Praise for the novels of Jennifer Armintrout

“Armintrout skilfully characterises each character, and her use of description varies between chilling, beautiful and disturbing. Paranormal fans will take pleasure in Ms Armintrout’s unique take on vampires.”

—The Romance Readers Connection on The Turning

“Unlike so many characters in books, Ms Armintrout’s are multilayered. They are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. You find yourself pulling for their redemption because you can see their humanity.”

—Vampire Romance Books

“Armintrout has created a dark and edgy world filled with flawed characters … The Turning was not what I expected at all and I loved it for that.”

—Lauren Dane

“[Armintrout] excels at building realistic new worlds.”

—RT Book Reviews

“The relationships between the characters are complicated and layered in ways that many authors don’t bother with.”

—Vampire Genre on Possession

“This series is one that only gets better. Readers should be prepared to be taken on a journey that will make them weep, yet want the story to never end despite or because of that.”

—Huntress Book Reviews on Ashes to Ashes

“Armintrout pulls out all the stops …

A bloody good read.” —RT Book Reviews on All Souls’ Night

AMERICAN

VAMPIRE

Jennifer Armintrout

www.mirabooks.co.uk

About the Author

JENNIFER ARMINTROUT was born in 1980. She has been obsessed with vampires ever since the age of four and her first crush was on Vincent Price. Raised in an enormous Roman Catholic family, Jennifer attributes her interest in the macabre to viewing too many funerals at a formative age. Jennifer lives in Michigan with her husband and children.

Visit her at

www.jenniferarmintrout.com

jenniferarmintrout.blogspot.com

Follow her on Twitter:

JArmintrout

Also by Jennifer Armintrout

BLOOD TIES BOOK ONE:

THE TURNING

BLOOD TIES BOOK TWO:

POSSESSION

BLOOD TIES BOOK THREE:

ASHES TO ASHES

BLOOD TIES BOOK FOUR:

ALL SOULS’ NIGHT

This book is dedicated to Rob Riddle,

my former roommate whose wok I destroyed,

and Oliver, his Cabbage Patch doll

who had a licence to drive a submarine.

One

If there was one power a vampire could really use, Graf McDonald figured it would have to be internal GPS. Steering his car—a black 1974 De Tomaso Pantera L, a total snatch magnet—with one hand, he jabbed at the tiny screen of his TomTom GPS thingie and said words his mother would have made him eat soap for speaking.

His BlackBerry vibrated against the leather of the passenger seat, seconds before Lady Gaga blared from its tiny speaker. He ripped the GPS from its suction cup base and took it in his left hand, steering with his knees while he answered the phone with his right. That was another thing vampires could use. Extra limbs, to be utilized whenever they willed it.

“Sophia,” he said into the phone as he pounded on the TomTom screen. “What do you want?”

“Darling!” Sophia called everyone darling. It was her thing. “You’re on your way, yes?”

Of all the traits that got Graf all hot and bothered about his sire, the way she would end questions with the answer she wanted to hear was in the top five, at least. He couldn’t help but smile to himself at that. “Slight delay. This stupid GPS thing isn’t working.”

“Oh, no, no!” Sophia clucked her tongue, and even that sound had an Italian accent. “Darling, you’re not going to miss my party, no?”

Graf flicked his gaze to the windshield, to the straight road that hadn’t changed since the last time he’d bothered to look at it. “Not if I can help it.”

“Well, where are you?” she asked earnestly.

“I’ll be honest with you, Soph. I have no fucking clue where I am.” He braced himself for the reprimand that was sure to come.

“Graf, your language! You sound like a peasant.” She sighed. “You have my address, yes?”

“Yes, I have your address. I programmed it into the thing.”

Fucking technology. Usually, he loved it. The internet, thank God for that. High-definition television, yes, yes, yes. Little weaselly devices that pretend like they’re going to help you and then stab you in the back? Those could suck his big, fat—

“Honestly, I do not know how you have such difficulty with directions. Get on the highway and go toward Washington, D.C. It is not difficult!” Sophia pouted over the line. “Do that!”

“Well, I would, pumpkin butt, but I dropped the damned TomTom in the parking lot at Denny’s, and now it’s all in Spanish and I can’t get back to the map screen.” He took a deep breath and propped the phone against his shoulder as he fished for the cigarettes in his jacket on the seat beside him.

