Under Attack

Chapter Sixteen


After Will dropped me off and after I had washed the smell of crime and primal fear out of my hair, I slid into my fuzzy bathrobe and crawled onto the couch. ChaCha obediently jumped onto my lap and snuggled up against my thigh, her warm chest rising and falling as she snoozed comfortably. I stared down longingly at her, wondering if I would ever again feel comfortable enough to close my eyes, to drop off into unconsciousness without waking up in a pool of my neighbor’s blood.

Then there was the Vessel.

My stomach roiled each time I considered that Alex might already know about me. Did we actually have a relationship or was it a ploy? Then there was Grandma... .

I stood up and ChaCha flopped over on the couch, growling at my bathrobe. I stared at myself in the hall mirror, trying to figure out which part of me was Vessel-esque and trying to formulate what to say to Grandma when I heard the lock tumble on the front door. The door opened a few inches and Nina pushed her fist—clutching her enormous orange leather Marc Jacobs bag—through the opening.

“Uh, Neens,” I started, kneading my hands, “I’m really sorry about the way I—” I pulled open the door and stopped dead in my tracks.

“Oh my God, Nina. What happened?”

Nina brushed past me delicately, holding her arms out tenderly, fingers splayed. Her black sundress billowed all around her, barely touching her thin frame. She continued her uncomfortable, straight-legged walk into the house and blinked out at me from behind enormous black-framed sunglasses. She peeled them off and I tried not to gasp.

“Oh, Nina, what have you done to yourself ?”

She gulped. “Is it really that noticeable?”

“What would—why would you—” I picked around for the right words while Nina flopped onto the couch, her full lower lip pressed out and quivering.

“I wanted Dixon to notice me. I just wanted to stand out.”

“But Nina—” I looked her up and down. “A spray tan?”

The usual marble sheen of Nina’s delicate skin was gone, covered over by a cocoa-butter tan that made the ruddy pink of her bloodstained lips stand out awkwardly, made the glossy black of her hair look inky and unnatural.

“But you’re a vampire!”

Nina looked at her arms. “Do I really look that different?”

“You look like a Chicken McNugget!”

She knitted her brows. “And that’s bad.”

I nodded slowly while Nina pulled up her dress and poked out one long leg, once a brilliant, porcelain pale—now an odd, Shake ’n Bake brown.

“I just wanted to stand out,” she said again, her voice soft.

“Nina.” I took her hand and sat down next to her. “You do stand out.” I turned her hand over in mine, then poked at her arm. “Even without the hard candy shell.”

She flopped headfirst onto the pillows. “I knew it! It’s horrible!”

“No!” I pulled her up by the arm, trying to reconcile the warm cocoa brown of her skin with the frigid chill of it.

“I’m actually starting to get used to it. It was just a surprise is all.” I forced a grin.

Nina cocked her head, a small, thankful smile on her lips. “Oh, Sophie—you are such a good friend. And a bad liar.” She wagged her head, staring at her palms. “I’m so sorry about today.”

I shrugged. “Nina, the tan will come off in a few days.”

“Not about that. About Dixon. The firing.”

I felt a pang of sadness, but tried to brush it away. “It’s okay. It’s not the worst thing that happened to me this week.”

“I’m lucky to have you.”

“Well, who else would? After all, I’m a felon. Do you want something from the fridge?”

“I’ll take a—wait, a felon?” Nina took my hand, examining the leftover black fingerprinting ink that even a good scrub hadn’t been able to fade.

“Long story.” I stood up, went to the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink? I could pour some O neg into a coconut shell. You know, to keep the Hawaiian Tropic thing going.”

Nina ran for the kitchen and was under my nose in a millisecond. “What do you mean, felon?” She shook my ink-stained finger. “Were you in jail?”

I blew out a reluctant sigh—I wasn’t happy about reliving the events of the night—but gave Nina the details anyway while she sipped a blood bag and I nursed a Diet Coke. When I finished, Nina’s brow was knitted in concern and I was beginning to consider Botox for what I assumed was my new perma-frown.

Nina looked me over, her dark eyes appraising. “So you’re the Vessel.”

I nodded. “I guess so.”

