Never Bite a Boy on the First Date Read online

  “Really?” I said. “You’re just naturally that terrifying?”

  Now that he was out in the hall, I could see his face, but that didn’t help because I’d never seen him before. He looked like he was my age, with coffee-colored skin and close-cropped, curly black hair and a dancer’s body, which I mention only because his shirt was open and I could see his abs above his jeans, and these were definitely abs worth mentioning.

  I found myself thinking, Wow, I hope he’s a vampire! I mean, not that I knew anything about vampire-vampire dating, but it had to be less complicated than dating a human, right? Unless he was the killer vampire. Hot or not, I don’t date murderers.

  “You startled me,” he said, with a hint of a smile. His voice matched his scent, sort of moody and layered, like he would have fit in perfectly as a saxophone player in an underground 1920s jazz club.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “You startled me.”

  “I did,” he said. “I apologize.” The unspoken question hung in the air between us. What the hell are you doing here? I would have asked, but I was trying to come up with a good answer myself. Plus I was a little distracted by how perfectly shaped his eyes were. If Michelangelo and Rembrandt and the top casting directors in Hollywood all got together to design the perfect face, they’d probably start with this guy’s eyes. It was kind of impossible not to gaze dreamily into them.

  “I’m Daniel,” he said.

  “I’m Kira,” I said, although in my daze I nearly slipped and told him my real name, from back when I was a human. “Do you go to school here?”

  And then he took my hands in his and helped me to my feet.

  Wait, let me go over that one more time.

  His long, elegant hands slid over mine, gripped my fingers gently, and lifted me up in such a smooth motion that I was standing before I’d even had time to recover from the softness and strength of his hands.

  Which is why I nearly missed his answer—but seriously, right then his hands seemed a lot more important than anything he could possibly say.

  “I’m new. Tomorrow’s my first day,” he said, and he let go of my hands. Which was disappointing, but it sure seemed like he’d held them a moment longer than necessary…hadn’t he?

  “Oh,” I said. “Tomorrow. Wow.” Yeah. There were many things about this situation that were short-circuiting my ability to form sentences.

  “Yes,” he said. “Not quite the welcome I was expecting.” He made a small gesture toward the window, which reminded us both that we were standing in the midst of a murder scene in the middle of the night. We stared at each other again for a long moment.

  I broke first. “Oh,” I said, like it had just occurred to me, “you must think it’s so weird that I’m here, don’t you?” Implied: Because I think it’s pretty weird that you’re here. I laughed nervously. “Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but I…needed a book from my locker.”

  He cocked one elegant eyebrow at me. “A book?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Shakespeare. Macbeth. Very gloomy. Lots of mu—” Don’t say murder! “—umbling. Mumbling about…witches…and stuff. Have you read it?” Oh, that was suave. Clever and romantic, all in one fell swoop.

  “A long time ago,” he said with a half smile.

  “Well, we have a test tomorrow, and I have to finish reading it, so I thought I’d get it now.” I trailed off lamely, wondering how much he had seen of me climbing through the window and searching the floor.

  “Oh,” he said. “Of course. I’d have thought they’d cancel any tests scheduled for tomorrow, but it’s always wise to be prepared.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s me! Prepared.” For tests, yes. For strange, hot boys in moonlit hallways, not so much.

  There was another pause. Two could play this little game. I lifted an eyebrow at him.

  He laughed softly. “All right. I have a confession to make.”

  Score! Murder solved! Well, that was much easier than I’d expected. Wilhelm and Olympia would be so proud. Assuming I made it out of here alive. Well, you know…“alive.”

  “I heard about the murder,” Daniel said, gesturing again, “and I’m afraid I was curious. I thought I should know more about my new school. I like figuring things out myself…I guess you could say I’m an amateur detective.” He rubbed his head, looking convincingly sheepish. “Do you think I’m terribly strange now?”

  Yes, but don’t worry, the “terribly hot” part makes up for it. I couldn’t figure out whether he was lying. It sounded about as believable as my story—which is to say, not very.

