Her Dear & Loving Husband

by Meredith Allard

  CHAPTER 16

  James didn’t have class the next night, but he went to his office anyway. The memories of the seventeenth century were cease-less now and he wanted the distraction of work. As he put a cof-fee mug into the microwave on the bookcase he heard a knock on his door. I must be distracted, he thought. I didn’t hear the footsteps. Worried about who might be waiting outside, he sat back and didn’t answer. Then he caught the familiar scents, sandalwood for one, rosewater for the other.

  “James? It’s Olivia. Can I come in?”

  He opened the door and in came Olivia waving a newspaper. Jennifer stepped in, too, shutting the door behind her.

  “Have you seen this?” Olivia asked.

  James shook his head. “I’m afraid to look. A present from our friend Mr. Hempel?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a present exactly,” said Jennifer. “More of a trick than a treat.”

  He took the paper and read aloud: “Do Vampires Live in Salem? By Kenneth Hempel, Staff Writer.” He tried an uncon-vincing smile. “The demon tales from long ago Salem may not be as fictional as many have come to believe. Do you know any de-mons? Or, perhaps a better question is, do you know any vam-pires? Before you laugh you may want to consider the facts. Vampires may be prowling as close as your hospitals, your favorite clothing stores, your dentists’s offices, even lurking in Salem State College.”

  He crumpled the paper and threw it into the trashcan. “Lurking in Salem State College?” He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Did he name me?”

  “He didn’t name anyone,” Olivia said, “but he mentioned dentists so he might know about Jocelyn too. I think he’s building suspense before the big reveal. He has enough information to be titillating, but not enough to prove anything. Seeing someone only at night doesn’t mean he's a vampire. Some people are just night owls.”

  “I want to know who’s been talking to him,” Jennifer said. “As soon as I find out I’m going to cast a spell that will make him wish he was never born.”

  “Jennifer, you know we can only use our spells for good.”

  James shook his head. “It hardly matters now, knowing who’s been talking. Hempel is going to keep searching until he gets the proof he needs to go public.”

  “Sounds to me like he has suspicions but no real evidence,” Olivia said.

  “You don’t need real evidence to convince someone some-thing is true. You need to speak with authority, sound like you know what you’re talking about, and manipulate enough people into believing you.”

  “What will you do if it comes out?” Olivia asked.

  “I don’t know. This is one problem I’ve never had to deal with. There were times when people grew suspicious of me, especially when I stayed somewhere too long, but even then I don’t think they suspected the truth. When I thought people were beginning to wonder about me I moved on.”

  “It won’t be easy to move on this time, will it?” Olivia asked.

  “No.” He realized that for the first time since he was turned it wouldn’t be easy to start somewhere new. He didn’t want to leave Salem without Sarah, and he didn’t think she would be willing to drop everything in this new life she was trying to create to go somewhere new with him, especially with all the tension between them.

  The microwave beeped and he slid back on his wheelie chair, took the mug out, and dipped his finger in the warmed fluid. Jennifer leaned over him and frowned.

  “Ugh,” she said.

  “You know what I drink.”

  “I know, but in all the years I’ve known you I’ve never actually seen you do it. That’s disgusting.” She shook her head as if she were trying to get the acrid smell out of her nose. “And I would give Sarah a while longer before you let her see you do that. That might be the one thing that will scare her away from you for good. I’ve known you my whole life and I’m scared of you right now.”

  James held the mug out to her face. “Would you like to try some?”

  “No, thank you. It’s all for you.”

  He smiled at Olivia. “Would you like to try some?”

  “Oh, no thank you, dear. It’s bitter, isn’t it?”

  He took a sip and paused while the heavy liquid flowed through his body. “Right now Hempel doesn’t have enough information to name names,” he said. “We can’t give him any more proof than he already has, whatever that is. It all seems pretty circumstantial to me…” He grimaced. “That’s right. I forgot we were in Salem. Circumstantial evidence works here. Even spectral evidence will do.”

  “From the article it seems like he’s fixated on the fact that he’s never seen you during the day,” Jennifer said.

  James looked out the window at the night sky as he con-sidered. “I don’t know how long I would last in the sun,” he mused, “or what it would ultimately do to me.” He stood up, paced the ten steps of his office, his plan coming into focus for the first time. He thought he might finally know how to handle Kenneth Hempel.

  “The sun?” Jennifer couldn’t hide her shock. “Why are you talking about the sun?”

  “If Hempel saw me during the day, he might stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Hunting me. If he keeps searching he might uncover some real evidence against me, or against Jocelyn or Timothy or any of us. Or he’ll find another way to convince people we’re real. How many innocent people will suffer if a new hunt breaks loose here? And I can’t risk him hurting Sarah. He might find some way to implicate her.”

