Of Light and Darkness: The Vampire's Daughter

“I ran into Evangeline. She was carrying a pile of stuffing back to her house.” He shrugged.

Charlotte frowned. “That pile of stuffing was Edwin. But you need to be quiet, Aiden!” Valek would surely hear them, if he hadn’t already.

He smiled. “I will if you come down here.”

Charlotte sighed. How was she going to resist that? “Fine, but not so close to the house!”

“Agreed.”

“Where should I meet you, then?”

“At my house.”

Charlotte looked at her watch. It was one-thirty in the morning. “Isn’t your mother going to be furious with you for having houseguests? It’s amazingly late!” She shoved her watch out toward him, expecting him to see the little ticking hands from where he stood, a full story below her.

“My parents aren’t home.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked the pebbles by his feet. “Look, you’re wasting more time by arguing with me.”

“Fine! I’ll meet you at your house in five minutes if you leave now!”

He smiled up at her. She watched his silhouette disappear back into the trees. Her heart fluttered. She closed her window and turned to see Valek standing once again at her threshold.

She gasped. “Valek! What—?”

“What does Aiden want with you at this hour?” he asked, dryly. His usually excitable features were still bland as ever.

Charlotte sank again. Of course Valek heard them. “Oh…um….” She couldn’t lie to him, he would know. “He wants me to come over.” She fidgeted under the bandages on her shoulders.

“At this hour?”

Valek looked so handsome leaning up against the baroque scrollwork around the doorframe like he was a part of it. It crushed her that she couldn’t just sit down with him and simply talk this out. She wasn’t ready, the humiliation too fresh.

“He doesn’t have school in the morning, and he knows this is the only time I’m ever awake,” she explained.

Valek shrugged, the edge of his words biting. “Have a splendid time.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. He was never this easy. Was he just trying really hard to give her some space? “All right,” she said, making sure he was serious.

He didn’t say anything further.

“Then I guess I’ll be back a little later. I won’t stay out too long.” She took only a tentative step to the door in case he really was having more of a difficult time than he was letting on.

“Be careful.” His voice wavered.

She decided she didn’t want to say anything else to him. Instead, she cleared her throat and uncomfortably brushed past him. But before she got to the top of the stairs, she turned back around to see that he was still watching her, like one of those haunted paintings whose eyes followed you no matter where you stood in the room. Suddenly guilty, she ran up to him and delicately wrapped her arms around his middle. He reluctantly hugged her back.

“Not too long,” he whispered.

She looked up at him before descending down the staircase and out the front door.

The night outside was getting cold, a common autumn evening. Brown and orange leaves crunched under Charlotte’s sneakers as she walked down the road toward the suburb district. The warm glow of the floating, bewitched street lanterns stretched her silhouette long and black across the road. She lifted her hands in the air like claws and studied her shadow. What if she were a monster?

Hands from nowhere reached from the darkness suddenly and wrapped around Charlotte’s face, concealing her scream. She fought with the grasp, only to find she knew those hands all too well.

Aiden released her, laughing.

She punched him hard in the arm. “So what’s your theory, pond scum?”

“Wait until we get to my house,” he whispered, looking around.

“What is wrong with you? You were just screaming at the top of your lungs at my house!”

“Shut up!” He put a hand to her mouth again. “Noisy thing.” She made a face and knocked it away. He wound his fingers between hers and led her a little faster down the street.

“You’re acting really weird.”

She grimaced at their hands woven together. She didn’t like it at all. It felt too warm, somehow. Too normal.

“Oh, so you get to be a freak all the time and I don’t?” He smiled wryly, eyes still darting about the emptiness of the streets.

“Funny, but let’s remember who the freak really is.” She flicked his slightly pointed ear.

“You’re the only human living in a town of Elves and Witches. I would say you’re the freak in this case.”

The two made their way to his house without any more words. It was quiet and dark with the promise of missing parents.

Once inside, he led her into the den where they both sat together on the warm, knit area rug, an olive color on the dusty, wooden floor. He put a finger to his lips. “Don’t make a sound. My brothers and sisters are finally sleeping.” He rolled his eyes.

“So, where are your parents?” Charlotte pried.

“My mom’s in Prague…visiting my dad.”

“Why is your dad in Prague?”

“He works there.”

“He works there?” She blanched.

“It’s a really long story.” He cut her off, and she glowered at him. “He works there at the Regime headquarters. My dad is fourth in command. The Wizard’s Regime headquarters is in Prague.” His explanation seemed to ramble together.

Charlotte frowned, trying to wrap her head around what he was telling her. She had never actually met Mr. Price. “The Regime? But I thought—”

“Listen, someday I’ll tell you about it, but right now we need to talk about something else.” His bright features faded into seriousness.

Charlotte’s eyebrows mashed together. She had never seen Aiden act this way. She watched him adjust his position so he sat on his knees, his tawny hair feathering a little over his eyes.

The room was completely dark, except for the small amount of moonlight washing in through the foggy windowpane. An apple tree outside cast a veiny shadow on the floor and across her friend’s face.

Aiden apprehensively took Charlotte’s hand again. It made her blush.

She grinned. Her stomach flipped. “What are you doing?”

“I–I wanted to….” He struggled to get the words out. Now she could see his face was turning red. “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said, gazing at her from underneath his ruddy-colored bangs.

She giggled quietly, nervously. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, Evangeline told me about Valek….”

“It’s fine. Really. I think it was just one of those things that happens when you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time…with the wrong person.” She met his gaze on the last word, but they both looked down immediately.

Aiden gently put his warm hand on her cheek — again, much different than the feeling of Valek’s. Her heart jump-started in her chest.

“Almost getting killed isn’t just ‘one of those things’,” he said.

She wanted so badly to argue with him. She wanted to fight him away and tell him he and his mother were wrong about Valek, but she couldn’t, because this time he was right.

Valek had scared her within an inch of her life. She understood he had instincts he couldn’t control, but maybe that was exactly what made him impossible to be around now.

“Is your shoulder okay?” he asked, his face inching closer to hers. She could feel his breath on her lips. The