Page 65 of Road Trip with a Vampire
I stopped short at the sight of him.
Even from a few feet away, I could tell something was wrong.
Less than half an hour had passed since our kiss. But the tension lingering between us when he’d left had evaporated. From the terrified look on his face, you’d never have guessed anything had happened between us at all.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed.
His eyes snapped to mine. “I had a note waiting at the front desk.” He extended his right hand out to me, in which was clutched a single folded sheet of white paper.
With shaking hands, I took it from him and began to read.
Mr.Elliott,
We found you! So glad to see you took our note to heart and are on your way to Blossomtown!
And your choice of travel companions? As the kids would say: “CHEF’S KISS!!!” You haven’t lost your touch. Staying in this hotel, your old stomping grounds? Brilliant.
That said: enough is enough. We do not appreciate you “going off the grid,” so to speak, for so long. Please see that it never happens again.
And do let us know (via the usual channels) if there’s anything we can do to facilitate your arrival.
See you at the B’town warehouse,
—JR
I read the note several times before handing it back to Peter. Its brevity, tone, and lack of a full signature all suggested it had been sent by the same person who’d sent the notes in California.
But whowasJR? And how did they know Peter and I were here?
“Did you tell anyone we were at this hotel?” I asked.
“No.” Peter’s eyes were too wide in his pale face, making him look both forlorn and frightened. “Who would I have told?”
I bit my lip. “You never got in touch with the people who sent you the notes back in California?”
“I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to,” he said. “I don’t know who they are or how to reach them.” He shuddered, then buried his face in his hands. “Whoever they are, though, they’re clearly spying on me. Onus.”
When he pulled his hands away from his face, the pain in his expression tugged at my heart. After only a moment’s indecision, I crossed the room and sat beside him on the couch.
“The note confirms you’ve stayed here before,” I said as gently as I could. “So youaregetting some of your memories back. That’s something.” And it made sense, if he’d visited the bowling alley before, that he would have stayed here. It was the only decent hotel for miles.
“I don’t know which is more upsetting,” he said, not acknowledging the silver lining I’d offered him. “That we’re being followed by the people who insist I find them in Indiana, or that I don’t know who they are or what they want from me.” He continued to study the note until, at length, something akin to recognition flared in his eyes. “It’s obvious that I was supposed to do something for this JR.Perhaps I used to work for them.” He set the note down on the couch between us. “From the way they’re acting, I suspect I still do.”
I moved closer to him without thinking about it, his anxiety its own gravitational pull. “In what way, do you think?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The reaction from that guy at the chicken restaurant, the spying, the cryptic and vaguely threatening notes this person is sending me…I don’t know. All of it suggests that my work may have been…shady.” He swallowed. “Or worse.”
I wanted to disagree but couldn’t. Everything about thisscreamedbad news. “Remembering something from your past isstill a good thing,” I pointed out. “If it turns out you were a jackass before you lost all your memories, and you don’t want to be one anymore, you can change.”
Peter smiled sadly. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re so afraid of doing wrong you won’t even tell anyone you can do magic.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if a person as good as you could understand.”
And there it was. My opportunity to tell Peter the whole truth about myself handed to me on a silver platter.
Would I take it, though? Everything between us would change. Ilikedthat he thought I was good. No one ever had before. It would all end once he knew what I used to be.
As scary as that thought was…perhaps I’d spent too long hiding from everyone.
Maybe it was time to let someone in.