  “No,” I lied. “I bet lots of other students would have done it if they could have figured out how to get in. Um…how did you get in?”

  “Through the boys’ locker room,” Daniel said, pointing down. “The lock was already broken, so I just walked in.”

  HMMMMMMM.

  Possibility one: Daniel was lying, and he’d broken the lock himself to get in, which he could easily do if he were a vampire.

  Possibility two: Some other vampire, possibly of the murderous variety, had broken the lock earlier this evening to come up here and revisit the crime scene, as I hear criminals do all the time.

  Possibility three: That’s how Tex got in last night—as did the vampire who killed him.

  “Isn’t that how you got in?” Daniel said innocently.

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “Of course. Lucky break for me.”

  He glanced at my hands. “So…where’s the book?”

  “I was just going to get it,” I said, trying to look all casual. He followed me down the hall and around the corner to my locker. I laughed awkwardly. “I guess I wanted to look at the crime scene, too.”

  “A fellow investigator,” he said with that hint of a smile again.

  I rummaged through my messy locker until I found Macbeth. The clang of the door closing echoed way too loudly along the empty hall. Daniel and I both went really quiet for a moment, as if he was also listening to be sure we were alone in the school.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. He led the way to the nearest stairwell, and we padded softly down to the bottom floor. I noticed that he didn’t seem hesitant about where to go—he led the way straight through the last door, turned left, and headed right for the locker room. Either he had a good sense of direction, or he knew this school better than he was letting on.

  I’d never been in a boys’ locker room before, not even when I was dating Zach, king of high school athletics back in Georgia. To put it politely, the smell was much…stronger…than in the girls’ locker room. Daniel chivalrously held the door open for me, so I had a chance to glance around when we first went in. I spotted a row of mirrors over the sinks, off in an alcove. Wouldn’t it be useful if I could spot Daniel in one of those…or not spot him, as the case may be—if, say, it turned out he had no reflection? But getting any closer would run the risk that he’d notice my lack of reflection, too.

  I watched him as he wove through the benches. Was he avoiding the mirrors like I was? If he was, he was pretty casual about it. We made it to the door that led onto the football field, and I checked out the broken lock. It looked like a super-strength job—as if someone had just grabbed the door and pulled, snapping the lock mechanism in half.

  Outside, the clouds were clearing up, and rays of moonlight sliced across the football field in front of us. Daniel paused in an oval of silver light and looked down at me.

  “It was nice to meet you, Kira,” he said.

  “Yeah, you, too. Welcome to the school,” I added wryly. “It’s usually not quite this exciting. Um—I mean awful. Well, okay, it’s usually awful, but in a different, really boring way. Um, but I’m sure you’ll love it.” Okay, stop talking now.

  “I’m looking forward to it a lot more now that I’ve met you,” he said. A slow smile spread across his face. It was a sexy smile, a candles-and-black-lace smile—the polar opposite of Zach’s dopey let’s do it in a closet leer.

  “See you tomo
rrow, then,” I said, smiling back.

  He touched his forehead in a little salute and started to walk away across the football field.

  “Daniel,” I called after he’d gone a couple of paces. He turned and looked at me, walking backward. “Did you find anything upstairs? I mean—about the murder?”

  He smiled the same smile again, but for some reason, this time it sent chills down my spine.

  “Oh,” he said. “I have some theories.”

  Then the moon went behind another cloud, and when it emerged again, Daniel was gone.

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  Chapter 6

  I spent the rest of the night trying to make lists of clues to help me solve the mystery. To give you an idea of how well that went, here’s what my “Daniel” list looked like:

  DANIEL

  Hot

  Likes hanging out at murder scenes at night

  Really hot

  Says he wants to be a detective

  Great abs

  Starting school right after the murder—suspicious?

  Extremely, totally, remarkably hot

  And here’s another list:

  SMILEY GUY

  Looked at the crime scene v. suspiciously

  Also very hot

  Where have these hot boys been hiding?

