Page 104 of My Roommate Is a Vampire

“Let’s go on a tour of the Upper School,” Jeff suggested. “We can take you to the art studios and show you where you’d be teaching if you join us in the fall.”

That had to be a good sign.

I grinned at them, unable to help myself. “That sounds great to me.”

My excitement over how well my interview went was short-lived.

When I got back home and there was still no sign ofFrederick, all my worry from earlier in the day came rushing back. I checked my phone and saw I had no messages from Reginald, either, which only heightened my anxiety.

True crime documentaries weren’t my favorite flavor of sketchy television, but I knew enough about kidnapping and murder cases to know that the longer you went without news, the greater the chances that the news you ultimately got wouldn’t be good.

On a whim that I recognized as a terrible idea even as it occurred to me, I took out my laptop and GoogledEsmeralda Jameson. If she had as much of an internet presence as Reginald had implied, maybe looking her up would give me some clues.

Reginald hadn’t even told me the half of it. Google brought up so many search results forEsmeralda Jamesonthere was no possible way of looking through them all absent a serious obsession with her I was uninterested in developing.

The top search result was a link to her Instagram. That seemed like as good a place to start as any.

Immediately after clicking, the very-bad-idea-ness of this plan came crashing down on me like a Doberman on a plate of hamburgers. I’d been prepared for Esmeralda to be beautiful and flawless, in the same way sort-of-but-not-quite-ex-girlfriends of hot guys usually tended to be. But nothing could have prepared me for the pictures I was looking at now.

I didn’t know if vampires ever worked as supermodels. If they did, Esmeralda Jameson would have beenreallygood at her job. She was easily six feet tall, with legs for days and a figure that made me question my own heretofore straight sexuality. Her latest picture showed her in a bikini that was notable for what itdidn’tcover, reclining on a lounge chair beneath a beach umbrella that kept her completely in the shade. According to thecaption, it had been taken somewhere on Maui. Her long, dark hair was artfully arranged, covering her bare, olive-toned shoulders and half of her angular face.

I clicked through the rest of her Instagram. There were pictures of Esmeralda being stunning in Switzerland in a ski outfit. Pictures of her prettily examining a flower in one of the largest gardens I had ever seen.

Here I am in Costa Rica, swimming with turtles.

It is so beautiful and peaceful here in the Andes.

My garden at home needs tending. The flowers here are beautiful, but I cannot wait to be back home again among my peonies.

There were no funny personal stories or witty hashtags. Nothing to really give me a sense of what she was like as a person. Esmeralda had over one hundred thousand followers anyway—probably people who were as captivated by her beauty as I was.

And then, I saw a post that nearly stopped my heart.

Here I am with Frederick, my fiancé. Isn’t he handsome?

It was a grainy picture, taken from a distance and late at night. Esmeralda stood beside a black stretch limousine as she helped Frederick into the back seat. If it hadn’t been for the caption, it would have been difficult to make out his features enough to realize it was him. But now that I wasreallylooking, there was no question that it was, in fact, the same Frederick I lived with—and had started falling in love with. The angle of his jaw, his dark hair, the way he tilted his face away from the streetlights...

It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, him.

The post was made at ten o’clock the previous night.

I closed my eyes and slammed my laptop shut. I could all but feel my heart breaking.

It was possible Reginald was right and something had happened to him, of course. But those pictures didn’t lie. Esmeraldawas everything Cassie Greenberg would never be. Tall, beautiful, self-possessed—and immortal.

He’d told me that he was into me. He’d acted like it, too. But what if meeting up with Esmeralda had reminded him of all he’d be missing if he stayed with a human like me? Surely someone like her—someone who wouldn’t shrivel up and age and eventually die—had to be more appealing than a semi-employed artist with few skills, and with a few more decades left in her at most.

But then a moment later, my phone pinged with new texts from an unknown number.

Cassandra. It’s Reginald.

Frederick is in BIG trouble.

He needs our help.

Meet me at Gossamer’s in an hour and I’ll tell you everything.

NINETEEN

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