I’m everything I kept back let loose all at once.
I break our kiss and push against his chest, and he immediately takes several steps back.
I stare down at my pure white dress, clinging limp and tired to my body, expecting it to be splattered with color. Nothing. Nobody can see what’s swirling inside me.
I tremble from the heat between us and the wet.
“Hold me,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
I nod, and he steps back toward me, wrapping his long arms around me and resting his chin on top of my head. I’m surprised to find his body trembling too. His heart thuds against my cheek.
“You do have a heartbeat.”
“You can have a heartbeat and still be dead.”
His words ring true.
I would know. I’ve been walking around like the living dead already, and my heart works fine.
But I’d hoped he didn’t. It was one of my signs of his vampire status, but not the only one. I still have my five out of seven, and right now it comforts me that the speed of Nicholas’s heartbeat matches my own.
I hope his embrace lets me press my well back together.
It doesn’t.
He tugs at the ends of my wet hair and looks down at me.
“What just happened?” I ask.
“We lived,” he says. “I felt alive for a moment, didn’t you?” He reaches out and wipes a thumb under my eye like you would for someone who’d been crying. But how could he tell? His own eyes appear a little red in the dark.
“Yes,” I say, and my voice cracks with more emotions than I could possibly name.
“I was wrong about you needing to be happy and never sad to live forever. You need both. You need everything. You showed me that.” He runs a finger down my cheek. “I see everything in you now. It’s beautiful.”
His face is shadowed and dark. Rain drips from his cheeks to mine. “But it hurts,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says, squeezing water from the tips of my hair. “I know.”
I twist my head to reveal the vulnerable skin of my neck. “Will you give me what I want?”
“Tomorrow,” he promises. “I want to see you one more time before you go.” He bends and brushes his lips across my wild pulse.
We met, and we talked, and it was epic,
but then the sun came up and reality set in.
—The Vampire Diaries
Nineteen
Monday morning comes harsh and bright. This must be how vampires feel when someone opens the lid of their coffin during the day. I don’t know what time I came in last night, but when I rip back my covers, I’m still dressed in my white sundress, damp and stained with hints of mud and streaks of moss. I brush back my tangled hair as I stumble to the bathroom. My once gorgeous eye shadow runs like dark tears, as if I’ve been crying guilt, releasing the last bits that held me back.
I wash my face until my makeup has that artful had a wild night but still look great rolling out of bed look and change into cutoff jean shorts and a sunny-yellow tank top.
And once I’ve finished with the outside of me, I turn to the inside.
But there’s no point. My well broke beyond repair last night, and now every color ripples under my skin and I can’t decide which one to focus on.
Excitement beats back the sorrow, telling me the sorrow will be gone soon anyway.
Today’s my last full day. My flight leaves tomorrow at 6 a.m., giving me plenty of time to see Nicholas after the sun goes down. Today I get what I want, and then tomorrow I’ll be home, saving my dad and living happily ever after for eternity.
Henry’s dressed and waiting at the kitchen table when I leave my room.
He looks up from a comic book he probably bought from Ruth as I smile at him, my nervous excitement beating out the tentative way he takes in my appearance.
“I did it,” I say. “I won. Today’s the day.”
He cringes, and I know he’s thinking about what I did to win the game, the sacrifices I may have made, but he doesn’t get it—I wanted to do those things, not just to win, but because they let me live a little while part of me was dying. They made me feel things even when I fought not to. And I craved that even as I feared it.
My limbs shake with all the released emotions.
“I’m going to the bookstore,” I say.
Henry pushes back his chair.
“You don’t need to come with me.”
“I want to be there,” he says, standing. “For you. As your friend.”
“I’d like that,” I say, and the brightest yellow fills me, turning my limbs light, and I don’t need guilt or sadness to chase it away anymore. I won.
* * *
Ruth sits at her desk with a fresh plate of beignets in front of her and an open book of Sylvia Plath poetry in her hand. She smiles as I walk in and offers me the plate with a wink. “Want one?”
I can’t help but laugh. “I’ve had enough powdered sugar for a lifetime.”
“You only live once,” she says.
I pause at her words. How much does she know about Nicholas and what I want from him? I’m afraid to ask, so I nod and move past her without touching the food. Henry can’t resist. He munches as he follows behind me.
“I’m really going to miss the food here,” he says.
“On that we can agree.”
I grab the book and pull it off the shelf, holding it pressed to my chest for a moment, feeling my heart pound against the cover. It’s like holding a letter from a college you’re waiting to see if you got into, except this is life and death.
I flip the book open, and it lands immediately on a page with a sealed envelope, and a note written on the top. Solve the puzzle and open the envelope. No cheating! Below are the blank spaces, spelling out a phrase.
E _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _,
a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _,
the _ _ _ _, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ o _ of _ n _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ t.
My m _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ l _ _s.
My _ _ f _ is a _ l _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
Do not _ _ _ _ for _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
S _ _ _ _ at the _ y _ _ _ _ _ of _ _ i _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
_ _ _ _ of _ _ss _ _ _ _ and _ _rr_ _.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ h by l _ _ _ _ _ in the
_ o _ _ _ _ _.