“I do not understand you, you men,” Sophia said, sure to lean on the word enough to let him know she meant it as an insult. “You know, I only turn women now, yes? Because they are not as … vulgar and stupid. I do not wish to hurt your feelings, sweet Graf, but it is true, it is just my opinion. Now, why do you not find a place to pull over and ask for directions, and then you hurry here. Okay, good boy. Bye-bye!”

As always, she hung up without a chance for rebuttal. He tossed the phone back onto the seat, threw the TomTom on the passenger side floor, and lit a cigarette. When he looked up at the road, the biggest deer he’d ever seen stared back at him.

With a shout, he jerked the wheel and veered onto the shoulder, narrowly missing the animal. Tall grass and a ditch loomed just past the shoulder, aching to chew up his paint job and destroy his aftermarket ground lighting. Unacceptable. He fought to get the car under control on the gravel shoulder, and brought it to a stop in the center of the road.

Very few things got Graf’s adrenaline pumping the way a threat to his car did, and he leaned over the steering wheel, his heart—which usually didn’t beat—pounding in his chest.

“Christ,” he muttered, easing the gearshift back to First. Okay, maybe Sophia was right. It was time to swallow his pride, ask for help, and keep his eyes on the road.

The trouble was, he reflected as he slowly rolled down the road, scanning the fields on either side for more white-tailed devil creatures, there didn’t seem to be anyplace to stop; he’d passed plenty of farms, lots of little ranch houses with decks, aboveground pools, and absolutely no shade trees in the lawns, but nothing that would indicate a town was nearby. He’d passed a grain elevator, but it had been abandoned. When he tried to remember the last time he’d seen anything that promised civilization lay ahead, he had to reach at least an hour back. And he was cutting his trip close … If he wandered around all night, he’d have to find a hotel to stay in. And if he didn’t find one before sunup …

He swallowed the lump in his throat and forced himself to take things one step at a time, without panicking. He’d been stranded at sunup before. The memory of prickling pain flaring into full-blown, fiery agony spread over his arms in a heated warning. A cold sweat of blood broke out over his forehead, and he wiped it away with a curse, ordering himself to get his fear under control. Yes, being burned by the sun had been excruciatingly painful. Yes, it had taken a long time to heal. But he’d been younger then, with less healing ability. The entire situation could be avoided, if he kept a cool head.

To distract himself, he thought of all the fun he’d have at his intended destination. Sophia’s July Fourth parties were legendary. All those years ago, she’d been in England when news of a potential uprising in King George’s colonies had caught her attention and Sophia, never wanting to miss out on anything exciting, had hopped a boat and relocated. Thus, she’d been at the very first July Fourth, and the revolution that followed it.

“Darling,” she had told him once, “it was either going to be a historic moment, or it was going to be chaos. How could I miss either? All of those bodies lying around, the countryside unprotected as the men went off to war. Delicious.”

Graf smiled at the memory. His sire was … well, she was spectacular. The only thing he didn’t like about her was that he had to share her with her other fledglings. She turned about three a year and sent them on their way, like she was a friggin’ vampire factory, but, somehow, she made them all feel special and loved. Just receiving her blood was an act of love in itself— what more precious gift could you give someone than the gift of eternal life?

From the corner of his eye, he spotted light. Not enough that a human could have seen it; vampire eyesight was beyond excellent. A beam of light swung wildly through the darkness. A flashlight. Inside a structure of some kind. He hit the brakes and pulled over, examining the source of the light. The building was a gas station, all closed up snug for the night, because nothing in these Midwestern middle grounds stayed open later than ten.

A gas station would have a map. And if someone was robbing the place, he could get one for free. And pick up a snack.

He pulled closer, then killed the engine and let the car drift into the gravel lot, not closing the door when he got out. The element of surprise somehow made people taste better, and if they had a gun, he didn’t want to get shot. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like hell.

As he approached the building, it became apparent that the place wasn’t just closed, it was abandoned. Several of the windows were broken, but no one had bothered to board them up. The price of cigarettes displayed on the faded sign in the one nonshattered window would have made Graf weep with joy had it been current. He pushed open the unlocked door and a bell jingled. So much for surprise.

