Eleventh Grade Burns(3)

The staking incident had been horrific to endure. And recovering from it had been no picnic. But the worst part of it was that he missed Joss, missed his company, his insight, his impossibly dorky way of looking at the world. When Joss had slammed that hunk of wood through Vlad’s chest, Vlad had survived ... but their friendship had not. And he was still mourning it, still grieving over the loss of a very good friend.

Not to mention the reason Joss was returning.

He didn’t need to hear it from Joss’s lips. The note he’d left on Vlad’s locker before he skipped town freshman year had said it all: Friendship over.

And if it really was over, then Vlad was going to have to formulate a plan pretty quickly on how to face Joss the slayer, rather than Joss the friend.

He sat up, gripping the coin tightly, and watched the door for Otis’s return. After many minutes, the door swung open, and his uncle entered.

Otis immediately met his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Vlad sat the coin on the table in plain view. “How’d the interview go?”

Otis furrowed his brow with a questioning in his eyes. “It went well. I’ll be teaching mythology full time at the high school.” He paused for a moment and wet his lips. “Is everything all right?”

“Congrats on the job. A lot of students have missed you since eighth grade—they’ll be happy to have you back. Me too.” Vlad dropped his attention to the slayer coin and released a tense sigh. “I have a problem, Otis. Joss is moving back to Bathory.”

Otis closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, visibly relaxing. He took a seat opposite Vlad with a small smile affixed to his lips. “You had me worried for a second.”

Vlad’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. Clearly Otis had lost his mind. “You’re not worried anymore?”

Otis shook his head. The bemused expression on his face irritated Vlad, though he wasn’t sure why. “Vladimir, there are far worse things than a slayer who’s out for blood. Besides, if he steps out of line and threatens you at all, he’ll be easily dispatched. Especially with two, soon to be three, vampires living here in Bathory.”

“Dispatched?” Vlad blinked, dropping his gaze momentarily to the coin on the table between them. “I don’t want to kill him.”

Otis seemed perplexed by this. He grew quiet, obviously mulling over something in his mind. Finally, he nodded and said, “If you’re more comfortable with it, I’d be happy to—”

“You’re missing the point” Vlad’s jaw tightened defensively. “I don’t want anything to happen to Joss. I don’t want you to touch him or hurt him in any way. He’s ... my friend.”

For a long time Otis didn’t speak. Neither did Vlad. He was too busy trying to figure out how the conversation had gone so quickly from asking for advice to killing his friend.

After a while, Otis leaned forward, tension and disbelief ebbing from him. “We are speaking of the same boy who drove a stake through your chest from behind, in the most cowardly way possible, yes? And you want to, what, give him an opportunity to finish the job?”

“No.”

“Then the matter must be dealt with”

“But he’s my friend, or at least he was. I don’t think he’ll try anything like that again.” It surprised Vlad how easily the lie slipped from his lips. Maybe it shouldn’t have. He’d been doing a lot of it lately. Pushing the image of Snow from his mind, he met Otis’s gaze.

Otis furrowed his brow. “Fine. If Joss keeps his distance, I’ll leave him be. But so help him if he threatens or harms you again.”

Vlad shook his head. “Then I’ll deal with him. I don’t want him hurt.”

The corner of Otis’s mouth twitched slightly. “You’ve made that abundantly clear. So what do you want?”

The thing was that he had no real idea of what he wanted. The only thing he could think of was for time to spin backward, for Joss to have never become a slayer in the first place. And that wasn’t exactly an option.

Vlad sighed. “Your advice. I want to know how to make a slayer back off without killing him.”

Otis sat back, shaking his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried. As far as I’ve seen, you can’t. Once a slayer has his mark, he will stop at nothing until the task has been completed. It’s always just been easier to take them out of the picture altogether.”