Vampire Romance | Trancing Miranda: Chapter 3.1
"The Wrong Kind of Bright" | CH 3, SC 1
Previously on Trancing Miranda
Nick is driving Miranda home. They talk about the tension between vampires and humans with the human population feeling disadvantaged and displaced by the vampires buying up property around the lake and elsewhere. Miranda feels relaxed and euphoric because of the energy Nick used to heal her and manage her pain. The agree to stop at a diner to eat.
The Wrong Kind of Bright
The diner was pretty from a distance. Up close, it was crazy bright. Not a friendly, sunshine kind of bright. The kind of bright Miranda hated.
Wide plate-glass windows blazed with fluorescent light. On the other side of the glass, patrons chattered away, immune to the glare.
The vampire parked and walked around and opened her door, but without the energy running between them, Miranda was her usual self.
She didn’t need his help. So when he offered her his hand, she pushed past him and walked through the parking lot on her own shaking legs. But once she got inside, she stopped.
The air was heavy with the smell of fried onions. People chattered like monkeys. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
For a moment, it was almost too much. Then the vampire slipped past her, and she followed him, cutting through the tables like he did, noticing how the humans looked up at him as he passed.
There was something surreal about all of it. The humans were pasty and just a little green in the weird, artificial light. Most had stopped eating. Some lapsed into silence when the vampire got close.
They didn’t know he was a vampire, obviously, because outside the gate vampires always caused some kind of stir, but they knew he was something special.
Because he was. Even glamoured, even passing as human, his basic attributes were hard to ignore.
The whole Greek god slash professional athlete thing. How you just looked at him and knew he had money. The way he was completely oblivious to the attention he was getting.
It was what all bluebloods were like, more or less. And it was not endearing.
The vampire stopped at the very last booth. There were no tables in this part of the diner. Just booths and a long, mostly empty lunch counter. Not so coincidently, two guys at the counter picked up their checks and left, along with a man and woman in the nearest booth.
Later they would wonder why they didn’t finish their food. Or maybe not.
Miranda knew it should make her mad. She had some human blood after all. Enough to be offended on behalf of the entire bloodline, but she wasn’t. She was just glad she didn’t have to listen to people talk.
She slid into the booth without a word, and the vampire sat down across from her.
He’d ditched the velvet jacket, but kept the tapestry vest and the flowy white shirt. And there was something about the silky black hair and the rolled-up sleeves that made him seem old world and just a little exotic.
Miranda imagined vineyards and stables and villagers who both loved and feared him. Odds were all of those things existed, too, at any one of a dozen estates. Probably he was as rich as Daniel. Maybe even richer.
Not that she cared. It was just another thing that made bluebloods a little less likeable.
Miranda pulled out her phone and scrolled until the waitress came over to take their order. The woman didn’t know he was a vampire, just like she didn’t know why she didn’t walk away after they ordered. She just stood there, staring, like she was waiting for a command.
Finally, the vampire gave her one.
He did it graciously too, making it even more annoying.
“Thank you, Sandra,” he said with a smile. “That’s all for now.”
The smile was perfect, just like the rest of him. Even white teeth, fangs nowhere in sight. The usual.
Half-vamps didn’t have perfect teeth, and you could see the fangs if they smiled big. In bluebloods, the fangs retracted completely. Like cat’s claws.
But it was the smile that Miranda kept coming back to. It was the eyes. Even accounting for the horrible lighting, the vampire’s eyes were the brightest thing in the room. And not in a bad way.
“You have weird eyes,” she said, all casual until she realized what she’d said.
She went back to her phone, but she could feel him staring at her.
“What?” she asked, not looking up.
“Are you seeing through the glamor?”
She was still a little high on his energy, evidently, and it was making her sloppy.
“I just remembered from before.”
It wasn’t a lie, exactly—she had remembered—but it wasn’t answering the question as asked either. Sometimes that kind of dodge got you past a vampire’s natural lie detector. Sometimes it didn’t. Because it wasn’t really the truth.
The truth, as the vampire was asking for it, was that she could see through the illusion. She always had.
When she was young, she’d thought everyone saw vampires like she did, up until her blueblood great-grandfather told her otherwise.
Her great-grandfather wasn’t especially interested in her ordinarily. He didn’t care what she did or if she was happy or if people knew about her tiny dribble of vampire blood—but he didn’t want anyone to know she was fae. “Don’t talk about it,” he had said. “It will make them wonder what else you can do.”
What she could do was nothing compared to a vampire, but she could do a few fae tricks. She knew when a vampire was close. She could tell one vampire from another by their energetic signature. And she could follow a trail all the way until the end.
But that was a secret. Not even her own half-sister or her best and only friend knew about her abilities. And Daniel would have a fit if she let some random blueblood figure it out.
So Miranda kept her eyes on her phone, scrolling aimlessly while the vampire waited politely for the food to arrive.
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