Page 44 of Bitten By Desire
The front steps creaked just a bit as we made our way to the front door. Luckily there was a wrap-around porch, because it was starting to rain harder.
Zoey reached out to turn the knob but it was locked. “Hmm. Maybe this open house doesn’t start until 2? Let me double check.” She pulled out her phone. “Yeah, we’re too early. We could go grab a cup of coffee and come back…” her voice trailed off as thunder boomed in the distance and the rain started falling faster.
“And now we’re stuck here.” I sat down in one of the chairs on the porch. “But at least now we have time to do some research.”
“What research?”
“Vampires, of course.” I pulled out my phone and googled if vampires age.
She sighed.
“They’re immortal. And they’re frozen at the age that they changed.” I pointed to my screen. “That’s probably why he moved away from the school. Someoneprobably got suspicious of him because he wasn’t aging.”
“Let me see that.” She grabbed my phone from me. She searched something else.
I leaned over to see the screen. She’d searched to see if vampires had gold eyes.
“When a vampire is hungry, his eyes get darker and darker until they’re almost black,” she said. “There. Callum’s not a vampire. And I’m still not convinced Callum is Theo Gold anyway.”
Thunder boomed again and I winced. “That doesn’t mean he’s not a vampire. It just means he’s not ahungryvampire. Look.” I pointed to the screen. “When they’ve fed recently their eyes are whatever their normal color is.”
“And gold is normal?”
“It’s normal for him.” A chill ran down my spine but I ignored it. “What if when he saw me in the maze last night…he’d just fed?”
Chapter 13
Sunday
“Stop it, Emma, you’re freaking me out,” Zoey said.
“I know vampires are supposed to just suck your blood. But maybe he’s bad at getting clean bites. His teeth are surely strong enough to rip flesh if they can bite right through it.” I pictured the mauled hand.
“Seriously, stop it.”
“And that’s probably why he left his coaching position. When I ran into him his eyes were perfectly golden. He probably ate one of the players at the party right before I ran into him!”
Zoey looked as freaked out as me. “But…vampires don’t exist, Emma.”
“But what if they do? And what if Callum is one?” I wasn’t even sure if I believed it. But the more I spoke, the more logical it seemed.
She pressed her lips together.
“It would explain everything. Why he suddenly left the team. Why he lived in that creepy old house. Why he deleted those pictures of himself from my camera. Why he’s pretending to be someone else now. Why he’s so pissed that I know who he really is. You should have seen him last night in the maze. He was so angry.”
“You think he’s worried that you’re going to unveil his secret identity to the whole town?”
I nodded. “I think he wanted to kill me last night to keep me quiet. He told me to stop calling him Callum.And when I didn’t…he said, ‘I tried to warn you,’ and he looked right at my neck. The only reason he didn’t go through with it was because Bennett showed up and scared him off.”
Zoey’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, Emma. He bit your neck when you first met him. Or…sucked it. Or whatever. You had a hickey for weeks. Remember?”
“Yeah.” Of course I remembered. I touched the side of my neck. “He also bit my finger so hard that it bled. I’d thought it was an accident, but...” I swallowed hard. “What if it wasn’t?”
Zoey looked so freaked out.
“And he said something else that first night. That he was surprised I didn’t scream. He seemed thrown off by it.”
“Emma, what if he was about to kill you that night? And what if he was about to kill you last night too?”
