His face twitched, his mouth jerking before he finally said, “It was…couple nights ago, at the Red Palm. You know that bar?”
“Yeah.” She sat down next to him. “You were drinking, weren’t you?” She remembered his rambling voicemail. Maybe that’s all this was, she thought. He’d partied a little too hard. Two days in a row. While she’d never known him to go out on benders, or to come into work hung over before, it wasn’t an unheard-of thing for a person to do. Maybe something had upset him enough to send him out on a crazy binge for a couple of days.
But Aaron frowned and said, “Yeah, but that wasn’t it.” He looked past Lucy, at the little University of Houston piggy bank squatting on his bookshelf, but his eyes seemed unfocused, like he wasn’t seeing anything but his memories. “There was a girl, there. At the Red Palm. Very pretty girl. Prettiest girl I’d ever seen, actually.”
“Oh.” Despite how worried she was, Lucy’s heart momentarily ached with jealousy.
Aaron’s frown deepened. “She took me outside. Into the alley. She kissed me and then…” His hand came up, brushing at his shirt collar.
Lucy noticed a few dark brownish spots staining the fabric. Blood, she thought, and reached to pull the collar away from his neck. A bandage clung to his skin. “She did something to you?” Lucy wondered if maybe he’d been cut somehow, or stabbed with a syringe. Drugged. She’d seen that, too, at the intervention center. It was appalling, some of the things people were willing to do to one another.
When he didn’t answer, Lucy tugged at the edge of the bandage. “I’m going to take this off, okay? I’m just going to have a look.” She peeled the plastic strip away as quickly as possible, surprised when he didn’t even flinch.
“Aaron,” she said, staring at his neck. “What is this?”
“A bite,” he said flatly. “From that girl.”
Lucy’s brows knit together. She started to shake her head. “I don’t…No, I don’t think a person bit you. This looks like…like a snake or a…baboon or something.”
“A baboon?”
“Something with fangs.”
“I know what it looks like.” He pulled away, training his feverish eyes on her. “And so do you. I know the kind of books you read. We talk about it all the time.”
Lucy’s pulse started to pound. “Aaron, you can’t mean—”
“That girl was a vampire,” he said, pointing his finger in her face. “She bit me.” Then he dropped his hand and lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “You don’t believe me, do you? I know you don’t. And no one else is going to, either. I’m going to die from this because no one will ever believe me. They’ll all think I’m crazy and…No one can help me.”
“Aaron, you are not going to die.”
“Yes, I am!” His voice was still quiet, unsteady with panic. “I can feel it happening already.” He held out his hands, gaping at them. “Or maybe I’m just turning into…into some sort of monster…” Fear flared in his eyes, and in Lucy’s heart. She watched him start to shiver.
And then her anger came flooding back, sluicing heat through her insides. Why would anyone do something to hurt Aaron? He was one of the kindest people she had ever met. He didn’t deserve this.
Whatever this was.
Lucy’s gaze cut to the hideous wounds marring his neck again. She tightened her jaw and clenched her hands against her thighs. Suddenly, she decided she didn’t care what had happened to him—if he’d been drugged or mugged or if it really had been a vampire who had bitten him—she was going to get to the bottom of it and make sure Aaron came out of this alright. It was the only thing she could do, the only course of action that would help her make any sense out of all this.
She wriggled closer and slipped her arm around his shoulders.
“Lucy, don’t.” He tried to jerk away. “I could be dangerous. You should get away from me.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be okay now. I’m not leaving you, and I’m not going to let anything else happen to you, either.” She stroked his face, running her hand across the light coating of stubble shadowing his cheek.
“Lucy…” he whispered and bit his lip.
She saw moisture start to gather in his eyes, and a new surge of compassion pressed against her chest. “Shhh, shhh…” She brushed a swift, featherlight kiss across his forehead. With her free hand, she slipped her phone out of her pocket.
Aaron’s frightened eyes fixated on the gadget. “What’re you doing?”
“Shh, it’s okay. I’m going to call Jessica.” When he started to protest, she added, “I’ve known her since I was nine, okay? She’s a good friend. We can trust her. And she always knows what to do.”
She wasn’t sure if Aaron had decided he trusted Jessica too, or if he’d just run out of energy to continue arguing, but he fell silent. Resting his head against Lucy’s shoulder, he let out a long breath and seemed to drift off to sleep. Or lose consciousness, she wasn’t sure which. All she knew was that he felt like a block of ice sitting next to her, but she refused to move away from him. No matter what else happened from here on in, she knew she wasn’t going to let him go. Not until he was okay again. Not until she had made this right.
“Come on, Jess,” she murmured under her breath as she listened to the phone at the bookstore ring. “Please pick up. Please, please…”
Chapter Five
“You know, you don’t seem nearly as freaked out by all of this as you probably should,” Lucy mused, following Jessica’s sleek ponytail deeper into the maze of bookshelves. Heeding her best friend’s advice, Lucy had headed to Book of Love as soon as possible, to conduct some “research” on how to help Aaron with his vampire problem. A problem Jessica seemed to be
