Eternal

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  If she eats two bites, I'll be impressed. Still, I think back to what Nora said about how, among other aspects of his human life, Drac misses eating food. I suspect that the same is true of Miranda.

  As Josh saunters off, she isn't the only one watching him go.

  One of the bigger angel perks is our looks. The toned bodies. The hair. There's something about the hair.

  At the next table, a young cutie stands in her too-short hot-pink suit and writes what's probably her phone number on Josh's hand. At the nearest booth, a bearded guy waves a napkin. Josh grabs it with a grin and, still walking, waves back.

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  Once he's lost in the crowd, Miranda asks, "What's your secret?"

  I do a double take. Did Josh somehow blow my cover? "What?"

  "Don't you ever gain weight? Not to be rude, I'm simply asking. When I was a human, I never could've eaten like that. Werehippos couldn't eat like that."

  I laugh. "There's no such thing as a werehippo."

  That's when Freddy, the events guy, shows up. He looks exactly like Harrison, except his hair is bleached and he's wearing wire-framed glasses. By "exactly," I mean exactly. They're identical twins.

  Miranda stands, and there's much cooing and air-kissing before they settle down.

  "Okay, let's talk gala!" Freddy says, playing with his PalmPilot. "May 13,14?"

  "We put the fourteenth on the invites," she says.

  "Hmm, we're already at about twenty days," Freddy observes. "Not a problem. We have the venue. With Nora, we don't need a catering staff. If she wants, though, I'll nab her some backup from servants in the neighborhood. I'm thinking a 'love bites' theme--sit down, music--harps maybe."

  "Harps?" I cut in.

  "Father has a passion for country music," Miranda says. She blinks rapidly and adds, "A closeted passion that I didn't mention, especially as pertaining to the collected

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  works of Johnny Cash." She glances at me. "Johnny wasn't a vampire. He just liked to wear black."

  "Dancing?" Freddy goes on, as if our exchange never happened. "We can scatter dime-size rubies on the buffet table or maybe sapphires if you're thinking red is overdone."

  "So overdone," Miranda says.

  Freddy makes a quick note. "And get this: we serve human hearts, cubed and chilled, with chopsticks over sticky rice on heart-shaped plates." He adjusts his glasses. "Of course, real hearts aren't heart-shaped at all. They're more disgusting and lumpy. Hence the cubing, which solves --"

  "You want a drink?" I ask him. I can't stand hearing this and not being able to do anything to stop it. I can't stand that Miranda is a part of this conversation. Besides, I need to talk to Joshua. Now.

  "I'd love a --"

  "I'll get the waiter," I say.

  The diners are a mixed crowd. Execs and young pros. Families. Couples. College students. Tourists. Rounding the centerpiece bar, I dodge five tray-carrying food servers who aren't Joshua. It takes me a minute to realize that the men's room is the most logical meeting place. I find him there.

  "Where have you been?" he asks, splashing his face at the sink counter.

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  "Me?" I check under the stalls. Empty. But the dining room is packed. We won't have this space to ourselves for long. "You're asking me--"

  "It's hard work, waiting tables,'' Josh replies. "The kitchen is running slow, everybody wants to substitute something, and hungry people can be mean."

  "Since when can you just walk around--"

  "Covert-ops exception. No showing off the wings, no lighting up, but..." He checks out his reflection and messes with his hair. "I'm stylin.'"

  I don't have time for this. "About Miranda--"

  "Yeah, after all of your moping, I figured you'd be jazzed to see her again. Cool, huh?" No paper towels. He shakes the water from his fingers. "Uh, except for her now being...That sucks. I don't mean sucks like...I mean, sorry, dude. I totally--"

  "Shut up. Listen. Can a vampire be saved? Can I save her?"

  Josh sobers and starts reciting from the Creed. "An angel may encourage, may inspire, may nudge, but each human soul ultimately chooses its --"

  I sock him in the gut, just hard enough to break his train of thought.

  "Ow!"

  "We're not talking 'human.' Does she still have a soul?"

  "Not in the way you mean. There's something hanging on, but it's not the soul of a living human being.

