“What’s Bobby doing?” I asked, hoping to cheer him up by talking about his boyfriend.
They’d been together for four months, and they weren’t “meant for each other,” not the way vampires are, but there was still something there. Bobby made Milo happy, and he was a good guy.
Bobby mostly lived with us back in Minneapolis, and despite my initial hatred of him, he’d really grown on me. Some of that probably had to do with the fact that I’d bitten him, bonding us together slightly. It tended to drive Milo nuts, but we couldn’t do anything about it.
“He’s sitting in front of a fan in our room,” Milo said, scratching absently at his arm. The spiders here were crazy about him. The bites didn’t really hurt him, but they left irritating, itching bumps for hours. “Even the heat is getting to him, so you know it has to be bad.”
“He’s probably just used to living in our climate,” I yawned. We hated being hot, and we constantly kept our house at frigid temperatures. Plus, we had just come from winter in Minnesota. “Ugh! It’s too hot sleep!”
“Tell me about it.” Milo looked up at me. “What time is it back home? Maybe Jack’s up.”
“I don’t understand the time difference. You tell me.”
“I don’t know what time it is here,” he said and made no effort to find out. “Have you talked to Jack lately?”
“The other day. The reception here is so shoddy, it’s hard for me to get through.”
My heart ached at the thought of him. I was bonded with Jack, so it was painful to be away from him. It had lessened a bit over the last few months, but it still wasn’t anything where I’d enjoy not being around him.
“How are things there?” Milo asked.
“The same, I guess. Ezra is moping around the house, and Jack can’t wait for us to get back.”
“I still can’t believe that Ezra hasn’t talked to Mae,” Milo looked a little wide eyed over it, and I felt the same way.
No matter how mad or frustrated I might get with Jack, I couldn’t imagine going months without talking to him. It would be like going months without eating.
Bobby shrieked from his bedroom down the hall, but Milo and I were slow to react. Spiders had been infesting their room since we arrived, and Bobby screamed like a girl every time he saw one. Admittedly, some of them could actually kill him, but most of the time, he’d already stomped on them by the time Milo or I came to the rescue.
I heard a door slam, followed by a bizarre clawing sound. Bobby’s heart beat frantically, but his wasn’t the only one. Another heart pounded hard and fast, but it was quieter and not as rapid as a human.
It was the sound of a vampire’s heart. A very small, very hungry vampire.
By the time Bobby yelled again, Milo and I were already running out of my room. His room was way at the other end of the hall, but we could see Daisy, clawing at the door with her bare hands. She was strong enough to tear the wood, leaving bloody trails as it splintered out around her fingers.
Before we had a chance to reach her, she managed to tear a hole in the door big enough for her little body to wriggle through, and Bobby started screaming like hell.
# # #
Read an excerpt from the first book in Amanda Hocking’s new paranormal romance the Trylle Trilogy:
Switched – available now
Prologue: Eleven Years Ago
A few things made that day stand out more than any other: it was my sixth birthday, and my mother was wielding a knife. Not a tiny steak knife, but some kind of massive butcher knife glinting in the light like a bad horror movie. She definitely wanted to kill me.
I try to think of the days that led up to that one to see if I missed something about her, but I have no memory of her before then. I have some memories of my childhood, and I can even remember my dad who died when I was five, but not her.
When I ask my brother Matt about her, he always answers with things like, “She's batshit, Wendy. That’s all you need to know.” He's seven years older than I am, so he remembers things better, but he never wants to talk about it.
We lived in the Hamptons when I was a kid, and my mother was a lady of leisure. She' d hired a live-in nanny to deal with me, but the night before my birthday, the nanny had left for a family emergency. My mother was in charge of me, for the first time in her life, and neither of us were happy.
I didn't even want the party. I liked gifts, but I didn't have any friends. The people coming to the party were my mother's friends and their snobby little kids. She had planned some kind of princess tea party I didn't want, but Matt and our maid spent all morning setting it up.
By the time the guests arrived, I already ripped off my shoes and plucked the bows from my hair. My mother came down in the middle of opening gifts, surveying the scene with her icy blue eyes.