"What do you do, Marcus, besides buy coffee for girls? You work?"

"Nope, just a college dropout." I had to think on the fly and that seemed like answer that fit the social situation.

"You live here alone?"

"Yeah."

"How can you afford a sweet pad like this by yourself? You a trust-fund baby or something?"

I shrugged nonchalantly as I took another sip of my coffee. "Yeah something like that." I could play the role of a trust fund baby. That would be a h.e.l.l of a lot easier than explaining the truth.

We sat in silence for a few moments before she popped up out of the chair and asked, "So you gonna give me a tour of the place or what?"

"Sure." I set my cup back down on the coffee table and walked her through the apartment. It took the better part of twenty minutes, partially because I have a three bedroom apartment, but mostly because she liked to take her time looking at each room. She was meticulous-examining every fine detail. She was most impressed by the master bedroom, even though it still had my spa.r.s.e decorating touch. She sat on my king-size, four-poster bed, bouncing up and down a few times before going into the master bathroom, climbing into the Jacuzzi tub and claimed, "I could die in here."

Is it so wrong that my immediate thought was... Yes, you could. She climbed out of the tub and wandered around my room for a few more moments before coming to a stop at my bedside table. She eyed the odd collection of little trinkets before her gaze landed on the little plant. She seemed to study it for a moment, brushing her fingers lightly over its leaves before walking out of the room.

When the tour was over, she picked up her bag off the floor and made for the front door. "So you wanna hang out again sometime or what?"

"Um..." I was caught by surprise and wasn"t sure how to respond.

"Sorry, I tend to be a little direct but you can say no if you want to. You seem nice enough and I don"t have many friends. I know we just met but I don"t know...thought maybe we could be pals."

This chick was more than a little odd and I"m not one for keeping friends, but then a wonderful thought came to mind. The challenge I had been looking for had just delivered itself to me with a big red bow, or a khaki-green messenger bag, as it were. I had been in a rut, feeding on the goth kids, and Jules could break that boring tedious cycle. So without further hesitation I agreed.

"Cool. If you"re not busy tomorrow, you wanna meet up at the coffee shop around three?"

"Sure," I replied and she smiled.

"All right. I"ll see ya then." I nodded to her as she left and closed the door behind her. I smiled to myself. She didn"t know that I had already decided any sort of relationship between us was doomed because she was mean to books, but I could fake it to give her what she wanted-a friend. In turn, I could get what I wanted-a thirteenth keepsake.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I met Jules at the coffee shop numerous times. We sat and had the get to know you kind of discussions: family, school, childhood-most of which I made up. After confessing to being a trust-fund baby, I didn"t want to be caught unprepared again. So the first evening after she left I came up with a whole persona to feed her. I also made the decision to not feed again unless it was from her-figuring it would make my victory all that more sweet. However by our fifth meeting, I was very hungry; growing weary of my own game and ready for it to be done. As I left my apartment, I made the decision that the time was upon us, no more f.u.c.king around. I couldn"t bring her back to my place though-what the h.e.l.l would I do with her body? I would need to get her to invite me back to her apartment-something she had yet to do. I would have to pour on the charm to get this done. It wouldn"t be hard to accomplish because I am, after all, a pro.

When I arrived at the coffee shop she was already waiting for me, sitting at our usual table by the window with a drink in her hand. I waved to her as I ordered a black coffee and a chocolate chip scone. I wasn"t hungry for food but I needed something to keep my teeth busy. I took up the chair across the table from her. She smiled a big, goofy grin at me and I returned the gesture.

We made our usual small talk for about twenty minutes, both of us picking at the scone, but I was too anxious to carry on the charade for much longer. I needed to steer the conversation towards us leaving but I wasn"t sure how I was going to do it. There just didn"t seem to be an opening for it to happen. I realized I was just going to have to force it.

"I"m kinda bored. You want to get out of here?"

"I guess. What do you want to do?" She smiled "I don"t know," I said as casually as possible. "Maybe we could go back to your place and watch a movie or something."

The smile slowly left her face as she broke eye contact with me. There appeared to be hurt in her eyes as she glanced down at her wrist watch and started gathering her things. "s.h.i.t! I completely forgot I have a ton of reading to do for one of my cla.s.ses. So I"ll have to take a rain check."

"Okay," I agreed hesitantly as she popped up off the chair and grabbed her usual gray cardigan, which had been hanging over the back.

"How about tomorrow? We can meet here first-same time as always?"

"Sure," I agreed again, but before I could say anything else, she was gone. I stared out the window wondering what the h.e.l.l had just happened. Sure she"s an odd little duck anyway but that behavior was strange, even for her. Maybe I had to concede, I was just projecting my own anxiety. I was disappointed that I wasn"t going to feed today, but come h.e.l.l or high water, I would feed when we met again.

