Meeting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 1

by Bridget Essex

  “I thought you said Melody was dead,” I told her, then. It came out a little dazed, and when I’d said the words, I looked at Tommie’s face.

  She let go of me. She stepped back as if struck.

  She, too, looked like she saw a ghost.

  “Rose, what do you mean?” she whispered, her eyes wide. Around us, the hall of paintings stretched on with the little lamps over the frame of each, showcasing the piece of artwork, the only light in the hall, the red and black tile floor beneath our feet seeming to devour that sparse light.

  “Good night,” I muttered, moving past her. I didn’t know what else to say. I was sure Kane was going to use the front door when she and Melody were done on the beach (done with what? Oh, I was just hurting myself now to think of Kane’s hands on Melody’s body, to think of Kane’s mouth…no, no, no, I had to stop thinking about that), and then if Tommie kept sucking on that woman back on the couch, she’d see exactly what I’d been talking about.

  I thought for a moment that Tommie was going to follow me, press me for answers. But she, mercifully, didn’t. I walked quickly to the far spiral staircase, and I ascended the steps until I reached my floor, and then I ran the rest of the way to my door, fumbling with my skeleton key at the lock.

  It was very late when I finally entered my bedroom. I collapsed on my bed. I didn’t even take off my sweater or my shoes. I pillowed my head in my arms, curled up my body like it was under attack, curling tightly in the fetal position, and there was no sobs, no sound, as the tears leaked quietly from my eyes, falling soundlessly to the coverlet beneath my arm.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Melody and Kane together, kissing, embracing, Melody’s eyes open and wide and staring at me with the exact same expression I thought a wolf must wear when it closes in for the kill. I didn’t want to replay that moment over and over, so I tried to stare at my pretty turquoise walls, tried to keep my eyes open, tried to think of nothing.

  But I must have closed my eyes eventually, because I fell into a deep, dark sleep.

  ---

  Somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew I was dreaming.

  Because Kane was kissing me again.

  Melody wasn’t there. Perhaps she’d never come. I could hear the ocean behind us, but it sounded…different, the sibilant hiss as it pounded against the shore taking on a different cadence then what I was now used to on that stretch of Maine coastline. Even the stars overhead, where the constellations had swung low, toward the water, were also different, as if it was a different time of year. But I wouldn’t know what the sky looked like there at any other time of year because I’d only been at the Sullivan Hotel a few days, had never experienced it in other seasons.

  But still, the stars were different. And it was strange.

  Kane backed away from our warm, passionate kiss—I could feel my heartbeat strongly in my lips, surging through me, the softness of her mouth, the warmth and brightness of her body against mine, how sharply I noticed each sensation, her breasts pressing against me, the angle of her hips hard against mine. She backed away, and she looked down at me with those bright, violently blue eyes with a deep longing that moved through me, captivating me, pinning me in place.

  She wore different clothes, older clothes, I suppose. It looked like she was dressed up for a costume party in her long velvet coat (I couldn’t tell the color in the dark) with the lace-edged sleeves, the high collar and the plunging neckline. But draped over the collar and against her cream-colored neck was a looping black necklace, all shiny black beads and bright silver chain that flashed in the starlight. My eyes were drawn to that, to the rise in her chest, and she laughed a little, a low, growling sound that made my skin rise with goosebumps, made me shiver as I stared up at her, then.

  We were no longer on the beach. Or perhaps we’d never been there, and I’d imagined everything else. For now we stood on red and black tile in a large, impressive-looking room complete with chandeliers covered thickly with guttering tapers and candelabras and floor to ceiling length mirrors, and women and men in long gowns and long coats, danced together to a piece of music that was vaguely familiar and classical.

  Outside of one of the tall windows, the stars continued to burn as Kane took my hand with her icy fingers, began to lead me in the dance.

  We passed a mirror, and as I glanced at my reflection, I began to feel cold.

  It wasn’t me in the mirror.

  ---

  I breathed out, eyes open in an instant, but as I panted in and out, trying to calm my racing heart, bits and pieces of the dream began to disintegrate. The harder I tried to hold on to them, to remember them, the faster my impressions of the dream disappeared.