The shelves were bare, so the place had clearly been looted. Why would someone even bother to break in?

“Hello!” he called cheerfully. “Anybody home?”

Something scurried in the farthest corner of the store, near the empty, glass-fronted coolers.

“Look, I know you’re in here. I saw your flashlight.” This was, Graf reflected, the kind of thing that would happen at the beginning of a horror movie. Cocky, confident guy walks into a creepy place, thinking he’s the toughest thing in there, something horrible jumps out of the shadows.

But he knew he was the most horrible thing there at the moment, so the horror-movie comparison made him grin. “Okay. You want to do this the hard way? We can do it the hard way.”

Whoever it was scurried across the floor. But they didn’t move away from him. They approached on hands and knees. A hand grasped his ankle, and he kicked to dislodge it.

“Stop! It will hear us!” A feminine voice, consumed with panic. “Get down! It’s coming!”

“What’s coming?” He crouched, but not out of fear of whatever this woman thought was heading their way. He needed to get a better look at her, to decide if she was crazy or just plain terrified.

Maybe both, if he had to judge by the eyes staring back at him. The whites shone like the moon in the darkness, with huge pupils obscuring nearly all the green around them. Her lips, the same pale of her skin, pursed against the agonizing wait. Fear radiated from her, from the scent of her sweat to the unrelenting grip on his wrist she’d secured when he’d knelt. Suddenly, she released him, turned her face up to the windows just above their heads. She pressed one finger against her lips and moved backward in a slow crouch. Graf followed, though he still had no idea what the hell was going on. A meal was a meal, and this one looked pretty tasty, despite the bone-chilling terror that gripped her.

She pushed open the door to the back room of the store, and they crept inside. She motioned, still silent, to the desk in the corner, a clunky metal contraption that no one had seen fit to take with them when they’d closed down. Climbing beneath it, she motioned for him to follow.

Here was a predicament. She was a hot little piece, and under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have minded squeezing into a tight spot with her. But if there actually was some ominous thing coming for them, being trapped when it got there didn’t seem like the best idea. On the other hand, hiding out in the back room would be fine once the sun came up, because it was mercifully windowless.

An inhuman roar shook the walls, and that made Graf’s decision for him. He dove beneath the desk, and the girl tried to avoid him with a squeak. “It’s here!” she screamed, covering her ears with her hands and squeezing her eyes shut tight. The sound of her rapid breathing and wild heartbeat filled his ears, and his fangs slid down in anticipation.

Then, the groan of rending metal sent daggers of instant “Oh, that can’t be good” shooting to his brain. As ridiculously quick as vampire reflexes were, he didn’t have time to react before a gas pump shot through the wall like a knife through hot butter, and asbestos tiles rained from the ceiling like snowflakes in hell.

“We should probably get out of here,” he said, but it really wasn’t up to the human to decide if she wanted to leave or not. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled. If she wanted to keep her hand, she would follow. She did, but screamed, “Don’t go out there!” even as he pulled her through the door.

“There’s my car!” he shouted over the sound of the gas station’s roof tearing off. Something moved in the darkness, but getting away from it was more important to Graf than getting a good look at it.

The girl hesitated, and he shoved her through the driver’s side door and climbed in after her as she scrambled into the passenger seat. “Drive!” she screamed as a chunk of roof fell on the hood of the car.

She didn’t have to tell him twice. The engine roared and the transmission protested as he pushed all three hundred and fifty of the horses under the hood to haul ass and get them out of there.

“What was that?” He checked the rearview mirror. The gas station, a crumbled ruin, stood alone at the side of the road, but nothing around it had been disturbed. The power lines stood, the cornfield waved placidly. “Was that a tornado?”

“How did you get here?” The human trembled, gripping the dash with one hand as she sat sideways to face him. Her voice held some of the same panic she’d had in the darkened station, as though whatever the hell had just happened to them hadn’t ended yet and that his relief was premature.

Very few things rattled him anymore, but the strangeness of her question did. Not a good feeling. “How else do people get here? I drove.”

“No, that’s impossible.” She sat back, stared blankly out the windshield. “This can’t be happening.”