I spent that evening, and most of the next morning, jittery as h.e.l.l. I paced around the apartment wearing holes in all the rugs. I still had another twenty minutes before I could leave to meet her when there was a knock on the door. I stuck my eye to the peephole and saw Jules standing on the other side. "Motherf.u.c.ker!" I whispered with clenched teeth and fists. What was she doing here? There would be no way I could casually shuffle her out of here and back to her place without arousing suspicion. This was seriously becoming more trouble than it was worth. I took some slow, deep breaths and plastered a phony smile on my face as I swung the door open.

"Jules, hey! I thought we were meeting at the coffee shop?" I feigned enthusiasm.

"Well, we were but you had mentioned something about watching a movie yesterday. Unfortunately, my roommate is home with the flu." She held up two paper cups. "So I brought the coffee to us and figured we could watch a movie here." She smiled her sweet, innocent smile and I fought the urge to wring her neck.

"Sure," I replied as I ushered her in. I was picturing all the ways I was going to torture her when I got the chance. I had never tortured any of my victims before but there"s a first time for everything-and if anyone was deserving of it, she would be the one.

She handed me one of the cups and I took a swig. It was as bitter as my mood. I scowled behind her back, sipping the drink. She plopped down in the recliner again but stayed sitting straight up, looking almost proper. I wanted to chuck my drink at her but instead I chugged it down fast.

"You have any popcorn?" she asked and I shook my head. She reached in her bag and produced a box of microwave kernels. "Oh, that"s cool. I brought some." I clenched my fist around the empty cup as I tried not to scream... Then why the f.u.c.k did you ask? Usually I found her strange behavior oddly charming, but now, I just wanted to throttle her for all her idiosyncrasies. She tossed me the box. I marched into the kitchen and shoved a bag into the microwave.

I tried again to take some deep breaths and calm myself down. I kept reminding myself it was early in the day yet, all was not lost. I poured the popcorn into a bowl as I heard the TV come on in the other room. Leaning my hands on the counter, I tried to center myself before going back to her. The past few weeks would have been for naught if I blew it now. I had to stay calm and focused. Picking up the bowl, I walked back to the living room.

I had almost made it to the couch when the room started to spin. The bowl slipped from my fingers and crashed to the floor, spilling popcorn all over the rug. Jules was still sitting straight as a rod, with the remote in her hand, flipping through the channels. "You all right?"

"I don"t know. I don"t feel very well," I responded, holding my head. My knees were starting to feel weak and I felt very unsteady on my feet.

"Yeah, about that, you might wanna lie down," she said absently as she continued channel surfing. I meant to ask why, but before I had the chance, I collapsed to the floor and everything went black.

I slowly opened my eyes. I was so groggy and the room was still spinning. Turning my head, I realized I was lying in my bed. How the h.e.l.l did I get here? I lifted my head and peered around the room-everything seemed in order. Was I that tired that I just stumbled into my room and fell asleep? I guessed it was possible. I tried to swing my legs over the edge of the bed to sit up but they felt like two lead weights. I tried again but I couldn"t make them move. I lifted my head again and it was then that I saw the ropes binding my legs to each post of my bed.

"What the f.u.c.k?" I asked as I tried to sit up. My shoulders were barely off the mattress when I figured out I couldn"t move any further-my arms were bound as well. I yanked on the ropes but couldn"t break loose. I yanked harder to no avail.

"Oh good, you"re finally awake." I snapped my head towards the sound of the voice to see Jules standing in the doorway. "I"ve been bored out of my mind. Two hundred and fifty channels and not a d.a.m.n thing to watch."

"Jules? What the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

"Playing a game, Marc. Isn"t that what you like to do? Play little games?"

"Did you drug me?"

She held her fingers up. "A little bit"

"Why?"

She walked slowly, deliberately, into my room. Stopping at the foot of the bed, she gazed down at me. She held onto the post to my left and swung herself around so she was near my head. Leaning down over me, she whispered in my ear, "Because I know who you are, Marc Keary, and I know what you"ve been up to." My eyes grew wide with surprise as she slowly rose to her full height and crossed the room to stare out the window at the twilight of the city.

"How?" was all I managed to whisper.

"We"re alike, you and I." I was stunned into silence. I had never met another vampire before. I was self-taught; my sire made me leaving immediately after turning me. I b.u.mbled my way through most of my existence. I felt an odd sense of relief knowing another had found me yet it was mixed with fear since I was, after all, tied up.

"How did you know what I was?"

"I"ve been watching you for a long time. I wanted to be friends until you decided to make me a victim. Rule number one that you must never forget with me-I"m a predator, Marc... not prey."

