Lost Without You

~38~

"Sam, are you awake?" Lia's voice followed a soft knocking on my door some time later.

My mind, like the sea outside, was heaving and swelling with all the things Stoker had said, making me toss and turn in my bed restlessly. I couldn't fall asleep, I was too scared to face a new dream after all those weeks of silent void, afraid of where I would find Vlad...

"Come in!" I called, sitting up and switching on my reading light.

"I couldn't sleep," Lia said, coming to my bed and sitting down, "and thought that if, by chance, you can't sleep either, we could decorate the Christmas tree. It's the twenty-fifth, I don't understand why you haven't done it already."

"I've been waiting for you! But you said you were too tired when you arrived, so I thought we would do it in the morning. Not at... two o'clock at night." I added incredulously, as my eyes strolled to the small alarm clock on my nightstand.

"Well I'm up now, and so are you. Let's do it before the men come back." Lia insisted.

"Back from where?"

"I don't know exactly, but Abraham went out a while ago and I think Lucas is with him. You know how they have... friends everywhere, those individuals Abraham helps, for instance... Some of them only get out at night..."

"Oh, do they?" I mumbled, realising that Lia already knew more about the present day vampires than I did.

"Anyway. Let's decorate the tree, then we'll go back to bed."

"Fine," I agreed, scrambling out of the bed and wrapping myself in my dressing gown before I followed her downstairs.

We were still in the sitting room, admiring our work nearly an hour later, when the men returned silently from wherever they had been.

"Do you always decorate Christmas trees in the middle of the night, girls?" Lucas teased from the doorway while his uncle approached Lia, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately, making her glow like a candle.

"Only since my best friend dates a vampire who wakes her up when he disappears in the middle of the night." I couldn't resist saying.

"Samara!" Lia protested.

"Well, your friend is right." Stoker told her without even looking at me. "I'm sorry. You need to sleep." He cupped her face in his large hands and kissed her on the forehead. Then he took her by the hand and tugged her out of the room, making her follow obediently.

"Good night!" I called after them, smiling. They were... cute together. That made me wonder...

"Did your uncle tell her who he really is? I mean, his real name..." I whispered to Lucas.

"I did, Samara, you don't need to worry about anything." Stoker's voice reached us from the top of the stairs, followed by Lia's, "What did she say?"

I shook my head, amused. Of course he had heard me.

"Now you." Lucas said. "You need some sleep too."

"Soon." I said, picking up a few boxes in which all the decorations had been stored and carrying them into a cupboard under the staircase.

Lucas switched off the lights and we climbed the stairs together.

"Where have you been, anyway?" I asked him curiously when we both stopped in front of our rooms.

"Close by. We would never leave you two alone, especially at night." He said, vanishing inside his room and making me understand that this was as much information as I was going to get from him. Vampires and their secrets.