Shell-shocked human. Fantastic. He should just pull over and eat her, dump her body in the ditch and keep going, but some instinct that was smarter than him warned that it wouldn’t be a good idea. “Well, I hate to tell you, but it is happening, and I’m about two seconds away from kicking you out of this car if you don’t stop acting so damn crazy. If you’re lucky, I might even hit the brakes first.”

“Oh my God, you’re really here. From the outside.” Her eyes got even wider, if that were possible.

“The outside of what? Ohio? What, are you Amish or something?” He pulled the car to the side of the road. Something about the whole situation was fishy, and he had a personal rule about getting caught up in human problems. And he definitely didn’t eat crazy. “Look, I don’t know what’s out there, or why that place got ripped to shreds, but you need to get out of my car now.”

“No!” She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging in through the sleeve of his shirt. “No, you have to go back!”

“My dear, I don’t have to do anything. Get out, or I’m going to throw you out.” If there was one thing he didn’t have time for tonight, besides being lost, it was being lost with a human who was deranged past the point of making any sense. She continued to babble as he opened his door and grabbed her by the arms, dragging her out over the gearshift. Even when she was out of the car, she kept pleading, as if she didn’t realize she was already on the ground. He pushed her back to get her desperate, clawing hands off him, and got back in the car and slammed the door before she could grab him again.

He rolled the window down just a crack. “Where’s the nearest town?”

“You’re in it,” she snapped at him, wiping her eyes. “I hope you enjoy your stay, asshole.”

Right … so, she wasn’t going to be any help. Sure, he was leaving her on the side of the road, but he had just saved her life. Humans could be so ungrateful.

He pulled away. She’d called him an outsider. What the hell had that been about? As much as he didn’t want to head back toward … whatever it was that had destroyed the gas station, he really didn’t want to drive straight to the heart of some religious commune, either. He blew past a THANKS FOR VISITING PENANCE sign with peeling paint and a faded metal Rotary Club seal on it and pressed the accelerator to the floor. He didn’t want to see the gas station when he passed it—at least, not as anything more than a blur. It had been about three miles since he’d passed the last county road. He’d backtrack to that and take it wherever it ended up leading. If he had to sleep in the trunk to stay out of the sun, well, he would. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be a hell of a lot more pleasant than being held hostage by religious freaks.

After a few long, silent moments, he turned on his iPod. Weird stuff happened all the time. It didn’t bear thinking about. He found Lily Allen’s latest album and turned it up, singing along absentmindedly as he struggled with the TomTom once more.

Three songs later, he noticed he hadn’t made it back to the road yet. No, that couldn’t be right. He probably was just too distracted trying to change the settings back to English to notice that he’d passed it. He pulled a U-turn and headed back. He’d only gone about a quarter mile before the ruined gas station loomed to his left, and he passed a WELCOME TO PENANCE sign on his right.

“What the …” Up ahead, a figure walked at the shoulder of the road, her head hanging, arms wrapped around her middle. He slowed beside her, double-checking the odometer. He’d driven fifteen miles. It was right there, in black and white on the little dials that worked just as well as the rest of the car.

The girl shot him an angry look over her shoulder, then faced forward again, tossing her long, brown hair.

He drove past her and waited, watching in the mirror as she tried to look anywhere but at the car she approached. He couldn’t help but notice her long, suntanned legs sticking out of a nice, short pair of denim cutoffs. Country girls. Yum. He rolled down the window as she walked by. “Something strange just happened.”

She didn’t answer, but kept walking. He gave her a little room, then rolled after her. When he pulled up even again, he continued, “I just tried to drive back to county-road-number-whatever-that-number-was, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Got any idea what that’s about?”

Still no answer.

He let her get ahead again, then drove up beside her once more. “You can either get into this car, or stay out here with whatever that was that just wrecked a building.”

She laughed humorlessly and kept walking. “You didn’t seem to care about leaving me out here when you thought you were going to be able to drive away and never see me again.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, creeping slowly alongside her. “But that’s only because I thought I was going to drive away and never see you again … Why didn’t that work out?”

“You’re a real gentleman.” She shook her head, still walking. “You can’t leave because It keeps us here.”

