Hunting Daylight (9781101619032)

by Maitland, Piper

  “You’re right.” I smiled, picturing Raphael. He was a charming blend of old-world ethics and modernity. No, he wouldn’t approve of Jude leaving me and Vivi for a day, much less a month.

  “Nothing will go wrong.” Jude slid his palm over my midriff. “But if it does, don’t linger too long in São Tomé. Avoid seasonal places where vampires congregate. Don’t go to Peru in July. Spend the summer in Denmark. Raphael will help you. He understands the vampire culture better than both of us.”

  My belly tightened as I remembered the toothed fish from my dream, and something else, something just beyond memory. I forced myself to smile. “Vivi’s already planning your welcome home party.”

  “I won’t be late.” He pulled me on top of him, and we plunged under the water.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jude

  Jude spread his hands on the veranda railing and faced the ocean. Most of the time he couldn’t see the beach, but tonight it was illuminated by a full moon. A glittering wedge of light fanned across the water, and a tugboat moved across the horizon, leaving behind a foamy wake. Above it, frayed clouds spread across the sky like tire tracks.

  He didn’t want to leave Caro and Vivi alone in São Tomé, but what else could he do?

  He walked back inside the house and turned into his study. An old Tiffany lamp sat on his desk, and honeyed light spilled over heaps of books and papers. At the edge of his blotter he found a blue satin ribbon. It smelled like Caro, and a deep ache opened inside him. He tucked the ribbon into his pocket, then opened his leather backpack. Caro had already added his rubber shoes, straight-leg pants, a drizzle-repellent jacket, insect spray, and moleskin strips for his heels. He squeezed in a map of the Birougou rain forest.

  Then he sank down in his chair and cradled his head in his hands.

  Too much to take, he thought. Too much to leave behind.

  Footsteps pattered down the hall, and then Vivi appeared in the doorway, clutching a stuffed elephant. Her pink dress had been washed so many times, the pattern had faded. A trembly feeling caught the edges of Jude’s mouth, but he smiled around it.

  “Hey, Meep,” he said.

  Vivi put her finger in her mouth and grinned. She’d given herself that nickname when she was a year old and she started to imitate the noise. At first, Jude had thought she’d somehow seen reruns of Road Runner cartoons, but she had latched onto the meep-meep sound that emanates from electric carts in airports, the ones that transport ill and elderly passengers. Jude had begun calling her Meep, and the nickname had stuck.

  She scooted to his desk, sliding her feet over the tile, and spread her arms, the elephant’s tusk dangling in her small hand. “Pick me up, Daddy.”

  He lifted her—gosh, she was getting so big—and put her in his lap. She smelled like milk and buttered rice. As he smoothed her dark pigtails, she stared up at him. For a moment, he felt a curious sense of doubling, as if he’d looked into his own eyes—blue, with tiny brown chips in the left iris.

  “What’s up, Meep?” he asked.

  “Bad dreams,” she said. “The awfulest ever. You got losted. Mommy was crying.” Her small hand flew away from the stuffed elephant and she clutched Jude’s arm, a surprising grip for a three-year-old.

  “Remember what your mum and I told you? Dreams aren’t real.”

  She let go of his arm and looked down at her knees, which poked up through the nightgown. Her long dark eyelashes fanned against her cheek like paintbrushes. “Why’re you going away?”

  A sharp wire twisted in his stomach. “Don’t you want Daddy to work?” he said, keeping his voice light.

  She glanced up, staring at him from under her eyebrows. “No. Don’t work.”

  “I’ll be home soon.”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  He exhaled, and the wire in his belly loosened. “Let me show you where I’m going.”

  He shuffled through his bag, lifted a colorful map of Africa, and spread it across his desk. He put Vivi’s small finger on São Tomé Island. “You’re right here.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded.

  He slid her finger across the Gulf of Guinea, to the coast of Gabon, and angled down to the southeastern part of Gabon, near the Congo border. “And I’ll be here. In a rain forest.”

  Vivi whispered the word to herself. “Will it have monkeys?”

  “Sure. All kinds.” He turned back to the map and pointed to a mountain chain. “I’ll be in caves near the Chaillu Massif. You know what caves are? They’re rocks—”

  “Bad ones.” Vivi’s eyes widened. “Don’t go there.”

