Even though we’d just been in a car wreck, I still felt safe with him. After all, he had saved me from the crash, even if he had also been the cause of it.
“This weekend felt so long,” I said drearily.
“Tell me about it.” Jack was just as tired and frustrated as I was, and that was easy to forget.
Generally, I considered him to be a culprit in all of this, but he was just as much a pawn as I was. We were trapped in an unyielding battle with biology.
“I just want everything to go back to normal.” I had expected him to agree with me, but he just laughed.
“I’m assuming you mean normal in that you were running around with your new vampire best friend,” he smiled. “Yeah. Cause that’s the baseline for normal.”
“Well, it feels more normal than all this business about my blood being meant for Peter,” I muttered. “How is any part of me meant for anything? Who decided that?”
“I wish I knew.” His expression slacked for a second, but then he shook his head. “Look, let’s just not think about any of that. You look exhausted. Why don’t we just do something nice and relaxing this evening?”
“Like what?” I turned to face him and leaned my head against the seat
“How about we just go back to my house and watch a movie? I have like a million. I’m sure there’s a couple in there you’d be up to watching.”
“That sounds fantastic,” I admitted. The thought of spending the evening just curled up somewhere with Jack sounded positively wonderful. “How long are Ezra and Peter gone for?”
“I don’t know,” Jack shrugged. “Probably a week, I guess. Why?”
“What do they do? For business, I mean. How did they make all your money?” I had spent so much time talking about the preternatural that I never really had a chance to ask about the practical things, like how they supported themselves.
“Ezra’s been working for, you know, hundreds of years doing various things, so he managed to build up quite the nest egg before I was even born. Right now, they’re doing a lot of stocks and trading, and I just never bothered to follow.
“They own a couple companies overseas,” Jack explained. “Everything they do gets shifted and moved around all the time. They can’t stay with the same people for too long, or people’ll catch on that they haven’t aged.”
“Why don’t you have a job?” I asked.
“Cause I don’t really need to work. Whenever I find something that interests me, I do it, but we have plenty of money. Ezra and Peter don’t even have to work. But Ezra thinks that since we’re going to live forever, we might as well be prepared for it,” he shrugged, then looked over at me. “Why? Does it bother you that I don’t work?”
“No, I’m just curious about all the machinations of your life,” I said.
We reached his house, and he drove up into the driveway. Turning off the car, he grinned wickedly.
“Well, you know pretty much everything about my life.” He got out of the car, preparing to escape with that total fabrication of an answer.
“I know hardly anything about your life!” I scoffed, hurrying out after him.
“I’m a vampire and I drive too fast and I’m awesome on the Xbox.” He spread his arms expansively, as if that explained it all. “That’s all you really need to know about me.”
“I hardly think that’s true.” I raised an eyebrow at him, causing him to laugh, but he just shook his head and went into the house.
Matilda was already waiting at the door for him. He just gave her a quick scratch and kept on walking, so she followed at his heels.
“Mae, I’m back!” Jack announced, going into the kitchen.
“I’m just doing some laundry!” Mae shouted from down the hall by her bedroom.
“I hate it when you guys are mundane.” I wrinkled my nose. “Vampires are supposed to be big and powerful and sexy and dangerous.”
“And buy a new outfit everyday?” Jack crouched down so he could give Matilda the attention she was dying for, and I leaned back against the counter. “That doesn’t really seem practical.”
“Exactly! Vampires aren’t supposed to be practical! You’re supernatural beings with magical powers! You don’t do laundry or play video games! You jump off cliffs and have sex with really attractive women!”
“I get it,” Jack laughed. “I had this notion about what a vampire should be, but it was all based on glamorized Hollywood ideals. Nothing could be sexy and cool all the time, especially not something that’s immortal. Do you know how exhausting and expensive it would be to wear designer gowns and crowned jewels everyday for six hundred years?
“And what would be the point? Who would I be trying to impress? I’m a damn vampire! I’m not gonna put on black eyeliner and grow my hair long just so some stupid humans think I’m sexy. They think I am anyway.” He winked exaggeratedly at me, so I laughed and started walking away.
“Where are these alleged millions of movies anyway?” I headed towards the living room, even though I hadn’t seen a single movie in there.
“Most of them are in my room.” He stopped me at the stairs and nodded up to his room. “This might surprise you, but I’m the movie buff in the family. Well, Mae is a little bit, but she only likes things with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, she really does act like she’s eighty-years-old.”
“I heard that!” Mae was walking towards us with a laundry basket overflowing with clothes, and she thrust them at Jack. “These are yours, by the way. You had a pair of tan Dickies that were covered in blood and I couldn’t get it out.”
“That must be from when I went to the club.” He sifted through the basket of clothes absently, but my eyes widened.
It was one thing to know that he drank blood. It was a different thing entirely to know that he’d ruined clothes by drinking blood from a human being.
“Sometimes Jack goes down to the vampire club on Hennepin Ave.” Mae had noticed the shocked look on my face, so she tried to explain. “A lot of the girls down there are donors, and the ones that aren’t don’t mind. But sometimes when you hit an artery, things can get a little messy.”
“But if you hit an artery, don’t they die?” I must’ve continued looking freaked out, because Jack started getting frustrated. He shifted the basket to his other arm and shook his head.