It scared me, and I drew back. If I had been the slightest bit hungry…
Zeke blushed, raking his fingers through his hair, and I realized I’d been staring. “I should go,” he muttered, backing out of the tent. “The others…I should probably help them.” He pushed himself to a crouch at the entrance, balanced on the balls of his feet. “If you need anything, just let me know. Dinner should be ready soon. Oh, yeah. And this is for you.”
Reaching off to the side, Zeke grabbed something and tossed it into the tent. It landed with a poof of dust: a thick blue-and-white quilt with only a tiny hole in one corner.
Stunned, I looked up at him. A blanket like this could be traded for a month of meal tickets back in the Fringe, and he was just giving it to me? That couldn’t be right. “I…I can’t take this,” I muttered, holding it back to him. “I don’t have anything to trade.”
“Don’t be silly.” Zeke smiled, a little puzzled. “You don’t have to give me anything for it. It’s yours.” Someone shouted to him across the camp, and he raised his head. “Be right there!” he called back, and nodded to me. “Gotta go. See you at dinner.”
“Zeke,” I called softly, and he paused, peeking back into the tent. “Thanks.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Don’t worry about it. We look out for each other out here.” He flicked the canvas wall, lightly. “And like I said, if the tent falls on you in the middle of the night, don’t panic. You’ll get used to it. No one really worries about keeping things erect around here, and… Wow, that sounded bad.” His blush returned, brighter than before, and he raked a hand through his hair. “Uh…yeah, I should… I’m going to leave now.”
Grimacing, he ducked out of sight. I waited until he was a good distance away before snickering into my quilt.
After zipping up the tent flaps, I looked around my newest lair. I didn’t like how flimsy it was, how easily someone could invade. I also wondered if the thin canvas would completely block out the sun when it rose directly overhead. I didn’t know if I would wake up if I suddenly burst into flames, or if I would quietly exit the world as my body burned to ash, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to find out.
I took out my knife and made a long slit in the floor of the tent, revealing the grassy earth beneath. Now at least I had a quick escape if the sun penetrated my flimsy tent. Or if something unforeseen happened and I needed to get away quickly. Always leave yourself an out; that was the first rule of the Fringe. This group might seem friendly and unassuming, but you couldn’t be too careful. Especially around people like Jebbadiah Crosse. And Ruth.
Lying back, I pulled the quilt over my head, hoping no one would disturb my sleep. As darkness closed over me and my thoughts turned slow and sluggish, I realized two things. One, I couldn’t keep this up forever, and two, Ezekiel Crosse was far too perfect to survive in this world much longer.
*
THAT FIRST WEEK was a study in close calls.
Thankfully, I didn’t burst into flames sleeping beneath the flimsy canvas tent, though I did wake up feeling uncomfortably warm, and wished I could simply burrow into the cool earth, away from the sun. As for the problem of guard duty, I spoke to Zeke the second night and convinced him to let me have first watch permanently. This meant staying awake a couple hours after dawn, and it was torture at first. My long coat protected me from the worst of the early morning rays, and I survived by staying in shaded areas whenever possible and never facing the direction the sun was coming up. But keeping myself awake was agonizing when my vampire instincts were screaming at me to sleep, to get out of the light. I finally started treating it as an exercise Kanin might have me do; building up my endurance to remain awake and active as long as I could.
My human companions were another issue. Except for Ruth, who continued to be a catty pain in the ass, shooting me poisonous looks if I so much as glanced at Zeke, and Jeb, who treated me with the same harsh aloofness as he did everyone else, the group was pretty friendly. Which I wouldn’t have minded, except they were also a curious bunch, always asking me questions about the city, what it was like living there, how I had escaped. I answered as vaguely as I could and finally managed to convince the adults that it was just too painful to remember that life anymore. To my relief, the questions finally stopped, and everyone was very understanding, almost to the point of pity. That was fine with me. Let them think I’d been horribly scarred by my life in New Covington; it made it easier to hide the real reason I got uneasy whenever the word vampire came up.