I had sensed something was off the day before and now I knew it was because she had been on to me. The jig was up and I hadn"t realized it. "Jules, I"m sorry. Had I known you were a vampire too, I never would have..." Her high-pitched laugher cut me off before I could finish.

"If you had known what?" I had her full attention as she turned away from the window and back to me.

"That you were a vampire too."

"I"m not a vampire, Marc. Is this one of your games? Because you"re kidding-right?" Her laughter began anew and I couldn"t for the life of me figure out what the h.e.l.l she was finding so amusing and, furthermore, why the h.e.l.l she kept calling me just Marc? She was trying to catch her breath before she asked, "Wait... did you say too? Do you believe you"re a vampire?"

"I know that I am."

Her laughter came to an abrupt stop and she looked down at me with what appeared to be sympathy in her eyes. "I thought it was just part of your game-I didn"t know you actually believed it." She blew out a long breath. "Wow, that"s kinda sad."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" My anger and frustration were starting to boil over. "I am a vampire. My name is Marcus Keary and I was born in 1813-brought to darkness in 1842."

She crossed the room and picked up her messenger bag, which had been lying on a chair near the bed. She produced a large, well-worn sc.r.a.pbook, sat down on the chair, and began thumbing through it. "Marcus Keary, also known as Marc-you were born in 1990 in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. You were the only child of Scott and Marie Keary. You grew up in a small town in Colorado where you attended Washington Elementary School and Snow Peak High School." Jules held up picture after picture with each new detail to ill.u.s.trate her story. She was clearly off her rocker but continued on with no regard to me-even though I was her captive audience.

"The part you told me about being a college drop-out is in fact true. You were studying for a degree in plant biology, dropping out after the tragic death of your parents a little over three years ago. Your family was traveling in your father"s private plane when you crashed in the mountains. You were the only survivor and you were trapped with your parent"s mangled bodies for days before rescue." At this she held up a newspaper clipping that pictured the twisted wreckage of a small prop-plane. I was holding her gaze until she shook the paper and drew my attention to it. She held it out to me as if it was supposed to mean something. I shook my head. "Really, you don"t remember any of this?" She shrugged her shoulders and folded the article back into her sc.r.a.pbook.

She pulled a worn picture from the alb.u.m and got a strange look on her face. "Maybe you"ll remember your high school girlfriend, Amy. After the accident you moved to the city to be closer to her." At this, she held up a picture of a beautiful young woman with short brown hair and an illuminating smile. I had seen her before-she was the woman from my dream, the woman covered in blood. That was when everything clicked back into place and the memories overwhelmed me. I gasped and quickly diverted my eyes from the picture. Jules continued to hold it out to me and I felt as though all the air had left my lungs. How could I have forgotten?

It felt like an eternity before I could speak again, "Who are you and how do you know all about me?" I asked, my mouth dry, the words hard pressed to leave my lips.

"I"m sad that you don"t remember me, Marc. After all, we did grow up together."

I had no memory of her. Other pieces of my life were falling back into place but nowhere did I find her. I closed my eyes tight and shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs in hopes that something might surface-but there was nothing.

"We went to school together?"

"Not exactly. I was homeschooled but I saw you every day. I lived three doors down from you and I used to watch you from my window. I thought you were so handsome. After your parents died I wanted to know more about you and to take away your sadness. So I did some research. It wasn"t very hard. The media was broadcasting every tiny detail of your life after the accident. I"ve been keeping tabs on you ever since. You moved here to be closer to Amy and that broke my heart, but I followed you anyway."

"You followed me here-how?"

"Again it wasn"t all that hard. I just got your forwarding address from the people who bought your parents" house. I really lucked out when I moved here and there was a vacancy in your building though. It made keeping track of your comings and goings a lot easier."

I was having a hard time following-her ramblings were obviously those of a complete lunatic. I remembered moving here for Amy but then nothing seemed coherent after that. It was this jumbled mess of what I thought had been reality. "If I moved here for Amy-where the h.e.l.l is she now? Why isn"t she here?" The vision of Amy covered in blood seeped back into my mind and I tried to shut it down, lock it out, and make it go away.

"Don"t you remember?" she asked and I shook my head. "Oh. Well, things were great with you two for a while but then about a year ago, you caught her with another guy. I wasn"t all that surprised-I always thought she was a wh.o.r.e. I had already known for a while what she had been up to. On days when you were being dull, I would follow her around. I was there the night you caught her, well not in the apartment, which would have been awkward, but I was waiting outside. The pain on your face was horrible. I knew I had to do something. I couldn"t let her get away with breaking your heart like that. I was determined to set things right for you and I did what needed to be done. You found her body the next day but it must have broken your already fragile psyche. You must have gone bat-s.h.i.t crazy and created this new persona. Some kind of weird coping mechanism, I guess, because a month later you made your first kill."

