The branch was from an evergreen tree, and I felt immediately that it had a special significance. I was going to have to try and talk to Raven, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I got out of the car, feeling especially brave, and yelled out.
“Raven?” I said, getting out of the passenger side of the car and stepping into her yard, around objects and plants strewn about.
She continued to run around with the branch for a few seconds before realizing other people were on her property. When she saw me, she dropped the branch and ran for me.
“Victoria!” she yelled and her eyes went wide. When she was close enough, her hands went to my cheeks like I was a child, and it was all I could do to remain calm in her presence.
If I thought she was odd and chaotic before, the energy coming off of her was now incredibly scattered and very intense. I felt myself going a little light-headed.
“Yes,” I said. “We’ve come to see you.”
I grasped her hands and felt a jolt through my body, like I had gotten a shock from an electrical socket. Calmly, I put them down and did my best to stand in her presence without absorbing too much from her.
“You’ve become one. You’ve realized your true gift,” she said, panting, eyes still wide and wild. Her hair stood on end. Each little soft, slightly curly strand seeming to have a life and energy of its own, like a polite medusa who had reduced the size of the snakes coming out of her head for the sake of her guests.
I hesitated for a moment as I felt something drop in my stomach and then steeled myself.
“Yes,” I said. “We’ve been to see The Three.”
She gasped and stepped away from me, her energy seeming to rise again.
“That was the location,” she said, looking at Lola, who nodded back at her.
“I had always had it,” Lola said, and Raven looked as though something was clicking in her mind.
“You were chosen for that,” Raven said, as she pointed one finger back and forth at the two of us. “You were led to each other.” She turned to Matt next. “You as well.”
Matt just nodded, not looking especially affected by what was going on, just taking in the information.
“Terrible things. Terrible things,” Raven began, suddenly regaining her crazy, like she hadn’t just been speaking calmly to us a second ago.
She ran for the branch she had dropped and picked it up again, waving it around and muttering to herself.
I wondered if this was what happened to magics when the order became unbalanced. I didn’t know any others, so for all I knew there was another Raven in another city doing exactly the same thing.
She couldn’t help it. Magics were servants of the order. When it was off, so were they. She was trying to restore her order—the order—with that branch.
I stopped for a moment and wasn’t sure where I had gotten that from. That information. It wasn’t something I had ever thought before and it wasn’t something anyone had ever told me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if Raven herself exactly knew that—although she clearly sensed it. But I felt completely certain I was right. The knowledge seemed to arise from thin air.
“Raven?” I ran toward her so we could speak. I almost grabbed her, but I knew that would upset her. So I stood still while she ran back and forth, close enough so she could hear me. “What does that branch do? Why do you have that branch?”
It took a few seconds for her to acknowledge me, but then she stopped like the grass had grabbed her feet.
“Evergreen has a special place in the order. It is the tree with no death, only life.”
And with the scales tipped toward death, she was trying to restore life.
“Is it working?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No,” she said and slumped over toward me so that I had to catch her. Her bony body just folded up into itself. “It’s too much death.”
With her in my arms, I made my way to the ground so that she could lie there and I wouldn’t have to hold her.
“I have no powers here. I can only sense what is. Where to go. What to do. I cannot change what is.”
I had a sudden surge of energy, and I knew I could change things. That’s what I was here to do, but I needed help. I needed to find Ivy, and I couldn’t find him on my own.”
“I can change it,” I said, and the certainty in my voice surprised even me. “But I need to know where to go. Where to start.”
Raven blinked up at me, the evergreen branch still grasped in her hand, and I wasn’t sure she had the wherewithal to guide me.
“Your favorite place,” she said.
I knew then that she was too far gone. My favorite place was my hunting territory—the bars and clubs. I had already been there, tried that, and it had yielded no results.
“Okay, Raven,” I said, trying to be soothing as she repeatedly whispered, “your favorite place.”
It was time for us to go, so I sat her up as gently as I could while removing myself from her grasp. She just la back down in the grass as soon as I was up. I guessed this was okay. She didn’t look like she had the energy to get back up right now.
“We can’t just leave her like this,” Lola said, kneeling down by Raven’s side.
“I don’t know what else there is for us to do,” I said, and Matt, who was on my right, nodded. “The only way to help Raven is for us to rebalance the order. That’s the only thing that can help her.”
“Did you get any ideas while you were here?” asked Matt.
“None,” I said and walked back toward the car.
2
Back at my apartment, the three of us sat around in the living room, discussing our next steps.
“Vic, she said to go to your favorite place. She gave you an instruction,” Lola said, for at least the third time in a half an hour.
“Yeah, I know what she said,” I said, getting up from the couch and walking toward the sliding glass door to the balcony. “But I’ve already tried my favorite place and it didn’t get me anywhere.”
Also, I didn’t want to mention that ever since we had returned from seeing The Three, something felt off to me in my old hunting grounds. I didn’t feel as comfortable, as certain, as I had always been there, and it was bothering me.
