Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things

by Margie Fuston

  Good thing I didn’t come here to draw pretty pictures. And I definitely didn’t come here to feel things, so I rein my emotions in and force the swirling colors into a well between my stomach and ribs.

  I switch my heavy suitcase to my other hand to distract myself.

  “Can I carry that for you?” Henry asks.

  I hesitate. Carrying my bag is a very boyfriend thing to do, but I’m probably overthinking.

  “Sure, yeah, thanks.” I pass him the handle and awkwardly try to make sure our fingers don’t touch, like we’re strangers.

  He pauses and squints at me. “You okay?”

  He hasn’t said anything about finding his own place, but I don’t want to press the matter and make things weirder than they are.

  “Totally.” I hold open the door before following Henry up the three flights of stairs. He hasn’t even broken a sweat at the top and relaxes against the wall while I fumble with the key in the lockbox and open the door.

  I reach out and snatch my suitcase from him and roll on through into a wide living room painted a startling shade of bright blue.

  “Wow,” Henry says, walking in. “A little much.”

  He’s right, but I don’t say so. The place is quirky to the extreme, with an old-fashioned grass-green velvet couch as the center point in the room with a wooden coffee table scuffed up just enough to be charming. On either side of the couch sit mismatched chairs clearly stolen from different dining room sets. Huge oil paintings of flowers decorate the walls. Dad obviously picked this place for me.

  “I like it,” I say.

  I roll my suitcase past the couch to the first bedroom with Henry at my heels.

  “Wow,” he repeats.

  Deep green paint covers the walls, a darkened forest but for the four-poster bed in the center covered with a hot-pink comforter. A light, dusty-blue velvet couch is the only other piece of furniture in the room. The whole bizarre place welcomes me, and I let myself love it for one small second before reminding myself I’m not here to stay inside and relax.

  Henry’s practically leaning over my back to look in, so when I spin around, I’m pressed up against his chest.

  He takes a quick step back—so quick I’m a little offended. “There’s another room, right?” he asks.

  I take a breath that sounds too deep. “Should be. It was supposed to be me and my dad.”

  Thinking about my dad steadies me. I need to focus.

  We walk down the hall to a master bedroom, which has a huge king-size bed made of black lacquered wood and covered in a deep burgundy comforter. The walls are painted a blue so dark they’re almost black, and they’re bare except for a huge window with black curtains.

  “Well, it looks like a vampire lives in here,” Henry says.

  “You can take this room.”

  “Don’t you want the master? This is your trip.”

  “It was supposed to be my dad’s room.” I pull my suitcase back to the smaller room, the one that was always going to be mine.

  Henry doesn’t press it. I sit my suitcase on top of the hot-pink bed and try not to think of him unpacking where my dad should be. But it’s all I can think about—how much I want Dad to be here, how much I want this trip to be a lighthearted search for vampires with the one person who believed with me.

  Henry’s not that person, so when I turn to find him leaning against the door, watching me, I snap at him before I can stop myself. “Why are you here? Because if you were hoping for a cool trip, this isn’t going to be.”

  “I’m here to help you. I’m certainly not here for vacation.” He snorts, looking out of place in his faded jeans and soft blue T-shirt.

  “Help me with what?” I press. He made it perfectly clear he didn’t believe in what I’m doing, so what help can he be?

  His silence is my answer. He thinks he’s here to protect me from myself, and now he’s one more obstacle in my way.

  “So what’s the plan? Where do we look first?”

  I analyze his face. He’s not grimacing like he did whenever I came up with a plan he didn’t like when we were kids. His lips are even, no condescending smile or judgmental frown. His brown eyes are wide and earnest. He’s going to try if I let him.

  I suck on my top lip as he waits for me to decide.

  “It might sound a little strange.”

  His brows rise.

  “Don’t freak out.”

  “Now I am. Tell me. It can’t be worse than what I’m imagining.”

  I wait for his composure to slip as I say the words. “We need to break into a convent.”

  For a moment he just blinks at me. And then, “I stand corrected. That is definitely worse.”

  The thing is, this is kind of

  the whole reason you have friends,

  so you don’t have to do the terrible parts alone.

  —The Originals

  Four

  Jetlagged and tired, we stroll down the street, wiping at the humid air on our skin like we can somehow get it to disappear. No such luck.

  “Why would a vampire choose to live here?” Henry asks, running a hand across his brow. “Anytime you tried to bite into someone, you’d have to go through a layer of sweat.” He tugs at his white T-shirt and jeans, which appear to be clinging to his legs.

  “Didn’t you pack any shorts?”

  “Nope. I didn’t really check the weather report.”

  I sigh. I wear beige linen shorts and a pink tank, and the humidity still claws at my skin with each step. A pair of twentysomething girls strut past us in breezy dresses and effortlessly curly hair. We both turn to watch them.

  “I guess people get used to it,” he says.

  I brush at the strands of sweaty hair around my face. “We can buy you some shorts later.”

  “But why New Orleans? If I were a vampire, I’d probably live in Alaska or someplace where it’s dark all the time, and you can make everything look like some kind of animal attack.”

