Chapter Twelve

Frankie was leaning between the both of us when the car beside us, full of human boys, revved. Heath glanced over, but I smacked his arm, "Don't you dare."

"What, are you afraid of a little race?" they called over.

He tightened his grip on the wheel, "Abbey...watch for cops?"

Despite the fact that he was about to attempt to race a Volkswagen, I nodded. The moment the light changed color, he took off. Frankie shrieked, but we were tearing off, neck-in-neck with the other car. I saw a glint of black chrome and yelled, "Break!"

Heath slammed on his breaks, bringing the Prius to a standstill in the middle of the road. A part of me was just thankful his tires hadn't screeched very loudly. The other car flew by the cruiser, awakening the sirens and lights.

"How did you see that?" Frankie said, partially left breathless by my best friend's reckless driving. Heath eased off the break, shooting me an exhilarated grin. I shrugged, attempting not to smile as we rolled by the other car on our way to the mall.

"It happens sometimes," I said once we had passed them, "I notice things other people do not."

"It's your werewolf powers," Heath said. For the first time, I realized he wasn't teasing. "Romulus totally gave you werewolf powers."

I smiled knowingly and playfully punched his shoulder, "Maybe this means you finally stop teasing me about him."

He winced. I didn't think I'd hit him that hard, but Frankie's head quirked with understanding. I tried to apologize with a smile, but the hit was more emotional than it was physical. At the next light, he rubbed his arm to save face. "Yeah, definitely werewolf powers."

Salem Hills Mall wasn't far from our part of town. It was right along the border between Salem, our monster city, and New Salem, the side of the city the humans had...kind of fled to. The mall ended the border of our de facto segregation. I saw Jackson hanging out with his friends from New Salem High, Clair and Chad, and their somewhat-friend Lilith.
We all went very silent when we saw Lilith for a few reasons. Firstly, she rarely left New Salem because of her overprotective family of monster hunters. While she wasn't set against us anymore, that didn't stop her family from reminding her that her uncle had gone missing last October while hunting. Secondly, I never told her that missing meant dead. I never told her that for all intents and purposes...I had killed him. I got to know Lilith a little bit after the incident that made her path cross ours, and mostly she had been trying to expose us because she knew. But she hadn't been able to prove anything, and we had proved ourselves to be friends to her, even when she wanted us to pay for what we'd very obviously caused. He'd been her guardian after her mother died. The Van Hellscream clan had been struggling since the Dracula incident a little more than a century ago. They kept getting murdered by monsters who thought it was just, after they'd done a lot of killing themselves. She was living with her uncle's ex-wife now, and I could tell even from afar that it wasn't going well. And it was all my fault.

Frankie and Heath froze in the car, waiting and watching. We could've pulled away and gone in a different exit, but I removed my seatbelt and climbed out. They budged a little slowly, but they budged. Jackson and his group were standing outside the movie theater, discussing their options.

"I don't know," Clair said. Her usual tights and attire had been traded for a dark purple Asking Alexandra tank top that hung off her slim figure and a pair of black shorts with ties up the sides and a pair of studded suspenders hanging down over her legs. Chipped black nail polish showed against her striped flip-flops. Chad looked like he was going golfing in his stark white board shorts with his matching glasses propped up on top of his head. He had a green shirt on with it. Jackson hung back, pushing up his glasses. For once he looked like he'd dressed simply and casually, almost matching Lilith. "The only things that look interesting are post-apocalyptic," Clair continued, "and those usually suck."

"We always have next weekend," Chad replied, "Or, you know, we can see Gatsby again."

Lilith's eyes flicked up and she smiled slightly. It was a little, apologetic, tense smile. She wore a cap-sleeved shirt in canary yellow and black jeans. She was a golden girl down to her teal eyes and her golden hair, and she looked so normal with this crowd that it was almost painful. Anyone who knew her knew, though. Jackson glanced up, shot me a smile but courteously refused to interrupt his chatting friends. It was alright, I didn't need attention brought to me. I closed the space between myself and Lilith and pulled her in for a hug.

