Deadly Offer by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page A

and quietly to show that she was in complete control. “I’m just changing the furniture around,” she said haughtily. “I am having a party this weekend, and you are not to be here.”
    His eyebrows rose. They arched like cathedral doorways, thin and pointed, vanishing under his straight black hair. With his eyebrows up, his eyes were very wide, too wide, as if they were glass balls that could fall out. “I’m quite looking forward to your party,” he said. He let go of the doorway and admired his fingernails.
    She thought of the people she had invited. Of the necks he could grip in those fingers.
    “Get out,” she whispered.
    “My dear,” he said.
    How she hated the affection in his voice. As if they were companions of some sort! As if they had anything to do with each other! “I’m not your dear,” she said. “Get out of my house.”
    “You forget, Althea, that I come with the house. I have been here longer than you, and I will be here long after you have departed.”
    Being addressed by name was far worse than being called “my dear.” It was so much more intimate. It gave the vampire some sort of ownership over her. She wet her lips and tried to breathe evenly, but it was impossible; her lips stayed dry and her chest rose and fell like a panting dog’s. “Go away,” she said.
    “I think not. Because I do have ownership over you, Althea.”
    He could read her mind? He was up inside her thoughts? Underneath her skull? Was nothing safe from him? Not heart, not veins, not even thoughts?
    Althea felt the terrible cold of his presence, the wet woolliness of the air around him. “I gave you Celeste!” Her voice cracked.
    “And so quickly, too,” he agreed. “So craftily, carefully executed. I was grateful. But a party! Twenty guests! I am really quite eager to meet them.”
    She threw the chair at him.
    But of course by the time the chair had crossed the room, he was elsewhere. “Try to control yourself,” he warned. “There is nothing to be gained by childish impulses. You and I have been very adult with each other. We made a bargain.”
    “I kept it. I gave you Celeste. That’s it. That’s all it was, that’s all it will ever be.”
    The vampire shook his head. She had seen him nod, many times; nod his head, nod his body, nod his cape. But she had never seen him shake his head no, and this, too, he did with his entire body, so that he rotated left, and then rotated right. She felt that he could bore a hole through the floor this way and drill himself into the cellar.
    “That’s not all it will ever be. There’s always more. One is never satisfied with what one has, you see.”
    “I am satisfied! You come to my party, and I’ll kill you! I will not have anything going wrong at my party! This is the first time any of them have ever been here. It has to be perfect.”
    “I’m afraid,” said the vampire, his voice like spilled chocolate sauce, dark and spreading and impossible to clean up, “I’m afraid that you are incorrect, Althea. You cannot kill me. But in any event, nothing will go wrong at your party. It will be a wonderful party, my dear. You are a born hostess.” He studied his horrid fingernails again, as if the wrinkled foil needed a touch-up. She envisioned him in some world, some room alien to her own, in. front of some evil mirror, inspecting himself, admiring himself. He said, “The tower room, of course, will be left open. My dark path will intersect with—”
    “No! There is to be no dark path anywhere! You don’t get any more chances!” shouted Althea. “You had Celeste. That was your chance! So go away!”
    “Althea, I hardly think that Celeste, and Celeste alone, is payment for what I have done for you. Cast your short little memory back over the last week. Ryan? Michael? Becky? Kimmie-Jo? Jennie?”
    A terrible heat rose up in Althea, staining her cheeks red.
    The vampire was amused. “Did you actually think they were paying attention to you because of the