I
gave
him
a
you-have-got-to-be-
kidding-me look. “Let me think.” I tapped my finger on my lip. “Since calling people usually requires having someone to call, I’d say no, I don’t know how it is.” 552/695
He stopped pushing the cart abruptly, looking completely taken off-guard. A little sad even. And perhaps…wait a minute…hold on…guilty.
It occurred to me that my snide remarks were probably not the best way to get him to open up and tell me the truth. “Sorry,” I apologized, starting down the aisle again.
He followed, the wheels of the cart squeaking with every turn.
“So what happened after they got back and realized what was going on?” I asked, sidestepping around a cupcake display that was smack dab in the middle of the aisle.
He paused at the soda section. “They headed straight to Vegas. And they made it there just in time to stop Laylen and Aislin from getting killed. I guess when Aislin trans—” He stopped talking as a middle-aged woman with overly-bleached hair walked by us. A Death Walker in disguise perhaps.
Yeah, I don’t think so. “After Aislin went 553/695
back to get Laylen,” he continued on after the woman had disappeared around the corner of the aisle, “more Death Walkers showed up. There was this huge mess, and I guess she ended up breaking her crystal.” He grabbed a twelve pack of Coke and set in down in the cart.
If what he’d just told me had been a story in a book, it would’ve been the part where everything seemed to play out a little too perfectly. “So Marco, Sophia, and Stephan just, what? Showed up and saved the day?”
“Yeah, basically.” He picked up a loaf of bread from off of a shelf. “Stephan’s very good at the whole rescue thing. He has a gift for it.”
I chose to ignore that comment. “So why didn’t Stephan ever call you?” He reached for a box of cereal, then pulled back, glancing over his shoulder at me. “What do you mean?”
554/695
“When they were making the, like, eight hour drive to Vegas. Seems like plenty of time to call and give a heads up that they were on their way, if you ask me.”
“I don’t know…maybe because they were in a hurry.” He started to push the cart again, but quickly slammed on the brakes and spun around. “Gemma, what exactly is it you’re getting at?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know…I was just trying to point out the obvious, I guess. I mean, don’t you think it’s just a little bit strange that they didn’t call right when they’d figure out what was going on?”
He scowled at me. “What did Laylen tell you?”
“I already told you, nothing.”
“Then what the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
My plan was going so well….Not.
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“Just so you know,” he growled, “most of Laylen’s bitterness towards my father comes from fact that he made Laylen give up his position as a Keeper after he was turned into a vampire.”
“Stephan forced him to leave?” I asked, astounded.
“Well, we really couldn’t let him stay a Keeper when Keepers are the ones who are supposed to be protecting people from vampires.” He turned around and started pushing the cart down the aisle again.
It sounded completely cruel and heart-less, if you asked me. How could they kick him out just because he was a vampire, especially when he wasn’t evil? “That sounds really harsh.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said in a flat tone. “But that’s the way things have to be in order to do what’s right.”
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“Do you really believe that?” I asked. “Or are you just repeating someone else’s words.” Like say, hmm…your fathers.
He whirled around again, his eyes burning with fury. “Isn’t that what you’re doing right now—repeating Laylen’s words.”
“Well, Laylen’s words are the only truthful ones I’ve heard in the last fourteen years,” I snapped wildly with anger. So much for keeping calm.
“And how do you know that for sure.” He glared. “You’ve only known him for, like, a day.”
“What’s knowing someone for a certain amount of time got to do with whether or not they tell the truth? I’ve known you for, like, a month, and Marco and Sophia for, like, seventeen years.” I held up my hands in front of me, my voice dripping with bitterness. “Oh no, wait, I mean fourteen years.” We were standing so close to each other now that I could feel the warmth of his 557/695
breath against my cheeks. Electricity was rushing passionately through my veins. Alex opened his mouth, about to snap something back at me, but clamped it back shut as his gaze wandered over my shoulder.
I turned around and then cringed. I wasn’t sure how loud we’d been arguing, but apparently pretty loud because we’d drawn in an audience. At the end of the aisle, watching us with wide eyes and a curious expression was a teenage boy wearing a yellow Edmunds Grocery’s apron. The middle-aged woman that had passed by us earlier also stood there, staring at us, along with a younger girl that had fiery red hair.
“Whoops,” I muttered, turning back to Alex.
He gave me a yeah-no-kidding look, took me by the arm, and guided me down the aisle in the opposite direction as our little audience, pushing the cart along with us.
558/695
And that was about the end of our little conversation, as well as our grocery shop-ping expedition. Alex grabbed a few more things then headed to the checkout stand.
Neither one of us said anything. I could tell he was still mad, but so was I. I was bummed out too, because I hadn’t gotten a single useful thing out of him. In fact, I think I ended up even more confused than I already had been before I’d started my questioning. It’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on going into a career as a detective, because I really sucked at the interrogation thing.
At the checkout stand, I helped Alex empty out the cart onto the conveyer belt.
Then we waited as the cashier—a perky blonde
girl
wearing
too
much
makeup—scanned each item. She kept batting her eyelashes at Alex, then started babbling to him about her job being a total drag, all while throwing in the occasional giggle and hair flip.
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She was totally flirting with him.
It sucked.
As much as I hated to admit it, I was jealous of her flawless flirting ability that I so did not possess. The last and final straw was when Alex flashed an award winning smile at her, leaned over the counter, and started flirting back. I almost lost it. Yeah, I know, I had no claim over him, and I was supposed to be mad. And I was. But when you feel some unexplained, intense, electricity thingy every time you’re around a guy, being territ-orial is kind of a given.
To
avoid
watching
the
painful
scene—and also to avoid doing something really, really stupid—I wandered over to a nearby magazine stand and distracted myself by reading through the headlines. I hated this. I wished my life was normal. Why couldn’t my life be normal? Oh yeah, because I wasn’t.
560/695
I picked up a magazine and flipped to the page with an article titled “The Top 10
Greatest Hits of All Time.” Most of the songs were totally old school, but I appreciated the distraction.
“Interesting read?” A stranger’s voice, soft and melodious like velvet, floated over my shoulder.
I instantly put my guard up as I slowly turned around. Standing a little too close for comfort was a guy probably a few years older than me with sandy blonde hair and eyes as gold as the desert sand. Immediately, I sensed something was off about him but couldn’t place exactly what.
He smiled, flashing a set of perfectly straight, white teeth. “Hi. I didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I just haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new here?”
“Umm…yeah.” I said guardedly. It was so bizarre. People hardly ever approached 561/695