“Maybe she meant someplace else,” Lola said, and I felt like the discussion was just going in circles now.
“What about—” Matt started to say, but I cut him off, as my irritation with Lola and this discussion rose.
“Lola, she’s out of her fucking mind. She’s ruined. I don’t think she knows what she’s saying.”
Lola jumped up out of the chair she was in and walked toward me, leaving Matt in the living room by himself. Her hands waved around and she was animated as she talked.
“Magics don’t just say things,” she started. “Raven, for as long as I’ve known her, she’s always right. Even if what she’s saying has to be...decoded first.”
I felt like I was going to explode.
“Okay then, you tell me. What’s my favorite place?”
Lola stopped, hands on hips and grimaced.
“The bars,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Maybe you need to try it again. Maybe something wasn’t in place when you were there before.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said, crossing my arms as well and looking out over the city. I opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony right as I heard Matt start to say something again. Lola was right behind me.
It was 3 a.m. but still hot and humid, and I liked it. It matched the fire I felt I had burning inside of me. The urgency, the intensity, the direness of the situation.
I could hear people yelling out, talking, laughing, even vomiting as they poured out of bars and clubs and onto the streets.
This is part of what I liked, the chaos of it all. The life of it.
“Hey,” Matt said behind me, grabbing my arm and turning me around. I hadn’t realized he was behind us. “I’ve been trying to tell you somet
hing.”
“Matt, we’ve gone over it all...” I started to say, truthfully thinking that if Lola and I hadn’t come up with it, Matt wasn’t going to either.
Now he grabbed both of my arms, and his strength brought me out of my head. He turned me directly toward him, his irritation fueling both my fire and the heat of the night. He let his grip on me go a little as he spoke.
“What about the place you brought me? Where you taught me about my gift? You know, out by the stream in the woods?”
I stopped and the night air suddenly seemed to cool down a few degrees. Matt dropped his arms and let me go.
That couldn’t be it. Could it?
“Seemed like one of your favorite places to me,” Matt said, sitting down in a plastic chair and turning his attention out toward the city. “You know, this reminds me that I’m getting hungry.”
It made sense. I had just never thought of it as my favorite place.
Find your desire, I heard The Three say. I wasn’t sure if I was thinking it or it had been placed in my mind.
Then I did something I had never done before, but which now felt like an instinct. I went inside myself, to the deepest place I could find, kind of like the cave we had met The Three in, and I asked inside that void if this was where I should go.
No answer came back to me, just a feeling, a sense that, yes, this was right. I came back out and I was with Matt and Lola again on the balcony.
“Let’s go,” I said and Matt smiled at me as he leaned back in his chair on two legs.
3
My favorite place.
If this was what being a knower was about, I sure was glad I hadn’t been one (well, realized I was one) until recently. Everything felt like a riddle to me.
We rode out to my spot. Lola driving Matt’s car with him in the passenger seat.
As I sat in the back, I didn’t speak to either of them. I just looked out the window and reflected.
I felt like this would never end.
Ever since Ivy’s arrival, I had been in a maze, and had not found the end.
I would do something right and find a piece of cheese, only to realize that the cheese wasn’t the end goal. It was just leading me to something else. I didn’t feel cut out for this, and I wasn’t sure the other two were either.
They made light conversation in the front of the car, but I felt heavy. Too dense for the trivialities of life, which made up the daily existence of most people. Vampires included.
How had I lived over three hundred years—five or six lifetimes of the average human—just going through the motions? Hunt, seduce, feed. Hunt, seduce, feed. I had been an animal, yanked around by compulsions, without giving a thought to any of them. Or maybe a feeling to any of them was a better phrase. Because that’s what I felt like now. I had feelings—sensations—coming at me from all directions.
I was becoming more and more sensitive, and it was making life harder to live, though I felt, ultimately, more connected somehow. Like I fit somewhere. Although “somewhere” was changing by the minute.
I wasn’t sure I would succeed.
It was endless. The clues here and there. Following them like phantom sign posts down a lonely rode. And I did feel lonely, even with Matt and Lola. But I had always felt lonely—even as a human, I think, so that hadn’t really changed.
I was anxious about what I was supposed to find at my spot. Would I recognize it? I hadn’t been doing a bad job so far. Things popped up and I—well, we—figured them out. Maybe that’s how it would go here.
But this seemed about as far away from Ivy as we could get. He wasn’t there—that I knew, but I guessed something there would lead me onward.
I wanted to sleep. To go to bed and not wake up. To not have to deal with this anymore. I was going to fail. I knew it.
Lola pulled up to the gravel lot and we all got out. The stars were many and bright, and my night vision was spectacular.
As we came into the clearing, I dreaded my next task. Mostly because I didn’t know what it was.
