SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy by Billie Sue Mosiman Page A

think about?"
    "Scaling Mount Everest,"
    "No joke?"
    He laughed, passing her by, heading for his room. "Yeah, it's a joke. I don't remember what I thought about. Girls, maybe."
    She had to remember he'd changed two years before, so he was fourteen now even though he didn't look it. He was definitely in the girl stage. Some things stayed the same.
    "I have some questions," she said, following on his heels.
    He plopped down on his twin-sized bed, swinging his feet up, and put his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. "Shoot."
    "You mentioned girls. You think about girls a lot, I guess. What are you going to do about it?"
    "About what?" He hadn't taken his gaze off the ceiling, as if her questions might have their answers written there.
    "About girls. Are you going to date? Have a girlfriend?"
    He closed his eyes and didn't respond for several seconds. Finally, he said, "Mentor discussed that with me. He'll get around to it with you, too."
    "Tell me what he said."
    "I think he should tell you. Or what's the point of having Mentor?"
    "Eddie!"
    He opened his eyes and looked at her. "What?"
    "Tell me," she said impatiently.
    He shrugged. "You can't get involved . . . uh . . . romantically . . . with humans."
    She had been afraid of that. Ryan Major's face floated into her mind. The boy who had just transferred to her school and who, before she'd changed, she had been hoping to find a way to meet. He didn't even know her yet. And now he probably never would. Some other girl, a cheerleader no doubt, would snag his attention and Dell would be lonely. All of her life! All of her many lives!
    She sank down onto the side of her brother's bed. He moved his legs over to make room for her. "Do our kind ever fall in love? With another vampire, maybe?"
    "I don't know."
    "So we go through all the years to come without . . . without loving anyone?"
    "Mentor didn't say that."
    "I guess he wouldn't. I mean, Mom and Dad fell in love."
    "Yeah, but they met before they changed," Eddie said carefully.
    "Well? What did Mentor say? It isn't like our emotions died. How do we keep from, well, from falling in love?"
    "You need to ask Mentor."
    "I'm asking you!" She hit one of his legs with her fist. How come he was still a pesky kid brother? She wished he was thirty and smart.
    "Well, I'm not thirty," he said, reading her mind. "But I am smart." He grinned widely. "Mentor said . . ." He paused.
    She hit him again with her fist to jostle him.
    "Stop it! That hurts. He said it's like the hunger. You don't want to ever kill someone, right?"
    "Right. He told me that. How I might have to fight off the urge."
    "You do the same thing about boys."
    "I have to fight off falling in love?"
    "Something like that."
    "That's horrible! Mom and Dad found one another, and Grandma and Grandpa. Even Uncle Boyd and Uncle Daniel."
    "I think they were all human and together before . . ." Eddie said.
    "Oh. But Mom and Dad knew they might become vampire.”
    "Now you have the gist of it," Eddie said.
    "But if they'd already changed, they would still have gotten together, right?"
    "I guess."
    "You're saying then that I just have to stay away from humans. My only choice is someone like me."
    "Ask Mentor."
    Dell gave up. She rose from the bed and stomped out of the room to show her displeasure. She didn't want to talk about love and boys and marriage anyway. It had just come to her, that's all. What did he think, that she cared?
    Eddie was sitting on the living room sofa holding his book bag when she entered the room.
    "I wish you'd stop that." She meant how he appeared somewhere else all of a sudden. She'd left him on his bed and yet here he was in the living room.
    "I can't help it if I can move instantaneously and you can't."
    "I can't yet."
    He grinned at her and unzipped his bag. "Give me a minute to flip through my history notes. I have a test tomorrow."
    She found the remote and turned on the TV. "I hate TV," she said, feeling petulant and wanting to criticize