  Too smiley to be a vampire?

  Really cute smile

  Find out name…investigate further…critically important: great abs or not?

  Like, seriously cute smile

  So it wasn’t exactly Nancy Drew–caliber work. Perhaps you can tell that I’d been stuck with Zach for the last six months of moving and hiding and not meeting hot new guys, so I was having some side effects. I don’t normally obsess over abs that much. At least I don’t think I do. Then again, my experience with hot-guy abs is fairly limited so far. Presumably in, like, a century or so, I’ll be all blasé: Oh yeah, abs, whatever—been there, done that.

  I checked Tex’s blog again to see what the last entry said. Scrolling back, I saw that he usually posted twice a day—once in the morning to record his breakfast and morning workout, and once in the evening to talk about what else he’d eaten, how totally kickass he was, and what sports he’d watched that day. He’d posted the last entry on the morning of the day he died.

  It said:

  Toaster waffles, bacon, and a protein shake for breakfast. Measured my biceps again–still the same as yesterday’s. LAME. Think I’ll go for another swim before school. Just because I quit the now totally loser-filled swim team doesn’t mean I have to stay out of the pool, right? I feel like shooting some hoops this afternoon. That’d be good for my biceps, right? Huh. Still hungry. Maybe I’ll see if there’s any leftover pizza in the fridge. Go Sox!

  Well, that told me nothing, although it did make me hungry. Birds were starting to twitter outside, and the pale blue light coming through my blinds told me it was dawn. I hid my clue sheets in my desk and went downstairs to ferret out some breakfast. Breakfast in a vampire household…let’s just say: Sigh.

  Okay, brace yourselves for a really hilarious joke here: Being a vampire sucks. Ahahahaha, I know, so clever. I bet you’ve never heard that before.

  But seriously? It sucks.

  For one thing, I used to be a vegetarian. I mean, I’d been a vegetarian for only, like, four months when I was turned, but still. I had to go directly from “Peace, haters! Cows are our friends! Let the chickens live! Fish deserve rights!” to “Oh, yes, thanks, I would love another gallon of blood for lunch. Yum.”

  Also, blood is disgusting.

  I used to make myself drink a glass of orange juice every day because I thought it was good for me and it would help me live longer (ha ha ha ha…ha), even though I hated the taste. Well. Right now I would give anything to drown in an ocean of orange juice rather than have to take another sip of disgusting, cold, ooky pig’s blood.

  But I have no choice. We need blood every day to live. I literally have to choke down at least two glasses of blood every morning, just to make it through the day.

  I’ve tried disguising it in lots of creative ways, the way my vampire family does—in milkshakes or on top of ice cream (highly not recommended) or scrambled into an omelet or baked into pancakes. But it is still blood and it is awful and plus then the pancakes or ice cream or eggs are totally ruined. So now I just hold my nose, pour it down, and eat as much as I can of something else afterward to get rid of the taste.

  In the old days, vampires got their blood from people, of course. It’s a lot more exciting and it tastes much better that way, and a vampire needs to do that only about once a month to survive. But it’s hard to be subtle about six vampires feeding in one town once a month, plus, if we start, Olympia is sure we won’t be able to stop. So instead she sends Bert out on blood runs to towns that are at least two to four hours away to buy animal blood in bulk, which just barely sustains us and is also completely disgusting.

  When I got downstairs, Olympia was rummaging in the fridge and Crystal was slicing tomatoes. Bert was sitting at the kitchen island, pouring blood into his cereal bowl. His horn-rimmed glasses were perched on his nose, and he was peering at the Wall Street Journal. Bert and Olympia manage our finances in some mysterious way that involves shadow companies and long-held stocks and stakes in lots of big corporations (obviously not those kinds of stakes), so we have plenty of money and none of the adult vampires have to work if they don’t want to.

