Free My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking Page A

being attractive. “Oh, and I do to have a
temperature. Everything has a temperature.”
    “ Okay, yeah, but you don’t
have a normal human temperature.”
    “ Are you like a walking
thermometer?” Jack started the car and looked over at
me.
    “ Where are we going?” I
asked, ignoring his question.
    “ I’m taking you home,” he
said, then added, “Just for the night. I’ll see you tomorrow. But
you’ve had a long enough night, and you have school in the
morning.”
    “ You still need to go to
the hospital,” I pointed out. “The bite broke the skin. You need a
rabies shot.”
    “ I do not.” He started to
pull out of the parking lot and turned on the stereo, but kept it
low so we could talk.
    “ Look, I know the wounds
aren’t very big, but if any of his saliva mixes with your blood,
you can get rabies,” I said. “I read this book by Chuck Palahniuk
all about rabies, so I’m almost nearly an expert. It’s even
sexually transmitted.”
    “ Well, luckily for you-”
(at that point he stopped to wink at me, but I just rolled my eyes)
“-I do not have rabies.”
    “ You don’t know that,” I
said. “It wouldn’t hurt you just to get a stupid shot.”
    “ No, Alice, I don’t need a
shot.” He looked at me, completely serious, and then it finally
dawned on me.
    “ You can’t get rabies.” I
sighed and leaned my head back against the seat. “That really blows
my whole werewolf theory.”
    “ I already told you they
aren’t real.”
    “ So is it just rabies or is
it any communicable disease?” I asked it even though I wasn’t sure
he would answer. “Oh my god. It’s any disease, isn’t it? Any form
of illness?”
    “ You’ve had a very long
night,” he said quietly. “Maybe we should drop it for
tonight.”
    “ But-” I started to protest
but I couldn’t think of a single argument for it. All of this was
getting maddening, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t tell me
what was going on. So all I could do was get more and more
frustrated and perplexed. “You’re okay, aren’t you?”
    “ What do you
mean?”
    “ Like… you got injured
tonight for me, and I just want to know that you’re okay.” That
might be the only information I’d get, and it had to be enough for
me to settle with that.
    “ Yeah, I’m fine,” Jack
smiled at me. We had stopped in front of my building, but I was
reluctant to get out.
    “ Ugh, this is so unfair,” I
groaned, opening the car door to get out.
    “ You know what you’re
problem might be?” Jack asked, giving me an odd look. “You worry
too much.”
    “ Yeah. That’s my problem,”
I grumbled getting out of the car.
    Jack was still laughing when he pulled away,
and I stood on the curb for a minute, trying to put everything into
perspective. Sure, he had killed a rabid dog and then magically
healed from the attack, but at least he saved my life. Again.
    There isn’t a single sound in the world
that’s worse than an alarm going off. After Jack had dropped me off
last night, it had been all but impossible to fall asleep. Between
lingering adrenaline from the near-death experience, and Jack’s
increasingly cryptic responses and bizarre behavior, I had too much
on my mind.
    Once the warm water of the morning shower
splashed my face, it all seemed even more ridiculous. I lived in
Minneapolis, not Gotham City, or whatever other bogus city where
supernatural forces at work.
    Here, in the real world, there were no super
powers or werewolves or unicorns. Everything in life had an
explanation, and Jack’s probably had more to do with cocaine or
mescaline than it did magic.
    People addicted to speed were known to
exhibit superhuman strength, and combine that with some kind of
chemical imbalance that made him smell irresistible to women, and
there it was.
    Problem solved. And he was just kind of a
jackass and didn’t want to let on that he had a drug problem.
    I spent too much time in the shower, and I
almost missed the bus to school. Milo