Driftwood - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,6

smells around her, the smells he loved. He thought her accent was the same way: she didn't sound like much of anything. She didn't drop her R's like the locals, had no Midwestern twang, no Southern drawl. She didn't sound like anything. Or, rather, she sounded like just herself, and that was exactly right.

And there it was: that sense of rightness about her, the sense that she was for him and he was for her. Even though only one of them knew it.

That was all right. He was a patient man.

She mistook his silence for something else and glanced down at herself, the first time he had seen her self-conscious: "Ugh, look at me. I must stink as bad as I look."

"You're beautiful."

"Ugh, stop it right now."

"But you are," he said, puzzled.

Her brown eyes narrowed as she studied him. "Boy Scout, get those thoughts out of your head right this minute."

"Thoughts that you're beautiful?"

"Uh-huh. I'm not beautiful; it's the vampire mystique. It's like… like a hormone I give off. Makes it easier for me to bite you.

Any vampire can do it."

"You don't smell like anything; how can you be giving off a hormone?"

"Because, trust me, I'm not beautiful. I've got a big nose and big feet and tiny tits and my hair never grows so I always look like a shorn sheep."

He was dizzy with the wrongness of her self-perception. "Huh?"

"This will never work out. Not in a thousand years."

"Huh?"

"Look at us."

He smiled.

"No, really look."

"I don't care that you're a vampire."

"You don't even know what a vampire is, or does."

"So? You'll show me."

"And the age difference?"

He shrugged.

"Boy Scout, I've got at least fifty years on you! I was thirty when I died!"

"So call a nursing home."

"And…"

"And?"

"You're white."

He waited for the rest of the explanation, and she had to resist the urge to put her fist through his television set. "I'm black, you're white. Are you listening?"

"You mean—You're a bigot?"

" I'm not! Everybody else is! And don't even tell me how trendy it is to be black or to have a black girlfriend because trends are cyclical, they are, and one day you'll wake up and I won't be trendy and then where will we be?"

"Miss," he said patiently, "do you want that shower or not?"

"Boy Scout, you're not hearing a thing I'm saying, are you?"

"You have eyes like chocolate," he said dreamily.

"You don't even know my name."

"Oh. Well. Mine's Burke Wolftaur."

"Of course it is. Great disguise, by the way, werewolf. Running around on the beach right before a full moon, got the word wolf in your damned last name, real bright."

He shrugged. "I was on my way back to my house; I would have made it in plenty of time if I hadn't run into you."

"Oh, so it's my fault you're a dumbass?"

"Yes. And all the packs' names go back to the same roots. There are hundreds of Wolfs, Wolftons, Wolfbauers, Wolfertons, right here on the Cape."

"I repeat: great disguise, dumbass. I'm Serena Crull, by the way."

"Cruel?" he asked.

"C-R-U-L-L."

"Oh."

"Well, at least my name isn't Serena Vampireton, ya big putz."

"The bathroom is down the hall and on your left. I'll find some clean clothes for you."

"Had lots of lady friends stay over, hum?"

"No, you'll have to make do with my clothes."

"Ah, let the fashion show begin!"

"You'll be lovely," he said flatly, as if stating a fact: It will rain tonight. It was too cloudy to stargaze. You will be lovely.

"Boy Scout, you are one weird white boy, anybody tell you?"

"Never to my face," he replied, and went to find her something to wear.

Chapter Seven

Burke shut the fridge and turned around, then nearly dropped the gallon of milk on his foot. Serena was standing right there and he hadn't heard a thing.

"That's disconcerting."

"Thanks, Boy Scout. If that's for me, don't bother. I don't drink… milk."

"It's for me, actually. I can still taste the sand from last night." He poured himself a large glass and drank it all off in a single draught, like it was beer. He could use a beer, but there wasn't a drop in the house. He scowled at the gallon container, then poured himself more.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I was about to ask you the same thing." She grabbed a napkin from the small pile on the kitchen table, stepped forward, and wiped his upper lip. "I can't hardly see where I bit you anymore."

"Fast healer. Fast metabolism."

"Honey, tell me." She stepped back—almost too quickly, he thought, as if she was afraid. Not that he could exactly