“It?” She’d said the word like it was a name, like it should be obvious what she was talking about, but Graf had no clue. “What do you mean, ‘It'?”

There was something hard about the way she wrinkled her nose, as though she had been defeated a long time ago and didn’t like talking about the fight. Whatever bad memories were associated with the subject, they made her voice a little less strident. “I don’t know. No one does.”

“Well, what do you mean I’m—” His foot slipped on the accelerator, and the car lurched forward. He hit the clutch and downshifted into Neutral. “Damn it, get in! This is ridiculous.”

To his surprise, she walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. “Are you going to drive me home, or just abandon me on the side of the road a little farther down?”

He ignored her. “You told me to enjoy my stay. So, I take it other people have had this same trouble?”

“No. You’re the first.” She wasn’t being sarcastic. She dropped into the seat and pulled in her long legs as she closed the door. “The rest of us have been trapped here, but outsiders never stop.”

Trapped. Well, that sounded great. “‘Never’ meaning … how long exactly?”

“Five years.” She pointed to a dirt road ahead. “Turn there.”

He complied, too confused to do much other than ask questions and take orders. That wasn’t like him at all, and it made him uncomfortable. “Five years, no one has been able to …”

“To leave Penance, or get in. No visits to or from. No one with car trouble on the side of the road.” She closed her eyes. “No ambulances.”

“So, I’m the first person to come to Penance for the past five years?” There was a fallow field to one side of the road, a swamp to the other. “What is this?”

“A town.” She looked at him like he was crazy. “A small one, but a town. And everything within the city limits has been trapped for the past five years. No one gets in, no one gets out.”

That explained the lack of cars on the road, the closed-down gas station. “So, what’s this ‘It’ that you’re so worried about? The ‘It’ that tried to bring a building down on us. What’s with that?”

“I don’t know.” She got a faraway look, as if she didn’t want to talk about it. “I’ve seen It before. A lot of people have. It kills. Not every night, not on a schedule. Some people have had It come right up to them and not do anything at all. Other people get slaughtered.”

“Okay.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But what is it?”

She looked dead-on at him like he was stupid. “It’s a monster.”

Two

Realistically, Graf couldn’t doubt the existence of monsters. It just wouldn’t make sense. Obviously, vampires existed. And werewolves. He’d met one of those. Zombies, he’d never heard of those existing, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Witches? Wouldn’t want to tangle with one. But unclassifiable bogeyman-type creatures that could bring down a gas station roof right over his head? It wasn’t that they couldn’t exist, they probably did, but such information was hard to believe when it was coming from a human.

“A monster?”

The woman nodded, still eyeing him like he might be a little bit “special.” “Yes. You don’t really think a tornado did that? And left the power lines up? And us able to run? And your car sitting right there, not getting a scratch on it?”

“I thought they were notorious for that kind of thing,” he muttered, but he didn’t admit that everything he knew about tornadoes came from the movie Twister. “So, what kind of a monster are we talking about?”

“I’ve never exactly asked It to classify itself while it was chasing me.” She blew out a breath and raised her hand to push her hair back. She still shook, giving Graf the visual interpretation of the old “like a leaf on a tree” expression. She didn’t stink of fear anymore, so she must have just been burning off adrenaline. “It’s just a monster. That’s the only way to describe it. Some people thought It was some mutant kind of giant possum when it first started attacking people, but …”

He frowned. “When did it start attacking people?”

“About five years ago,” she replied in a “Gee, what do you think?” tone. “Right after we all got stuck here.”

For a few minutes, Graf didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes on the painfully straight road and let everything she said tumble around in his mind. For five years, an entire town had been held captive by some kind of monster, and no one on the outside had noticed? There was clearly more at work here than just plain old monstering. That was the kind of thing only a spell could accomplish, not that he’d tell her that. He never liked to reveal the existence of the supernatural to a human, even if they had already experienced it in some form. There was always a ton of explaining to be done, and the same tiresome questions. Questions a lot like the ones he’d had for her.

“My place is right up there.” The girl indicated, pointing to where a mercury light cast the side of a white farmhouse in a sickly green glow.