For a long time, I had felt so certain and so powerful. Those were a couple of things that came along with being a vampire, having a special gift and possessing the knowledge that you couldn’t die. And now, I felt uncertain. And I felt it everywhere.
In my actions, and in my thoughts. In all of my relationships. And most of all in myself.
That was completely new, and I didn’t like it.
Hunting had always brought me the feeling of being a winner. I was victorious way more often than I wasn’t, and that’s the way I liked it.
When you were winning, you didn’t have to think too much. Didn’t have to change. Didn’t have to heal. You could just go on maintaining the illusion. And what a sweet dream it was.
But I was awake now.
“Hey! Watch this!” Matt said before taking off down the clearing, his body disappearing into a blur.
I saw him reappear a couple hundred feet away, and I smiled, without really understanding why.
He disappeared again and I saw the blur this time come right by me and off the edge of the embankment.
When I saw him again, he was already on the other side of the creek. He threw his head back and yelled in celebration at his movement, clearly enjoying the exercise. A few seconds later, he was on our side again and climbing the tree that overlooked the creek.
“God, I wish I could do something cool,” Lola said, her eyes following all of Matt’s movements. “I’m sorry to be such a fucking complainer, but locating just kind of sucks sometimes.”
She sat down in the grass with knees bent and rested her arms over them, and I sat down next to her.
“You got us to The Three. You’ve had their location since transformation. That’s not information everyone is given. Your gift is special,” I said.
“I know,” Lola said, taking a big inhale and letting it out in a sigh. “I’ve always wished for a more fun gift, something I could enjoy. Like Matt.”
“Look on the bright side. At least you’re not a magic, or you’d be a lunatic right now.”
Lola chuckled and then picked up a pebble from the ground and threw it.
“I guess there’s always a silver lining.”
Deep inside me something stirred, and I realized that while our gifts were powerful, they were not always fun, or enjoyable. I mean, I had always enjoyed mine, I think. But now as a knower, I wouldn’t exactly call it enjoyable, although I was now considered one of the most powerful vampires there were. A servant of The Three, in a way, like magics were servants of the order.
“Maybe our gifts aren’t supposed to be fun,” I finally said, listening to the insects. “Maybe we’re just supposed to use them.”
Lola shrugged and her shoulder bumped me as she did. She was like my sister, in a way, in this big, huge, fucked up family we were in. Ripped away from our real families and thrown together. Ripped away from our lives really.
“Do you ever think about your family?” I asked, following this train of thought.
Lola turned her head and looked at me like she didn’t understand the question.
“You mean, like, my human family?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I knew why she was so confused.
“No,” she said, while searching for another pebble. “Not really.”
“Did you have brothers and sisters?”
“Yeah,” she said, tossing another pebble. “Eleven of them. I was the sixth of twelve. Of course, by the time of my transformation, four were already dead, so there were just eight of us. And I would have been next.”
I turned my head at this new information and nudged her to go on.
“Yeah, I was sick, dying really. My mother had given up on me. She would just come in to wipe down my forehead, to do things to make me more comfortable. It would have been only days before I was gone. I was just...waiting. And, then a woman came to the house. A rich woman, which was odd to say the least. And my mother said she had a cure.
I re
member wondering if she was a spirit. She seemed so...ethereal to me. Like she walked around on the earth without really ever touching the ground. I couldn’t figure out why she would want to cure me, much less how she would cure me. But I was desperate, and weak, and at that point, I would have chosen a shot at life, at any life, over death any way that I could.
My mother seemed to know this woman well. Well enough, anyways. And I couldn’t figure that out either. We had no money, not many possessions, and no standing in society, but this woman clearly was from means. If I had had the wherewithal, I would have been suspicious, but I didn’t and the woman gave me the cure.”
“Let me guess. It involved a bite to the neck?” I asked, smiling but enthralled.
Lola turned to me and smiled back, having temporarily abandoned her pebble tossing.
“Good guess. Yeah, she bit me. By the time I realized what was happening—my strength started to return before she was even done—she was wiping off her mouth and walking out of my bedroom door.
My mother walked in, bundled me up, and with the help of a couple of others walked me to the woman’s carriage outside
That was the last time I ever saw my mother.”
I felt a pang in my chest and looked down at the ground quickly, trying to hold back the flood of feelings that had just invaded my body.
“Long story, short. The carriage took me to Raven’s house. Not where she lives now mind you, but her little hut that she occupied at the time. The woman—my creator—would come by now and again for the next few years. But then she stopped coming. I never knew her name, never knew who she was, but I owe her my life. Well, my immortality.”
I bumped her shoulder with mine.
“You never told me that. About Raven. That that’s how you know her? Kind of important, don’t you think?”
When she made eye contact with me, there was confusion, but also nostalgia and sadness.
“Yeah, it’s funny...I don’t often think of that anymore. About being brought to her house. I guess I just...forgot, in a way. I mean, I remember, obviously I just never thought to mention it.”
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