  “Why would anyone implicate Sarah?” Jennifer asked.

  “Why would anyone implicate Elizabeth? I couldn’t protect my wife from the witch hunts, but I will protect Sarah.”

  “But you can’t go in the sun, dear.”

  James sat back at his desk and took another sip from his mug. “After I was turned I went out during the day, once, and felt such excruciating pain behind my eyes I never went out in the light again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go out at all during the day. It doesn’t mean I’ll die from the exposure.”

  “Don’t you know what will happen?” Olivia asked.

  “No one of my kind has ever seen another in the sun.”

  “Jocelyn?” Olivia asked.

  “She doesn’t know,” James said.

  Olivia shook her head. “It sounds dangerous. You should find another way. You don’t want to do anything to put yourself in danger. Not now.”

  Jennifer looked James in the eye. “If you need help dealing with this Hempel, then I will help you. He’s not just after you. He’s after Jocelyn and Timothy and the others. Then he’ll move onto us.” She gestured at her mother. “Next it’ll be Howard and his family. He can’t do this. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  “And you have my help as well, James,” Olivia said.

  “Thank you both, but I need to do this on my own. Hempel seems to have taken a particular attachment to me for some reason.”

  “What about Sarah?” Jennifer asked.

  James sighed. He didn’t want to think about Sarah and Kenneth Hempel at the same time. “I haven’t told her about him yet. I keep hoping the problem will go away. Perhaps Hempel will get bored hunting for something that isn’t supposed to exist and give up. It does sound ridiculous when you think about it—hunting for vampires in the twenty-first century. Perhaps people will scoff at his article. If no one believes him he’ll have to let it go.”

  “Maybe,” Jennifer said.

  James paced to the window, pulled open the blinds, and looked at the moon. It was big that night, full, bright, and yellow. It was jarring sometimes when he remembered that the moon was the largest object he had seen in the sky for over three hundred years. He remembered sometimes that he missed the sun. When he was alive he loved spring and summer. He loved the warmth, the way the world would spring back to life when the light made its appearance again after the bleak winter months. He laughed when he remembered how much he hated the cold then and the irony that now cold was all he knew. What wou
ld it be like to see the sun again after so long? How would it feel to have the heat on his dead-cold skin and stand in the day glow of sunbeams? Would it be as brilliant as he remembered?

  “Have you spoken to Sarah today?” Jennifer asked.

  “No,” James said, “I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “Maybe I should cast a love spell.”

  Olivia nodded. “That would be using a spell for a good reason. Though we’re not supposed to interfere in people’s lives without their consent.”

  “Yes, Mother, I know. You’ve told me so about a thousand times.”

  James wondered if a love spell could help him break through the barriers that still kept him and Sarah apart. His logical mind told him no, but then he reminded himself what he was and he decided he was in no position to judge the truth of magic spells. He came this close to giving Jennifer his consent—it couldn’t hurt, after all. Then he caught a whiff of strawberries and cream com-ing down the hall. He opened the door for her and she smiled when she saw him, though she seemed surprised to see Olivia and Jennifer there.

  “Wonderful to see you, Sarah,” Olivia said. “We were just leaving.” Mother and daughter slipped down the hall, whispering to each other as they disappeared into the elevator. James watched Sarah standing there, her dark curls pulled back into a loose ponytail, her rose-colored dress revealing her curves. He wanted to take her into his arms.

  “How do you drink?”

  Her terse tone startled him from his other thoughts.

  “What?”

  “How do you drink? I never thought about it until Steve said something last night. He said he was nervous until he knew where Jocelyn was going to get blood to drink. Where do you get blood from?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “That depends on where you find it.”

  She tried to smile, but he could see the strain she was hiding behind her upturned lips. It pained him that she still worried about whether or not he would spring on her and drink her dry.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  He sent a quick text on his cell phone, then grabbed his keys, locked his office, took her hand, and walked her to his car. They drove to Highland Avenue and parked. Sarah gasped aloud when she realized where they were. Her hand went to her throat as if she were afraid James was going to attack her right there.

  “This is Salem Hospital,” she said.

  “It’s all right. I think you can handle it.”

  He opened the car door for her and led her to a bench near the emergency entrance of the North Shore Medical Center. He held her hand while they waited. She shivered in the winter air. It had snowed the day before, and the ice sparkled under the streetlights like scattered crystals on the pavement. James was wearing a scarf he didn’t need, so he wrapped it around her neck. She moved so she was sitting closer to him, then she turned her gaze to the starless sky and sighed.

  “I love the sunlight so much,” she said. “I don’t think I could live only at night.”