Graf pulled into the driveway, lined on both sides with milk cans rusting under their coats of white paint. “Nice decor.” He sneered.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been really worried about my curb appeal during the last five years that I’ve been unable to leave town and lived in constant fear of a monster, so go fuck yourself,” she snapped, pushing the passenger door open.

She was feisty. Now, he didn’t know if he wanted to fuck her or eat her. Or, he could do both, but only if she let him into her house.

“Wait,” he called after her, turning off the engine.

He got out of the car, and she stopped, hands on her slim hips as she turned to face him. “I hope you don’t think you’re coming into my house.”

“Look, I know that we got off on the wrong foot—”

“The wrong foot?” She laughed, tilted her head back, and gave the trees above her an imploring look, like they could save her from his stupidity. “I’m going to have to disagree with your assessment of the situation. You see, getting nearly killed by It and then being left for dead by the person you think is trying to save you, that’s not getting off on the wrong foot. That’s called getting screwed, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to do that to me again.”

“I’m not trying to … screw you.” He forced away an immature giggle. That would not help his cause in the slightest. “If I’m trapped here, I’m going to need a place to stay. Can’t you at least give me directions to a motel?”

“Yeah. I can.” She smiled sweetly. “It’s about twenty miles away, just over the state line in West Virginia.”

He cursed and turned away, then turned back. “Is there anyone in town who would put me up?”

“As charming as you are, I’m sure you’ll find someone delighted to have you as a guest in their home. But not here. There is no room in this inn.” She walked up the lawn, toward the wide front porch.

“Just, wait.” He wasn’t asking this time. The sun would be up soon. The sky was already turning that weird grayish-blue color that it did toward dawn. She was going to let him inside, or she was going to die trying to keep him out. “I need a place to stay, and you owe me.”

She stopped with a noise of disbelief. “I owe you? For what? Stranding me on the side of the road?”

“For saving you from your monster. And for the ride home.” He could have left it at that, but he didn’t, striding up the lawn to loom over her. “You stranded yourself. You ran out there. You were going to be walking home, anyway, so I was good enough to give you a temporary reprieve, not really stranding you at all.”

Her jaw dropped, but thankfully no words came out of her pretty little mouth.

“I won’t be here for long. Just give me a place to stay until I figure out a way to get out of here.” It still sounded like he was asking permission. What he needed to do was rip out her throat and go right on inside.

“We’ve been trapped here for five years, and you think you’re going to waltz right on in and out in a few days?” She shook her head. “Oh, yes, please do come into my house and continue to insult me.”

“Look, I know I’ve been a huge asshole. But listen, I have this … medical condition.” He fished in the pocket of his pants. It was time to play the card that most people saw right through, the one that practically screamed, “I’m a vampire, put a coffee table leg through my heart.” His fingers closed on the slender piece of metal and chain. “See this? It’s a medic alert bracelet.”

“Good for you, you’re allergic to penicillin.” She turned away and took the steps up to the porch two at a time. When he followed, she whirled and shouted, “Get away from me!”

“Would you listen to me for a minute? I have photosensitivity. Polymorphous light eruption. I won’t go into details, because it’s disgusting. Pus is involved. I can’t be in the sunlight. I need to be indoors.” He had one more trick to pull out of his sleeve before he decided to bite her and be done with it, an option that was looking less and less appetizing the more she opened her mouth. It was drastic, and he hated to say it, but he braced himself and added, “Please.”

She considered a moment. A sick part of his mind wondered if she would look so serious and doubtful if she knew the only option left was getting her blood sprayed across the faded white siding. Finally, with an annoyed sigh, she said, “Look. I don’t know you. You could be a psychopath. There is no way that, under normal circumstances, I should let you into my house. But normal circumstances went out the window about, oh, five years ago. You can’t stay here permanently, and I think it’s only fair for you to know that I have my dad’s double-barrel shotgun inside and it’ll be the last thing you see if you try to lay one finger on me.”

He held up his hands and tried not to smile at the absurdity of her statement. He was too strong and way too fast. He could do anything he wanted to her; she wouldn’t even have time to load. At this point, though, he didn’t want to do anything but get her to shut up. “Understood.”

She hesitated a moment, then turned to open the door. “You’re going to stay in the basement.”

“That’s fine.” He’d slept in worse places. And most basements he’d been in had couches and pool tables.

