Totally a Vampire Thing || ONC 2024 ||

Chapter 14. Grounded!

Before we went to Freida's, Cruz put on one of his grandpa's shirts. He kept his game pants rather than help himself to nipple-high waistband slacks. He rocked the buttoned-down pink over navy-blue spandex, which was the best testimony to his hotness. 

"Turn around, let's see it from the back." I was looking at him, giggling and shoving my car fob, sudoku puzzle book and my phone into my bag, so my mind barely registered the numbers on my phone screen.

02

08

Sun, April 28

"Sunday?" I fished out the phone from my bag and stared for a stupefying moment. "Is it Sunday?"

Sunday meant it was two in the morning.

"Is it two in the morning?"

A ball of fear formed in my throat. "M-my parents..." My shaking finger opened the texts, and the one right on top, the first of the twenty-six new text alerts from just Mom, read:

Dawn: Zoe, whatever happened, just text us! Police won't do anything until 24 hrs.

The phone winked out, stone-cold-dead, at this precise moment, like it was a sadist.

"Charger! Is there a charger in this place?" I whimpered, turning in one spot a dozen times. Thinking straight? I couldn't if my life depended on it! Of course, an Ancient vampire didn't have a charger lying around! She hid it with magic, just like the secret blood stash. But in my car...

"There is a charger in my car...it's 2 am. My parents are going insane..."

In my panicked stumbling, I would have eventually found an exit from Freida' room by sheer blind luck, but Cruz seized me by the shoulders. "Zoe! I'm taking you home."

My mind churned. Sort of. "B-but they said, you can't leave."

He scoffed, grabbed my hand and vampire-zipped me out of the room, down the hallway, past Lilian's post and out of the building.

"Try and stop me!" he yelled at the mansion. A muggy Mississippi night flashed by us as Cruz raced to the parking lot, confirming that 2 am wasn't a figment of my reeling mind...alas.

Nobody bothered with the streetlights for the visitors' parking lot, since the mortals didn't stay on the premises overnight. Even without the magnolia's thick foliage to block out the sky, it was almost completely dark, with the yellow crescent moon obscured by the rain clouds. Only the Eternal Acres sign was on, its LED glow reflecting from the surrounding white lilies.

Moving by feel rather than by sight, I grabbed the charger out of my Mini and got into Cruz's Porsche without a word of argument. One, I wanted to text my folks. Two, I was too mentally and physically exhausted to drive a rural road in the middle of the night. Three, every extra minute with Cruz was precious.

The Porsche launched so fast, I nearly swallowed my tongue. Bouncing in my seat despite the seatbelt, I searched for a plug-in, finding only a cigarette lighter. "Cruz, where do I—"

"Sorry, Zoe, a USB would have ruined the original feel of the seventies' interior. Grandpa insisted when he gave his car to me." The speedometer's needle bounced to and stuck to the right corner of the gage. "But we'll be in Delys in a few minutes. What's your address?"

"How can you be so calm!" I grasped the panels, the rear-view mirror—anything. "Don't your parents—"

"They will blame Grandpa, as usual...and Grandpa is in a vampiric sleep."

"Lucky you!"

"Address, Zoe?"

I rattled off my address through chattering teeth, as the sparse lights of the night-time Delys rushed toward us.