapsing.
Only a few narrow slots served as makeshift windows, and someone had blocked them with chunks of the same board that had been nailed over the warped latch-string door.
"I want to look inside," I told Jesse, who went to the door and tugged off one of the boards, as easily as if it were made of Styrofoam. "Why aren"t I as strong as you?"
He thought about it as he removed the other boards. "You are a girl."
A laugh burst out of me. "That has nothing to do with it and you know it, you chauvinist."
"It was the only answer I could think of. You ask hard questions." He set the boards out of our way and tried the door, which made a splintering sound and fell inside. A small cloud of dust billowed out around our feet, but nothing came running out.
"I should have brought a flashlight," I said as I peered inside. Because we both had excellent night vision, we never needed them. "Who do you think built this place?"
He breathed in and frowned. "Someone who killed animals. Perhaps a trapper or a hunter."
Jesse"s sense of smell, which was as keen as a vampire"s, could detect a drop of blood from across a room. Too much blood, especially human, made him shift into his predatory state. I saw his eyes darken, but they didn"t turn solid black as they would have if the blood were fresh.
"You don"t have to go inside," I told him. "I just want to see if it might work."
"As what?"
"A safe place." I stepped over the threshold and gingerly moved inside.
Except for what the wind had blown in through the narrow gap at the bottom of the door, the interior of the cabin was surprisingly clean. Split logs of wood with their flat sides up formed the floor; time had left a lot of cracks in them, but the wood still felt st.u.r.dy under my boots.
"Why do you need a safe place?"
"It"s not for me." I turned around to find Jesse right behind me. "It"s for you."
His teeth flashed. "All right, why would I need it?"
"I was thinking we could make it into a vault."
Although Jesse had most of the same powers as a full vampire, he also shared some of their weaknesses. Iron and garlic were poisonous to him, and any exposure to the sun"s rays burned him like fire. If he stayed out too long in the daylight, he would die. As he nearly had once when we"d been together, and Prince had suddenly bolted, leaving me and Jesse on foot in the woods near dawn.
I"d gotten him to safety in time, but I"d had to take my brother"s truck without permission and speed through town to get to Jesse"s boat to take him back to Raven Island, where I wasn"t welcome. Trick, who at that time still hadn"t known about me and Jesse, or why, had grounded me for weeks after that.
Jesse stopped smiling and took my hand in his, threading his fingers through mine. Instead of ridiculing my fairly ridiculous idea, he took a more serious look around. "The roof would have to be replaced and sealed from within, and any gaps in the walls filled. Such renovations would require many materials and supplies. Purchasing them and transporting them here without drawing anyone"s attention would be difficult."
"I was thinking that we could put something inside the cabin," I said. "It would just have to be light-proof, and big enough for you to get inside. That way we could leave the outside of the cabin like it is, as camouflage."
He nodded. "We could use a coffin."
I felt annoyed. "Don"t make bad jokes."
"I am quite serious, Catlyn," he a.s.sured me. "Vampires prefer caves and vaults, as they can be barricaded and safeguarded more easily. However, they have been known to use coffins and crypts as places of concealment and protection when they are caught away from their strongholds during the daylight hours. Humans have great respect for the dead, and never think of looking among them for those who prey on the living."
"You"re not a vampire." I couldn"t stand the thought of seeing him climb into a coffin. "We"ll think of something else."
A block table and chair sat empty by a brick-and-mud fireplace, and against the other wall I saw bunches of long branches that had been lashed together to form a short rectangular bed frame. Some pieces of rotted rope hanging from the branches at regular intervals must have once webbed the frame to support the bedding.
Something drew me to the hearth and the long wooden mantle set into the stone above it. On one corner someone had carefully carved a small heart into the edge of the mantle. On top of that an old, battered tin cup, coated brown with rust, sat next to an equally ancient lantern. The kerosene it had once held had long ago evaporated, but I could see something through the dusty gla.s.s that had been wedged behind it. I moved the lamp aside, creating another dust cloud, to expose a flat piece of metal.
