He stowed my things then came around and slipped behind the wheel. He looked good there. But then again, he looked good anywhere. “The coven house is a sort of communal gathering place. It’s a house that belongs to the coven as a whole.”
I pursed my lips. The idea of belonging to a coven was foreign to me. It sounded like a cult. “You all share this house?”
He nodded as he merged into traffic. “Our master owns it, and all of the coven’s property, but we are allowed free use of anything the master owns.” He sighed, “My master is not pleased with me right now, but when Leah is the one having the party, everyone is expected to attend.”
I frowned at him, “What is it you are doing that makes everyone so angry?” He always seemed to skirt the issue. I was tired of the secrecy. Peter didn’t look happy. He didn’t want to tell me, but he wouldn’t lie to me when I asked him a direct question.
“I passed my one hundred year mark about five years ago,” he said slowly. I’d guessed his age, but I never had the guts to ask. I mean that seems like something you don’t really tell a human- even if you are sleeping with her. I tried not to think about the things I had done with a man who should have died a good twenty or thirty years ago.
“So what does that have to do with it?” He sighed and glanced at me, swerving around a pothole and breaking at a red light without even looking at the road. Creepy.
“Vampires can’t have children- not in the usual way.” He returned his gaze to the road. “We have to turn a human to continue our line, so to speak.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s kind of an unwritten rule that we turn a human every hundred years- no more, and no less. “He gripped the steering wheel tighter and I was afraid it might snap. “I refuse to do it.”
I considered that for a minute. “I guess that makes sense.” I imagined having to drink blood for the rest of my life and thought I might throw up.
We drove on in silence for some time. I’m sure Peter was stewing over the demands of his peers. I was thinking about what it would be like to be a vampire. “If you made me like you, would I be healed?” Obvious question. He had to have seen it coming.
He shrugged, slowing as we crossed a small bridge over a little offshoot of the river. We were heading out into the country and the lights and signs of civilization were thinning. “It might.” His voice was flat. I started to speak, but he cut me off. “Of course there is also a very good chance you would be just the way you are, only immortal.” He tapped his head. “There have been some instances where the turn went wrong. Usually when the human had a mental disorder.”
I frowned at him, and he hurried to cut me off. “I am not saying you have a mental disorder. It’s just that the human brain is a mystery. My blood could heal broken bones easily, but there is no way to tell what effect it would have on your mind, and even your physical difficulties are mostly due to your brain injury.”
I thought about that for a minute. Exactly as I was. Never changing, never aging, never dying and moving on. I would always be just as I was. The disabled vampire. Well that was pretty much the worst fate I could think of.
We pulled up to a big white house with a lake in the backyard. It looked like someone’s summer home. There were several shiny cars parked out front, and the windows of the house were all lit up in the dark. I sighed. I would never be a vampire. So much for the quick solution. “Are you sure your friends will be okay with you bringing a human?”
He slipped out of the car and got my chair from the back. “Bringing a human with me won’t be considered unusual,” he said with an uncomfortable shrug. Okay.
He was pushing me up the driveway toward the door when another car pulled up. A bunch of people piled out of the pick-up. A couple of guys were riding in the bed. I noticed the big, brown haired one almost immediately, and my eyes found Cynthia in the