Kyla laid there listening to the TV’s background noise on the monitor and wondered how on earth she could possibly fall asleep. Was she really safe? The idea that Sam could be a foe instead of a friend was more than unsettling and if that was the case, would he do something tonight? Was Tristan just being paranoid? Or were his spidey senses tipping him off to something that could make things get a whole lot worse? This crazy night had been punctuated with something unfathomable to her. Punctuated period!She scrunched her eyes tight and after what seemed like forever, she finally fell asleep.-14-Kyla felt disoriented when she woke up. She glanced at the phone. 6:45 AM. She looked at the computer monitor and swiped the mouse pad to get the screensaver off. Tristan was asleep on the couch. Sam wasn’t in view.
She felt her scalp prickle. Where was he? She heard a noise on the laptop and then saw him come into the upstairs view. Kyla felt like her heart stopped. Sam was carrying a stack of clothes and towels and some shaving gear and he headed downstairs, a towel wrapped around his waist.
Kyla exhaled hard. She saw Tristan sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
“Hey,” Sam said to him and put the contents of his arm load onto the coffee table, “Coffee?”
“Yeah.” Tristan answered and got up and left her view. She got up, used the bathroom and brushed her teeth and washed her face, and then heard her name.
She looked at the monitor.
“Hi baby, good morning. I’m going to put a cup of coffee and your phone in the closet. When I get downstairs, grab them and put my phone in the closet, okay?”
She changed the settings for an open mic. “Good morning. Okay.”
She sat up in bed and watched Tristan bring things into the closet. He looked so unsure, so wary. She caught sight of Sam behind him.
Tristan deposited the coffee and the phone and then left. When he got to the bottom of the stairs Kyla hit the green button and did the phone swap and snatched her coffee. She got back into the closet and hit the red button quickly.
“I’m back in,” she said, “but I’d feel better doing that if there were more distance.”
“Okay, we’ll leave next time.”
Then she saw Tristan come upstairs and fetch his phone.
Uneventful. It worked.
Kyla took a big sip of her coffee and relished it.
She picked up the phone and looked up and then downloaded a period tracking app. She’d had used the birth control pill package before now but Daisy had said she’d used an app on phone and had commented it had worked wonders for predicting when her period would arrive.
She heard Tristan say, “I’m heading out, Kyla,” as he picked up his keys and grabbed the front door’s knob. “Text me if you need anything brought here later.”
“Okay.”
He and Sam left.
That was sort of a less than warm goodbye but she’d guessed it was due to Sam’s presence. Tristan had said last night that he was unsure about Sam and in the past had talked of not being seen as weak. She suspected Tristan was being very guarded. At least they could text in private.
She got a text:
“I didn’t want to say this in front of Sam but you don’t have to stay in the panic room when I’m not here. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back in. Don’t answer the door. No reason anyone should be knocking. Be back approx midnight-one tonight. I’ll text you Sam’s contact details in case of emergency but only in emerg. Remember what I said.”
“Okay. Xo”
Kyla hit the green button and wandered out into the apartment. She washed the coffee mugs in the kitchen and then stared out the window. She didn’t feel safe. She didn’t feel secure. Her senses were on overdrive. She’d felt better in the closet.
“Fuck it,” she said aloud and went back upstairs and hit the red button. Three seconds later, the phone started to ring. It was Tristan.
“What?” He sounded totally out of breath.
“No, I’m okay,” she said. She heard him let out a huge sigh.
“Why are you back in there?”
“I don’t feel safe out there.” Her voice was small.
The silence between them on the phone was almost deafening to her. She knew he had to be beating himself up right now. She finally broke the silence,
“It’s okay. I’m fine in here. I have my chocolate and my grape Fanta.”
He didn’t laugh. He made a frustrated sounding grunt.
“It’s okay. I’m just gonna take a nap. Then I’ll watch some movies online or download a book to read. Do what you need to do.”
“I’ll call you in a while.” His voice was laced with tension.
“Okay.”
She wanted to take a nap to give Tristan’s brain a break but couldn’t sleep so opened a browser window and started to Google vampire information, digging for information that might help her find out more about their predicament. She couldn’t find anything worthwhile. She dug through some deep web resource pages as well, the underbelly of the internet that the average person doesn’t find on Google or Yahoo and while she found some fetish type stuff she never found anything helpful related to vampire nectar, inability to mesmerize, or vampires being driven to psychosis by menstrual blood. The research took a huge chunk of the day and really didn’t accomplish much, other than killing time. She was finally interrupted mid-afternoon by a text from Tristan,