  He was taken aback by the urgency in her voice. He lifted her stuffed animal and gave it a little squeak. “Do you want me to take pictures of real elephants?”

  Vivi nodded. Then she sucked in air, pigtails trembling, and dove against his chest. Her shoulders shook violently, and a moment later, he felt a cool, wet place spread across his shirt.

  “It’s all right, Meep,” he whispered, hugging her close. “It’s all right.”

  She wrenched away, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her hand clamped down on his arm again, and a vein bulged on her forehead. “Don’t go.”

  Jude’s head tipped back, as if someone had thrown an unripe guava in his face. A throbbing pain moved through his sinuses, and his ears popped.

  A sick feeling washed over him. He turned sideways, put his elbows on the desk, and rested his face in his cupped hands.

  “Daddy?” Vivi’s voice seemed to be coming from another room, yet he could feel her warm breath hitting his arm in sharp bursts.

  Don’t worry, Meep. I’ll be fine in a minute, he said, or thought he said. Just a minute more, and I’ll be fine.

  A drop of blood slid out of his nose and hit the map. He stared down incredulously. What the hell. He’d never had a nosebleed, not even when he’d been a kid. A second drop struck the map, then another and another, faster and faster, as if dark red roses were blooming out of the paper.

  Vivi slid off his lap, ran out of the room, and screeched for Caro. Jude pinched his nostrils, but the blood drummed onto the map. He was bleeding all over Africa.

  CHAPTER 4

  Caro

  Five days after Jude left, I tucked my laptop under my arm and led Vivi into the cool, vanilla-scented air of Café Companhia. I ordered fresh-squeezed pineapple juice and a granola muffin for her; a galão with extra milk for myself.

  We found a table next to the window, and I plugged in the laptop. I scanned the messages in my inbox, searching through the e-mails. Nothing from Jude. He was in the bush, not the Athenaeum Hotel in London. I tried not to worry.

  “Daddy send pictures?” Vivi asked, pushing against my elbow.

  I chewed the edge of my lip. I’d been raised by my uncle Nigel, a loving old archaeologist who’d mixed half-truths and falsehoods. He’d given me a nickname, Dame Doom, because I’d been such a fretful child. I hadn’t found out about my hybridism until I was a grown woman, and I’d been determined that my child would always hear the facts. But I hadn’t understood the complexities of motherhood or the fragile simplicity of a child’s question.

  “Not yet, Meep,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “We’ll check back tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay.” Vivi held out her muffin, offering me a bite.

  When we got home, the cottage hummed with noon light. I had left the shutters open, and humid air pushed through the screens, carrying the bite of salt. Vivi stretched out on the sea grass rug with her Disney coloring book. I walked around the corner into the green-tiled kitchen and began chopping onions for bean soup.

  I remembered the night Jude had left São Tomé, how the wind had stirred his hair as he’d climbed into the Al-Dîn jet, then turned back to wave good-bye. I’d almost raced over to him and begged him not to go. Then I reminded myself that he was trying to do the right thing, to provide for his family; I couldn’t take that away from him just because I’d dreamed about fanged fish. I’d held my breath as the jet had taxied
down the runway, dust churning around the wheels, then the plane curved over the Atlantic and he was gone.

  “Mommy, can we go to the ocean?” Vivi called.

  I wiped my cheeks, then peeked around the corner. She held a pink crayon in her pudgy fingers. Her expression was so intense, she reminded me of Jude—he always got the same look when he put a slide under a microscope: eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open, head tilted.

  I smiled. “Sure, Meep. After your nap.”

  Vivi put down the crayon, scrambled onto the sofa, and closed her eyes. “I’m ready to sleep.”

  After I made the soup, I tidied the kitchen—I liked everything just so. I folded a stack of tea towels, straightened the silverware drawer, then scrubbed the counters.

  Vampires are prone to OCD. As a hybrid, I had a mild case. Jude’s was stronger. He made hundreds of to-do lists and even more Don’t-Do lists. Sometimes he felt the need to count the tiles in the kitchen floor—aloud, mind you. He checked and rechecked his stash of blood bags. He charted sunrises and sunsets, not that they varied much on the equator. When the compulsions took hold, I brought him a glass of blood-tinged scotch and rubbed his shoulders with coconut oil until the kinks loosened inside him.

