“Ow,” I muttered, wiggling my fingers and toes to make sure I hadn’t done permanent damage.
There was a blur of motion, and suddenly Collin’s face was hovering over mine. “Are you OK? Does anything hurt?”
“My pride,” I groaned. “And my ass.” He helped me sit up. “You didn’t see a hint of that? Nothing?”
He shook his head.
“You’re trying not to laugh at me, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“I hate you,” I moaned. “I hate you so much.”
“No, you don’t. You’re just upset with me.”
“I am, but I’ll get over it,” I grumbled, sitting up. “Eventually, I will understand you were trying to do something good. Your heart was in the right place, but your head was up your own ass.”
“That’s a memorable and disturbing image.”
I’d apparently fallen through the unlocked external doors of the farmer’s root cellar. The farmer used this room as a storage space/storm shelter/winter pantry. Rows of carefully preserved green beans, peaches, and applesauce lined the shelves. I took a plastic gallon jug of distilled water and twisted it open, draining much of it in one long, blissful pull. My eyes landed on a first-aid kit and then the camping lamp hanging over our heads. Collin reached for it and tried to open the little glass cylinder.
“You don’t light it,” I told him, flicking the little switch on top.
“Interesting.” He scanned the little windowless room, with its low ceiling and bare earthen walls. “Rather homey, isn’t it? Clean, roomy, no instruments of death lying about. We can always just sleep here for the day.”
“Yeah, it will be great, until the farmer decides he needs a jar of pickled beets tomorrow afternoon, opens the door, and then you’re a little pile of dust.”
“Have a little faith.”
“Really, Collin, why don’t you just run ahead or something? You can cover the distance in a night, right? I’ll be fine. I’ll get home on my own.”
“Because I’m a vampire, not a cheetah,” he told me. “I can’t run that fast or far. And second, I’m not leaving you behind. If I arrive without you, your employer will know we had trouble.”
“I think she’ll notice when I show up without her car.”
“I’ll take full responsibility for the car. She can’t be angry with you over something a client did.”
“Your sudden bout of cockeyed optimism is annoying. Besides, say we survive the day undetected, then what?” I asked. “We find a phone, call Iris, and beg her for bus fare?”
“We’ll find a way,” he assured me, lifting my face to meet his gaze. “I promise you. We’ll find a way to get home without getting you into trouble. Come on, woman! Where’s the girl who showed up at my door three nights ago? The girl who called me a piece of work and reminded me I had no way of getting home except for her car? She would scoff at this little travel … hiccup. Sleeping in a root cellar with a vampire. It’s child’s play. I would think it would appeal to your perverse sense of adventure.”
“You’re right. I should make the best of—hey! What do you mean, perverse?”
Collin began rooting around for materials that we could fashion into a bed. I secured the door with an ax handle, then started searching through the pantry contents.
“This feels really wrong,” I told him as he shaped a pile of empty feedsacks into a makeshift bed. “As if we’re haunting this poor man’s basement.”
I cracked the wax seal of one of the jars and carefully picked out a few slices of fruit from the fragrant liquid with my fingers.
“What are you doing?”
“In the name of not starving, I am appropriating this jar of spiced peaches. Consider it the sweet course after the tomato entrée. My concerns about thievery decrease in proportion to my concerns about low blood sugar and dry heaves. Also, this stuff is fricking delicious.”
He was watching me scooping the delicious, pulpy fruit from the jar and sucking the juice from my fingers. I cringed, knowing that this must be sending his OCD into overdrive.
“Sorry. I’m being rude. What about your blood?” I asked. “It went down with the ship, so to speak. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I should be all right for a few more hours.”