The next night, Jackson was busy with some pack work that he and Eli needed to get finished. He said that I could come over and hang out, but that he would be busy most of the time. I'm sure it would have been fun to hang out with Mason and Alice, but I decided to use the time that Jackson was busy to spend some time with Xavier. I hadn't seen him in a long time and it was good to have him back around.

We really had been best friends until he'd moved and the distance had slowly separated us. We talked on the phone every day at first, but eventually the calls dwindled and I hadn't heard from him in about five months before he showed up in town the day Bane had attacked me.

It was past time for us to catch up and having a Saturday night to do so was perfect.

"So, I was thinking," Xavier said, causing me to look over at him. We were just laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to decide what to do tonight. I didn't really have any ideas that involved leaving the house as the town didn't really have an active social destination for those of us under twenty-one. "We should go to a club."

I raised an eyebrow at him, knowing that wasn't going to be possible. "Okay, first, my parents would never let us go, second, I'm not old enough, and third, we don't have any underage clubs."

Xavier rolled his eyes. "Nice list. Let me address all of the problems you see with my idea. You do actually have a club around here that I can get you into, you just have to be special enough to know about it, and your parents will be fine with it if I tell them that it's an underage club and that I'll keep an eye on you."

"Is it an underage club?" I asked, wary of the tone he'd used.

He made a face at me. "Well, not exactly, but you're not too young to get in. They don't have a specific age limit or anything, you just have to be special. It's mostly teens and up."

"And how special do you have to be to get in?" I asked. There had to be a catch in there somewhere.

Xavier gave me his best innocent face and said, "Vampire special?"

And there's the catch.

I stared at him with shock widened eyes. "You want to take me to a vampire club?" I asked for clarification, almost positive that he was joking. "And you want to tell my parents that it's a safe, underage club? I don't think so."

Xavier sighed, rolling onto his stomach so that he could face me more easily. "Come on, Ceci! The club isn't dangerous and you are half vampire!"

Okay, he had a point with the half-vampire thing. "What if someone tries to eat me?" I asked of him.

Now he rolled his eyes as if I was just being stupid. "No one is going to try to eat you." His tone was impatient and annoyed, as if I should know this already.

"It's a legitimate question!" I exclaimed in my defense.

"Look," he replied, "Do you remember when I told you that you smell delicious but the vampire genes were a turn off?" I nodded in response. "All the other vampires feel the same way. Plus, the coven loves getting to know dormants. They enjoy showing you who they are and who you could be."

I copied Xavier's position, rolling on to my stomach and thought it over. It was better than staying here all night and it definitely had to possibility to be fun. I'd never been to a club before. "Will there be blood there?" I asked him.

He nodded. "It is a vampire club, Ceci. However, since you smell like a dormant, you most likely won't be offered any. Most dormants don't drink blood and the vampires there know that."

Relenting, I nodded. "Okay, I'll go if you can talk my parents into it."

Xavier grinned victoriously and bounced off the bed. "Leave it to me! I'll be right back!" Before I could even blink, Xavier was gone. I stared at the open doorway for a moment in shock and then accepted it as a vampire thing.

He wasn't even gone for five minutes. He came bounding back into the room, appearing out of nowhere again. "We're good to go! And even better: your parents are leaving soon for a date night, so we can find you something to wear and leave after they do!"

His statement made me a little nervous. "They did say yes, right?" I asked. "We're not just waiting for them to leave and then sneaking out are we?"

Xavier pretended to be offended that I even asked. "Of course they said yes!"

I gave him a calculating look, trying to make sure that he wasn't lying to me. The last thing I needed was to get grounded again. Jackson and Alice would both be mad.

"They said it was fine as long as I don't let you out of my sight," Xavier reassured me. "I just want you to get to know your other side. I know that the werewolves don't like us and they're not going to have anything good to say. I don't want your opinion formulated based on theirs. We are a civil race for the most part and I don't want you to hate vampires just because your mate does." His eyes were pleading with me and for the first time I saw exactly how much this meant to him. He really wanted me to meet other vampires and like them as well.

I smiled at him in reassurance. "I'll form my own opinions, I promise," I told him. "Now, what do you wear to a vampire club?"

He grinned and rubbed his hands together, walking into my closet. He looked through all my clothes complaining the whole time about how I didn't have any clothes sexy enough and wasn't I a teenage girl? Didn't all teenage girls keep at least a couple sexy outfits?

I just rolled my eyes and let him complain. Eventually, he pulled out a black pencil skirt that I used when I needed to dress professionally. It stopped just above my knees and hugged my thighs. "This has promise," he told me. I smiled in relief, glad that he wasn't trying to dress me in provocative clothing.

