Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend Read Online Free PDF Page A

else—he was warm and soft, inviting, a bit mysterious, but oddly comfortable, considering I’d only just met him.
    And, of course, there was the fact that he was a vampire.
    â€œYou’re such an angel,” Mom said, kissing my forehead and rushing off to the trailer, pausing to tell the group of people approaching the tent that she’d be back in ten minutes.
    â€œIf I’m an angel, where are my wings?” I whispered. It was what I always said whenever she called me an angel, starting from the time when I was little and she would swing me around and around, and tell me I was an angel sent to bring heaven to earth.
    I looked down at my hand. It wasn’t small and slender like hers, or long and graceful like Imogen’s. It was big, and my fingers had blunt tips. A musician’s hand, someone had once told me, but I had to stop piano lessons when I was twelve because I couldn’t stand touching Mrs. Stone’s piano. Too many kids used it for their weekly lessons—I’d go home afterward shaking and near tears. That was when Mom finally figured out what had happened to me.
    â€œHow long have you been a psychometrist?”
    I turned around slowly, wondering if Benedikt had read my mind .
    â€œSince I was twelve.”
    He stood on the other side of the table, a large black shape blocking my view of the sky turned indigo and black. “Puberty?”
    I nodded and tried to look away, but couldn’t. It was something about his eyes, glowing with an inner light as they watched me fiddle with my gloves. I didn’t want to talk to him about the weird things I could do. I didn’t want him to think I belonged in the freak show.
    You’re not a freak.
    â€œStop that,” I said, taking a couple of steps backward, as if distance would keep him out of my mind.
    Are you afraid of me?
    His eyes were the color of dark oak, little golden flecks against the warm honey brown, flecks I could see even though his face was thrown into shadow. “Why should I be afraid of you? If anyone should be afraid, it’s you. I know your secret.”
    And I know yours , he said into my head as he started coming toward me.
    I backed up a couple more steps, straightening my shoulders, trying to look big and tough and mean. “Yours is worse than mine, so if you don’t want to end up on the business end of a sharp stake, you’d just better back off and leave me alone.”
    I don’t want to leave you alone.
    â€œYou don’t know who you’re messing with—” I started to say, then shrieked when he lunged toward me, grabbing my arms and pulling me toward him. We stood together like that for a second, me braced and ready for him to bite me, him looking down on me with eyes that were changing into glittering ebony.
    â€œI don’t want to mess with you at all, Fran.” Slowly, very slowly, his hand slid down my arm. I watched it as it headed for my naked hand, my bare hand, my hand that kept me from being happy like any other kid.
    â€œDon’t,” I said, ashamed it came out a whimper.
    â€œTrust me,” he said softly. His fingers trailed along the back of my bare hand, then curved under, pushing my arm up so that our palms rested together. I gasped and held my breath, waiting for the rush of images, waiting for the everything that would pour from his mind into mine.
    There was nothing. I was touching him, hand to hand, and I felt nothing, saw nothing.
    I looked from our hands to his face. “How do you do that? How do you turn yourself off like that?”
    His fingers twined through mine, and all of a sudden I was aware that he was a guy and I was a girl, and we were standing together holding hands.
    â€œYou know who I am.”
    â€œI know what you are, if that’s what you mean.”
    He nodded. “What do you know about us?”
    â€œI know that you’re a vampire . . .” His fingers tightened on mine. Poop.