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  What's left is infected. It's withering, and every time her vamp nature kicks in, it'll wither more until there's --"

  Right then two guys in overpriced suits burst through the men's room door. They're bitching that neither of them made partner at their law firm.

  The heavyset one knocks his shoulder into mine. His colleague in the questionable tie asks if I've been hurt by "the assault."

  Josh is gone. I'm sure he didn't run off to check on my nachos and quesadillas. He's once again taken a siesta from the mortal plane.

  On my way back to the table, Freddy passes by, headed to the can. He stops me with a hand on my forearm. "My brother," he begins. His voice is different. The way he holds himself. "You know Harrison? You work with him?"

  "Yeah," I say. "Well, not anymore. He's..."

  "So it's true." Freddy's head falls forward. "He's one of them now."

  I realize that everything I've seen of Freddy up to this moment has been an act.

  "I knew this would happen," he says. "I tried to tell him it wasn't too late to walk away. I guess it's too late now."

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  Miranda

  AT CHESTNUT AND MICHIGAN, we say good-bye to Freddy and I begin toying with Zachary's black wool scarf. It's an excuse to touch him. "I suppose we should be getting back."

  "Why?" he asks, bending so his forehead is almost resting against mine. "What are you, a workaholic? What do you do for fun?"

  Fun. I have to think to remember what the word means. I've never been one of those girls who lives for shopping, but we are standing on North Michigan Avenue, I'm incredibly rich, and there are still another couple of hours before the stores close. "I do need to get Father a gift for his deathday."

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  Gift giving isn't to be delegated. Father took pains to explain to me the restoration he had done to the Impaler so it would be ready for my debut party. He's harder to shop for, though. There should be a catalog, For the Exalted Who Has Everything.

  "Let's hit a bookstore," Zachary says. "Or two."

  We half walk, half run across all six lanes. We're flanked by business people--men in business suits, dark trench coats, Florsheim shoes, and women in skirt suits, dark trench coats, gym shoes (their pumps tucked into their briefcases).

  As we weave through the crowded streets, a cherubic trio of little kids---two girls and a boy, joined by one of those child leashes--stop on the sidewalk. They giggle and point at Zachary. He grins and waves.

  I wonder if he wants kids someday. I wonder if that'll stop him from choosing elevation, if it's offered. There's precedent for eternal parenthood, but it's rare, dangerous, and mystical. I haven't had a period since I died.

  "Hi." Zachary squeezes my hand. "I'm right here. Where are you?"

  "I'm right here, too," I say, making an effort to appreciate the night, the moment: Zachary's calloused hand and the exhaust of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the lovers in horse-drawn carriages and the skyscrapers jutting like fangs.

  I breathe the chill into my limp, neglected lungs, setting my stride to the tune of a street musician's saxophone.

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  He's accepting donations in his open instrument case, set at an angle on the sidewalk. As we walk by, Zachary reaches into the pocket of his black leather jacket and tosses in a twenty. "I love music," he says.

  Before I know it, we're in a bookstore, and the spell survives when he lets go.

  For an hour, perhaps more, Zachary and I wander, skimming spines, flipping through pages, reading quotes on dust jackets. I leaf through
a book on the care and feeding of gerbils, wondering how Mr. Nesbit is holding up. It's not his basic needs that I'm worried about. I'm certain Mom is feeding him and refilling his water bottle and cleaning his cage, but she won't pet or talk to or play with him. That isn't her way.

  It's been a while since I read anything but the news or The Blood Drinker's Guide. Last fall, I took a couple of online college classes, but with this spring's social calendar, Father encouraged me to take a semester off. Even so, he's supportive of my continuing education. He himself earned an MBA online.

  When Zachary moves to another aisle, I pick up a copy of Curse of the Cubs.

  My gaze strays to a lone blonde wearing a V-neck long-sleeved T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a clip. She studies a volume in POLITICS as I study the skin above her jugular. It looks smooth. I suspect she uses self-tanning lotion.

  With a sigh, I shake off the lesser temptation in favor

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  of Zachary's company. It's hard to even think about feeding when he's around. The section sign reads THEOLOGY, and my PA has seated himself on a footstool, his nose buried in Angels to Zombies.