  I lay there for a very long moment, aware that there was sunshine pooling warmly on the floor, that it was morning. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the house waking up. Somewhere on this floor, someone was playing a classic rock station, and I could hear a much-muted guitar riff. There was the clank of pipes and the white-noise of running water rushing through the old walls. They were all good, comforting sounds, and as I stretched in bed, I brushed a finger against my lips.

  And then I remembered Kane. I blushed as I lay there, remembering our kiss, remembering her cool mouth against mine, how I’d felt, in that moment, so completed, so undone by her. She’d told me before she’d kissed me that I compelled her, that she was drawn to me.

  I was so purely happy in that moment. All of my feelings for Kane…she’d felt them, too.

  And then everything else from last night came rushing back. And I remembered that I had nothing at all to be happy about.

  Because somehow, impossibly, Melody had returned. And she had taken Kane from me.

  It wasn’t true, though. I had to be honest with myself. Melody had, of course, come long before me. Kane was hers, had always been hers. She had never been mine.

  But true or not, I felt it fiercely. It felt, to me, that Melody had taken Kane from me.

  And it felt very wrong.

  There was a sharp, bright knock.

  I eyed my door warily, but I had no choice but to push off my covers, shove my feet into slippers, wrap my robe around me and shuffle toward the door.

  Gwen stood there, decked out in new, low-riding jeans and a pretty blue blouse that plunged dangerously low at her neckline (too low to be around vampires, I thought wryly, but I knew that my best friend had no idea what this house was currently inhabited by). Her little traveling purse was on her shoulder, and her feet were currently being tortured by bright blue high heels that not even a stunt walker would probably try.

  “Rose, you’re not even dressed!” she sighed in exasperation, casting her eyes heavenward in a what-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-you expression of longsuffering. She pushed past me into my bedroom and began pulling out drawers on the antique wardrobe. “There’s a ton of stuff I want to show you in Eternal Cove, and we don’t have all day!” she muttered, pulling out jeans and underwear. “Well, actually, we do have all day,” she announced brightly, throwing a shirt in my direction. I caught it without thinking. “But there’s a lot of stuff to see. Chop, chop! Put this on! Five seconds or less, missy!”

  Oh yes. Right. Gwen and I had decided last night that we were going to go to Eternal Cove together so that she could actually show me around the little town I was now calling home.

  But that was before…everything.

  “Gwen, I don’t actually think…” I began, but Gwen turned to me, putting her hands on her hips and raising an eyebrow. Her crazy brunette hair was teased even more than usual, and stood out from around her head as if she’d stuck her finger into an electric outlet. It was not without its charms.

  “You are not backing out on me, missy—I don’t care if you’re hung over or whatever,” she said with no sympathy, placing her hands at the small of my back, shoving the jeans and other things she’d chosen for me into my arms and then shoving me through my small bathroom door. She shut it behind me with a thud of final
ity. “And don’t come out until you’re ready!” she announced from the other side.

  As much as I love my best friend—and trust me, she’s saved my life a couple of times, and I love her a lot—I couldn’t fathom gathering enough energy for a girl’s night—or day—out. After all, let’s be honest: Gwen wanted to show me a town I wasn’t even certain I should be living in anymore.

  As I stared at myself in the small bathroom mirror after flicking on the light, I saw my reflection’s eyes narrow. Mirrors. That was odd. I sort of remembered something strange that had happened with mirrors, something like a dream…

  “I don’t hear you moving around in there!” was Gwen’s utterly ridiculous comment from the other side of the door. “How hung over are you?”

  Gwen had rearranged heaven and earth to help me move to Eternal Cove, including getting me the job at the Sullivan Hotel sight unseen—I hadn’t even had to interview, Kane had trusted her so completely. Yes, I was miserable, but it would only be a human thing to do to keep my promise to her.