Inside, she flipped on a light switch, and the full Midwestern horror of the house became instantly apparent. Everywhere Graf looked, doilies covered end tables and decorative plates hung on the walls. Beyond the living room—and the hideous floral couch—the archway leading to what Graf assumed was the kitchen had a pair of antlers mounted over it.

“This is.” He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to mentally erase the figurines of chubby German children on the fireplace mantel. “You decorate this yourself?”

The girl stopped, her mouth again in the increasingly familiar half-open position, like she’d never heard someone say that her place was hideous before, which Graf couldn’t believe. “Don’t worry. The basement isn’t anywhere near this nice.”

She marched into the kitchen and turned on the lights there and a ceiling fan began to whirl gently. Graf watched it for a moment, something nagging at his brain. “No one can leave, and no one can really arrive, right?”

“Yup.” The woman went to the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of plain water. “Thirsty?”

Yes, but not for anything you’re going to give up willingly. He shook his head and took a seat at the small island. A pot rack hung overhead, with oven mitts shaped like chickens’ heads dangling from a hook. “If no one can get in and no one can leave, then there isn’t any way that mail is getting out.”

She poured herself a glass of water, keeping her eyes on him as much as possible. “You just found out you’re trapped in a town where no one has been able to leave for five years, and you’re worried about the mail?”

He shrugged. “Not worried. Curious. You’ve got electricity. Who’s paying the bill?”

“I don’t know. It just never turns off. Water neither. Some people think we’re frozen in time, but I don’t buy it. The physics teacher over at the high school held a town meeting to explain it once, but he’s gone now.” She took a swallow from her glass, her slender throat moving as she did so.

Usually, that would have been a temptation, especially on a woman as good-looking as she was. But while the package was sexy, what was inside was annoying as hell, and he wanted no part of it. “I thought you said no one had left in five years.”

“Not ‘gone’ gone. Gone. He put a gun in his mouth over on Pleasant Creek Road.” She looked down sadly. “He didn’t live here. Just worked here. His family was over in Bucksville County. He hadn’t seen them in a year when he finally gave up hope and did it.”

Graf couldn’t bring himself to actually care. “That would suck.”

He looked at the refrigerator, where a magnetic chore list adhered to the door. Someone had written on it in dry-erase marker: MOM, DAD, JONATHAN, and another name half swiped off and unreadable. “So, I know you’re not ‘Dad’ or ‘Jonathan,’ so should I call you ‘Mom'?”

“What?” She looked in the direction he pointed, and she stiffened. “Oh. That’s just … old.”

He studied the stilted way she moved as she went to the refrigerator and pulled down the chart, scattering little round magnets with pictures of dishes and brooms all over the floor. She opened a drawer and shoved the whole thing in, then slammed it closed.

“So, I’m going to guess that Jonathan, not being a feminine name, belongs to someone else. Maybe someone who used to live in this house, but doesn’t anymore.” He drummed his fingers on the island. “Is this really your house?”

“Yes, it’s my house.” She didn’t turn to face him. Her shoulders were tense and she gripped the edge of the counter as though it supported her. “Jonathan was … Jonathan is my brother.”

“‘Is’ or ‘was'?” Graf asked absentmindedly, examining the carved wooden chickens in wacky poses on the windowsill. A family had lived here. A family with very bad taste in interior decorating. “That’s kind of crucial to the story, I’m guessing.”

“Is. He’s dead, but he’s still my brother.” Her voice trembled. She was crying.

Oh, this is just precious. He rolled his eyes and managed a semi-interested-sounding “I’m sorry.”

She turned, a fake smile on her face. She didn’t need to pretend anything. Graf didn’t care. And smiling was the exact opposite of what she’d been doing to him all night. She killed the lying expression and pushed away from the counter. “You’re probably tired. Let me show you where the basement is.”

To his left was the outside door, the window covered in a red-and-white-checked shade. Perpendicular to that, a door covered with too many coats of thick, white paint, with an antique porcelain knob. About a foot above the knob there was a chain lock, attached by two measly screws. That wasn’t going to keep him out, no way, no how. But he wouldn’t tell her that. “I have some stuff I need to get out of the car, before it’s too late. I’ll meet you down there.”

