Free Fate of the Vampire by Gayla Twist Page A

Ohio is quite chilly.
    In a very low voice, he said, “I know who took Colette’s body.”
    “What?” I said, spitting out the word again. “I mean, who? And also, why?”
    Running the fingers of his free hand through his hair several times, Jessie finally blurted, “It was my mother.”
    “What?” I said for the third, and loudest, time.
    “Aurora, would you please stop saying what?” Jessie asked, glancing significantly toward the living room where my mother had gone.
    “I will when you stop telling me crazy things,” was my reply. “I’m not sure how else to react.”
    “I know. I’m not sure how to react , either,” Jessie said, slumping a little in his chair.
    “Did …” I started and then stopped. In truth, I was horrified. I couldn’t imagine what a vampire would want with a dead body that had been drained of all its blood. It was creepy to the extreme. I tried again. “Did she at least explain to you why she stole it?”
    “It was to protect our family,” he said with a deep, soul -deflating sigh. “Mostly me, of course, but all of us, really.”
    “Why would she take it, though?” I asked. It didn’t make any sense to me. “What did she think was going to happen?”
    Jessie’s brow puckered. “Well, I guess she thought the coroner would figure out that Colette died because of a vampire’s bite. And then the police would start putting two and two together as far as who the reclusive family is that lives in the big fortress down by the river. And then …”
    “The townspeople would grab their torches and pitchforks?” I supplied. I felt the tension releasing from my body like a deflating air mattress. Mrs. Vanderlind stole the body to protect her son. It was a stupid thing to do but also made sense in a weird way. I knew most moms would do anything to protect their children. A vampire mom was probably no different when it came to that unconditional love, no matter how long she’d been a parent.
    “I know. She was being an idiot,” Jessie agreed. “But what I wanted your opinion on is … what do we do now?”
    “What do you mean?” I was wondering why he asked me. I didn’t have any experience with body snatching, let alone body returning.
    “I mean that Colette is your family. She’s Lily’s sister. What do you think she would want done?” he said, a little exasperated —not just with me, I assumed. “Do we return her? Or do we bury her somewhere? Or what?”
    I could tell the whole situation was causing him great pain. It was bad enough that Colette was dead and had been killed by his own kind, but now all this nonsense with her corpse. It was pretty gruesome. “Grandma Gibson would want her to have a proper burial,” I told him. I knew that without a doubt. “So I think you have to bring her back. Is that possible to do without getting caught?”
    Jessie nodded. “Very easily. But do we just leave her or give an explanation? How do we handle her reappearance out of nowhere? Do you think if we came up with some kind of explanation it might help get rid of all the media or make it worse?”
    I laid my hand to my cheek and gave it some thought. If Colette just magically reappeared, then the mystery continued , and the reporters would stay on in hopes of uncovering the truth. We had to give them something that made sense but wasn’t all that enticing. “I have an idea,” I said after a few moments. “I just need to type something up.”
    Our printer is in my mom’s room. It sounds weird, but we have a small house , and that’s just the way we’ve got it set up. Jessie must have made a good impression on my mother because when I told her we were going into her room to use the printer, she only blinked a few times and then said, “Okay, but don’t take too long.”
    Our printer was low on ink. We milk out the end of our ink by taking out the cartridge and shaking it around a bit. It’s possible to get a dozen more pages printed that way. As I was messing about