I should've lied

I should've lied


Amy whistles low. "Damn, Julia. You work fast."

"LANGUAGE!" Mom and Dad shout in unison.

"Sorry," Amy says, not looking sorry at all. "But you have to admit, this is kind of impressive. She almost died, got rescued by a vampire, developed a mate bond, and got marked all in 48 hours. That's like a supernatural speed run."

Dad pinches the bridge of his nose like he's getting a migraine. "Let me see if I understand this correctly. The vampire scent we detected at the lake—that was from him saving Julia's life."

"Probably," I admit.

"And then somehow, between yesterday and today, you encountered him again."

"Yes."

"Where?"

Another trap question. I really need to stop walking into these.

"Here," I say quietly.

The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the bathroom fan humming and what sounds like Mrs. Henderson's cat yowling in the distance.

"Here," Dad repeats, his voice deadly quiet.

"Here."

"In our house."

"Yes."

"The house where you're supposed to be under house arrest."

"That's the one."

Mom makes a sound like she's choking on her own outrage. "He was in our house? When? How? Why didn't you scream? Why didn't you call for help? Why didn't you—"

"Because I didn't want help," I interrupt, and the words are out before I can stop them.

The bathroom goes so quiet you could hear a pin drop, or in this case, hear my entire family's worldview crashing down around them.

"You didn't want help," Dad repeats slowly, like he's trying to translate my words into a language that makes sense.

"No."

"You invited a vampire into our home."

"Not exactly invited. More like... didn't uninvite."

Amy snorts. "That's the worst defense I've ever heard."

"You're not helping," I tell her.

"I'm not trying to help. This is way too entertaining."

Dad starts pacing again, which is really quite a feat in our small bathroom. He's like a caged animal, if caged animals wore pajama pants and had to deal with teenage daughters who make questionable supernatural dating choices.

"Let me get this straight," he says, holding up his fingers to count off points. "A vampire saved your life. You didn't tell us. He showed up at our house. You didn't tell us. You spent time with him alone. You didn't tell us. He marked you. And you didn't tell us."

"You make it sound much worse when you list it like that," I point out.

"IT IS WORSE!" he explodes, then seems to remember that shouting in a bathroom creates weird echoes and lowers his voice. "Julia, do you understand what you've done?"

"Gotten myself into trouble?"

"You've mated with our mortal enemy!"

"Technically, he mated with me."

"That's not better!"

Mom stands up from the bathtub, swaying slightly like she might faint. "I need to sit down."

"You are sitting down," Amy points out helpfully.

"I need to sit down more."

Dad stops pacing and looks at me with an expression I've never seen before. It's somewhere between disappointed and terrified and completely lost.

"Julia," he says quietly, "how did he mark you?"

And there it is. The question I really, really don't want to answer.

"Um," I say, buying time while my brain frantically searches for an explanation that doesn't involve admitting that I made out with a vampire in our kitchen while my parents were hunting rogues.

"He bit me," I say finally, which is technically true.

"Where?" Mom asks.

"On the lip."

"Your lip?" Dad's voice climbs an octave. "He bit your lip and somehow that created a mark on your chin?"

I touch the mark self-consciously. "Vampire magic?"

"That's not how marking works!" Dad says, pulling at his hair. "Marking bites go on the neck or shoulder! They don't migrate to your chin!"

"Maybe vampire marking is different," I suggest hopefully.

"Different how?"

"I don't know! I'm not a vampire expert! Maybe their marking bites have GPS and can relocate to more visible areas!"

Amy bursts out laughing. "GPS marking bites? Julia, that might be the stupidest thing you've ever said, and you once asked if werewolves could get pregnant from vampire bites."

"That was a legitimate question!"

"It really wasn't."

Dad slumps against the bathroom wall like he's been defeated by the sheer impossibility of this conversation. "None of this makes sense."

"Welcome to my life," I mutter.

"Your life is making my life not make sense," he says. "And that's a problem."

Mom, who has been unusually quiet during this exchange, suddenly perks up. "Wait. Julia, show me exactly where he bit you."

I point to my bottom lip, where there's still a tiny scab from last night's vampire encounter.

Mom stares at the spot, then at the mark on my chin, then back at the lip, her expression growing more and more confused.

"That's not..." she starts, then trails off. "That's impossible."

"What's impossible?" Dad asks.

"The distance," Mom says, sounding like she's working through a very complicated math problem. "Even if vampire bites could create marking tattoos, which they can't, the distance between her lip and her chin is too far. Magic doesn't work like that."

Amy leans in to examine my face like I'm a crime scene. "Unless the bite didn't create the mark."

"What do you mean?" I ask, though I'm starting to get a sinking feeling about where this is going.

"I mean," Amy says slowly, "what if the bite and the mark are two separate things?"

The bathroom falls silent again as everyone processes this possibility.

"Two separate things," Dad repeats.

"Like what if he bit her," Amy continues, clearly enjoying her role as supernatural detective, "and then marked her some other way?"

"What other way?" Mom asks faintly.

Amy grins. "Well, vampire marks can be created through saliva contact, right? So if, hypothetically, he bit her lip and then, say, kissed her chin..."

All eyes turn to me, and I feel my face flush approximately the color of a fire engine.

"Is that what happened, Julia?" Dad asks in a voice so calm it's actually terrifying.

I look around the bathroom desperately, searching for an escape route that doesn't exist, a distraction that won't come, or maybe a natural disaster that could interrupt this conversation.

No such luck.

"Maybe?" I whisper.

The explosion that follows is loud enough to wake the dead, or at least Mrs. Henderson's allegedly deceased cat.

"HE KISSED YOU?" Mom shrieks.

"ON THE FACE?" Dad roars.

"WITH HIS MOUTH?" Amy adds, because apparently, she wants to make this as specific and embarrassing as possible.

"It was just a little kiss!" I protest weakly.

"A LITTLE KISS?" Dad's voice cracks. "A little kiss that created a permanent supernatural tattoo on your face?"

"When you put it like that, it sounds bad again."

"BECAUSE IT IS BAD!"

And that's when I realize that falling down in the bathroom really was the least of my problems today.