Driftwood - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,10

Maggie her feet) and Serena wore saddle shoes, which were the slightest bit too tight, but who cared? The sun was shining and oh, it was good to be young and alive and eating ice cream cones and welcoming the admiring glances from the fellows on the sidewalk in June, in Minnesota, in summer, in life.

"Place has twenty flavors of homemade ice cream, glorious hand-cranked ice cream like Grandma makes, and you always pick vanilla." Serena took another bite of coconut chip and tried not to look smug.

"Never mind my choices, let's talk about yours. You've given up happiness for how many decades, and for what? To avenge me? For what? Because you feel guilty?"

The ice cream suddenly tasted like ashes, and Serena had to fight the urge to spit out the bite. "I don't want to talk about that now. This is supposed to be a nice damned dream."

"Tough noogies, chowderhead." Maggie brushed her bangs out of her eyes and Serena noticed the ragged bite marks—chew marks—all around her friend's neck. Something had been at her, and hadn't been nice about it, either. "You managed to literally stumble into some happiness, and what? Did you jump on him and try to make a baby?"

"I can't have—"

"Or did you drag him down into your sick old shit?"

"Maggie, he has to pay!"

They both knew the "he" Serena was talking about. "Sure he does. But do you?"

"I don't know what you—"

"You never did, honey. That's why I'm the scholarship student, and you're running around dead on Cape Cod. No lover, no home, no nothing. Just your bad old self. And for what?"

"Maggie, I can hear you screaming in my sleep. Vampires don't even dream and most of the time I dream about that."

"That's on you, honeygirl." Her friend looked at her with terrible affection, the vanilla melting in her fist, the blood running down her blouse front. "You didn't want to spend eternity alone; who would? So here we are, both dead. But now you've got another chance—and you're wrecking that one, too. The first time was piss-ignorance. Not your fault. But this? Willful."

"It's not—"

"Well, you always were the stubborn one." Her friend grinned, all teeth and gums and blood. "And I was the pretty one."

"Maggie—"

"See you 'round, honeygirl."

Maggie vanished. The stores vanished. The old-fashioned (at least, to her twenty-first-century eyes) cars vanished. The sidewalk patrons vanished. There was only her, and her stupid coconut chip ice cream cone, and her too-tight saddle shoes, and—

—the guest bedroom.

It was night again and the thirst was on her; her mouth felt like dust, her mouth felt dead. Dead. Like Maggie, long dirt and bones in her lonely grave. The grave Serena had helped put her in. Had led her to.

She shoved back the blanket and was on her feet, then up the stairs and headed for the door. She had to drink before she could think, and she certainly wasn't going to chomp Burke again, poor boy. She had enough guilt on her shoulders without—

"Where are you going?"

"Don't sneak up on me, Boy Scout," she said without turning around. "Bad habit."

"But where are you going?"

"Breakfast. Well, supper. Can't say when I'll be back."

She hadn't heard him cross the room, but suddenly his arm closed over her elbow.

"Rules of the house," he said simply, looking down at her with his storm-colored eyes.

"You have to eat what the host serves." He tugged the neck of his T-shirt down, exposing his jugular. "Me."

Chapter Ten

In a perfect world, she would have logically reasoned out why it wasn't appropriate to bite the boy, the infant—cripes, how old was he?

In a perfect world, she would have used her superior vampire strength to shake him off and gone traipsing down his porch and onto the beach, picked some drunken tourist and slaked her thirst, then come back and coolly discussed Pete's upcoming murder.

Neither she nor Burke lived in a perfect world; they yanked toward each other at the same moment (a clam between them would have shattered), mouths searching, tongues exploring, and then she reared back like the beast she was and bit him, pierced the vein with her teeth and sucked.

And nearly reeled; his blood was the richest, most satisfying drink she had ever had in all her years of being undead. In all her years, period. He tasted like salmon fighting upstream, like rabbits fucking under the moon, like wolves bringing down cattle.

They staggered around his living room in a rigid dance, fingers digging into each other's shoulders, and