Third Strike by Heather Brewer Read Free Book Online Page A

stepped outside, Henry stepped out after him. “I’m going with you, Joss. And I’m staying on your every move for the next month, like your new shadow. Because who knows who you might attack if someone’s not there to stop you?”
    â€œI’m not going to attack any—” Joss stopped himself before he lied. It was true that he didn’t plan on attacking anyone, but what if a vampire attacked him? Then it was all bets off. He didn’t want any more lies between his cousin and himself. Shaking his head, he said, “You don’t have to follow me. Really.”
    â€œDon’t have to. But going to. Where’s this ice-cream parlor anyway?” Henry stepped outside completely, letting the screen door slap shut behind him.
    Joss wasn’t exactly sure what to say or what, if anything, he could possibly do to convince Henry that it wasn’t the best idea on the planet that he follow Joss around. So rather, he sighed his frustration and shook his head, pointing up the road. “Just up the road a bit.”
    Henry moved in the direction that Joss had pointed, as if he were leading the way, rather than shadowing Joss’s every move. Joss had to jog a little at first in order to catch up with him. When he did, he slowed his pace to match Henry’s stride. The two walked in silence for several minutes, until two young boys crossed the road in front of them carrying Nerf guns and sprinting as fast as their small feet would carry them. The sight of it brought a small smile to Joss’s face. He dared a glance at Henry, who still wasn’t smiling, and bet that Henry might not allow himself even a moment’s happiness while he was in the company of Joss McMillan, Vampire Slayer. “That reminds me of the time we snuck up on Greg with Super Soakers.”
    No response from Henry. Not even a small twitch.
    â€œDo you remember? We filled our squirt guns with cranberry juice and climbed that tree in your backyard. We were going to get him through the open window.” Joss chuckled at the memory. “Only it turned out he was supposed to get pictures taken that day and we had no idea.”
    â€œMy mom was so mad at us.” The corner of Henry’s mouth lifted in a smirk—one that Joss was enormously relieved to see.
    Joss laughed openly, shaking his head. “How were we supposed to know he’d be wearing white?”
    â€œWe both got grounded for a week.”
    â€œYeah.”
    The two cousins exchanged looks then, and Joss wasn’t sure what it meant. He only knew that he missed their closeness, their connection. He missed the way that things had been before he’d lost Cecile, before he’d trained to become a Slayer, before he’d staked Vlad. He missed Henry.
    Henry blinked, as if bringing himself back to the present. The smile washed from his face, and he turned his attention back to the road. “But that’s the past. If I’d known then what you’d turn into later, I—”
    â€œYou’d what? There was no stopping this, Henry. I’m a Slayer. It’s just a part of me, like having blond hair is a part of you. Like—”
    â€œLike being a vampire is a part of Vlad?” Henry stopped in his tracks then and met Joss’s eyes. His words weren’t bitter, just matter-of-fact, which in some ways, made them much harder for Joss to hear. “Don’t try to make me understand it, Joss. Because I won’t ever understand how you think that killing people is like having blond hair. You make choices in life. And you’re making the wrong ones.”
    Joss wanted to blurt out that vampires kill people all the time, much more than Slayers ever do, but instead he fought to keep his mouth shut. An argument at this point in time would get him nowhere. He’d seen the light in Henry’s eyes when he spoke of their shared childhood. There was hope there, hope that their friendship could