Changeling by Steve Feasey Page A

She watched as he began to rifle through the drawer of a small cabinet that stood in a corner of the room. ‘What are you looking for, Trey?’ Alexa asked.
    ‘Something to protect myself with. A knife, scissors, anything,’ he mumbled to himself. He shook his head in desperation at the neatly folded stacks of bedclothes and towels that were housed in the drawers. There was nothing even remotely like a weapon in sight.
    ‘Are you sure that you’ve really thought this through? Exactly what is that you are so worried about?’ Her calm, unflustered tone sounded completely at odds with his own feelings as his thoughts and emotions scrambled over each other in an effort to try to make sense of things.
    He ignored her, and his eyes fell upon a small, silver-handled letter opener on top of the bureau. He picked it up and hefted it in his hand. He tried to imagine standing in front of Lucien or Tom, brandishing this small, effete tool in their faces as a warning. A small whimper escaped him as the hopelessness of his situation dawned on him.
    ‘Trey,’ Alexa said, ‘why are you freaking out?’
    He stopped for a moment and turned to her with a look of utter disbelief. ‘Are you insane?’ he said. ‘Your dad is going to eat me! That’s why I’m freaking out !’
    ‘Think about it,’ Alexa said, getting up and taking a step towards him. ‘If my father had wanted to harm you in any way – which is quite the opposite of his intentions – couldn’t he quite easily have done so at any point without bringing you back here to our house to do so?’
    He turned to look up at her.
    She held his eyes with her own, her stare open and frank. ‘I think you already knew,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps you weren’t absolutely certain, but I think that you had a good idea about what my father really is,’ she continued.
    ‘That’s absurd. How could I possibly have known?’
    ‘Maybe you have talents and senses that you choose not to recognize,’ she said, giving a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘I don’t know, maybe you’re not as “normal” as you’d like to think. Have you ever felt that, Trey? Felt that you aren’t like the other people around you?’
    He paused, taking a deep breath and considering what she had just said. He found both her tone and the question unsettling. Had he known? Had he somehow guessed in that moment that Lucien had removed his sunglasses to look at him that he was not human?
    ‘I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. Lucien is a vampire. Why would I willingly put myself into the hands of something like that?’
    ‘Because maybe you feel that you and he are not so different after all?’ Alexa raised one eyebrow and tilted her head slightly to one side. It was an action, Trey thought, that made her look even more attractive and he was once again struck by just how pretty she really was.
    What was he thinking? This was Lucien’s daughter. Lucien Charron, who had calmly admitted to being a fully paid-up member of the undead. And here he was, eyeing her up, when only seconds ago he’d been imagining her father tearing his throat open to feast on his blood. He stopped and looked at her suspiciously, his heart smashing against his ribcage.
    She was his daughter, so she must be one too.
    He stood up and backed away, holding the pathetic letter opener in front of him in one hand.
    ‘You’re hypnotizing me right now, aren’t you? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Vampires put their victims in a kind of trance. I’m not thinking straight because you’ve hypnotized me and later on you’re all going to feast on me!’ The words spewed from his mouth and he heard the hysteria rising in his voice. He had to concentrate to stop the hand holding the letter opener shaking too violently.
    A small smile played on her lips and she raised her hands in front of her as if to show him that she was of no threat to him. ‘I’m not hypnotizing you, Trey, and I am not a vampire.’ She kept