  “I’m glad you’ve thought that through, but you realize they also have full days of sunlight there, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s when you vacation in Paris. We could have gone to Paris,” he grumbles, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

  “Don’t you remember? One of the vampires from ten years ago said he lived here.”

  Henry frowns. He doesn’t have to say it. I know he thinks all those people were attention-seeking hoaxes.

  “Besides, it’s not about the weather. It’s about the people. Night on Bourbon Street is one of the wildest party places in the world. Only a year ago a woman went missing here. Her fiancé said she was there one minute and gone the next. She showed up a week later and couldn’t remember a thing. She thought she was drugged, but there were a ton of articles and news stories speculating about whether vampires were surfacing again and how many might be hiding in the French Quarter. Think about it. Every night tons of people get blackout drunk and can’t remember huge blocks of time. It’d be a smorgasbord.”

  “Your general excitement and use of the word ‘smorgasbord’ concern me.” He takes a dramatic step back from me.

  I step after him and punch his shoulder. This time I don’t overthink it—I embrace it. It feels comfortable, like I never really stopped. As if we’re still best friends and he’s going along with another one of my bizarre shenanigans.

  “It makes sense.”

  He nods, his face deadly serious in a way that makes it clear he doesn’t think it’s serious. He just needs a little more convincing.

  “Besides, look at this place. The whole town is vibrant and alive, yet somehow ancient and decaying all at the same time.” I run my hand along the cold, old bricks of the building we’re passing, blackened in some spots and faded in others—no two bricks exactly the same. I bet each one has a story to tell. Startling royal-blue paint covers the doors, which open to the sidewalk, letting smooth jazz and raucous laughter spill out. Across the street, what looks like a newly renovated building sits with fre
sh gray paint and curved windows trimmed in unblemished white. In another city, the buildings might clash, but here they make sense. The French Quarter’s beautiful because nothing fits, so everything fits.

  “Wouldn’t you want to live here if you were immortal? Everywhere you look, something’s different. It would never get old.”

  I can’t hide my excitement. My steps are lighter than they’ve been in months—I have a plan, and I’m in control again, doing something instead of sitting around while everyone else decides Dad’s dying.

  I glance back at Henry, who’s walking behind me as we thread through the crowded sidewalk.

  He wipes sweat from his forehead. “It’s great.”

  “Well, it’d be cooler for vampires, since they’d only be out in the evenings.” Or maybe they don’t even feel the heat if they’re cold all the time. If everything goes well, pretty soon I’ll only be out in the evenings—I’ll never see the vibrant colors of this place in quite the same way. Never get to draw this place fully alive in the sun. I want to stop walking, to spin in circles and try to commit all of it in the daylight to memory. But I don’t have time. A different kind of loss pinches at me, but I ignore it. Losing the daylight is so small in comparison to losing my dad.

  The crowd thins, and Henry takes a few steps to catch up with me. “Why are we out now? Why don’t we lie low until dark in… how about there?” He points to a quaint café painted a fading yellow with a blackboard sitting out front boasting fresh beignets. Sugar wafts in the air, attempting to coax us off mission.

  “They might be in the attic. Attics are dark any time of day.”

  Henry groans. “Breaking into a convent attic is on my list of things I never want to do.”

  “You can wait outside.”

  “For you to be brought out in cuffs? Don’t you have another plan we could try?”

  I stop walking so I can look at him. “This one’s my best bet.”

  “Okay.” He folds his arms across his chest, his signal he’s really prepared to listen to me. “Convince me.”

  I don’t know how honest I should be. I didn’t even have this plan two days ago. Yeah, Dad and I said we’d hunt for vampires out here, but we didn’t do any real research. It was more like, maybe we’ll run into one while touring these cool vampire-related sites.

  I hesitate. I need him to prepare himself, though, in case this goes badly. “I was digging around on the message boards on the flight and someone posted about their friend coming here to try to get into the attic. They went alone and never came back—that was only five days ago.”

  “I feel like that would have made the news.”

  “Not if it was covered up—or if they didn’t take the friend seriously.”

  “They could have left—run away from their life.”

  “Or this is the easiest hunting ground for a vampire looking for willing victims.”

  “An attic in a convent?”

  “This isn’t just any convent. Its name on the message board is what caught my eye in the first place because it was on my dad’s and my list of places to visit. Do you know why?”

  Henry raises a brow. He’s only going to humor me so much. I know he can tell I’m gearing up to go off the “vampire deep end,” which is what he used to call it anytime I gushed too long about some vampire legend or movie. He’s still listening, though, so I’ll take what I can get.

  “Because this was the location of the first North American vampire sighting.” I grin and jerk my thumb to the right.

  The convent is large and unassuming, beige with dull gray shutters, about how you’d expect a convent to look, and yet it possesses a simple beauty that makes you want to whisper when you stand beside it.

  “So the nuns are vampires?” I know he’s trying to give me the benefit of the doubt and not let what he’s really thinking show on his face—that I’ve lost my marbles somewhere along the way. I try not to blame him.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think there are vampire nuns.”

