I wanted to hit something. Fight something. Bite something. I slowly turned my head, cast a covetous glance at the refrigerator.
"Jesus H., Merit."
I flicked a glance her way. Mallory's eyes were wide, her hands clenched at the edge of the countertop. I heard the quick, flat double-thudding of a drum, and realized it was the thump of her heartbeat.
"What?" I whispered.
She reached out a hand, but snatched it back. "Your eyes. Your irises are completely silver."
I ran from the kitchen to the first-floor bathroom, flipped on the light, and stared at myself. She was right. The blue of my eyes had become gleaming silver, the pupils dilated to pinpricks.
Mallory squeezed into the tiny powder room behind me. "You got angry. It must happen when you get angry."
Angry or thirsty, I silently amended, since I'd just considered drinking blood as a means of stress relief.
"Open your mouth."
My eyes still silver, our gazes met in the mirror. I hesitated for a moment, having to work up the courage for it, knowing what I'd see when I did.
I opened my mouth, saw the fangs that had descended from my upper jaw. My eyeteeth had lengthened, the tips becoming longer, sharper. That must have happened when I'd considered raiding the refrigerator. I'm not sure what it said about who I was now that I hadn't noticed at the time.
I murmured a worried curse.
"Those weren't there before."
"I know," I bit out.
"I'm sorry, but that's wicked f**king cool."
I snapped my mouth shut, and pointed out through a clenched jaw, "Not so cool the first time I get the urge to make you an afternoon snack."
"You wouldn't do that."
Her tone was easy, wholly confident, but I had no such faith. "I hope not."
She picked up a lock of my straight, long hair. "Your hair is darker." She cocked her head at me. "Maybe 'sable,' instead of 'chestnut.' And your skin is paler. You have this kind of . . . undead glow."
I stared at my reflection. She was right - darker hair, paler skin, like the stereotypical vamp.
"What else do you feel? Stronger? Better hearing? Eyesight? Any of that?"
I blinked at my reflection. "I see the same stuff, and my hearing level is the same." I thought of the smells of the house, the richness there. "Maybe a little better sense of smell? And I'm not bombarded or anything, but when I got excited, I could kind of sense new things." I didn't mention the prickle in the air I'd felt around her, or the fact that the new things I could sense included the resounding thud of her heartbeat.
Mallory leaned against the doorframe. "Since my hands-on experience with the walking dead is, like, eighteen hours old, this is just a guess, but I bet there's an easy way to take care of this silver-eyes problem."
This should be good. "And that would be?"
"Blood."
We put it on the island, along with a martini glass, an iced tea glass, a food thermometer, a bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup, and a jar of olives, both of us unsure how best to attack. Mallory jabbed the bag with the blunt end of a bamboo skewer. It gurgled, and the depression in one side of the medical-grade plastic slowly filled back in. She made a sound of disgust and looked at me with sympathetic eyes. "Jesus, Merit."
I nodded and looked down at the bag of type O. It was one of the seven that had been delivered. There was one of each type - A, B, AB and O - and three extra bags of O. It was supposed to have universal appeal, I guessed.
"Liquid, liquid everywhere and not a drop to drink," I observed.
"Ugh. English lit geek much?"
"Corporate oppressor."
"Nerd."
"Blue-haired weirdo."
"Guilty as charged." She picked up the iced tea glass and handed it to me. "Now or never, Merit. She said you needed a pint every other day."
"I'm kind of assuming that's an average. You know - four pints a week, give or take, averaging to one every other day. And I probably had one before they dropped me off yesterday. So I don't really need to open it until tomorrow."
Mallory frowned at me. "You don't want to even try it? It's blood, and you're a vampire. You should be ripping at the plastic with those sharp-ass teeth just to get to the stuff." She held up the bag between two fingers, waggled it in the air. "Blood. Yummy, delicious blood." The crimson liquid shuffled back and forth in the bag as she waggled it, making little waves in a tiny, self-contained ocean. And it was making me seasick.
I put a defensive hand over my abdomen. "Just put the bag down, Mallory."
She did, and we stared at it for another few minutes until I looked up at her. "I think I'm just not hungry for it. Surely it would be more appealing if I really, really wanted it."
"Are you hungry for anything?"
I scanned the library of cereal boxes on top of the refrigerator, the stash owing in part to Mallory's preparations for the rumored vampire apocalypse. "Hand me the box of Chunkee Choco Bits. The marshmallow kind."
"Done and done," she said, and slid off her stool. She went to the refrigerator, reached up, grabbed the box, and walked back to hand it over. I opened and reached into it, grabbing a handful of cereal, then picking through it to get to the marshmallows, which I popped into my mouth. "None for you?"
"Mark's coming over," she carefully said, "if that's okay with you."
Mark was Mallory's sweet but aimless boyfriend. I gave them two more weeks. "Fine with me. Make him bring Chinese. But if he annoys me, I'll probably have to bite him."
She rolled her eyes. "Vampire bitch."
I shrugged and picked through another handful of cereal. "I'm just warning you, I'm probably going to be a total hard-ass vamp."
Mallory snorted and walked out of the kitchen, calling out, "Yeah, well, you've got a purple marshmallow on your chin, hard-ass vamp."
I peeled it away and, between my thumb and index finger, flicked it into the kitchen sink. Stuff like that was going to ruin my reputation.
At twenty-five, Mark Perkins decided he wanted to swim the English Channel. At twenty- six, he decided he wanted to climb Everest. Then it was Machu Picchu, base-jumping, ghost-hunting in New Orleans and racing the Utah salt flats. Unlike Mallory, who rarely planned, Mark planned with a vengeance.
He just never actually did anything.
Tall and thin with short brown hair, he blew through our front door like a tempest, arms laden with guidebooks, maps, and two paper bags with greasy bottoms.
"Chinese!" Mallory squealed, leaping to the door when he came in. She pecked his cheek, grabbed a bag of food, and headed to the kitchen. I'd been reading again, so I returned the book to its spot on the coffee table.