“What did your grandmother say? I mean, she had to know she was raising—”

“Supernatural Tupperware? I don’t know; I haven’t asked her yet.”

Nina’s eyes bulged. “Go ask her!”

I went back to the hallway mirror and tapped. My finger tapped back. “Grandma?” I asked into the mirror.

Nina stepped up behind me; she had no reflection, but I could feel the cool air coming off her body in waves. I shivered.

“Do you like, have to say a magic phrase or something ?”

I shot Nina an Are you kidding me? look and hugged my arms. “She comes out to give me warnings about nothing and to watch Alex in the bathroom, but when I really need her, she’s not here.” I narrowed my eyes. “I bet she’s with Ed McMahon.” I paused, an idea edging its way from my periphery. “I’m going to Cala Foods.”

Nina blinked. “You’re going to the grocery store?”

I snatched my keys from the rack and hiked my shoulder bag up. “Be back in twenty.”

I pulled into the parking lot of our local twenty-four-hour grocery, thanking the god of parking and permits that he had allowed Cala Foods the measly six-spot piece of earth where I parked my car. Parking might not mean a lot to most people, but to a city girl like me, a spot within the area code you intended to visit is worthy of celebration.

I dug my hands into my pockets, shuddering against the biting San Francisco summer and entering the store, heading for the produce department and stopping in front of a pyramid of half-priced melon. I slipped one into my basket.

I looked at the cantaloupe I had selected, bit my lip, and then heaved two more in, just in case Grandma was going to be initially uncooperative. I dropped a package of Snausages in there for ChaCha and two more boxes of marshmallow Pinwheels for myself. I paused, and then cleaned out the entire Pinwheel shelf.

I lugged my stash to my car, the solid cantaloupes finding their way to the bottom of my pink canvas shopping bag and bopping painfully against my shins as I hurried. At home, I hefted the melons onto my counter and pulled out a butcher knife, slicing into the first piece of fruit after checking the reflection in the knife’s steel blade. I halved the first melon and then leaned in, whispering to the pale orange flesh.

“Grandma?”

I tried the other half. “Grandma?”

I slopped the silent melon halves into the sink and sliced into the next fruit. “Grandma?” I shouted.

“Um, Sophie?”

I whirled around to see Nina standing behind me, her cocoa-butter tan even more outstanding now that she had changed into a hot-pink Juicy Couture tracksuit. “What are you doing?”

I put my melon-soaked hands on my hips and sighed. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re talking to fruit. Fruit that you’ve named Grandma. Maybe you want to sit down. Sit down for a bit while I call the doctor?” Nina moved to the wall and picked up the phone.

I frowned. “No. I’m perfectly fine.” I looked back at my melons. “Okay, I guess this looks a little weird. It’s that ...”

“Sophie!”

Both Nina and I snapped to look at the face in the fruit as it beckoned to us. Grandma looked from side to side. “What’s with all the cantaloupe?”

“I was looking for you everywhere!” I said, as if there were a natural connection between communication and cantaloupe.

Grandma raised her bushy grey eyebrows in the sly, sexy fashion that grandmothers should never use in front of their grandchildren. “Sorry, I was indisposed. Turns out Ed McMahon and I got along better than I expected.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, my hip jutting out in instinctual irritated-teenager fashion. “You mean you were canoodling with Ed McMahon in my moment of need?”

Grandma sucked her teeth and looked annoyed. “Sophie, you’re a grown woman and lately, you have a lot of moments of need.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes your grandma has her own moments of need.”

Nina pressed her palms over her ears and clamped her eyes shut. “Okay, I don’t know what’s weirding me out more: seeing your grandmother in half a cantaloupe, or hearing that Granny’s getting it on with Ed McMahon posthumously.”

I gave Nina a dirty look and turned back to Gram. “This is serious. Grandma, I met Will Sherman today.”

Grandma blinked, her eyes flat in the cantaloupe flesh. “Is he some sort of rapper or something?”

“Will Sherman, Grandma,” I enunciated. “My guardian? You know, because I’m the Vessel of Souls.”

Grandma paled, despite the fleshy orange cantaloupe color. “How do you know that?” she asked, her voice a hoarse rasp.

“Did you know I was the Vessel of Souls, Grandma?”

Grandma nodded very slowly.

