American Vampire. Jennifer Armintrout

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СКАЧАТЬ we first all started to realize that we were stuck here … we didn’t know how long it had gone on. We thought there was something wrong with the phone lines.” She looked down at her hands. “You’ll get used to it. We don’t really rely on each other here, but you’ll learn to rely on yourself.”

      Oh, for Christ’s sake, I had to get trapped in a Lifetime original movie, didn’t I? He couldn’t take any more homespun wisdom from the woman who appeared to be the queen of all mood swings. “Well, that basement is sounding awfully comfy right now. You can lead the way.”

      He carried his overnight bag and cursed his light packing. Not only would a pair of jeans and change of shirt not last him for eternity, if he was really trapped here that long, but he hadn’t brought an eternity’s worth of blood with him. He’d fed off a waitress when he’d stopped earlier in the evening, but he’d been planning to gorge himself like a tick at the Independence Day party, so he’d only brought emergency rations. Like her or not, he’d be tearing into this woman before too long.

      He followed her down the basement stairs. It was not the kind of basement that the word basement described in his mind. A “basement” was a place where somebody puts the aforementioned pool table and maybe a miniature refrigerator. They put up drywall and maybe some wood paneling and called it a den or a family room. This place, with its bare rock walls and dirt floor, was more like what someone would call a cellar. Or a hole. “You’re seriously going to keep me down here?” He wiped a finger through the cobwebs clinging to visible floorboards of the house over his head.

      “I’m not going to serve you breakfast in bed, if that’s what you were hoping,” she called over her shoulder as she tugged futilely at a mound of various, unrelated objects stuffed in a corner.

      That’s what you think. He watched her struggle for a while with whatever it was that she was doing, then reached past her, shouldering her out of the way.

      “Very gentlemanly of you,” she griped, wiping her hands on her jeans.

      “I never claimed to be a gentleman.” The metal frame and musty canvas of an army cot pulled free from the rubble of tent parts and Christmas decorations. He untangled a string of colored lights from the cot and set it on the ground at his feet. “Is this what I’m sleeping on?”

      “That or the floor.” Beneath the moldering wooden stairs was a stack of plastic totes. She pulled one out, examined the label, and popped open the lid. “Blankets in here. They’re old, but they’ll do.”

      “Your hospitality amazes me,” Graf quipped, snapping open the cot’s folded frame.

      “I’m sorry, I must have missed the Holiday Inn sign at the end of my driveway.” She put her hands on her hips, where she might as well just keep them permanently, they ended up there often enough. “I could always rescind my invitation, you know.”

       I’d like to see you try.

      “Sorry.” The word left his mouth almost less frequently than please, and it had to make its way past his clenched back teeth this time. “You have to understand, you’ve had five years to get used to this whole ‘being trapped’ thing. I’ve had five minutes.”

      “You’ve had an hour. Suck it up.” She went up the stairs. They creaked, and a fine rain of sand fell from each step. “This isn’t permanent. At sundown, you start looking for a new place to live.”

      The door closing at the top of the stairs was a judge’s gavel falling, and the scrape of something heavy being dragged in front of the door was the sound of a jail cell locking up tight. He’d been sentenced to living in a basement and putting up with a warden so insufferable, he didn’t even want to eat her.

      If she had known that a flimsy lock wouldn’t keep him in, would she have still taken that precaution? Probably. Humans did silly things to reassure themselves when they were frightened, which she most definitely was, with a strange man in her basement.

      Still, if she had wanted to make him feel like a prisoner, she couldn’t have been more effective. Graf decided he could bide his time; the thing about caged animals was, they only stayed caged for so long.

      Three

      Jessa stood, hands still braced on the heavy wooden bench, and wondered if it would be enough to hold a grown man inside. She wasn’t worried about him running away. Actually, she would prefer it. Contrary to the rumors around town that she was a man-hungry spinster, she did have some established criteria when it came to weeding out the bad ones.

      This guy was one of the bad ones. That was why she was so worried about him getting out. He wasn’t bad in the hot-guy-who-was-nothing-but-trouble kind of way, though she had plenty of experience with that type. He was bad in the he-was-always-so-quiet-serial-killer kind of way. It was something about his eyes. There was a void there, an absence that had chilled her the moment she’d seen him. She’d almost been willing to take her chances with It, rather than hide in the gas station with him. But she had stayed, and gotten into his car on a desolate stretch of road in the middle of the night, and even let him sleep in her house. History had proven she wasn’t a very good judge of character before, but this example was like a neon sign that flashed YOU DUMMY.

      Keeping him close wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. It wasn’t by chance that he was the first person to be able to stop in Penance. Nothing happened by chance anymore. Maybe she was a hard, cynical bitch—no, she was sure she was—but she wasn’t going to trust that he was just a stranded traveler. Having him on her side could be an advantage, or it could be a huge mistake.

      She kept one eye on the basement door as she filled the kettle and set it on the stove. The sun would be up soon, and it would be too late to go to bed. Not that she could sleep, anyway, with a stranger in her basement who might or might not be trustworthy.

      Then why did you let him stay? She scrubbed her hands over her face, blocking out the kitchen, blocking out the world. Blocking out the knife drawer, the scene of so many failed attempts to escape life, escape Penance, escape everything. Was it that same self-destructive urge that had convinced her to let him in?

      It didn’t matter why she had offered up her basement, and it didn’t matter why he was here. What mattered was she had chickens to feed and chores to do.

      She had to survive, because, so far, not surviving hadn’t been an option she’d been able to follow through on.

      She left the kettle to boil, vaguely aware that it could be used as a weapon if he did sneak out of the basement. That line of thinking was counterproductive. All thinking was counterproductive. Once she thought about one aspect of her situation, she would have to think about all of it. The guy in the basement. The reason he was here. The thing that might have sent him. The town, the past, the future, all of it. The only way she got through the days and nights was by blocking all of it firmly out and pretending something else was happening.

      She drifted up the stairs, imagining it was a Friday night, and she tiptoed to avoid waking her parents, who, once upon a time, would have been sleeping behind the closed door to their room. If they found out she’d been running around at all hours, they would tan her hide. There was no way she was going to get grounded this close to the homecoming dance. She went into the bathroom and closed the door, holding her breath when the light clicked on. It was the little sounds that would wake her parents, like the light switch flicking or the creak of the floorboards in front of the sink. She shed her dirty clothes and dropped them into the hamper. Mom did wash on Fridays, СКАЧАТЬ