Red Hot

Time was a flighty fiend, I thought as I watched Cindy rummage through my closet. Not the one at my little cottage of a house, but the one in Professor Pops' mansion.

"What about this one?" Cindy asked, holding out the dress my dad and stepmother had brought home for me.

I swallowed down the raw hurt over my father leaving. Shook my head. "What else?" I eked out.

Cindy was getting frustrated. She threw her hands up. "I need a break. Your turn." She gave me a haphazard look and I smiled, getting off the chaise.

"Fine," I said, watching Cindy fall onto the same chair I'd been sitting in.

As I pushed through all of the amazing dresses Pops had purchased for me, I considered again the strangeness of time. How seconds flickered in slow motion until an instant later, weeks simply vanished, disappearing without a backward glance.

A month had passed since I woke from my time with Silindra.

Though I was still desperate to end her - Sharra - the vampire queen, I wasn't meant to be her next v