  I was feeling rather knotty myself as I walked out of the kitchen. I checked my cell phone. No one from Al-Dîn had called, but I had a message from Uncle Nigel. A few years earlier, he had been accidentally transformed into a vampire while digging for artifacts in Bulgaria. Now, as I listened to his voice message, I smiled. He’d arrived in Ecuador with two other archaeologists; all three vampires were heading to a dig site at Japotó. He sounded jovial, as always.

  Which is more than I could say for myself. Jude’s absence was a solid thing. I couldn’t seem to pull enough oxygen into my lungs, as if I were pinned down by the weight of silence.

  Like any mother, I worry. Sometimes I think I am making the same mistakes that my parents made, and if I have, that doesn’t bode well. Because my family was murdered.

  I know little about the events that drove my parents into hiding. Before I was born, a British pharmaceutical magnate had stalked my parents. Apparently my mother, Vivienne, purloined some historical artifacts from the magnate’s safe. She was only trying to return the objects to their rightful owner, a blond, curly-haired, thousand-year-old vampire named Philippe Grimaldi—her lover.

  My mother wasn’t a thief. She was a soft-spoken British woman, a highly educated, law-abiding manuscript curator, and her grandfather had served in the House of Lords. My mother’s crime never made the news. If it had, the headline would have read, BIG-HEARTED WOMAN STEALS A RICH ASSHOLE’S TOYS. And the asshole was furious.

  Philippe and Vivienne left Europe. They moved around the world and finally ended up in Crab Orchard, Tennessee, a small town ringed by the Appalachian Mountains. I was born a few months later.

  We lived in a quaint, two-story white clapboard house, with sweeping views of the mountains. Our driveway sloped down to a solar-powered gate. My family seemed perfectly normal. On warm summer nights, Philippe and Vivienne drank wine on the front porch, wind chimes tinkling in the background.

  I loved hearing their voices. My father spoke English with a French lilt, and my mother talked with a cut-glass British accent. Me, I sounded like a strummed hairpin, but it suited the harsh landscape, a raw, rocky place with copperheads and coal mines, and no doctor for miles.

  One evening, I was playing in the yard, and I stepped on a wasp’s nest. The ball of my foot swelled until it was as red and big as a pomegranate. My parents rushed me to a hospital in Knoxville. The doctors wrapped my foot in ice and stuck needles in my rear end. I was taken to the pediatric ward, and my mother read Beatrix Potter stories until her voice gave out. After she went to the cafeteria for hot tea, my father opened a copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  He began to read, and his voice poured over me like warm syrup on a biscuit. At first, I was confused—I’d expected to hear a story about talking bunnies. But as my childish brain soaked up images of characters in the book, Elizabeth and Darcy, I forgot about my sore foot and fell asleep.

  The next morning, my foot had almost healed, but my father was gone. Sunlight streamed through the window and fell across the bed. Out in the hall, I heard my mother arguing with the nurses. “Caro has always been a fast healer,” she told them.

  I held back tears. Fast healer sounded bad. When I got home, my father was in the kitchen, a ruffled apron tied low on his waist, and he was cooking my favorite meal—pan-fried rainbow trout, garlic mashed potatoes, and cloverleaf rolls all slathered with butter. There was even chocolate cake for dessert.

  I spent the rest of the summer trying to avoid wasps and rattlesnakes, but my vigilance turned out to be useless. One night thieves broke through the security gate at the bottom of the hill, then crept up the long gravel driveway and set our house on fire. My mother ran through the smoky dining room, shoving items into a backpack. I held still while she hooked the straps over my shoulders.

  “Hide behind the waterfall,” she said. “No matter what you hear, don’t come out until morning. I’ll find you later, I promise.”

  She guided me out the back door. I raced into the shadowy woods, my backpack slamming between my shoulders. Then I started to worry about my parents, and I circled back to the house. Flames leaped behind the windows. Men were dragging my father up the porch steps. I waited till they got inside, then ran after them. There was so much smoke, it hurt to breathe. When I tried to open my parents’ bedroom door, the knob burned my hand.

