“I didn’t think anyone lived in that apartment,” Lucy said. “I’ve never seen anyone going in or coming out of it.”
“He only comes out at night, duh,” Jessica said. “I see him sometimes when I go out for a walk.”
Lucy squinted. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”
“I didn’t think you would believe me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“See?” Jessica threw up her hands. “Anyway, I don’t actually know him. We haven’t officially met. But if you guys want, I can try to talk to him. Ask him what he thinks we should do, how we can help Jason and Aaron.”
Dara’s pretty face scrunched in a frown. “If you don’t actually know this man, Jessica, then how do you know he’s a vampire?”
“Well,” Jessica sighed, “he’s really beautiful. Tall. Black hair, blue eyes. Otherworldly-looking. And like I said, I only ever see him at night.”
Lucy and Dara waited a few beats. When Jessica didn’t offer anything else, Lucy said, “That’s it? He’s good looking and he only comes out at night, so obviously he must be a vampire? What if he’s just some hot guy with a night job?”
Jessica made a face. “Well, no, those aren’t the only two reasons I think he might be undead.” She took a deep breath, let it out in a huff. “A few months ago—gosh, I guess it’s actually been closer to a year now—I saw something weird. Something I wasn’t supposed to.” And then she told them. The story she’d been keeping to herself all these months, about the incident that had instantly turned entire portions of her worldview on their ear.
It had been late, but Jessica, a perpetual night owl, had been out for a habitual stroll around her apartment complex. She had a routine course that took her past every major landmark on the property, including the twenty-four-hour recreation area across from the swimming pool. The complex tried to sell this space to prospective residents as a “lounge,” but it was really just a dreary-looking TV room, with balding, stain-spotted carpet, a few shabby sofas, and a flat screen mounted on one wall. There was also a dusty bookcase in a corner, next to a vending machine.
As Jessica had crossed the courtyard that fateful night, she’d heard someone grumbling and what sounded like a fist banging against a metal surface. Peering ahead into the lounge, she’d seen Mr. Hambly, a retired man that lived on the first floor of her building, beating up the snack machine. Shouting an obscenity, Hambly had grabbed the machine and started rocking it from side to side, yelling at it to give him his “(bleeping) potater chips.” Jessica had watched, alarmed, as the machine had pitched back and forth, tilting more precipitously with each wrench of Mr. Hambly’s surprisingly sturdy upper body. She’d begun jogging across the courtyard, about to scream out a warning for Mr. Hambly to, for goodness’ sake, stop doing that, when the machine had reached the point of no return and begun tipping over…
Jessica had stopped in her tracks, paralyzed by fear. She’d clapped her hands over her mouth in horror, certain she was about to witness the elderly man being crushed to death. But then she’d caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye. More of a blur, really. And the machine had come to a complete standstill.
Jessica’s neighbor, the mysterious handsome man who lived across the hallway from her, had stood in the center of the lounge in his customary gray t-shirt and jeans—she had never seen him wear anything else—with his large muscles hardly straining as, with one hand, he caught the vending machine and pushed it back up against the wall. Then he’d reached inside and grabbed the potato chips that had finally fallen free, handed them to the old man, and steered him over to one of the couches. He’d leaned over to say something to Mr. Hambly.
As he’d straightened back up again, he’d caught sight of Jessica standing in the courtyard, her hands still pressed to her lips.
Her neighbor’s eyes had glinted fiercely, and she’d felt a prickle of terror skip up her spine. He’d lifted a hand, almost as if he were waving at her, and he’d stared even more intensely at her, his eyelids lowering as his irises began to glow. She’d backed away across the flagstones, rushed back around the parking lot to her building, scampered upstairs to her apartment, and locked herself inside. She’d never told anyone what she had seen that night. Until now.
“You see what I’m talking about?” she said to Dara and Lucy. “He’s obviously got super-speed. And superhuman strength. I saw it with my own two eyes!”
Lucy gave her a doubtful look. “That doesn’t mean he’s a vampire.”
“Okay, so what if he isn’t? He’s obviously something. Something not human.”
“Which means he could be dangerous,” Dara said. “If you approach him, he could hurt you.”
Jessica gave a dismissive shake of her head. “I seriously doubt that. He knows I’m aware of his secret, right? And he obviously knows where I live. But I must have passed him around the complex a dozen times since then, and he’s always just ignored me! He’s certainly never threatened me to keep quiet or anything like that. And if he’s the type to eat people, why would he go to the trouble of saving some helpless old man and then getting him his Ruffles? To me, that all says he’s not evil. I think maybe he can help us.”
The other two exchanged another glance. They were obviously confused and extremely skeptical, but it was also clear they were both desperate for solutions. Dara was the one to finally say something. “Well, I can’t speak for Lucy, but I know I’d appreciate anything that might help Jason. No matter how weird it is, no matter how crazy.”
Jessica nodded, approving of this can-do attitude, and then she and Dara both looked expectantly at Lucy.
Lucy’s face worked in indecision for a
