Page 9 of Wind with a Chance of Wolfsbane

“It’s not ratty,” I shot back. Okay, it was fairly tattered, but I wasn’t about to admit as much to her.

She lifted a brow. “I hate that story.”

“Draculais a great story!”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s stupid.”

I gasped. “Never say that.”

I took it personally for a reason. Stoker’s novel wasn’t entirely fictional. There were shades of truth weaved through the fiction. Those grains of truth had connections to our family history.

Since we’d been named after a character from the novel, I’d known about the book and its characters from an early age. Our parents had a quirky sense of humor, as noted by the fact that my twin sister and I had names that were a play on an infamous character from Stoker’s novel—Wilhelmina Murray.

She was an ancestor on my father’s side of the family. I remember my father talking about her as if she was an inspiration, held in high regard in the family.

I’d longed to ask Helen if any of it was true. She was a Murray and could have answered my questions. She simply chose not to. What little she did offer made me question if she was telling the truth or not.

So, I was left to find answers in my tattered, albeit well-loved copy of the novel. The handwritten annotations in the margins dove deeper into the lore, making notes of what was supposedly true and what was allegedly not. The person who had written it had also doodled in it, going so far as to draw what looked to be a map on the inside cover.

I didn’t know who had made the notes in the book or if they knew what they were talking about. I simply followed my gut, and it said the person was a man and that he more than knew the truth.

Mina’s copy of the novel also had annotations, though hers were different from mine. The handwriting was as well. She wasn’t as taken with the novel as I was. She always seemed annoyed to share a name with the heroine, probably because her name was easy to recognize as part of the canon.

Mine wasn’t.

That and Mina detested vampires, both real and fictional. Losing our parents at the hands of supernaturals had been the catalyst, but having Helen in her head, constantly pushing her to be the natural-born slayer Helen claimed we were, hadn’t helped matters any.

Mina shook her head as I set the backpack on the ground and began trying to straighten the clothing in my suitcase as quickly as I could.

After about two minutes, Mina grunted, pushed me out of the way, slammed my suitcase shut, and sat on it. “Snap it.”

I did, shaking my head the entire time. “How are we related? You have like no patience.”

“Because you soaked it up in the womb,” she returned, hopping to her feet and dusting her backside off since gravel had been on the outside of my suitcase. She set my bag upright and stepped back. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

I went to lock the van’s sliding door, but she grabbed my arm.

“Leave it,” she said with a grin. “He called me a bitch.”

“Oh please. You’d get that embroidered on all your clothing if you could,” I returned, putting my small backpack on and then lifting my suitcase.

“That would be awesome,” she supplied as she grabbed the handle of her suitcase. She had band stickers on her suitcase and a bumper sticker that said “Next stop, Hell.”

Mine had stickers I’d gotten and liked over the years. Most had to do with reading, but some were of wolves, and there was a British flag one I’d gotten while in London.

We took a few steps from the van, and I stopped, set my suitcase down, and opened the side door. I pulled the door nearly closed, leaving it open enough to keep the overhead light on. I glanced back at my sister. “There. Since he called you a bitch.”

She cackled. “You’re an evil genius!”

Smiling, I retrieved my suitcase.

We walked at a brisk pace through the parking lot. Two of the streetlamps were burned out, leaving a section of it dark.

Mina and I looked at the area, keenly aware of the dangers that could lurk there. We made it to the small bus stop next to the four-lane road that wasn’t very busy this time of night. A red car came by, moving at a high rate of speed. It caught Mina’s attention, and she gave it a nod of approval, no doubt because it was a fancy sports car like she was always talking about wanting someday.

I wasn’t impressed. Instead, I set my suitcase down on the sidewalk and rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet, hoping the bus showed soon so we wouldn’t be late and miss the flight.

Helen would never let us live it down.

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