Kristie Cook - Promise

"Is that it?" I asked when he just stood there.

"Well…I didn't get to say good-bye and I couldn't sleep without this." He bent over and brushed his lips across mine. Then he smiled and winked. I stared at him, dazed. "Okay, better. I can sleep now. Good night."

"'Night," I murmured. He disappeared into the darkness.

Our glorious weekend stretched into the following weeks. We watched sunsets and cooked dinner for Mom. She watched us carefully at first, but seemed to be coming around.

We played Baby Steps every day. He got a question and I got a question. They often led to more questions, but they were generally superficial topics. We discovered we had similar tastes in music—a preference for alternative rock, but could enjoy anything but rap. I learned he wanted to be an engineer or an architect. He'd lived in many places throughout Europe, as well as several cities in the U.S., had spent time in Japan to study Aikido and had traveled to every continent except Antarctica.

He learned I'd never been out of the country but had a passport because Sophia thought it practical, and I took four years of Spanish in high school and could say maybe five full sentences and count to one-hundred. I told him I could name every Edgar Allan Poe story and recite by heart nine Emily Dickinson poems. I even admitted I'd tried my own hand at poetry.

I learned he didn't like Halloween, saying it wasn't right that little kids wanted to be witches, vampires and other monsters. I admitted I'd always been a witch or a vampire, but always a good one—as a vampire, I carried around a cup of donor "blood." He guessed correctly it was Mom's idea. She preferred fairies, princesses and humorous costumes to the gory and scary ones. He asked Mom if my interest in monsters and fantastical creatures was healthy. She just laughed. I talked him into taking me to a couple haunted houses and he growled fiercely at the monster-actors, making them jump and shriek. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. He admitted it was the most fun he'd had on Halloween.

By Thanksgiving, we knew all of each other's favorite everything…colors, bands, authors, actors and actresses, food, ice cream flavors, books…. All the top-layer stuff that really had little to do with who we were and why…the stuff that made us real. Little hints and nuggets could be gleaned from these surface subjects, but they didn't touch the deep, inner-workings of our hearts or souls and definitely had nothing to do with the secrets we kept and pain we hid. I knew, though, it was only a matter of time before those things came out.

And when they did…well, it certainly didn't happen the way I could have ever expected.

"Owen and I could have done that," Tristan said as Mom and I climbed step-ladders in the bookstore's expansive front window, a string of Christmas lights stretched between us.

It was the night before Thanksgiving and Tristan and I had spent the day helping Mom and Owen prepare for the holiday rush. Mom didn't believe in selling Christmas before Halloween or even Thanksgiving, so here we were, nine o'clock at night, still decorating. Nearly finished, Mom had just sent Owen home. Not two minutes ago we had two perfectly able—and perfectly tall—men to hang the lights. But this was Mom's way of making sure everyone (well, Tristan specifically) knew we depended on no one.

"Alexis and I are quite capable of doing this," Mom replied. "In fact, you can go home, too, Tristan."

"Nah, I'll stay. Although, we could be done a lot faster if you didn't do it the hard way," he said as he picked up empty boxes that had held the decorations.

Mom mumbled something under her breath, but all I caught was "normal" and "mainstream." Tristan chuckled as if he heard her clearly, though he was at least twenty feet farther away from her than I was.

I opened my mouth to ask what that was all about when a pair of headlights racing down the street distracted me. The shops on Fifth Street closed hours ago. I could see lights of restaurants and bars down another block, but our block was deserted, except for this one car. So I didn't understand when the headlights suddenly swerved, arcing right into the store's window. Then I realized the car barreled straight for us.

" Mom! " I shrieked without thinking.

The car continued racing right at us, way too fast to stop in time.

"Alexis! Jump! " Mom yelled.

Before we even had a chance to jump, though, we both flew off the ladders and into Tristan's arms. I stared wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlights—literally—my mind somehow registering several things at once. When the car was about twenty yards away, still going way too fast, a light flashed on something directly to the right of it. It was the driver's door, swinging open. Then Owen, who had just left through the back door, stood in the street, but out of the car's path. He thrust his hands out toward the car as if willing it to stop. The driver must have finally slammed on the brakes—the tires squealed as it nearly stopped just before crashing into the store.

And then it hit. Sliding into the window. Glass imploding.

Mom and I tucked our faces into Tristan's shoulders. He bent over to shield us. Glass chinked and shattered as it rained to the floor around us.

When it was finally quiet, I lifted my face and immediately smelled the night air, mixed with lingering exhaust fumes. The orange car sat quietly only a couple of feet inside the shop—right where Mom and I had been only seconds earlier. The ladders lay on their sides, part of one under the car, as well as the Christmas tree and fake presents we'd just set up.

"That was intense," Tristan muttered as he straightened up. "You two okay?"

Mom shook her head, not to answer but to shake her hair out. A couple of small pieces of glass hit the floor. "I'm fine."

She twisted in Tristan's arm and he let her go. I noticed pink lines on her arms—minor scratches already healed. She healed much faster than I did. I hoped Tristan didn't catch that.

"Uh, yeah, I think I am," I breathed. "Are you?"

I started to look up at him, to make sure he wasn't cut anywhere, when Mom sucked her breath, distracting me.

"Alexis, honey, don't move," she instructed, her words slow and deliberate, as she moved to my right between me and the car. Tristan cupped his hand against the side of my face and tilted it up toward his before I could see what had her enraptured. He pulled me tighter into him.

"Just look at me," he said quietly.

"What's going on?" I whispered, afraid to know. Tristan held my eyes with his and I could tell by his expression it wasn't good.

I immediately thought of the driver and the car door swinging open just before impact. Did he fly out of the car? Is he under the car? My stomach lurched at the thought.

"It's all right. It's not in an artery or anything," Mom said and then a sharp pain tore through my thigh.

"Ouch! Son of a witch !" I screamed, trying to twist myself free, but not able to in Tristan's tight clutch.

I looked over my shoulder and Mom held a shard of glass at least five inches long and two inches wide, half of it covered in blood. My blood.

In a strange, delayed reaction, the pain suddenly screamed up and down my leg. Then more stabs and throbs in my arms and one on my head. A tickling sensation ran down the back of my head and I lifted my hand to it. When I pulled it away, blood coated the tips of my fingers. I glanced up at Tristan while balling my hand into a fist to hide the blood. I could tell he'd already seen it, though. This is so not good .

"Police," he said.

"Huh?"

" Police , Alexis, you need to get out of here," Mom said.

It finally registered when I heard the sirens a few seconds later, still several blocks away. Oh, crap! Witnesses! I felt the cuts on my arms already starting to heal.