  He looks relieved until I continue.

  “Once upon a time, the nuns locked the vampires in the attic.”

  “Of course. Of course.” He keeps muttering the words as he stares into the sky like it will offer him some kind of relief.

  “But the nuns don’t live here anymore,” I continue, talking to him like he isn’t praying to the overcast sky for Jesus to save him.

  He finally looks back down at me. “Then who does? Besides the vampires, of course.”

  I give him a glare for his sarcasm, but he’s too distracted to appreciate it.

  “It’s a museum.”

  “A vampire museum.”

  “Of course not. A museum about the nuns, but it’s a cover for the vampires.”

  He says something under his breath I don’t make out.

  “What’d you say?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Fine. Please hear me out.” I take a deep breath, steeling myself. I need him to hear the truth in this—one of the many stories of vampires that people tried to explain away before we got confirmation they existed. “There used to be a French colony here, but it was all men, and one day they decided they wanted some women to liven things up, so they sent a letter to the French king and begged him to send women. The king rounded up volunteers and sent them over on a boat. Only the boat gets here and nobody sees any women get off, only some suspiciously coffin-shaped boxes that they carry to the convent. Everyone assumes the women died, but then the women start showing up on the street looking extra pale and extra red around the lips, and the men who get close to them start disappearing. Historians tried to come up with explanations for this, like scurvy, which would make the women’s gums bleed, and they claimed the missing men could have hopped a boat up to Baton Rouge or anywhere else, but that’s just a lot of what-ifs to cover up the uncomfortable truth.”

  Henry stares at me like I’m an overly eccentric history teacher.

  “Do you want to know what that truth is?”

  “I’m dying to.” He cracks a faint grin.

  “Please take this seriously.”

  “Okay, okay.” He holds up his hands in fake surrender. He drops his smile, but I sense it lingering around the edges of his lips.

  I almost tell him to go home right then, but I need to finish the story. “Rumor has it the nuns realized the vamps were out there making the men disappear and decided to do something about it, like seal off the entire third floor. They say all the third-floor shutters have been nailed closed with nails blessed by the pope. But people still report seeing them open at night.”

  “Maybe they should have doused them in holy water when they blessed them.”

  I try not to punch him, but he’s eyeing the rounded, inconspicuous third-floor shutters, so maybe he believes me a tiny bit.

  “Do you really think they’re still there after all this time? Wouldn’t all those vampire researchers that popped up after the Gerald debacle have checked this place?”

  “Yeah—they did, right after it happened, and why would a vampire hang around in a place they knew they’d be looking? But that was ten years ago. People aren’t bothering to search a place that’s already been picked over. Plus, do you remember Jerome, the vampire from New Orleans? He got asked where he lived in the French Quarter, and he got all mysterious and quiet like he wouldn’t answer, but then he said he had a very, very good view of this convent. He actually said very twice like that, like there was a hint in it. What if he lived here? What if he supported the convent, and they kept his secret? He would have had to move during the vampire heyday, but now? What better place to hide than a place that’s already been checked a thousand times over?”

  “And you’re sure he’s back?”

  “No, but this was where that guy was headed the last time his friend saw him. Either he found someone here or he found something that led him somewhere else.”

  “So we’re going to break in and get to the third floor, f
ind a coffin, hope a vampire is inside and not some old bones, hope the vampire is nice, ask them to turn you, and then go home.” Henry’s tone is sarcastic, but an edge leaks into it—anger, maybe. He doesn’t want me to risk this no matter how slim he thinks the odds are that I’m right.

  “Yes,” I say. My voice wobbles. I’m a weird mixture of doubt and fear, but I only really need to get rid of one of those emotions. Doubt poisons your thoughts until nothing seems possible. This is possible. “Yes,” I say a little clearer. I reach into my back pocket and pull out my phone to show him a drawing I found online of the convent layout. Henry leans over me as I point. “There are two stories between us and the attic, but if this is right, then the stairs are to the left of the front door. Easy access. So are you going to help me or not?” I don’t wait for an answer, just head across the street. When I turn around, Henry’s standing along the stone wall, eyeing the decorative trim at the top.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “This is going to be hard to get over, but I think I can boost you. I’m not sure how I’ll follow.”

  I laugh—actually belly laugh—for the first time in a while. He may not believe the way I do, but he is committed. “How about we buy tickets for the museum instead?” His face flushes, feeding my laughter. “I appreciate your dedication though.”

  “Here to help,” he mutters.

  “Seriously, you’re the best.” I link my hand in the crook of his elbow and drag him along through the front gate.

  The woman selling the tickets eyes us. “You know this is nothing but a museum, right? Not a supernatural tour. It doesn’t even look like a convent anymore. It’s a museum about the nuns.”

  They must still get some people snooping around trying to track down the legend. I open my mouth to try to set her at ease, but Henry beats me to it.

  “I love nuns,” he says.

  The lady and I both stare at him.

  He flushes. “I mean—not like that—the history. I love church history.”