  I sighed, washed my face and brushed my teeth, and threw on my clothes, pulling my hair into a ponytail. My auburn hair, usually fine and tangled anyway, was especially tangled after such a restless night, so I yanked a brush through the finalized ponytail and adjusted it in the mirror. I didn’t have the heart to put on any makeup, but at least I didn’t look—after I’d scrubbed my face—like I’d cried all night. Which I most certainly had. So I guess that was a start.

  I opened the door and Gwen wrapped an arm in mine, practically dragging me to the door. I snatched up my skeleton key from the table beside the door and snatched up my coat, and then we were out in the hall and practically to the stairs before I could blink.

  “I’ll drive!” she sang out.

  As we began to descend the spiral staircase, my heart seized. I didn’t want to run into Kane. Frankly, I didn’t want any possibility of running into Kane, and if I saw Melody first thing that morning, with her smug smile and dark eyes and hands all over Kane, I figured I’d probably die on the spot. Though Kane had certainly not paid any attention to me last night after Melody had showed up, I didn’t want to talk to her about the events of the evening just yet. And I would do anything not to see the smirking, self-assured Melody ever again.

  “Is there a way out to the parking lot from the basement?” I murmured quietly to Gwen.

  This was the first moment that she cast a sidelong glance at me oddly—I think she was finally realizing that something wasn’t right.

  “Yeah, there’s a couple of doors out from the kitchen,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she stared at me with wide eyes. “Rose, what’s going on?”

  “Oh, you know,” I muttered, glancing ahead and down the staircase to see if anyone else was on it. Thankfully, there was no one. “The usual,” I sighed.

  “Huh,” is what Gwen snorted, but made no other reply. When we hit the ground floor, we kept going all the way down to the basement.

  The kitchens—empty the night before—were now bustling with the impressive energy of only one woman. She stood a little shorter than me, her petite body curvy and very pretty beneath her knee-length pink dress with a scooped collar, showing off her pearl necklace. Her blonde hair was in two ponytails that dangled around her face as she stuck a finger in a metal bowl on the table and licked it with a thoughtful expression on her face. She wore a little makeup, and her full, bright pink lips seemed like they turned up at the corners pretty often.

  “Molly, this is Rose,” said Gwen, as we passed through the kitchens, toward the far half-glass door that seemed to be radiating sunshine from down concrete steps. “Rose, this is Molly—she’s our cook and does a ton of other stuff at the hotel.”

  Molly snorted at that, licking her finger completely clean before offering me her hand to shake. I grinned a little and took it—her smile was infectious.

  “It’s so nice to meet you, Rose! I’ve heard so much about you, all good things, I promise,” she winked. “So how are you enjoying yourself here so far? It’s an easy job, isn’t it?” she continued, steamrolling over anything I might have said. “They’re so easy going, those Sullivan women, and they’re just the nicest, the whole lot of them. I know you haven’t been here long, but I want you to hear from me first, so I’ve got to tell you: I’m pretty sure they’re all gay, and that’s pretty great, I think, and I’m trying to get at least one, maybe two to give me a go, because I only took this job here because a friend of mine told me a rumor that they were all lesbian, and who wouldn’t want to work at an all-lesbian place if you’re a lesbian? I mean, it’s—”

  “Molly, we’re kind of late—but we’ll come back for dinner, yeah?” asked Gwen, all but shoving me at the small of my back again as she continued to push me through the kitchens and toward the door.

  “If you’re going to the Cove, for the love of whiskey, get me a latte!” Molly called over her shoulder as she took another finger-full of whatever she’d been whipping up (I was pretty certain it was cake batter), and licked it again with a thoughtful expression on her pretty face.

  “I love her,” Gwen murmured as she shut the door behind us and began trotting up the concrete steps toward the parking lot, “but she will literally talk your ear off if you let her. Literally. I don’t even know if I have ears anymore, can you check for me?” She turned her head to me with a laugh.

