Braced to Bite (Book 1: Half-blood vampire series)

Chapter Twelve

I sat on the couch feeling like I didn’t have a friend in the world. Oh yeah, I didn’t. How silly of me to forget. I was about to figure out my next step when the scent of vanilla wafers caught my attention.

     “Hey, Aunt Chloe,” I said softly over my shoulder.

     “Those new ears of yours are something else, missy,” Aunt Chloe said as she padded into the family room wearing fleece slippers and an oversized robe. I gave her a halfhearted smile when I noticed she was carrying a heaping bowl of ice cream, but didn’t bother to correct her. I couldn’t hear much better but I could smell everything.

     She took a post opposite me in one of the large overstuffed chairs and nearly disappeared. She swore under her breath and struggled to sit upright. “I love your mother dearly, but I hate her taste in furniture. A body should be able to sit in a chair and stay put, not sink into a pool of fluff.”

     I jumped up to help her. When she was finally seated properly, she took a bite of ice cream and said, “You look like you lost your best friend.”

     I snorted at her but smiled in spite of myself. Aunt Chloe had a gift for understatement.

     “Piper is pissed at me and Thomas, well, Thomas …” I trailed off, not wanting to tell her the truth: that he wanted to kill me.

     She nodded in sympathy. We sat in companionable silence a while longer, she eating her ice cream and me—well, I was drowning in my own misery, wishing I could eat her ice cream as well.

     “Did I ever tell you about the love of my life?” she said suddenly.

     I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Aunt Chloe never married but I always thought she preferred to be independent.

     She regarded my look and chuckled. “Yes, I know what you young people think. Someone my age who never married probably hates men. You thought I buttered my toast on the other side, didn’t you?”

     I tried to object, but instead my mouth just sort of hung open and wobbled about like a big fish gasping for its last breath.

     “No. No. Don’t deny it. The way I saw it was, if I couldn’t marry the love of my life I wouldn’t marry at all. Wouldn’t be fair to the fellow who came after him.”

     Wow, Aunt Chloe had a love of her life. Who’d have thought?

     “What happened?” I asked, not sure if fate or tragedy had kept them apart.

     “It was during the war. Korean one. I wasn’t much older than you when we met. God, he was magnificent.”

     “How could you have been so young?” I asked skeptically. After all, Aunt Chloe was known to exaggerate on occasion.

     “Times were different then. I went to nursing school when I was sixteen. Not much for young women to do back then, career-wise. I graduated when I was barely eighteen and was called upon to serve my country right after. I was pretty wet behind the ears and with the war, well, I grew up real fast.”

     “Did you know him long?” I was fascinated that she could have been a surgical nurse at such a young age.

     “No, not long. But it didn’t matter. Our eyes met and we both knew it. You don’t meet your soul mate and not recognize him.” She wagged her spoon at me to emphasize her point.

     “So what happened?” I asked eagerly.

     She sighed deeply, put her spoon and empty bowl down on the side table and astounded me with her answer. “I killed him.”