“Just open it,” Henry says. “He won’t know.”
“He might.” I pull out a pen and start writing the words I’ve collected at the bottom of the envelope so I can see where they fit.
I start with the ones underlined in my final poem and work out from there.
The End
If I could have put you in my heart,
If but I could have wrapped you in myself,
How glad I should have been!
And now the chart
Of memory unrolls again to me
The course of our journey here, before we had to part.
And oh, that you had never, never been
Some of your selves, my love, that some
Of your several faces I had never seen!
And still they come before me, and they go,
And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.
And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,
And have not any longer any hope
To heal the suffering, or to make requite
For all your life of asking and despair,
I own that some of me is dead to-night.
—D. H. Lawrence
This poem drags at all the loose emotions inside me, forming a painful swirl of them in my center. I swallow, and it burns my throat. I may have been using Nicholas, and he was probably using me, but it ends now. We weren’t in love, but attraction can be missed too. The poem suggests we’ll never
see each other again. Clearly, I am the girl with many faces. I thought we would be bonded forever—that I might come back here eventually and introduce Dad to the boy who saved him. I frown—even Nicholas hinted he would remain in my life after the transformation. But I can let go of him as long as I am dead tonight too.
I fight to compose myself. I don’t want Henry to see how much I actually started to care about Nicholas. Because I care about Henry more.
But Henry will not want me as a vampire. He’s too serious, too set in what he wants to believe about the world to not see me differently. He will leave me. I’ve known this all along, but now it hits me in the stomach, and I fight back nausea. I might be left with no one else, but I’ll have Dad.
Fingers shaking, I turn back to my puzzle and start counting the lengths of words and putting them where they might work.
“This seems a little melodramatic even for a vampire,” Henry says as I struggle to make sense of the words.
“Shut up and help me,” I say, but I grin. He referred to Nicholas as a vampire. And if Henry can say it out loud, it must be real. He starts giving directions to me, laughing when I place a word where it can’t possibly go.
“I think we got it,” I finally say.
A poem. He turned the words into a poem, and I’m not surprised at all.
Eternity unrolls before me,
a sluggish setting sun and falling moon,
the ripe, sweet horror of unbroken night.
My memory grins and lies.
My life is a bleeding dream.
Do not stop for immortality.
Smile at the mystery of shifting twilight.
Sing of passions and sorrow.
Conquer death by living in the moments.
“What the hell does that even mean?” Henry asks.
But I know. I’ve been reading poems all week. I know how to piece together the unexpected images to form a complete picture.
Every color inside me drains away, and I’m empty again for one second as I flip the envelope over and drag my finger under the seal so fast I get a paper cut that leaves a harsh red streak on the pristine white envelope. I empty the contents onto the green rug I’m sitting on.
Pictures. Me with powdered sugar on my chest. Henry and me, rushed and blurry, holding a clove of garlic and a gold necklace. Me baring my teeth in a not-quite-smile at Antoine’s. Scattering them around the floor, I search for something, anything else. Another clue. One last set of instructions I know I won’t find. His poem told me all I needed to know—eternity sucks, and he wants me to live.
Henry’s grim face looks down on me.
“He played with you,” Henry says slowly. “It was all just a game. He was never going to help you—if he even could.” He says it like he’s known this since the beginning but hoped it wasn’t true.
Hearing the words he’s been saying all along, this time with the weight of proof behind him, breaks me. I bend at the waist until my forehead rests on the pile of photos, each one a representation of what I gave up to get here. Nicholas made me chip away at my well while he chronicled it and then disappeared once the floods broke. A sob shudders through me.
Henry’s hand rests between my shoulder blades, and it’s enough to make me draw a breath and stop another sob in my throat.
“It’s all right,” he says.
“No.” I push myself up off my knees, shrug away his touch, and rush out to where Ruth sits with her empty plate covered in powdered sugar.
“Where is he?” I ask.
She has the nerve to look startled.
“Who is he, really?” I don’t know which question’s more important to me. My hands clench the edge of her desk as if I might flip it over if she doesn’t answer me.
Ruth closes her book slowly, eyeing me like I’m a starved and rabid cat and she can’t decide if I need to be put down or fed. I think she might lie to me, keep up the charade, but she sighs. “He’s the son of a wealthy real estate investor. You can’t throw a stone in the Quarter without hitting something his father owns.” She gestures around the shop. “He owns this place. Nicholas isn’t a bad kid, but he gets away with a lot ever since…” She shakes her head. “He pays me in cash to play his games using my shop.”
Games. Plural.
“How many times has he done this?”
“You’re the sixth one who’s been in here. There were a couple of boys before you and a few girls before that.”
My stomach bottoms out. “Did he…?” I stop and look away. I want to ask if he seduced the others too—if the connection we had was just as fake as his vampire status, but I can’t ask that without admitting I was seduced. And I can’t say that in front of Henry, even if he already knows.
