Four

"Anything to drink?" Amber asked. She opened the fridge. "I have orange juice, lemonade, coke, milk and water." She looked at Laura and me who were sitting on the kitchen table, trying to look unobtrusive.

She'd made us call our parents, and tell them the double thing. You know, I was at Laura's house, she was at mine. While Laura was making her call, I had time to snoop through the house. It wasn't filled with headless bodies, rotting corpses or guilty knives covered with blood. It was, however, filled with red flowered crockery, a cow cookie jar, and wooden furnishings. Damned pretty house for a psychopathic butcherer, but I'm biased.

"Um, we're alright, thanks," I said, because Laura was too busy staring at Frost's ass - uh, behind - while he was temporarily bent over to get glasses. She licked her lips.

"Something stronger maybe?" Amber said, hidden behind the fridge with only her shaven long legs poking out at the bottom. "Beer, vodka, Barcardi, whisky, Bailey's, what's your poison?"

"I don't like alcohol."

Everybody froze. Amber closed the fridge to look at me, Laura stopped mid- perve, and even Frost glanced back at me.

"Jesus Jennifer!" Laura cried. When she calls me Jennifer, the world is ending. "You're not supposed tell complete strangers that!"

"What? What!"

"That you don't like alcohol!"

"What's wrong with not liking alcohol?"

She smacked her forehead. "It's ok because I know you already, but people are going to think that you're some kind of freak who doesn't like beer."

"But I don't like beer!"

"Just trust me with this, why don't you? Don't you dare say that to complete strangers again!"

I put my hands up. "Ok, ok. I give up."

Frost coughed. "Getting back to the topic?"

Amber poured a coke for herself. "If you insist."

"I do."

Amber nodded and drank her coke. Interpersonal skills at its best.

Laura leaned towards me. "You don't suppose that they're...you know," she whispered.

"Know what?"

"That they're...together?"

"Who knows?" Although it sounded more like, 'Hoo owes?' because I tried to do that ventriloquist trick where you spoke, but you didn't move mouth.

Laura's face went ashen. "They are together, aren't they?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" I said from the corner of my mouth.

Laura shut up, because by that time, Amber and Frost had come to sit at the quaint pine table, on the wooden seats with flower cushions.

"So you want to know why I killed Brad," Amber said with her hands clasped on the table. The epitome of Mona Lisa, minus all-knowing smile. It'd be more reassuring if she wasn't a murderer.

"That'd be nice," I said calmly.

She looked at Frost for help, but he just shrugged. His eyes shifted towards me, and his hands brushed away some blond hair from his eyes. I could imagine those hands running down my back, staring into those intense blue eyes, my lips on his skin...

"Jenny."

"Whaa?"

Amber rolled her eyes, although I got the idea that it was more for Frost than me. "Ok. For the next few minutes, I'm going to sound like I'm completely off my head, but everything I tell you is true, ok?"

This was not a promising beginning. In fact, it made me wonder if she was a disillusioned psycho serial killer. Which would be a shame, since Frost would be her accomplice.

"It's this thing called the Night World."

"Where's the Night World?"

"It's not a place. It's like a secret society."

Laura's eyes lit up at the words, 'secret society'. "Like a cult? Or like Paul Walker and Joshua Jackson in the Skulls?"

"No, not really -"

"Like the Freemasons in From Hell?"

"Not quite."

I could practically see Laura's brain scanning through her enormous movie database for cults. Or secret societies. It was like Google-For-Movies-or- TV inside her brain.

Frost cut in mid-search. "It's a secret society of vampires, witches and shapeshifters," and when Amber looked at him, he just shrugged. "Might as well get to the point."

Yup, definitely crazy.

On the other hand, Laura beamed. "Like Blade! I bet they have a whole vampire Bible written in blood and everything. And..." she frowned. "Deacin Frost can't be your real name."

"Good thing it isn't," he replied. He gave her a look that stopped Laura from saying anything further. First person I'd seen who could do that. "I'm not going to explain it to you either."

I tried to appeal to my best friend. "Laura, think about what they're saying! They're saying that vampires are real!"

She looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Well, yeah."

"But they're not real!"

"There are more things than heaven and earth -"

"Oh, don't pull the Shakespeare, A+ English Student, Future New York Times' Bestselling Author crap on me. There are no such things are vampires," I said resignedly. On the other hand, I knew that murdering lunatics did exist. Ah, choices, choices.

"Why don't people ever believe it?" Amber said with annoyance. "I believed it."

Frost laughed. "You only believed it because you about to get your neck chomped off."

"I would have still believed," she said gruffly.

Laura waved her hand. "Uh, hello, I believe you guys."

"You're the exception."

"Are you saying I'm weird?" Laura accused, looking very offended.

Amber was confused. Which was understandably in the case of Laura. "What? No!"

"You are!" Laura stood up, angrily.

"Am not!" Amber said standing up as well.

This would have continued if not for Frost baring his fangs and snarling. Stop. Fangs. Snarling.

"Ahhhhh!" I screamed in unison with Laura. I grabbed her hand and we ran into the bathroom, locking the door.

"I thought you believed in vampires!" I said hysterically.

"Yeah, but I didn't say I believed Frost was a vampire!"

"Oh my God, they're real! We have to get out of here. We're in a house with a bunch of murdering vampires!"

"You're right, Amber has to be a vampire too!"

"If only I was Christian!" I wailed.

Laura looked at me wildly. "I have a crucifix!" she said, and took out a lavishly decorated cross from underneath her turtleneck.

"I didn't know you were Christian."

"I'm not. It's a fashion statement."

"Ok, you distract them with the cross, while I unlock the front door, and we'll run out together."

"Why do I have to be the one to distract them?" she asked me. She sniffed. "I don't even believe in God."

"Because it's your cross! Ready? One, two, three!" And we were out in the corridor before Laura could argue any more. Amber and Frost were standing there, unmoving, and I ran to get the door.

"Away, you even fiends from Hell!" Laura shouted, as I fumbled with the lock.

"Crosses don't work," I heard Frost say.

I stopped fumbling. "You didn't get it blessed! Why didn't you get it blessed?" I said to Laura accusingly.

"I told you! It's a fashion statement! Why would I get it blessed?"

"Because you believe in vampires!"

"I'm putting an end to this idiocy," Frost muttered, and I blacked out.