  The door opened, and a tall, pale man with black, bushy hair stepped out. I spun around and bolted through the haze, down the hall and out the door.

  Hide behind the waterfall, Caro.

  I skidded down an embankment and ran to the cave. The cool air felt good on my cheeks. I walked toward the sound of rushing water. Just a few more steps, I told myself. Almost there. I pulled off the backpack and crouched in a dry place, cradling my burned hand, waiting for my mother to fetch me.

  Those bad men came instead, calling out to each other in strange, sharp voices, as if knives were trapped inside their words. I opened my mouth wide, struggling to pull in a breath, but I couldn’t get enough air.

  I waited until the sky turned ashy and the men were gone. With my good hand, I lifted my backpack, crept out of the cave, and slogged toward the charred house. A wall of heat pushed me back. I stumbled down the driveway, through the open gate, into the highway. I ended up in the same Knoxville hospital, but this time a gray-haired, barrel-chested man showed up, claiming he was my mother’s cousin.

  “Just call me Uncle Nigel,” he said, and he brought me to a stone house in Oxford, England. I soon discovered that he was an archaeologist, skilled at piecing together broken things. Uncle Nigel put salve on my burns, fed me candy for breakfast, and brushed the knots from my incorrigible hair.

  My backpack had disappeared, along with everything inside it, except for an old Byzantine icon that had belonged to my parents. It wasn’t the sort of art a child would hang on her wall, but I liked it. The images were mesmerizing: a female saint in a burgundy robe, an ostrich egg, a gilt-edged book, a castle, and a vineyard. A bleeding man lay on the ground, while a monk hovered in the distance.

  Three mornings a week, Uncle Nigel taught a class at King’s College, and I went with him. He strode ahead of me, his black gown swirling around his shoes, chalk dust clinging to his sleeves. Every few minutes, he’d glance over his shoulder to make sure I was still there, and then he’d turn back to the throng of students that always followed him, and he’d begin quizzing them about Bronze Age artifacts.

  I was still pretty much an emotional wreck. Despite my uncle’s kindness, my throat would clamp down, and I would be unable to breathe. When these spells hit, I locked myself in Uncle Nigel’s library and found his copy of Pride and Prejudice. I stood in the middle of the room and faced the diamond-paned windows that overlooked the garden. Hands shaking, I opened the
book and read out loud, forcing air in and out of my lungs.

  My Appalachian twang always drew Dinah the cat, an elderly tabby with a distinct M on her forehead. I couldn’t decide if Dinah was fascinated or repelled by my odd American accent; whatever the reason, the cat would sit outside the library door and yowl. Part of me wanted to let her in, but another, bigger part was embarrassed to read aloud in front of a cat.

  When the mewling reached a crescendo, I put down the book and squatted beside the door. “Please go away, Dinah. I can’t hear myself read.”

  The cat let out an earsplitting bawl. I pressed my lips to the keyhole and shouted, “It’s a truth universally recognized that a cat in want of a girl will go to extremes. That’s you, Dinah.”

  The cat screeched louder, as if to say, Orphans in want of parents will hyperventilate.

  The human and feline caterwauling brought Uncle Nigel. He tapped against the door. “Sorry to interrupt you, Caro darling, but I just made an apple tart.”

  I chewed my bottom lip, tempted to ignore him, but I’d already caught the scent of cinnamon and browning crust. I cracked open the door, and Dinah shot into the room, tail crooked. Uncle Nigel was right behind her.

  “Do you like cream on your tart?” he asked.

  I set down the Austen novel and followed him to the kitchen. It was a sunny room with floral dishes lined up in a Welsh cupboard. A teakettle simmered on the Aga. Herbs grew in pots beside the sink. Uncle Nigel found a knife and a jar of cream. He cut the tart down the middle.

  “Half for you,” he said, lifting a hunk and setting it onto my plate. He put the other piece onto his plate. “And half for me.”

  In many ways, my troubles were cured by time and apple tarts. The broken places inside me solidified, streaking here and there like dark veins in a marble slab. But I wanted to learn more about my parents.