  I’m sure I’ll appreciate that once I’m done with high school and I can live a charming life of leisure, too. But right now I just picture them sleeping peacefully all day while I suffer through band in a hot music room that smells like sweaty marching uniforms, and it makes me wildly jealous.

  I sat down and stared gloomily at the blood going gloop-gloop-gloop over Bert’s cornflakes.

  “It’s grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-oss!” I joked.

  Of course, nobody got my brilliant Tony the Tiger reference, because none of these people have ever watched enough television. Bert gave me a puzzled look and then went back to his paper.

  My mom would have laughed. I can’t believe I miss her.

  “Hey, Kira,” Crystal said brightly. “Olympia says you’re solving a mystery!” Crystal was twenty when she died, in 1926—I’m not sure how, because in my house, we don’t talk about how we died. Except for Zach, who ought to be embarrassed about it but apparently isn’t, since he brings it up incessantly. I was surprised when he remembered all the details of his death; I barely remember anything about the car accident that killed me.

  Anyway, it’s a good thing Crystal got to stick around for the sixties, because that was the perfect decade for her. I think she’s hoping it’ll come back sometime. She still wears tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottoms as often as she can. She has pale blond hair that curls around her chin, and she likes to come into my room and dance in the middle of the night, no matter what music I’m listening to. She’ll dance to anything. As vampire sisters go, she’s not bad. Certainly better than Apolla, the very quiet little sister I had when I was alive. She was ten when I died and was known around our house as “the good one.”

  Crystal is my favorite member of my new family Although the early morning perkiness—actually, the all-the-time perkiness—is probably going to get old after a couple of decades.

  “Yup,” I said. “A mystery. Wheeee.”

  Crystal found Bert sometime during the Great Depression and turned him into a vampire after they fell in love. This turned out much better for her than it did for me with Zach. Which is sort of mysterious, since Bert is a buttoned-up math nerd and Crystal is a ditzy free spirit. I never would have put them together, but here we are, like, seventy years later, and unfortunately they still act schmoopy around each other all the time.

  Crystal dropped a kiss on Bert’s head as she sat down with us. Her morning blood was spread on three toasted tomato sandwiches. I couldn’t even look at them.

  Olympia plunked a tall glass of blood on the
island beside me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to heat it for you?” she asked, like she does every morning.

  “No, thanks,” I said. It might taste more like living blood that way, but when it’s hot I can’t drink it as fast and get it over with.

  “Where are you going to start?” Crystal asked me, bubbling with excitement. “Do you have a list of suspects? Are you going to interrogate them?”

  “Don’t forget the one we saw yesterday,” Olympia said.

  “Rowan something,” I said. “I know. I thought I’d try to meet him today. Crystal, would you help me with my makeup?”

  “Oooo, yes!” Crystal chirped, bouncing up and down.

  Not having a reflection anymore is a huge pain in the butt. You try getting ready for high school every morning with no mirror. I’ve mostly given up on wearing makeup these days; otherwise I’d have to wake up Crystal every morning to do it for me. It’s pretty difficult to put on eyeliner when you can’t even tell where your eyes are. But I figured that on this occasion it would be helpful to be as cute as possible—you know, if I was going to subtly investigate cute boys. Not for flirting purposes, of course. Just for clue-finding and mystery-solving, yes, sir.

  The good news is, I can still see my clothes, although in the mirror they kind of look like they’re floating in space, which is not always helpful. Yes, a vampire has no reflection, but our clothes still do. I mean, why would our clothes suddenly not show up in mirrors? Wouldn’t that be weird? It’s not like anybody sucked all the blood out of my sweaters or anything.

  The same is true for anything we put on ourselves—earrings, makeup, et cetera. For instance, Olympia recommends that we all dye our hair regularly. The fake color shows up in mirrors, which is enough to trick most people. If, out of the corner of their eyes, they catch clothes and hair going by in a mirror, they probably won’t notice the missing face and hands.

  Of course, I think Olympia was picturing a nice brown or blond or even red for me. She dyes her own hair black, which if you ask me is a little cliché.