  I chuckled a little at that and drew my light jacket tighter about myself. It was a beautiful October day, the kind that people say you only get in Vermont, but I know that’s not true. We had plenty of beautiful fall days in New Hampshire, too, and Maine was proving to be pretty similar in all the rich, gorgeous fall colors, crisp breezes and brilliant blue skies that contrasted so well with the breath-taking crimson of all the maples. The maple trees around the edge of the Sullivan Hotel were that bright red, now, and as we moved through the gravel parking lot toward Moochie, Gwen’s beat-up blue van that had somehow survived several years as her only transportation, a brisk wind began to move through the trees, making them shake their leafy heads and bringing with the wind the distinct nippy chill of a brisk fall day.

  As Gwen unlocked her driver’s side door, I drew the jacket even closer about myself, stood on tiptoes and peered over the far hedge wall that I knew separated most of the parking lot from the cliff path and the ocean.

  The rolling blue far out to sea had high white breakers that seemed to roll endlessly, and the prick of salt tickled my nose. It was beautiful—breathtaking, even, that view.

  But it held no joy for me today like it should have.

  “Okay,” said Gwen, one brow up imperiously once I was in the passenger’s side seat, clicking my seatbelt on. “You’ve got to spill.”

  “Spill what?” I asked. My voice sounded falsely bright, even to me. Gwen rolled her eyes so hard, her head seemed to roll with them.

  “What. The hell. Happened?” she asked, dropping her van keys with a metallic jangle onto her jean covered lap and folding her arms with an expectant sigh.

  I gazed out at the ocean again, working my jaw.

  Well. I didn’t really have to mention anything about vampires.

  “Remember…” I cleared my throat when it came out like a croak. “Remember how I told you last night that I was attracted to Kane?”

  “Yes,” said Gwen, drawing out the word as her other brow rose to accompany the first one. “Whoa…did you…” She trailed off, blinking. “Did you get together with her?” she whispered.

  “Yes. No. No…” I muttered miserably, placing my face in my hands and massaging my forehead with my fingertips. “There was a…complication.” I licked my lips and thought, ruefully, like the fact that she’s a vampire, and I’m a human, and if you’ve ever seen any sort of television show or read a book about a vampire and a human together, when has that ever really worked out for the best? “Her…her ex came back last night.” I wracked my brains as I tried to figure out the easiest way to translate the fact that Kane’s long
dead ex-soul mate had seemingly come back from the dead to make out with her on a beach last night, just moments after I’d had that remarkable pleasure. I moved my hands down to massage the back of my neck and grimaced as I glanced sidelong at my best friend. My best friend who was staring at me with her mouth open.

  “Are you serious?” asked Gwen quietly. “I thought her ex was…well. Dead.”

  Why was I always the last to know about everything? I sighed in exasperation and shook my head, leaning back against the plush softness of Moochie’s seat. “Yeah, well,” I muttered, “I guess she wasn’t as dead as everyone thought she was.”

  “Honey, you know I love you, right?” asked Gwen after whistling lowly. “But you attract trouble like honey and picnic baskets attract bears. What the hell? Her ex, who—by the way if I remember correctly—she pined over for years comes back from the dead when--”

  “When I was kissing her on the beach,” I groaned, putting my head in my hands again, pressing my palms to my eye sockets so hard I began to see purple. “God, it was terrible,” I groaned again, but then tears began to force their way between my sore eyelids, and I was holding back a sob.

  “Honey, honey…” said Gwen, leaning over, and then she was squeezing me tightly, her warm arms wrapped around me with the same fierce strength she’d had when Anna died. “I mean, it was just bad luck, right? It’s okay…I know you really had a thing for Kane, but you just got here, yeah? Lots of other fish in the sea. Er. Hotel.”

  I sighed for a long moment. Gwen was understanding and wonderful and the most caring best friend that anyone could have ever asked for. And I know she’d been wanting me to move on with my life—and my love life—after an acceptable mourning period following my girlfriend’s accident and death. But I wasn’t like…that. I wasn’t the type to jump from woman to woman—I’d never been that type. There had been something in Kane that had spoken to me, and she’d said the same on the beach last night, that there’d been something in me that had spoken to her. I drew in a shaky breath as I remembered: From the very first moment I met you, touched you, there has been something in me that is answered by you…