“Sunny, you’re probably totally overreacting,” she tells me unnecessarily for what seems the thousandth time tonight.
“I don’t care,” I reply, for the thousandth and first. “This was supposed to be the best night of my life. Now it’s turning out to be the worst.”
“Only if you let it.”
“Please don’t. You sound like Mom,” I grump. “What would you be doing if Jareth suddenly told you he was hooking up with some random trashy redheaded chick?”
Rayne thinks about it for a moment, then smiles evilly. “I’d claw out his eyes. Slowly and painfully. I mean, he’d probably grow them back, you know, being an immortal vampire and all. We’re so good at regeneration. But I bet it’d really hurt at the time.”
“Exactly.”
“But Magnus didn’t say he was going to hook up, Sun,” she clarifies.
“No, he’s going to do something much, much worse. He’s going to make her his blood mate. That’s like freaking marrying her under vampire rules. They’ll be bonded together forever—just like you and Jareth.” I stare down at my hands, feeling the tears well up in my eyes again. “They’ll be side by side, staying ridiculously beautiful forever, while I wither up and prepare to die.”
“Please. Even as a white-haired granny, you’ll still be hotter than that white trash ho. Do you know she had acrylic fingernails with little pink bats painted on them?” Rayne snorts. “How tacky. And here she’s supposed to be some Rhodes scholar or some crap like that.”
I look up at my sister. “Really? That’s weird, right? I mean, her whole outfit was weird. Not to mention how she talked.” The more I think about it, the stranger the whole encounter with Jane seems. At the time I’d been so pissed at Magnus that I hadn’t really given it much thought. But now that I’m running tonight’s events through my head again, I’m realizing that something just isn’t adding up. Why would this supposed political mastermind, hand-selected by the Blood Coven to become their Master’s blood mate, dress only half a step up from a Miami hooker? And why had she shown up now, just days before the big vampire consortium in Vegas?
“Hmm,” Rayne says thoughtfully, “maybe she’s an evil plant, sent by a rebel vamp coven to infiltrate the organization and destroy it from within.”
I stare at her. “Oh my God! Do you really think so?” I imagine Jane, seducing Magnus and then staking my poor helpless boyfriend in his sleep. Blaming it on a slayer (maybe even my sister!) and then taking control of the Blood Coven and manipulating it for her own evil purposes—which may or may not include taking over and/or destroying the world as we know it. “We should warn Magnus.”
Rayne rolls her eyes. “Please.” She snorts. “I was totally kidding. I mean, conspiracy theory much, Sun? Trust me, bad taste in fashion does not an evil vampire make. You should have seen the vamp chicks from the English coven. Then again, they were a bit evil, I suppose, throwing us out in the cold and making us sleep in a barn, just because of that whole pesky vampire slayer thing ...”
I glare at her. So much for sisterly support.
“Fine. But I still think there’s something fishy about her,” I mutter.
“I’ll admit, she does smell a bit fishy,” Rayne says brightly, still evidently determined to make light of my desperate woe. I throw a pillow at her and she dodges it.
“Don’t you have some kind of secret slayer mission or something to go on tonight?” I grump, lying down on my side and turning so my back faces her. A hint, if there ever was, to get out of my bed and leave me alone. I’m done with her brand of cheering me up.
“Nope. I’m here for you, Sun. All night, if necessary.”
“Awesome. Lucky me.”
Rayne tries to put her arm around me, but I shrug away. All I want to do now is curl up in my bed—alone—and fall into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep. Trying to forget that my boyfriend, the love of my life, is currently hanging out with another girl. Another girl who might very well be evil, no matter what anyone else says.
I roll over and look at my sister, who’s already fallen fast asleep, her breathing easy and her face completely relaxed. I sigh. If only I were a vampire like her. Or a slayer, even. I could kick Jane’s ass from here to Oxford and demand she never set foot in Oakridge again as long as we both shall live. But no, there will be no ass-kicking. No demanding she leave my boyfriend alone. Because at the end of the day, I’m not Rayne. I’m just helpless, little old Sunny—a completely mortal girl, without any superpowers to help me prevent a potentially evil vampire from stealing my boyfriend away. This bites big-time.
5
When I wake up in the morning, Rayne is still sacked out on my bed, instead of her own cot, which Mom installed after David took over her bedroom. I like to think it’s because she doesn’t want me to feel all alone in my suffering, but I know for a fact she just doesn’t find the cot gives her enough lumbar support. Not that she needs any—seeing as she’s an immortal vampire and all. They tend to be immune to back problems. Or any health problems whatsoever, for that matter.
I, on the other hand, feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I spent the night tossing and turning and getting very little actual sleep. Thank goodness it’s Saturday and I don’t have to go to school.
I notice my cell is blinking and I flip it open to check my missed call list. Magnus. Like a dozen times. And just as many messages. I smile a little. At least now I know he wasn’t out with Jane, forgetting I even exist. I crawl out of bed, careful not to disturb Rayne, and tiptoe out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Mom and David’s doors are still closed, so I pad downstairs and curl up on the couch to call him back.