Nocturnal though he might be, he wasn’t prepared to descend into his tomb yet. He already felt trapped. In the basement he would feel completely claustrophobic.

As he unloaded his bags, he caught sight of his BlackBerry lying on the passenger side floor, and he dove for it. Miraculously, four bars glowed reassuringly on the screen. He redialed the most recent call—if anyone would know how to get out of this mess, Sophia would—and held his breath.

It never connected. It rang—once, twice, four times, five—and the voice mail never picked up. Seven, eight rings, ten and still nothing. He waited out twenty rings, then cursed and hurled the phone to the ground.

“I know the feeling.”

Graf whirled to face the girl. She stood behind him, an expression of true pity on her face. He didn’t need her pity. He needed a way out.

“When we first all started to realize that we were stuck here … we didn’t know how long it had gone on. We thought there was something wrong with the phone lines.” She looked down at her hands. “You’ll get used to it. We don’t really rely on each other here, but you’ll learn to rely on yourself.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake, I had to get trapped in a Lifetime original movie, didn’t I? He couldn’t take any more homespun wisdom from the woman who appeared to be the queen of all mood swings. “Well, that basement is sounding awfully comfy right now. You can lead the way.”

He carried his overnight bag and cursed his light packing. Not only would a pair of jeans and change of shirt not last him for eternity, if he was really trapped here that long, but he hadn’t brought an eternity’s worth of blood with him. He’d fed off a waitress when he’d stopped earlier in the evening, but he’d been planning to gorge himself like a tick at the Independence Day party, so he’d only brought emergency rations. Like her or not, he’d be tearing into this woman before too long.

He followed her down the basement stairs. It was not the kind of basement that the word basement described in his mind. A “basement” was a place where somebody puts the aforementioned pool table and maybe a miniature refrigerator. They put up drywall and maybe some wood paneling and called it a den or a family room. This place, with its bare rock walls and dirt floor, was more like what someone would call a cellar. Or a hole. “You’re seriously going to keep me down here?” He wiped a finger through the cobwebs clinging to visible floorboards of the house over his head.

“I’m not going to serve you breakfast in bed, if that’s what you were hoping,” she called over her shoulder as she tugged futilely at a mound of various, unrelated objects stuffed in a corner.

That’s what you think. He watched her struggle for a while with whatever it was that she was doing, then reached past her, shouldering her out of the way.

“Very gentlemanly of you,” she griped, wiping her hands on her jeans.

“I never claimed to be a gentleman.” The metal frame and musty canvas of an army cot pulled free from the rubble of tent parts and Christmas decorations. He untangled a string of colored lights from the cot and set it on the ground at his feet. “Is this what I’m sleeping on?”

“That or the floor.” Beneath the moldering wooden stairs was a stack of plastic totes. She pulled one out, examined the label, and popped open the lid. “Blankets in here. They’re old, but they’ll do.”

“Your hospitality amazes me,” Graf quipped, snapping open the cot’s folded frame.

“I’m sorry, I must have missed the Holiday Inn sign at the end of my driveway.” She put her hands on her hips, where she might as well just keep them permanently, they ended up there often enough. “I could always rescind my invitation, you know.”

I’d like to see you try.

“Sorry.” The word left his mouth almost less frequently than please, and it had to make its way past his clenched back teeth this time. “You have to understand, you’ve had five years to get used to this whole ‘being trapped’ thing. I’ve had five minutes.”

“You’ve had an hour. Suck it up.” She went up the stairs. They creaked, and a fine rain of sand fell from each step. “This isn’t permanent. At sundown, you start looking for a new place to live.”

The door closing at the top of the stairs was a judge’s gavel falling, and the scrape of something heavy being dragged in front of the door was the sound of a jail cell locking up tight. He’d been sentenced to living in a basement and putting up with a warden so insufferable, he didn’t even want to eat her.

If she had known that a flimsy lock wouldn’t keep him in, would she have still taken that precaution? Probably. Humans did silly things to reassure themselves when they were frightened, which she most definitely was, with a strange man in her basement.

Still, if she had wanted to make him feel like a prisoner, she couldn’t have been more effective. Graf decided he could bide his time; the thing about caged animals was, they only stayed caged for so long.

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