She laughed, "You're nice and cold."

I almost told her. I almost blurted it out right there in the middle of the entryway to Salem Hills Mall. I almost apologized, and I almost tried to ask what she thought of the bodies that had been found in Salem. But I just squeezed her tightly and said, "Good."

She accepted the hug silently, wrapping her slender arms around my back in reply. We held on until it became awkward, then I let her go. Chad was staring and Clair had resumed work on the ring candy on her hand. "Something you want to tell us, Lilith?" he teased.

She rolled her eyes, "Yes, I just hugged a portable air conditioner."

I smiled. It seemed to put things in perspective for the humans, because they both rushed to me and hugged me then. I laughed, feeling Heath's arm snake around my neck, "Nah, this one is mine. I'm a fire elemental, I need it."

Jackson rolled his eyes. I glanced to Lilith, tempted to ask how she was, but she wandered over to Jackson before I could speak and quietly asked him what he wanted to see. He went on telling her about one of the sci-fi movies on the matinee and let me wander off when his friends dispersed from me. Heath kept his arm around me though, keeping me from going back to them. "What was that about?"

I shook my head. His fingers lowered to lace with mine. We passed by a set of polished windows and I tried not to enjoy the fact that we looked very nice together. His skin was warmer than Romulus's, so I knew I wouldn't have a high tolerance for closeness to it without worrying about my crystal flaring up, but it was nice while we had it. He stopped to look at overpriced phone cases, letting the observation continue. Our skin tones were so close to being alike- mine was blue-tinged white, his was yellow-tinged. I wondered for a minute if it was because of the sulfur that came with fire. I wondered if the fire smelled, because I'd never taken notice before. Did his house smell like the smoke of a matchstick? I bet the air around it tasted like you could barbeque on the walls. Frankie caught me staring, but she didn't say a word. I was about as tall as Heath in flats, and I was stronger than him. With Romulus, the inequality wasn't so pronounced, but I could see it in us.
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, Heath was a totally different kind of monster than me, and not just because of our elements. It made our friendship a little more sacred.

"Hey," he murmured, squeezing my hand,"Are you okay?"

I knew I looked sad, staring off into space the way I did. I squeezed his fingers that were still laced with mine and nodded. He didn't believe me. He grinned, though, ever able to keep up an act and tugged me off toward the ice cream parlor, "Alright, it's lunch time for my ladies."

"I genuinely hope you don't have multiple ladies," Skelita said from behind the counter upon our entering. The skeletal girl had a small, warm smile for us regardless of her teasing to her best friend's boyfriend. Heath reached around the counter and took her hand, giving it a warm kiss. "Is Jin on break yet?"

"No, but she will be at one. Maybe you could stick around." She ignored his flirting as much as I did. It was nice to see that he had grown closer with Skelita since she and Jin were like sisters. They did live together while their families were in their respective countries, after all. I couldn't help but smile at the idea that Heath had probably taken a measure of responsibility for them.

"What will it be?" she asked, glancing to us.

Frankie considered her options beforehand, and looked up with a wide grin, "Mint chocolate chip."

"Of course," Heath teased.

"Superman," I said. It was colorful, to say the least.

"You know what?" Heath interjected, "I'm going to get the exact same thing...and a churro."

"You're going to get fat before you're thirty, but okay," Skelita teased him. He broke into a grin and flexed his slender muscles, "What, you think I can't work out?"

"You don't work out," Jinafire said from behind him. He jumped and broke into a beaming, love-struck grin. He threw his arms around his girlfriend and pulled her in for a hug, making her laugh. He was enthusiasm, she was calm, and as they pressed together I noticed that they seemed to fit against each other perfectly. Her tail swished beneath her skirt, swaying the hem. She turned her face to kiss his neck and make him blush. "How are you?" he muttered, toying with her hair shyly.

