Character Post: Faith Crosse from Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

Since so many readers of Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side e-mail to vent about how much they despise Faith Crosse, I thought it would be fun to give everybody a glimpse into Faith’s world. Following is how I imagine Faith’s life in the aftermath of the book.
Happy reading – and happy “blogoversary!”
~Beth

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SPOILER ALERT:
If you haven’t read the book yet – first off, this “chapter” won’t make any sense – but it will also give away a plot twist or two!
Read the book first!

Lu-ci-us… Lu-ci-us… Lu-ci-us…

I hadn’t even noticed that I was again repeating his name like a mantra as I drummed my fingernails against the arm rest of my teak lounge chair, and when I realized what I was doing –thinking about him – my fingers clenched, nails scraping against the wood.

DAMMIT. Not again. NEVER again.

Licking my lips – too hot, suddenly – I shifted in the chair, feeling the sweat trickle down my spine, tracing a path from the string that held my bikini top in place all the way down to the string that essentially served as the bottom.

My tan would cover nearly my entire body. Not that I had anybody to show the tiny, tempting patches of creamy white skin that were covered by the suit.

Eyes closed behind my mirrored sunglasses, I felt a smile of approval start to play on my lips as I pictured myself stretched out by my family’s pool, my blond hair glistening in the sun.

Of course, I could have guys lined up to peek at those secret, fair places that my bathing suit concealed. Old men, young men, that perverted math teacher who used to get red and flustered every time I would lean over his desk and ask for help, just to screw with his head. And my idiotic ex-boyfriend, Ethan Strausser, would probably pay – his entire salary from his humiliating, minimum-wage summer job as a ride operator at a theme park – to see me again, even for a minute.

My lips pursed, my smile vanishing in tandem with the sun that ducked behind the shifting clouds.

But I didn’t want Ethan anymore. He had served his purpose, first to establish my dominance at school – who else would Faith Crosse date but the most popular boy? – and then in my plot to revenge myself against Lucius Vladescu.

Ethan had been jealous and almost too ready to believe that Lucius was a monster who needed to be destroyed in a lonely barn by an angry mob.

What a simpleton Ethan was, compared to Lucius. Smart, sexy, savage Lucius…
Tilting back my head, I reached up and traced the side of my throat with my slick fingertips, feeling the two small scars that had sealed Lucius’s fate on that cold, winter night.

I had inflicted the wounds myself, alone in my bathroom, barely flinching as the point of the metal nail file had gone deep into my flesh.

I’d had the idea on the spur of the moment, while soaking in the tub, and I hadn’t wanted to risk even running to the kitchen for a knife, for fear that I’d lose my nerve. I’d just climbed out of the water and bubbles, snatched the file from a drawer under the sink, and stood naked and dripping in front of the steam-clouded mirror, doing what I’d needed to do, not even thinking about what might happen if I’d gone too deep or struck my jugular.

I would even say that I’d been eager – had a need to satisfy – and the rush had been amazing as the hot blood had coursed out of the two wounds, trickling down my neck, mingling with the warm droplets of bathwater, and staining the pure white towel that I’d finally grabbed to stop the flow when I’d started to get unsteady on my feet from the loss.

In that moment, as I’d stood shaking with excitement and weakness and the promise of vengeance, I’d finally understood what I’d been yearning for on those nights when Lucius and I had been together, and his mouth had grazed the very spot that I’d just pierced.

That sensation… That’s what I had longed for, without even understanding what I’d needed.
That feeling, and Lucius, himself. A vampire…

I’d thought I was making up that monster story to punish Lucius for rejecting me – Faith Crosse! – but it had been true.

All along, it had been true.

That strange pressure I’d felt against my throat when we’d been alone up in his apartment, in the dark… That pressure that I’d come to crave so badly, in a way that was never really satisfied… That had been Lucius’s fangs, barely concealed and scarcely controlled.

My fingers clenched again and I dropped my hand back to the arm rest, raking my nails against the wood, purposely ruining my Malibu Pink manicure, which had cost my stepmother sixty dollars just the day before.

Lucius Vladescu could have given me everything. Could have fulfilled all my desires. We could have – SHOULD HAVE – been together forever.

But he’d chosen Jessica Packwood.

I didn’t even speak her name aloud, and still my mouth tasted sour. Or was that bitter?

I’d thought removing Lucius from this earth would be enough… but it didn’t change the fact that he’d wanted her. I hadn’t counted on how that would sting even after he was gone.

I reached out blindly, and when my fingers met the icy, sweating tumbler of iced tea on the table at my side, I lifted the glass and held it to my lips, drinking deeply. I needed to quench my thirst not just for cold liquid, but for something else. Something I couldn’t name, but which would extinguish this unbearable disappointment, like water could put out fire. I couldn’t endure second place one minute longer. I would go crazy...

Opening my eyes, I slammed the glass back down on the table, so hard that it cracked and nearly cut my fingers, spilling more blood.

Or would I always be in second place?

I’d heard rumors that Jessica had gone to Romania to find Lucius. That he was somehow alive and living in a castle. And I knew enough about rumors – I’d started enough rumors – to know that they often held at least a grain of truth.

I could certainly believe that Lucius was a prince, as surely as I believed he was a vampire.

Was it also possible that he had somehow survived that night in Jake’s barn?

I closed my eyes again and squeezed the arms of the chair, mind starting to race. Was there a chance that the stories about vampires were true… that Lucius knew the secret to eternal life? I had felt his strangely cool skin, and the way his heart beat so slowly, even when we were…

“Faith!”

My stepmother’s squeaky, girlish voice came from the screened veranda, and I gritted my teeth, angry to have my thoughts interrupted. “What?” I snapped, not removing my sunglasses. Not even opening my eyes. “What do you want?”

“I’m just worried, sweetie, that you’ll get melanoma laying out there in the sun all day,” the big-chested bimbo who’d married my father on the rebound had the nerve to suggest. “Or worse yet, you’ll wrinkle your pretty face before you’re thirty!”

I didn’t bother to answer her, and after awhile I heard the screen door slap shut as she went back inside to hide her own chemically peeled skin in the climate-controlled mansion that my father had bought for her.

Reaching to release the back of the chair so I could lie flat, I rolled over onto my stomach and unlaced my top, baring even more skin to the punishing sun.

Screw turning thirty. I was eighteen and my thirtieth birthday seemed like it was a million years away. And as for cancer – I’d beat that, too, if I had to. I would never lose again.

I turned my face to the side and folded my arms under my bronzed cheek, and soon my fingers found that familiar spot on my throat, like they always did when I needed to soothe myself. Remind myself who I was.

Someone who got what she wanted.

The girl who always took first place, at any cost.

The back of my index finger stroked the scars, over and over again, repeating the motion the same way I too often repeated my former boyfriend’s name.

Lu-ci-us… Lu-ci-us…

What if you really are alive?

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Thanks so much Beth!! So great to hear from Faith's point of view (even though I still hate her :P ).

For those who have yet to experience the darkly-amazing magic of Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side check out my review HERE!

Thanks bunches and remember to join my contest!!

Wdebo :)