“Well, it feels more normal than all this business about my blood being meant for Peter,” I grumbled. “How is any part of me meant for anything? Who decided that?”
“I wish I knew.” His expression slacked for a second, but then he shook his head. “Look, let’s just not think about any of that. You look exhausted. Why don’t we just do something nice and relaxing this evening?”
“Like what?” I was exhausted, and truthfully, anything I would be up for doing had to require very little movement. The thought of spending the evening just curled up somewhere with Jack sounded positively wonderful, and thankfully, he was on the same wave-length.
“How about we just go back to my house and watch a movie? I have like a million. I’m sure there’s a couple in there you’d be up to watching.”
“That sounds fantastic,” I admitted. I had turned to face him and leaned my head against the seat. “How long are Ezra and Peter gone for?”
“I don’t know,” Jack shrugged. “Probably a week, I guess. Why?”
“What do they do? For business, I mean. How did they make all your money?” I had spent so much time talking about the preternatural that I never really had a chance to ask about the very practical things, like how they supported themselves.
“Ezra’s been working for, you know, hundreds of years doing various things, so he managed to build up quite the nest egg before I was even born.
Right now, they’re doing a lot of stocks and trading and stuff I don’t understand.
They own a couple companies over seas. Everything they do gets shifted and moved around every couple years, though, and I just never bothered to follow it.
They can’t stay with the same people for too long, or people’ll catch on that they haven’t changed.” He didn’t know very much about what they did, but it sounded very deliberate. He didn’t care very much for business, and he was very lucky that he was in a family that allowed plenty of leisure of time.
“Why don’t you have a job?” I wondered.
“Cause I don’t really need to work. Whenever I find something that interests me, I do it, but in the end, we have plenty of money. Ezra and Peter don’t even have to work. We live well below our means, and you’ve seen how we live. But Ezra thinks that since we’re going to live forever, we might as well be prepared for it,” he shrugged, then looked over at me. “Why? Does it bother you that I don’t work?”
“No, I’m just curious about all the machinations of your life.” We had reached his house, and he drove up into the driveway. Turning off the car, he grinned wickedly.
“Well, you know pretty much everything about my life.” He got out of the car, preparing to escape with that total fabrication of an answer.
“I know hardly anything about your life!” I scoffed, hurrying out after him.
“I’m a vampire and I drive too fast and I’m awesome on the Xbox.” He spread his arms expansively, as if that explained it all. “That’s all you really need to know about me.”
“I hardly think that’s true.” I raised an eyebrow at him, causing him to laugh, but he just shook his head and went into the house. Matilda was already waiting at the door for him. He just gave her a quick scratch and kept on walking, so she followed at his heels.
“Mae, I’m back!” Jack announced, going into the kitchen.
“I’m just doing some laundry!” Mae shouted from somewhere at the other end of the house.
“I hate it when you guys are mundane.” I wrinkled my nose. “Vampires are supposed to be big and powerful and sexy and dangerous.”
“And buy a new outfit everyday?” Jack sneered. He had finally crouched down so he could give Matilda the attention she was dying for, and I leaned back against the counter. “That doesn’t really seem practical.”
“Exactly! Vampires aren’t supposed to be practical! You’re supernatural beings with magical powers! You don’t do laundry or play video games! You jump off cliffs and have sex with really attractive women!”
“I get it,” Jack laughed. “I had this preconceived notion about what a vampire should be, but it was all based on glamorized Hollywood ideals. Nothing could be sexy and cool all the time, especially not something that’s immortal.
Do you know how exhausting and expensive it would be to wear designer gowns and crowned jewels everyday for six hundred years? And what would be the point? Who would I be trying to impress? I’m a damn vampire! I’m not gonna put on black eyeliner and grow my hair long just so some stupid humans think I’m sexy. They think I am anyway.” He winked exaggeratedly at me, so I laughed and started walking away.
“Where are these alleged millions of movies anyway?” I headed towards the living room, even though I hadn’t seen a single movie in there. I assumed they were hidden away in some magic closet, because it seemed like the kind of house with hidden doorways.
“Most of them are in my room, actually.” He stopped me at the stairs and nodded up to his room. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I’m the movie buff in the family. Well, Mae is a little bit, but she only likes things with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, she really does act like she’s eighty-years- old.”
“I heard that!” Mae was walking towards us with a laundry basket overflowing with clothes, and she thrust them at Jack. “These are yours, by the way. You had a pair of tan Dickies that were covered in blood and I couldn’t get it out.”
“Oh, that must be from when I went to the club.” He started looking through the basket of clothes casually, but my eyes widened. It was one thing to know that he drank blood. It was a different thing entirely to know that his clothes had been ruined because he had drinking blood from a human being.
“Sometimes Jack goes down to the vampire club on Hennepin Ave.” Mae had noticed the shocked look on my face, so naturally, she reached out and pushed my hair back. “A lot of the girls down there are donors, but the ones that aren’t don’t mind. But sometimes when you hit an artery, things can get a little messy.”
“But if you hit an artery, don’t they die?” I must’ve continued looking freaked out, because Jack started getting frustrated. He shifted the basket to his other arm and shook his head.
“Our saliva has chemicals in it. Like mosquitoes and vampire bats have anesthetic in theirs. We have that, plus more to make the wound heal insanely fast. The marks are usually completely gone within an hour or two of the bite.”
He grew bored with the conversation, so he turned and started jogging up the stairs. “Come on, Alice, if you want a say in what we watch.”
“I’d go with him, or he’s liable to make you watch The Lost Boys,” Mae warned me.
“Hey, it’s a good movie!” Jack shouted, and I was inclined to agree. Just the same, I’d rather watch something a little less blood sucking. The whole point of the night was to not think about all the weird stuff going on.
I hurried up the stairs after him and fought the urge to go into Peter’s room. Even standing in the hall, I could smell that tangy, sweet aroma that Peter left behind, but I quickly pushed it out of mind before my heart would beat all funny and Jack would freak out on me. In order for this friendship to continue, I could not think about Peter.
“I’m just gonna put these away real quick,” Jack informed me when I came into his room. “I wouldn’t want my vampire image to be spoiled by wrinkled clothes.”
The door was open to his massive walk-in closet, and he had started hanging up some of his tee shirts. I walked over to peer inside, and I wasn’t surprised to find that his wardrobe consisted almost entirely of tee shirts, Dickies, and various shades of Converse.
“You have a billion dollars, and you have the wardrobe of a twelve-year old.”
“Yeah, well, I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old too, so-” He stuck his tongue out at me and then went back to hanging up his clothes.
“You showed me.” I rolled my eyes and went over to flop down on his over-stuffed bed. Naturally, it was completely unmade, but it had to be the most comfortable thing I had ever laid on. The sheets were probably Egyptian with a ten million thread count. Not that I knew what any of that meant, but I know it made things more comfortable for some reason. My sheets came from Target, though, and I slept just fine on them. “Oh my god! This bed is like a cloud!”
“I’m glad you like it.” He had finished hanging things up and flicked off the light in his closet before walking out into his room. “I would’ve made it if I’d known you’d be rolling around in it.”
“I’m not rolling around,” I muttered, but I sat up so I wouldn’t be tempted to.