I took it down and carefully blew away more dust to expose the image on the surface, which showed a man and a woman in very old-fashioned clothing. "Look at this." I handed it over to Jesse. "It"s almost like a photo."
"It is a photograph. These were called tin types. They printed the images on the metal to better preserve them." He studied the couple. "This man is wearing a uniform. He was a soldier. Perhaps he and his lady came here to escape the war between the states." He turned it over. "There are some letters and numbers engraved on the back." He swiped his thumb over the metal to wipe away some dirt. "And three words: "From Jacob"s heart.""
I touched the carved heart. "He was a romantic guy."
Outside the cabin, Sali uttered a short, plaintive whinny, her way of telling me that she was bored. Prince followed it up with his deeper, rumbling whicker.
I checked my watch, which read 3:20 a.m. "We"d better head back. It"ll be dawn in a few hours." I saw him pocket the tin type. "Why are you taking that?"
"It intrigues me. Perhaps I can use it to find out who they were." He gave the cabin a final glance. "And why they made their home here, in such a remote place."
Now he was making me curious. "Maybe they were like us, and this was the only way they could be together."
"Someday we will have more than a secret cabin in the woods, Catlyn." He touched my cheek. "I promise."
"Bugs love old books," Trick said at breakfast the next morning. "You"d better find out how she deals with them, because I doubt she uses insect spray."
I shrugged. "She probably shakes them out and swats them with the book."
"Yeah, but you hate bugs," Gray reminded me. "And you don"t want to run around the place shrieking. Someone will call your boyfriend."
Trick looked up from his paper. "What boyfriend?"
"He means Sheriff Yamah." I glared at Gray. "With whom I am not even friendly."
"That"s another thing." Trick set aside his paper. "I don"t want you letting any of your friends from school in the store while you"re working. This is a job, not a hangout for winter break."
"I promise, I will not let a single friend from school into the store." I hadn"t met Jesse at school, and he didn"t attend Tanglewood, so it wasn"t a lie. "All my hanging out will be done at other locations, like strip clubs, crack houses and biker bars."
His jaw tightened. "Does the owner have a security alarm?"
"I don"t know, Patrick." I folded my arms. "I didn"t exactly inspect the place from top to bottom yesterday. I was too busy, you know, trying to get the job?"
"Ask her about it," he told me, "and if she does have one, have her show you how to arm it while you"re working."
"I don"t think old books are at the top of the list of stuff burglars want." I looked at his face. "All right, all right, I"ll ask."
Finally my brothers went out to repair the damage Rika had caused to the training pen, which made me very happy. Being asked questions I didn"t want to answer was almost as annoying as listening to advice I didn"t need.
I spent the rest of the morning taking care of my daily ch.o.r.es before I went upstairs to tidy up my room and figure out what I was going to wear for work. That was when I realized I had a brand-new wardrobe problem.
Mrs. Frost had said to dress comfortably, which to me meant jeans and a T-shirt. Most of mine were worn, though, and while they were okay for home and school I felt I needed a different look for my job.
The good outfits in my Justin case would definitely be too dressy, and I couldn"t borrow anything from my brothers. Why hadn"t Trick or Gray been born a girl?
Just as I reached for the newest pair of jeans I owned, I felt a funny twinge inside my head, and glanced at the four old suitcases sitting on the shelf above the hangers. I used them whenever we moved, and they were empty ... at least, I was pretty sure they were.
I reached up and took down one, which was light as a feather, but opened it to be sure. The only thing I"d left inside were some balled-up socks that I"d outgrown in middle school. Feeling stupid, I closed the case and put it back. As I did I b.u.mped one corner into the others, which shifted-all except the largest one.
I pulled down the largest suitcase, which was so heavy I nearly dropped it, and lugged it out to my bed, where I opened it. A faint trace of some sweet perfume rose from the inside of the case, which was filled with stacks of neatly folded clothes: blouses, slacks, skirts and a couple of scarves. They all looked brand-new, and were in soft, pretty colors and nice fabrics; most of the blouses had lace cuffs and collars.
None of them, however, belonged to me. In fact, I"d never seen them before now.
"What"s that?"