Chapter Eighteen – Luna
Chapter Eighteen
Luna
I was outside Jack’s apartment at ten-forty-five, keys in hand. I was pretty sure I’d beaten Jack back here—I put my ear to the door and didn’t hear anyone moving around inside.
Which didn’t entirely prove that Paco wasn’t just inside the door, awake and waiting to be fed. I decided to wait—and ten minutes later, Jack showed up, smelling like sex.
“You smell like girl,” I complained, as he pulled out his keys.
“Occupational hazard,” he said, unlocking the door for the both of us. He held it open for me in a gentlemanly fashion.
“Oh no. You first,” I said, sweeping him in with my arms. He gave me a look like I was being ridiculous, but went in, still holding the door so I had to slink by him.
I should’ve used it as an opportunity to grind up, but it was clear someone else had fed him well already.
It wasn’t just the lingering scent of sex, but the way he held himself. He was positively smug.
Someday, I would get the chance to beat that smugness out of him.
“He wasn’t changed until three in the morning, Luna.” Jack explained, taking the lead into the apartment, flipping on lights and kicking off his boots.
“Have you ever seen someone wake up before?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, crossing my arms. I hadn’t either. But I did know that my predecessor as Rosalie’s favorite had been ‘accidentally’ eaten by Tamo when he’d woken up, and I wasn’t going out like that. “I don’t know how precise things are. I don’t want to take chances.”
“About that,” Jack said, looking at me. “I need to go talk to Maya tonight.”
“And?”
“That’s why I asked you to come home. I want you to stay here. Just in case.”
My eyes went wide. “No way.”
Jack ignored me and fearlessly went back into his bedroom where Paco slept to change his clothes. “I’m not going to miss his waking. It’s just that I’ve got to stop Maya from making a huge mistake.”
“Bigger than leaving me here with a fresh vampire?”
“I think so.”
I didn’t. But I could tell by the way he’d set his shoulders when he emerged that he’d already made up his mind. “What do I do if he wakes up?” I asked.
“He won’t. But if he’s like me, even though he’ll be hungry, he’ll wake up sane. The real hunger doesn’t hit for an hour or so. So you’ll be able to talk him down.” He started pulling his boots back on.
“What if he’s not like you?” I asked, letting my very real panic tinge my voice. “And remember—he doesn’t know me.”
“At least he knows about vampires though. So he won’t require too much explanation—and he’ll remember what happened to him, too.”
“That he was almost beaten to death by my former Mistress? That’s just great.” I crossed my arms and held myself, while peering into the darkness beyond. “Jack, I thought you were starting to like me.”
“I do like you, Luna. I just don’t want to like you. Sorry if that doesn’t make sense.” He stood up—after tucking a knife into his boot.
I rocked back and forth, full of indecision. My Master had told me to bind him—what could possibly be more binding than this kind of favor? But what kind of favor could possibly be worse?
“Jack, if I do this, I’m literally risking my life for you—and there’s nothing official between us. So what do I get out of the deal? It’s all well and good for you to order that boy around, but I know what you can offer—and I know what you’re asking of me now.”
He hesitated. “All right. If you do this for me—if he wakes, and you shepherd him through it until I get back—then we can talk, all right? Like equals.”
Like…equals? Rosalie and I had never had a single conversation like equals. I didn’t trust it. “And if he doesn’t wake? Doesn’t it say a lot about me that you’re willing to leave him with me and take that chance?”
Jack considered this, running a hair through his dark hair. “Fair enough. It does. Equal talking, later tonight. No matter what.” He stuck out his hand. I took it, and we shook.
“You’d better not be going off to die. Or leaving me here to.”
“Neither are in the plans tonight,” he said with a cocksure smile, leaving me behind.
Jack locked the door behind him. I waited until surely he was down the hall and unlocked it, worried I might need to bolt.
The door to the bedroom was open, but everything beyond it dark. I sat on the couch, staring into the darkness like it was a grave.
I had gone and looked, of course.
Years of living with Rosalie under the same roof and I couldn’t have told you where she slept during the day if you’d put a gun to my head and a knife to my throat. That was the kind of operation she ran.
But Jack? Just a box. On his bed. To keep the cat out.
He’d tacked up particle board over the room’s only window.