Ruth seems to sense what I’m not saying anyway. Her expression softens. “He’s never asked me to let him meet the person in my bookshop before. That was new. You were different.”
That doesn’t answer my question, but I still feel some relief, and that makes me angry. Why should I care if his feelings were real or not? The most important thing was a lie.
“How could you—” Something dark and dangerous and worthy of a vampire builds in my chest, and I can’t speak anymore without fear of yelling. That darkness travels upward. My face burns as I fight to control it. I swallow, and it’s like swallowing coal, but I do it again and again until I trust myself not to lash out. None of this is Ruth’s fault. I push down the fire, but I don’t snuff it out. The effort releases a few tears from my eyes, and I step back from the desk to wipe them away.
“I thought it was all fun and games,” Ruth says quietly.
I almost spill open right there and tell her about my dad and how this was my last shot to find a way to keep him, but she doesn’t deserve that burden. And suddenly I can’t say the words out loud. I’m acutely aware of how foolish they will sound. And then she’ll have the look—the one Henry had when I first told him, the same one as the woman and the security guard at the convent.
“It’s okay.” I lie instead. “Just tell me where he is.”
She looks away. She may want to tell me, but she won’t—not if it means risking her shop. No wonder Nicholas had access to everything. Everyone seemed to know him and be a little afraid of him, but that fear was really for his father.
Henry says my name, and I turn around. He has the stack of photos in his hand. He holds one out to me: me and Nicholas together at the restaurant, his arm draped across my shoulder, leaning toward me like he might tell me a secret we both know he never will.
“I don’t want to see those, Henry.”
“Look at his neck.”
I peer closer, where his shirt stretches farther open than normal as he leans in, revealing a small golden cross with a ruby center.
Henry holds up the other, blurry photo of our thieving selves. They look the same.
“He kept it,” I say. He’s a liar, why not a thief, too?
“Unless it was already his.”
I swear my heart skips a beat at that. “Let’s go,” I say, but first I rip the pictures out of Henry’s hands and set them on Ruth’s desk. “Leave them.” I hold out my hand to Ruth and give hers a little squeeze, adding a broken smile on top so she knows I don’t blame her for any of this, and then I’m gone, with Henry close behind me.
I just feel like all the sand’s at the bottom
of the hourglass or something.
—Only Lovers Left Alive
Twenty
This time, when we go through the side gate, we don’t creep around the back. We climb the worn-down porch and ring the doorbell.
A handsome man in his early fifties with warm brown skin and graying curly hair answers the door. He has dark circles under his eyes, like we’ve just woken him from an ancient sleep, and he seems startled to see actual people on his front porch. He stares past us for a moment, probably at the still-chained front gate, before making eye contact.
“Can I help you?”
All the ways I c
ould answer that question flood my mouth, and I flounder to pull out a single word.
Henry finally speaks up for me. “Nicholas home?”
“Nick?” He looks behind him and then at us again. “He’s upstairs in his room.”
“Can we come in and say hello?” Henry reaches out and shakes the man’s hand. “I’m Henry, by the way. We met Nick in town earlier this week and he mentioned we could stop by.” Henry gives that winning smile of his that frequently got us out of trouble when we were kids. I say a silent prayer of thanks that he’s still as smooth as ever at manipulating adults. I could never get my scowl at getting caught to go away long enough to do the same.
“Sure.” The man steps back, opening the door wider.
“Great. Thank you,” Henry says, and we’re in.
Walking through the house as an invited guest instead of a burglar is a different experience, but I’m not in the mood to appreciate the opulent wealth today. I head right up the stairs and toward the bedroom I know Nicholas must be in. Henry speeds up at the last minute and beats me to the door like he doesn’t quite trust what I’ll do once I’m on the other side.
Nicholas lies on top of the dark-brown bedspread, eyes closed, hands behind his head, earbuds in, his phone on top of his chest. He wears gray drawstring sweatpants and a white tank top, and he looks younger than I’ve ever seen him—just another guy a couple of years out of high school still living with his parents. There’s a softness in the slightly upturned corners of his mouth that I can’t make fit with the shadowed smirks and grins I remember. He crosses his legs at the ankle. So innocent—not like a vampire at all. Did he ever look like one, or did I see what I wanted to see?
He smiles at whatever he’s listening to, and that does it. I dart past Henry and rip an earbud out.
His eyes widen, and he jerks upright, phone sliding off his chest and thumping softly on the bed. I’m tempted to pick it up and hurl it into the mirror above his dresser. He pulls the other bud from his ear. His mouth opens and closes, and I wait for him to find the words even though I know they won’t help me. The window across the room opens to the morning sunlight, which makes his warm brown skin glow with obvious life. I scan the room, searching like a fool to find bloodstained carpet or a dead, drained body—any sign to override the ones breaking in front of me. I struggle to breathe as I realize I was still holding onto the smallest splinter of hope that I would come here and find him in a room blacked out with heavy burgundy drapes, and he’d take me into his arms and suck enough life out of me so I could live forever without any of the pain of being human. But all I find is a half-empty cup of coffee on his bedside table.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 23
