“You’re shaking, Lawson. What’s going on?” Alex asked, coasting to a stop at the light.
“Ophelia. Get her out of my head.” I could feel the unattractive flare of my nostrils, feel the ache in my jaw from gritting my teeth. “She’s always going to be one step ahead of us as long as she’s in my mind. If we’re ever going to save Nina, I have to get her out.”
“Okay,” Alex said, staring through the windshield.
I grabbed his shoulder, feeling my fingers digging into his warm skin. “Tell me how, Alex. Tell me how to get rid of her. You have to know a way.”
“Well, there is one way. The mind reading—”
“Mind-hijacking is more like it.”
“Well, it’s not an exact science. Every time she gets in your head, you’re generally on your own, right?”
I frowned. “Or with you.”
Alex ignored me and continued. “The more people who are around—the more distraction—the more difficult it will be for Ophelia to get a handle on your thoughts. She’ll find it difficult to find you and get in your mind.”
“Okay, fine, so we go somewhere with a lot of distraction.”
“Somewhere with a lot of people. Generally, people who won’t notice a stray or weird thought poking into their head. There needs to be something entertaining them.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Okay, but I don’t think we can make it down to Disneyland before Ophelia lays waste to my entire life.”
Alex remained silent, thinking. Suddenly, he jerked the car toward the highway on-ramp, wheels squealing as he took the corner at full speed. “I know a place.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I fiddled around with the car stereo and finally found a soccer game being broadcast on the Spanish channel. I turned it up to earsplitting level, hoping the hiss of the crowd would drown out any Ophelia-influenced thoughts. We were inching our way through the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza when Alex turned the volume down and looked at me.
“Since when do you like soccer?”
“It’s called football,” I murmured.
“Okay. Since when do you like football?”
Since I’ve had a psychopath taking up valuable real estate in my brain. Since Will walked into my life and try as I might, I can’t get the soft English lilt of his voice out of my head, can’t deny the knight-in-shining-armor way he looks in his firefighter uniform. I thought. I was stabbed with a pang of guilt when I glanced at Alex, at the sincere worry in his eye.
He’s not staying around... . This time the voice in my head was my own, and the truth of the words squeezed at my heart.
“I just want to focus on finding Nina,” I said to the windshield.
“Where would Ophelia take Nina?” Alex mumbled.
“Vlad.”
“What?” Alex cut behind a Muni bus, causing the man in the Zipcar behind us to lay on his horn. “Do you think Vlad might have a better lead on Nina? Vampire connection or something?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, Vlad is right there.”
I pointed, and Alex followed my gaze out the driver’s side window to the garish lights of the Roxie Theater. Vlad and his fellow VERMers—all dressed in the standard-issue velvet smoking jackets and ascots—were marching in a neat oval, their wooden-stake signs illuminated by the red and yellow lights of the Roxie. There was a small group of teenagers gathered around them, and when Alex rolled down his window we could hear their faint chant as they thrust pale fists into the air.
“What’s he doing?”
I unhooked my seat belt. “Protesting.” Before Alex could say anything I was bundling myself against the late-afternoon city fog and dodging cars. I crossed the street and made a beeline for Vlad, who, while marching, was clearly being followed by an adoring clutch of teenage breather girls.
“Vlad,” I said when I saw him.
He glanced over his shoulder at me, a kind smile spreading across his lips. “Are you joining us?”
I felt thin fingers clutching at my elbow, and I whirled, only to go face-to-face with a young girl, her cheeks ruddy and shiny, her forehead broken out and partially covered by a failed attempt at Sandra Bullock side-swept bangs.
“You know him?” the girl asked, her grey eyes heavy with awe.
I rolled my eyes.
Vampires, as a whole, are an attractive lot. Vlad, immortally sixteen, and with the wiry, smooth muscles, chiseled jaw, and brooding countenance of the attractive, misunderstood, teenage ne’er-do-well, was all but irresistible to the under-eighteen female set. It wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed girls falling all over themselves to brush a finger through his thick black pompadour while attempting to lose themselves in his black-as-coal eyes. Since his last crush had tried to kill me, I was wary.
I shook off the girl. “Trust me, you’re better off.” I turned back to Vlad. “This is the theater you’re protesting?”