“And you didn’t tell me?” My voice was rising to near hysterics. “How could you not tell me that I was a Vessel?”

Grandma rolled her cantaloupe-colored eyes. “Please, Sophie. You locked yourself in your bedroom and cried for two months straight when I said you were going to have to get braces. I didn’t think telling you that you were a supernatural holding tank would go over all that well. So sue me!”

“I need you to tell me the truth. About everything.” My hysteria was giving way to tears and I fought to keep myself from crying. “Did my mother kill herself ?”

Grandma pressed her lips together, her eyes rolling upward as if the answer she was looking for was somewhere above her.

“Oh, God, it’s true. That’s why she doesn’t appear to me. She’s”—I paused, swallowing saliva that had gone metallic and sour—“not in the same place as you are, right? She can’t appear to me.”

“Sophie, who told you this?”

“Tell me the truth, Grandma. Did my mother commit suicide?”

“Your mother loved you very much.”

“Did she do it?” My voice was barely above a whisper.

I watched the grey-tinged curls on my grandmother’s head waggle as she nodded her head, her chin low in defeat. “Yes, it’s true. But Sophie, you have to understand—”

“And my father? Lucas Szabo, the college professor. Only he wasn’t a college professor, was he? Did Mom know, Grandma? Did Mom know that he was the devil?”

My grandmother looked away and I felt a pang of despair as I watched a glistening tear roll silently down her cheek. “She wasn’t sure at first,” Grandma said. “She promised me she didn’t know.”

I gritted my teeth. “She killed herself. If anything would have happened to you, would my father have taken care of me?”

“We had to keep you safe.”

“And suicide was my mother’s answer?”

“The Vessel of Souls existed long before you did, Sophie.”

I crossed my arms, slumped into a dining room chair. “What does that have to do with anything? My mother took up with the devil. My mother fell in love with Satan.”

“To her credit, he was very charming.”

“Grandma!”

Grandma’s eyes were stern. “You don’t know everything, Sophie.”

The tears started to spill over my cheeks before I even knew I was crying. “She fell in love with him and then she abandoned me. Is it because she knew what I was? Because she knew I wasn’t real—that I was a Vessel?”

“Sophie Lawson, you are as real as any of us in this room.”

I stood up angrily. “Forgive me if that doesn’t give me much comfort, Grandma. You’re a cantaloupe and Nina’s been dead for a hundred years!”

I sniffed, storming past Nina, who stood in the kitchen, stunned, and leaving my grandmother, openmouthed, in half a cantaloupe. I was about to walk into my room when I heard my grandmother’s voice ring through the apartment.

“Being the Vessel of Souls is not a bad thing, Sophie Lawson. But dying to protect it is!”

I slammed the door behind me and flopped down on my bed, letting the tears come. If it weren’t for me, my mother would still be alive. My mother killed herself and Ophelia knew it. I rolled onto my side and curled my knees up into my chest and let the tears shake me. One time in my life the strangest thing was being the only breather in an office full of the undead. Now I had no idea who—or what—I was, though it seemed like the whole world already knew. I hugged my knees, rested my head on my arm, and fell asleep.

I tossed and turned most of the night, staring at the red numbers on my digital clock and finally putting on my iPod to try and drown out the chatter that was going on in my brain. The next morning I awoke with the cord from my headphones wrapped around my neck and my sheets bunched on the floor. I was still achy and tired but did my best to keep the events of the last night—from jail to Vessel to suicide—out of my head. When I padded into the kitchen Nina was still there, sipping from a coffee mug and leaning against the cabinets, ChaCha asleep at her feet.

“You look good today,” she said with a cheerful smile.

“I love that I can always count on you to lie to me.”

Nina handed me a Starbucks from the fridge and slung her arm across my shoulders. “That’s what best friends are for.”

I unscrewed my drink and slumped at the kitchen table. Nina sat across from me. “So, speaking of fabulous best friends, I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Because you’re a vampire?”

“Yeah, and because my best friend feels like her life has been turned upside down.” Nina reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze.

I felt another lump forming in my throat, but I smiled. Nina’s skin may be cold, but her touch warmed me nonetheless.

“You need answers, so I’m going to help you get them.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

Nina offered me a wide grin that showed off her white teeth—pointed incisors and all. “Close your eyes.”

