Vampire Romance | Trancing Miranda: Chapter 3.5
"The Magic in the Memories" | CH 3, SC 5
Previously on Trancing Miranda
Nick takes Miranda back to the Regio—the gated vampire-run community she calls home. They talk about the weak effect of traditional amulets. Before getting out of Nick’s car, Miranda gives him her number against her better judgement.
The Magic in the Memories
Miranda ignored the vampire and walked to her house alone. By the time she got to the front stoop, Milo was waiting. His orange fur was scruffy, and his ears were pinned back flat.
She opened the door, and he walked in ahead of her, stiff-legged and sour.
“The cat door is right around the back,” she said, a little out of breath—on account of the blood loss. “There’s no reason you have to wait.”
Milo stalked into the kitchen, and she followed him in. Just as she put her phone down on the counter, it chimed, so she read the text.
Sleep well.
She tapped once, and then she tapped again. But when the pop-up asked her if she was sure she wanted to block this number, she wasn’t.
Milo meowed again, so low in his throat it was almost a growl. “You ate all the canned food I put out,” Miranda said. “You came in through the cat door and ate it.”
The yellow eyes narrowed.
She filled the empty bowl with kibble, and Milo sat down next to it and glared. He was holding out for another tiny, overpriced tin of gourmet food, but Miranda refused to be manipulated.
“I know you get fed at other houses.”
She went into the bathroom and peeled up the edge of the bloody bandage to take a look at the bite. It wasn’t pretty, but the stitches were a hundred times better than anything she would have gotten in the ER. In between the sutures, the edges of the bite were stuck together in a thin, delicate line—as if they’d been glued.
Which was weird.
No ordinary injury came together that fast. The vampire had done more than make her clot. He’d kick-started the healing process. She guessed that was why it didn’t really hurt either.
Vampires couldn’t heal, that she’d ever heard of. But they could regenerate after an injury. She guessed that maybe some could regenerate someone else, too.
It was surprising, but she was too tired to think about it. She pulled off the vampire’s T-shirt and changed into her oldest, softest pajamas. Then she picked up her grandmother’s bloodstone pendant up off the dresser and put it back on.
It was a fae amulet, not Christian. But the vampire wasn’t wrong. Amulets didn’t do much, and the bloodstone was no exception. It was good for insomnia and anxiety and grounding. But it wasn’t because of some spell.
The real magic was in the memories.
The memory of her grandmother’s cottage. The chipped pansy teapot. The call of the crows. The energy of the trees. The illusion of safety.
Miranda picked up the jade plant on the windowsill and held it under the faucet. She saw a fleeting shimmer of green. Not the plant itself, something running like a current along the edge of a single leaf.
Her imagination, probably, or just wishful thinking.
She brushed her teeth, turned out the bathroom light, and crawled into bed. A few minutes later, Milo curled up between her feet and started to purr. And just before she drifted off to sleep, she thought about Nick, the vampire, and the steady, comforting hum of his energy.
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