  "Sounds more like occult," I muse.

  Zachary looks me in the eye. "Do you believe in angels?"

  "Angels?" It's an odd question. I know Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life, and the Bible is chock-full of winged guys who start sentences with "lo." Lucy's mom has this old-fashioned framed picture of a floating guardian angel, overseeing two children--a boy and a girl--crossing a bridge. Or maybe they're on train tracks--I don't remember for sure. When I was little, I used to imagine I had my own guardian angel, sort of like an invisible friend. "Seems like wishful thinking."

  Zachary slips the book--subtitled The Apocalypse A to Z--onto the shelf. He reaches for another one, resting on the floor beside him. "Here. Try this."

  Wow the Crowd. It's a book on acting. Grandma Peggy gave me a copy one year for Christmas. A remarkable coincidence, but Zachary probably deduced my love of theater from the framed posters hanging in my office back at the castle.

  As we pass the in-store coffee shop, I ask, "Do you want to stop in?"

  He replies, "How 'bout we go dancing instead?"

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  Zachary

  I'VE SURPRISED US BOTH. I want to dance with her, though. Just once. The universe owes us that. Besides, she's never had a real date. It's not that guys didn't notice her. Though she held back, my girl had a faerie-like beauty and shy sparkle. But her obsession with Geoff Calvo was as transparent to the masses as it was a pain in the ass to me.

  At the checkout counter, we have the books shipped to the castle so we don't have to carry them. Outside, back on the sidewalk, the temperature hovers at around forty degrees. But Miranda doesn't seem to notice, and I'm okay. The wardrobe she had delivered to my room included a black leather jacket worthy of James Dean.

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  A CTA bus rolls by. A young couple strolls arm in arm, speaking Russian. Two pissed-off-sounding guys, one behind the other, shout threats at each other and kick at pigeons on the sidewalk. A fair-skinned, distinguished-looking man carrying a black umbrella tips his hat at me as he walks by. I consider hightailing it to the 900 Shops on North Michigan to pick out dressier clothes for the occasion. But the castle is so much about wardrobe. I like the idea of looking like regular people.

  We hop a cab with no shocks south to the Edison Hotel. As the cabbie complains about the Bulls, Miranda snuggles against my arm and her thigh presses against mine. I doubt she's doing it on purpose.

  Miranda apparently still has no experience with guys. I, on the other hand, am decades older. Plus, I let it rip, drowning my sorrows in earthly pleasures in the months before I woke up on the Amtrak train. But she's really getting to me.

  I hold it together as the cab passes the Tribune Tower and the Wrigley Building. At Millennium Park, I shift in the seat and clear my throat. Finally, I take her hand and gesture toward the Art Institute. "I'd like to take you there sometime."

  Once the words are out, I realize I mean them. "I'd love that," she says, like we're a normal couple. "How about next week?"

  White lights dot trees growing from the medians and

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  along the sidewalks. Old-fashioned-style streetlights glow golden. It's a romantic night.

  But Miranda and I, whatever we're doing, it can't last. According to the Auto Shop and Body Repair calendar stuck to the cab's dash, Drac will return in just under three weeks.

  Now that I know where he sleeps, I can't help wondering...When I destroy him, will she try to stop me? How big of a dent have I made in her loyalty to the master vamp?

  I know the Edison Hotel because it was Danny's fave hangout. I'm relieved to see the sign. Good news. It's still in business.

  "What do you think?" I ask as a bellhop holds open the thick glass door.

  "Swanky," Miranda says.

  The 1927 twenty-five-floor hotel has a forty-foot lobby ceiling, comfortably worn antique furniture, breathtaking crystal chandeliers, and an A-list clientele. Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and a mixed bag of heads of state, including every president since FDR, have stayed here. The carpet is red, the walls gold, and the columns carved from gray marble. Even the trash cans are made of gray marble.

  It's the kind of place where you expect to see a slinky doll with a long white feather in her hair walking a cheetah on a thin gold leash. It's also off the supernatural grid. Or at least it was back in the day. I can't think of a better, safer place that would welcome both of us.