I laid my head against the table and moaned. “No, no more surprises. From now on, I’m never losing consciousness, never closing my eyes, never opening doors. And I’m only eating clear broths.”

I could practically hear Nina’s eyes rolling.

“I was in jail!” I wailed.

I looked up as I heard the paper fall onto the table. A piece of folded yellow notepaper lay in front of me. I grabbed it.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

I raised a suspicious eyebrow and Nina snatched the paper out of my hand and unfolded it, smoothing it on the table. At the top of the paper was written Lucas Szabo, and underneath it, his full address. I felt my jaw drop.

“You found my father.” My voice was a near whisper. “What? How?”

Growing up without a father, I went through the typical stages of child-abandonment feelings: making believe my father was looking for me, never wanting to see my bastard-making father, assuming he had a good reason for leaving, dating guys who wore blazers and used fatherly expressions like “cotton-pickin’” and “malarkey.” At times I pored through old records or did halfhearted Internet searches. As angry as I wanted to be, I couldn’t help but feel a meaningful tug around Father’s Day or The Men’s Wearhouse, but not knowing where my father was—only that he existed somewhere out in the world—gave me a weird sense of comfort. Not anymore.

“Lorraine owed me a favor,” Nina said, her voice smug.

I felt a little stab of warmth. “And you used it on me? How? When?”

Nina shrugged. “Turns out Lorraine’s as much of an insomniac as I am.”

I looked at the paper, pinching it hard between my thumb and forefinger. “Thank you.”

Nina threw her arms around me, engulfing me in one of her cold vampire hugs. “I’m really sorry about everything, Soph.”

I barely heard her as I stared at my father’s address. He lived in Marin County, less than forty-five minutes from my home in San Francisco. I wondered how long he had lived there. I wondered how long he had lived just across the Golden Gate Bridge and had never bothered to see me.

“I want to see him,” I finally said.

“What? Now?”

“No, not now. I want to see him, at least see his house. I want to see where he lives, but I don’t want him to see me.”

“Because he might be Satan?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want him to see me because I’m not ready for that. I just want to see where he lives. I want to see what I can find out about him before I actually”—I swallowed hard—“meet him.”

Nina and I shared a glance.

“And also, I guess I wouldn’t mind finding out if he is actually the devil.”

“We can go there. He lives close,” Nina said softly.

Too close. My father lived less than an hour away from me, yet made no attempt to find me. Satan or not, shouldn’t every father want to check on his little girl? I steeled myself, reminded myself that my so-called father just might be the cornerstone of evil, the King of Darkness, Hell personified. Not the kind of guy you want driving your car pool.

Nina put her hands on her hips. “What are we supposed to find at his house, though? Pictures of his Hell-adjacent condo? Pitchfork in the coat closet?”

I grinned in spite of myself. “Whatever works.”

Nina shrugged. “Either way, I guess a little sleuthing couldn’t hurt.”

“Unless we’re found and flayed alive,” I said helpfully.

Nina slung an arm over my shoulder. “Sophie, do you really think your dad would flay you alive? And he should be happy to see me. Technically, I’m one of his people.” She bared her fangs. “He probably even has my soul somewhere in one of his file cabinets. Alex’s, too.”

I stood up, my heart hammering in my chest. “Then this isn’t a crazy idea?”

“Of course it is. It’s downright suicidal.” She licked her lips as my stomach sank. “But I love a challenge. It’ll be a midnight mission.” Nina held out her tanned arms. “And now I won’t stand out in the dark. We’ll go tonight.”

My heart stopped. I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly bone dry.

I had spent the last thirty-three years pretending that I didn’t care about my father’s whereabouts and inwardly hoping that somehow, he was searching for me. Now, in less than twenty-four hours I could be face-to-face with the man who abandoned me, who walked out, leaving behind my mother and a four-day-old infant. I could ask him why and he could tell me. He could tell me that he missed me and that he looked everywhere for me, that he dreamed of me, too. Or he could tell me that he just didn’t want me.

“Okay, then,” I said, my voice wavering. “Tonight.”

Nina put out her pinkie, hooked it with mine. “To your family tree. May it not be growing in Hell.”