The smile slipped off my face, to be replaced with a look of shock as he used his teeth to rip half the length off the skirt. "What are you doing?!" I exclaimed, jumping off the bed.

"I said it had promise, not that it was perfect. Put it on," he ordered, handing me what was left of my skirt and returning to my closet.

"I'm not wearing this," I told him throwing it on my bed. "And that was a great skirt you just ruined!"

"You'll wear it if you want to go to the club tonight, Cecilia. It's Fangs!" he called from inside the closet. "I won't let the guys near you, but you are wearing it. Put it on and let me know when you're done so I can come out. I think I found a top for you to wear with it. I'll look for shoes while you're putting that skirt on."

I sighed, resigned to the fact that my male cousin was dressing me to go out to a club. I didn't have much say, as I'd never been to a club before, much less a vampire club and I didn't know what people were supposed to wear. I didn't want to stick out, but at the same time, I didn't want to wear that skirt either.

"I don't hear movement out there!" Xavier called in a sing-song voice.

I growled in aggravation but pulled off my jeans and jerked the skirt on. It ended only an inch or so below my butt and I fretted over the length. "Are you sure about this, Xavier?" I asked him. "It's really short."

Xavier stepped out of the closet, holding a pair of nude heels in one hand and something pink in the other. He appraised the length of the skirt before nodding. "I'm sure. It's perfect. Put these on too." He tossed the shoes on the bed and the pink thing at me.

Holding it up, I realized that it was a tight pink tank top with some of the length also ripped off. I stepped into the bathroom to put the tank top on as Xavier had thrown himself on my bed to wait for the reveal of the outfit he'd picked.

After pulling it on I assessed myself in the mirror. I was showing way more skin than I was comfortable with. On top of my newly acquired mini skirt, Xavier had ripped enough length off my tank top that it ended just above my belly button and only had about inch and a half straps.

"Leave your hair down and curly!" Xavier called through the bathroom door. "And come out here and put these shoes on. They're not the knee high black boots that I was hoping for, but they'll work."

I blanched at the mention of knee-high boots with this outfit. Was he trying to dress me like a hooker? I just wanted to dance and learn about the vampires, not sit on a corner and make some money!

When I walked out of the bathroom, Xavier handed me the nude heels again. They were four inches with straps that went up and around my ankles. I'd worn them for about an hour the day of prom, quickly kicking them off when it was time to dance. It looked like they were about to be worn again.

I pulled them onto my feet and twined the straps around my ankles, making sure they were wrapped properly, before standing up and doing a sarcastic twirl for Xavier. A grin spread slowly across his face and he nodded. "I did good! You'll blend in and you'll have plenty of dance partners to choose from as well."

I wasn't sure if that was a good thing. I didn't ever want Jackson to find out about this, but if he did, the clothes would be hard enough to explain. I didn't want a bunch of guys getting touchy feely and I'm pretty sure Jackson wouldn't approve of that either. Well, he wouldn't be finding out about this anyway. There's no way he's going to meet anyone from the vampire club that can tell them all about the little dormant they met that one night.

I knew that I should feel bad that I wasn't ever going to tell him about this, but I knew that he wouldn't approve of me going to a vampire club, regardless of the way I was dressed. I couldn't tell him about my vampire heritage and Xavier was right. I had the genes to become a vampire if something happened to me and I should know that half of my heritage.

Speaking of, "Xavier, how am I half vampire if neither of my parents are?" I asked him.

"Grandpa was a full vampire that mated with a human," he replied. "When they had children, my mom was born with the gene activated and your father was born with the gene dormant. He passed the dormant gene on to you. It's not really a measure of the fraction so much as whether it's dormant or active. Dormant vampires are referred to as half and active are referred to as full vampires."

"Why doesn't my dad know about his heritage if his father and sister were both full vampires?" I asked.

Xavier shrugged. "I don't know. I was never told why they didn't tell him about it. They hid it well from him and grandma apparently. I don't even know how they pulled that off."

My eyes widened. I couldn't believe that grandpa hadn't even told grandma what he was. They were married! And they had a child that took after him. That was something that she definitely should have known, even if they chose not to tell their half-vampire son. I firmly believe that the whole family should have known. Then, I could have had my father to explain the possibility of becoming a vampire one day.

I knew Jackson would probably hate me if I ever became a vampire, maybe even if he found out about my dormant genes, but there was nothing I could do about it. I'd keep it hidden from him unless there came a time that he needed to know. And right now, he didn't. 

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