"Tired," she replied, "I have to work double shifts because the girl after me called in sick, but I'm making more."

"You need a vacation," he murmured in her ear. "I got you some ice cream."

She withdrew and kissed him very gently on the lips, "You're a very good boyfriend."

I huffed on the glass of the ice cream case and drew an exaggerated heart. He shot me a look that if he hadn't been in the presence of girls, he would've given me the finger. I grinned, pleased with my teasing, and pulled out my wallet. He got very suddenly noble and pulled out his own, "Ah, no, I got this."

"Chivalry isn't dead yet," Frankie said with a giggle.

I watched my best friend cuddle his girlfriend as they slid into a booth and allowed Frankie to sit on the edge beside me. Heath broke off pieces of cinnamon-sugar pastry for her and she fed him the occasional spoonful of rainbow ice cream. Frankie and I glanced at each other, trying not to laugh out loud at their overly-stereotypical young-couple-cuteness. I wondered if Romulus and I looked like that to other people, or if we just looked celestially bound to each other. I worried about him. He'd never been this serious about a girl before, and if things didn't work out someday with her, I didn't know if he would get over it. It was silly in retrospect, people rarely ever married their first love, but I looked at them and I really hoped they would because gold and yellow went together well. Because their hair side-by-side looked like a Christmas tree, even though I was pretty sure all of her green was dyed in. When their fingers brushed, she looked at him and he looked at her, and even if it was just a flicker of a look, I saw just how much it meant to both of them. I wanted to break the silence and ask Frankie if she had anyone like that, but she was happily staring off at the array of food. None of us needed love to be happy, but it sweetened the deal a lot, and seeing Jinafire and Heath together eased my guilt quite a bit that I had never felt the same way about him when he had a crush on me.

"So," she said, breaking the silence before anyone else figured out what to say, "Spectra's blog had one big rumor this morning."

Frankie's eyes lifted with vague interest. I shrugged it off, of course the ghost girl gossiped, it was probably the only thing keeping her tied to earth. Heath was content with his churro until she leaned in and whispered, "Apparently, Spectra talked to one of the kids from Belfry Prep, and they saw a vampire dumping bodies and trying to make it look like someone's framing the werewolves. She hung around the police station until she got a statement on some 'real, hardcore investigative reporting.'"

"Do they know who?" I whispered.

"No. But she said she'd actually put money on Bram and Gory, because they live out there. They know the woods." She straightened up a little, glancing to her boyfriend with a wry, catty little smile, "I wouldn't doubt if there were more they just didn't use."

"That's creepy," Heath said, his tone too impressed to be afraid.

"They're not like that," I said, scooping out a spoonful of rainbow. "Gory was sick when she found the bodies and he was worried about her. They aren't bad people, they were just misguided once."

Frankie nodded with a mouthful of ice cream preventing her from speaking. Her eyes kept darting back to the cookies. She swallowed and voiced her thought before getting up to indulge the craving. "She's right. I mean I've hung out with them since, Gory's kind of entitled and kind of spoiled but she's really nice, and even though Bram's kind of..."

"A dick?" Heath offered.

She shot him a look. "He's not capable of murder and neither is she. They talk like it, but they're not capable of doing it. I mean, have you seen the way he looks at her?"

"Didn't stop them from trying with Abbey," he pointed out. I didn't speak up, but she shot him a look. She understood that things done in anger were never from the heart. I'd seen the vampires' hearts. They weren't bad enough to actually murder, I didn't believe that, and if they had it was for their own safety. I trusted them, and I had enough faith in Romulus to know that he would have more than a sneaking suspicion brought on by coincidence if they'd really done something wrong.

"Well," Jinafire said, "It's just gossip anyway. The day I believe Spectra Vondergiest will be the day the earth stands still, and that's scientifically impossible."

Heath just shrugged and kissed her cheek, "I love it when you talk sense into me."