I hadn’t looked on the first day, because it’d just felt too wrong, but by the second I’d wound myself up enough to do it—I ran in, and threw the light switch on, intellectually knowing that he wouldn’t know I’d done it, but still afraid of getting caught.
After five minutes of not getting busted for that, I’d gone over and pulled the lid of his silly box back, and found both him and his man dead inside.
They were dead-dead. Jack looked asleep, but Paco—well, it was a good thing Jack loved him, right?
Because love was blind, and Paco looked worse for the wear.
I mean, I knew that, I’d seen him get beaten—I just sort of assumed becoming a vampire would fix all that.
It would, wouldn’t it? Or would he have a scar and a puffy eye for life—or his unlife?
I guessed I’d find out tonight. Hopefully later—much later.
Sugar went in, and I harbored a dark fantasy about using her as the canary in Paco’s vampire-coal mine, but she returned with a stuffed mouse and started batting it across the room, blissfully unaware of the danger I was in.
She danced with it across the carpeting and then launched it under the couch.
I sighed, as she sat back and looked at me expectantly.
I looked from the darkness of the bedroom to her and back again.
She meowed, knowing she was being ignored.
I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. I got off of the couch, knelt beside it, and reached under it to get the mouse out. I grabbed its tail and slung it across the room as I retook my perch on the couch’s end, and watched her play with it again.
“I’m jealous of you,” I told her.
“Why?” croaked a voice from the bedroom.
I fucking told Jack! I sat on the couch for a long moment, frozen in terror. “Pa-co?” I asked, making his name a question.
“What the hell is this box for?” he asked, his voice thick from disuse.
“That’s a long story. Do you…remember what happened to you?”
A pause, as dead neurons began firing again. “Yes. Where is Jack?”
“He had something he had to do. He didn’t think you’d wake up until later tonight. But I’m his friend, and he left me behind to look after you.” I stood, moving incrementally closer to the front door. “Do you know what you are?”
A breathed sigh. “I get the feeling I do, yes. Unfortunately.”
It was all I could do not to close my eyes and grind my teeth. Here I needed to be turned before an illness ruined me—and here I was with another goddamned reluctant vampire.
Everything in the world was unfair.
“Okay, well. You’re probably going to be hungry soon. Just please don’t kill the messenger, okay?”
There was a rattle from the bedroom as he got out of the box in the dark. “No promises,” he said, then after a pause. “That was a joke, by the way.”
“Of course it was,” I muttered to myself, and then said, “Vampires are known masters of comedy,” sarcastically, much more loudly.
He lurched into the hallway. “I feel disgusting. I want to take a shower.” He looked better, but sort of scabby—and he saw where I was standing, halfway to the front door. “Are you going to be here when I’m done?”
I swallowed and walked back to the couch to sit down. “As long as you promise not to eat me.”
“No promises,” he repeated, and shuffled down the hall. “Also, joking.”
“Also super funny, ha, ha,” I shouted after him. I started pacing as soon as the shower turned on.
To be completely honest, I paced halfway down the hall outside.
I could ditch Paco. He was a grown man, and it wasn’t like he could really re-die this evening—he clearly knew the score.
But I wanted my Master to turn me, which meant I needed Jack to owe me—and I actually came up with a plan, so I paced back in time to hear the water turn off.
Paco came out to walk back to Jack’s room, wearing a towel. He stopped, seeing me—and I wondered what it was like for him to watch me with a vampire’s eyes. Did he…want me? Possibly not, if he was into Jack.
But blood was the great equalizer, and Rosalie had told me more than once that watching mine soar inside me was beautiful.
“My name is Luna,” I announced, on the off chance that him knowing my name would make him less murdery.
He shook himself, said, “Hey Luna,” then went inside the bedroom.
He returned wearing some of Jack’s clothing—it was all a little tight on him, because he was more muscular than Jack was, but not tight in a bad way. And the scabs had washed off and the eye had de-puffed—all in all, he was a good looking man, and the way Jack’s jeans fit him didn’t hurt.
“So—what now?” he asked from the doorway.
I’d checked my phone while he was pulling clothes on. Was Jack done by now? On his way home? He didn’t even have my phone number to text me.
“Are you…hungry?” I asked carefully.
His gaze flicked over me. “I could eat.”
“About that then,” I said. “Let’s go.”