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  Miranda

  IT'S NOT LIKE THERE aren't any grand historic hotels in Dallas, but my family didn't go to places like this. When my relations came to visit, they stayed at our house. When we visited them, we stayed at theirs.

  I've been to one wedding reception, my cousin Molly's, and it was at a Doubletree or someplace like that in the San Francisco Bay Area. I also was invited to Shira Levine's bat mitzvah at the Marriott in Piano because our moms are friends. They were nice hotels, clean and new, but not the kind of places where you could imagine running into movie stars or presidents or, now that I think about it, undead royalty.

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  Zachary accompanies me up a sweeping red carpeted staircase with gold banisters to a four-star, candlelit seafood restaurant with a generous dance floor off the bar area and a five-piece band playing old love songs. We're underdressed--me in my black turtleneck and black jeans, Zachary in a white, long-sleeved shirt and black cargo pants--but no one seems to mind. I free my hair from the ponytail, glad I wore the three-inch dress boots tonight. I'll stick with my higher heels from now on.

  When we take our places among the swirling couples, most of them in their sixties or older, he looks at me, sheepish. "Uh, do you know how to dance?"

  I can't help smiling. The moment I'm feeling out of place, Zachary reassures me that we're not so different. I relax against his chest, my cheek on his shoulder, and breathe him in. Zachary smells so good, like vanilla and musk. Like sex and Creation. Or at least what I imagine them to be.

  Somehow, he knows most of the songs.

  "I can't sing worth crap," he says.

  I'm playing with his feather-soft curls. "Most people can't."

  He sidesteps. "Not most people, that's true."

  We seem to float between the dance floor and our table.

  When Zachary spills red wine on his white shirt, it's an excuse to fuss over him with soda water, to bring my lips close to his, until he draws me up to dance again.

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  I'm not the only one who admires him. Everywhere we've been tonight--at O'Conner's, at the bookstore, on the street--humans have noticeably marveled at Zachary's beauty. It doesn't bother me, though. After all, he's mine to keep.

  Finally, we're the last couple on the floor, and the bartender is putting the chairs upside down on the tables. The band stopped playing a few minutes ago. A hostess turns on the vacuum cleaner.

&nbs
p; As we exit the coat-check counter, arm in arm, inspiration strikes. At just past two AM, most of the human world may be sleeping, but it's still early for us. "Let's stay here tonight."

  Zachary stumbles. "I don't know --"

  "Please. I want to pretend like I'm alive."

  Saying the words out loud was hard enough. I won't make it an order.

  He runs a hand through his thick hair, blinks at me, and, for a heart-wrenching moment, looks away. "Just tonight," he says.

  When I show the hotel manager my Dracul platinum card, he hastens to assign us to the bridal suite, no charge, and says he'll put us down for a late checkout.

  Moments later, perched on the gray marble counter in

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  the bathroom, I twist to face the Hollywood-style mirror, framed in lightbulbs.

  I look paler than usual. I skipped the pig's blood before we left. I hadn't been planning to stay out all night.

  "In here!" I call to Zachary, who was flipping through channels when I left him in the seating area. "You need to soak that stain."

  What I know about laundry could fit in a thimble, but my mom was big on soaking. More important, it's a workable rationale to get him out of that shirt, an occasion I've been longing for since the night of the fire when I was too distraught to fully appreciate the view. His fanged smiley-faced boxers were fetching, though.

  When Zachary slides the shirt off his shoulders, I'm so distracted that it takes me a minute to notice the tattoo over his heart. I must've missed it the night of the fire. I reach out with my fingertips, reminded of our earlier conversation at the bookstore.

  Zachary moves my hand from his skin and gently squeezes it before letting go.

  "Where did that come from?" I ask. "The tattoo, I mean."

  He runs water over the wine stain. "Austin."

  "You were in Texas?

  Are you from Texas?" What with the stress of pleasing Father and warding off batty Elina and beheading Theo and dealing with the

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  runaway servants and Harrison's bloodlust rampage and the nursery fire and the French and negotiating my diet and meeting with Freddy I've neglected to look deeper into Zachary's background.

  "I was in Austin before Chicago. I was in Dallas before that."