She had killed my Amy and in return, I had killed others. I turned my head to my bedside table, to my little keepsakes-specifically the panda necklace. Jules followed my eyes and nodded her head, lifting the necklace as I turned away. "Yep, that"s right. That was from your first victim. Although... how in the h.e.l.l you never got caught is anyone"s guess. You were so sloppy that first time around."

I stared at the ceiling as the memories began to rush back to me. I remembered each of them-their fear and my excitement. There were no words that could adequately describe my thought process at that moment. Everything she was saying was true. I felt the bile rising in my throat. "If you knew-why didn"t you turn me in?"

"What? Send you to jail? I could never do that-I felt responsible for you. I was protecting you. You seemed to enjoy your first kill and, as I"ve already told you, we"re alike, you and I. Besides-what was I going to tell the police? Oh h.e.l.lo officer, Marc killed someone because I killed his s.l.u.t girlfriend and it drove him mad? C"mon," she snarked at me as she laid the necklace back down. "As we both know, you didn"t stop after that first one, you killed again. It was fascinating to watch but I didn"t like being a bystander-there"s no fun in that. So I learned your patterns, which wasn"t hard after following you around for three years. I watched you hunt your victims and I"d hunt alongside you-and every time you killed, so did I. Although, I had no idea about the vampire thing... just when you think you know someone... It was still a fun game though."

She winked at me and my stomach clenched again. I knew why she had seemed so familiar after our meeting in the coffee shop, Witchy Woman. "That night in the club, when I left with Lyd... Katherine, that was you. You were there."

She nodded. "Of course."

"Did you kill that guy you left with?"

She shrugged casually. "Duh! Didn"t you watch the news the next morning? Our stories were back to back. It was so awesome!"

This girl was a genuine psychopath but then again-wasn"t that the pot calling the kettle black? Twelve people were dead by my hand. I had been killing people and drinking their blood because I believed I was a vampire. She was doing it to what, impress me? "Jules, why? Why would you do all this?"

She seemed insulted that I would even question her motives "I already told you. I wanted to make your sadness go away. I thought we were kindred spirits; but then you decided to kill me, feed off me, or whatever. You were going to make me your thirteenth victim. Not cool Marc, not cool at all." I turned away from her and resumed staring at the ceiling, attempting, in vain, to process the events of my life. She rose from the chair and I heard her shuffling around. She had her back to me but, out of the corner of my eye, I could see her pulling something from her bag. "That day at the coffee shop, I orchestrated the whole scene so we could finally meet, face to face. I thought we had something really special and we could have had more-but you had to go and ruin it."

She turned and walked slowly back to my bedside, clutching a large dagger. I couldn"t take my eyes off it; it was so like a weapon one might find at a Renaissance festival. It was garish-silver and gold with red jewels encrusting the handle. "Are you going to kill me?"

Her shoulders slumped and she sighed heavily before responding. "This isn"t an easy decision for me but you forced my hand, Marc. You tried to make me your thirteenth victim. The poetic end to our relationship would be for you to become my thirteenth instead." She climbed up on the bed and straddled me with the dragger still clutched tightly in her hand.

I knew I should have been begging and pleading for my life but I just couldn"t find the strength, not after all I had done. Maybe in her own insane logic she was right. My death could be poetry. I had nothing left to live for-except for one thing. I looked into her sad blue eyes and asked, "Would you do one favor for me after I"m gone?"

"What?" she asked, raising the dagger over her head and gazing down on me.

"Would you take care of my plant?"

I am Serna.

Magen McMinimy.

"So this is her?" Damon looked at the smiling woman depicted in the photograph. She was beautiful-with long mahogany hair, jade-colored eyes and a lithe, almost athletic build.

"Yes, she"s in a small town in California."

Damon looked from the picture to the White Witch standing in front of him. He didn"t know the Caldwell Witch who"d approached him, but she knew who he was.

"You say Paige told you about me?" Damon asked, swishing the deep-amber liquid in his tumbler.

The Witch nodded. "So, will you help my niece?"

Damon took another peek at the picture. "Why does Serna want her?"

The Witch snickered. "Why does the Witch Queen ever want a White Witch? Ariel is young, but her power already surpa.s.ses even my own. In four years she will be a force to be reckoned with and a match for Serna."

Serna was a sickness on the magical community, a Dark Witch with a t.i.tle she never deserved. Damon knew better than anyone what she was capable of. It was why he"d spent the last five years hunting her-but she was slick and was always one step ahead of him. Somehow, always just outside of his grasp.

"I a.s.sume Paige also told you that I have one mission I"m working towards?"

"You want Serna. Perhaps in saving my niece, you"ll come upon the Queen."

Damon smirked. "Perhaps. So what little town has your niece found herself in?"

"Sebastopol."