His eyes glinted in the moonlight, and I wondered what I looked like to him—hair probably a mess, lips swollen, cheeks flushed. “That’s creepy,” I teased.
“That’s vampire.”
I laughed, then tugged him closer for another kiss.
“It’s late,” he said, his lips brushing mine as he spoke.
“I’m wide-awake.”
He laughed into the kiss, and I swallowed the sound, wanting to keep it. Wanting to keep this moment, this feeling, this impossible thing tight against me, safe where I could never lose it.
His hands slid up my sides, leaving trails of heat despite their coolness, and I shifted so I was more on top of him than beside him. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice pointed out thatwe were supposed to be sleeping, but the rest of my mind told that voice to shut up and go away.
My shirt was riding up. His hands were everywhere. And I was just thinking that maybe tonight would be the night we stopped being so damn responsible when my bedroom door flew open.
And Mom stood there.
For one horrible, frozen second, nobody moved. Then Mom’s eyes went wide—taking in me on top of Jared, both of us rumpled, my shirt twisted halfway up my torso, his hands frozen where they definitely should not have been when my mother was watching. Then his hands were gone, moved so fast I hadn’t even seen it happen. Vampire reflexes. Too bad they hadn’t kicked in earlier.
“I—,” Mom started, then stopped. She turned her head, looking very deliberately at the wall. “I should have knocked. I’m sorry.”
I scrambled off Jared so fast I nearly fell off the bed, yanking my shirt down. “Mom. This isn’t—we weren’t?—”
“I really don’t need details.” She was still staring at the wall, her jaw tight. I noticed that she had dirt on her clothes and her hair was escaping from its ponytail, and there was a leaf stuck near her temple. She’d been in the cemetery with Daddy—training, they called it. And I had to wonder if maybe they’d been doing what I’d been wanting to.
“Defcon 3,” Mom said. “Get downstairs.”
And then she was gone, the door swinging shut, her footsteps already retreating down the hall.
I stared at the closed door, my heart pounding and my face burning.
“Well,” Jared said, and there was a hint of amusement in his voice that made me want to throw a pillow at him.
“Don’t.” I grabbed my hoodie from the chair and yanked it on, as if covering up now would somehow undo what she’d already seen. “Just don’t.”
He was already on his feet, calm and composed, like he hadn’t just been caught with his hands up my shirt. “Defcon 3 isn’t that bad. You could handle Defcon 3 in your sleep.”
“I’m not freaking out about Defcon 3!” My voice came out higher than I intended. I took a breath, trying to get myself under control. “I’m freaking out about my mother walking in on us.”
“It’ll be okay. Kate likes me.”
I shot him a look as I shoved my feet into my sneakers. “Maybe not anymore.”
3
KATE
Iwas not going to think about it.
The Greatwater Mansion’s spooky halls stretched before me, all polished wood, marble, and shadows, the high windows letting in just enough moonlight to navigate by. I paused at Timmy’s door out of habit, then cracked it and listened to the soft rhythm of my little boy’s breathing and, faintly, Fran’s voice from the attached nursery, singing Elena back to sleep. My almost-five-year-old was safe with my friend-turned-nanny, dreaming of rockets and dinosaurs, blissfully unaware that something terrible had happened in the cemetery outside.
I closed the door softly, then continued down the hall, wishing I could be blissfully contemplating dinosaurs instead of?—
Nope. Really not thinking about it.
The mansion had once belonged to Theophilus Monroe, a descendant of San Diablo’s founding family with an unfortunate obsession for the occult. I could feel that history in the bones of the place—in the strange symbols inlaid in certain floor tiles, in the way shadows seemed to gather in corners even when the sunwas blazing outside. And in the spooky library that had come with the place, full of dark occult books filled with things I’ve neither seen nor heard of—and that says a lot.
My best friend Laura had once compared the mansion to the hotel fromThe Shining, and she wasn’t wrong.
