Free Born at Midnight by C. C. Hunter Page B

her, just the situation. Because dad-blast it, if she’d heard someone could see ghosts, she’d probably be afraid of them, too.
    “Good.” Miranda reclaimed her spot at the foot of the bed.
    Della continued to glance around. “Nope. Too weird. I don’t want to room with you.”
    “I’m not any weirder than you are.” Kylie stared at the vampire and for some reason wanted Della to accept her.
    “She has a point,” Miranda said to Della. “We’re probably pretty scary to her, too. I say, let’s try to make this work. You know, be buds.”
    Della let out a deep breath. “Okay, but you’ll tell us when you see a ghost hanging around?”
    Kylie nodded, but quickly realized how hard that request was going to be to keep, because the familiar icy feeling of a ghostly presence hit right then. The saving grace was that she didn’t “see” the ghost. Not that she looked hard, but who could blame her not wanting to clash gazes with a dead person?
    *   *   *
    Kylie hadn’t thought she could eat, but when the warm, spicy scent of pizza hit her nose, she realized how little she’d eaten all day. She’d managed to down one slice of thin pepperoni and cheese and eat half her salad before she started feeling self-conscious from the occasional twitching stares. Some of the campers were still trying to figure her out. Well, good luck with that. She took another bite of salad and hoped that if they managed to do it, they’d let her in on the secret.
    As Kylie moved her gaze around the room, she found Derek sitting at another table. There was a red-haired girl sitting next to him, and from her body language she found Derek more interesting than her pizza. The girl leaned so close to Derek that her left breast brushed against his arm and from the way Derek leaned into the girl, Kylie figured he enjoyed the girl’s attention.
    The tiniest bit of jealousy echoed in her chest, but Kylie pushed it back. It was just because he looked like Trey. Biting down on her lip and her emotions, she knew she’d have to be careful where Derek was concerned. It would be easy to confuse her feelings for him.
    Right then the half-fairy looked over his shoulder at her. Their gazes met and held. The flutter, the good one, started happening again in the pit of her stomach.
    “I think he likes you,” Miranda whispered.
    Realizing she and Derek had drawn attention, she glanced away. “He’s probably just curious about me like everyone else,” she whispered back.
    “Nope. He’s hot for you,” Della said, reminding Kylie of the supernatural hearing of some of the campers. “When he was sitting by you at lunch, he oozed so much testosterone that it was hard to breathe. He wants your body,” Della teased.
    “Well, he’s not getting it,” Kylie said.
    “So you don’t like him?” Miranda asked, sounding thrilled.
    “Not like that, I don’t.” It felt like a lie, but she ignored it, because she knew any feeling she might have stemmed from his looking like Trey. She had enough stuff going on in her life right now. She sure as heck didn’t need to start falling face-first into another relationship, especially one based on a lie. Derek wasn’t Trey.
    And Trey wanted her back. Or at least he’d insinuated that on the phone earlier. With all the other stuff she’d been zapped with today, she hadn’t had time to consider how his confession made her feel. Happy? Sad? Angry? Maybe a little of all three?
    Trying to prevent emotional overload, Kylie reached for her glass of diet soda and watched Della pull the pepperoni off the pizza and pop it in her mouth. The very tips of her sharp canines caught Kylie’s attention and her thoughts skipped past Trey issues and landed on living-with-a-vampire issues.
    As another piece of pepperoni disappeared down Della’s throat, Kylie realized that the girl was eating. From the fictional books she’d read, she’d assumed vampires didn’t eat. They only drank … Kylie’s gaze slammed against