  “After I realized it was painful for me to go out during the day I thought it would always be darkness for me, but over time I became accustomed to the night. I missed the sunlight for one hundred years before I reconciled myself to living only under a pale moon and far away stars. I had to accept that the full light of the sun was forbidden to me forever and a day and a day and a day…”

  He looked toward the hospital and saw a young couple hold-ing hands, and he couldn’t turn away when he saw the glowing warmth between them. For someone with only human eyes it might have been hard to see their faces in the dim night sky, but even their body language seemed very much in love. When they passed beneath the street lamp their enamorous expressions were illuminated. James smiled because he knew what it was like to feel that way. The girl who lit him up from the inside out was sitting there beside him. He looked at her, saw her watching him, and at that moment he wanted to kiss her more than anything in the world. He leaned toward her, she leaned toward him. Then, just before their lips touched, like a rude tease, he heard his name.

  “Doctor Wentworth?”

  He grinned when Sarah sighed in frustration. He turned to the young woman in green scrubs standing a few feet away. “It’s all right,” he said, nodding toward Sarah. “She’s in on it.”

  The young woman held out her hand and showed him four red-filled medical bags. He looked around to be sure no one was watching, then took the bags and slid them into his black backpack.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Though I think we’re past your calling me Doctor Wentworth. How about just James?”

  “But you’re my professor. I’m in your Romantic Poets class.”

  “Yes, Amy, I know.”

  Sarah seemed fascinated by the young woman standing there. “You know why James needs that?” she asked, pointing at the black backpack.

  “Sure,” Amy said. “Jennifer told me.”

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “Why would I mind? Everyone is different in their own way, and he seems harmless enough. Anyone who can talk about Wordsworth and Keats the way he does won’t hurt anybody.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Sarah said.

  “Amy knows she can’t tell anyone,” James said. “For any reason. Bad things happen when people are confronted with things they don’t understand. This is Salem after all.”

  “The witch trials were a long time ago,” Amy said.

  “It’s not that long ago to me.”

  “Things are different now. People are more accepting these days.”

  “People haven’t really changed. Not in any meaningful way. Maybe there are some who are more enlightened, but there are still narrow-minded people to be concerned about.”

  When Amy left, James took Sarah’s hand and walked her back to the car.

  “Not too gory, right?” He winked at her. “More like a drug deal than anything you’d see in a horror film.”

  Sarah slipped on some black ice in the parking lot, and as James caught her she fell into him. He held her a long time, longer than it took to help her upright. As he kept her close in his arms he saw her watching him, as if she were trying to x-ray through the flat blackness of his eyes to see what was there beneath his dead-cold exterior. Did she see him as he was then, a mild-mannered college professor who only wanted to live and let live? Or did she see only what he might have been in the past, savage and bloodthirsty? She wasn’t pulling away. If anything, she pressed herself into him. As he looked into her, as deeply as she looked into him, he thought he saw Elizabeth staring back at him, the way her jaw blushed hot, the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled. Yet he also realized, looking into her chocolate-brown eyes, brushing a stray curl from her cheek, that he loved her just as she was. Sarah. Not the idea of some ghost from his past. He loved the beautiful woman there in his arms. The one who accep-ted him as he was, turned, when few others would. The one who watched him with such longing in her eyes. The one who startled his long-dormant heart into feeling like it was pumping again. An odd thought popped into his mind as they stood pressed against each other in the hospital parking lot, but it was too outlandish, even for someone as familiar with the paranormal world as he was. Sarah was a dead ringer for Elizabeth. So much about her was the same. She knew the words to Elizabeth’s favorite poem though she said she hadn’t read it. She had this need to know about the Salem Witch Trials. He had lost Elizabeth during those brutal hunts—she had been snatched from him because of weaker people’s accusations, politics and prattle. The situation might have been entertaining if it were only the plot of a prize-winning play, but the Salem Witch Trials were not just a figment from a playwright’s imagination. His wife died miserable and frightened because of them. Then the questions began:

  Why was Sarah so compelled to learn about the witch hunts?

  Who was that nameless ancestor she thought died here then?

  What was that horrible vision that accosted her
at the mere mention of the Witch Dungeon Museum?

  And then, when he allowed himself to dwell on the thought…

  Was his instinct the first night he saw her correct after all? Could she be his wife, come home to him after all this time?

  After their moment of bonding in the parking lot, he helped her into the car, buckled her in, and drove her home. While they were in the car he pressed the foolish questions aside, wondering if it really mattered. As much as he mourned the loss of his wife, now he loved Sarah. I’m not lonely anymore because of you, Sarah, he thought.

  He parked in front of her house, leaving the car running so he could keep the heat on her. She didn’t seem too eager to get inside, which pleased him. He didn’t want her to leave.

  Sarah sat in the car, looking at James. She wanted to invite him inside, but memories of other nights, the one when she wanted him to stay and he ran away, the one when the she learned that the man who had awakened such human feelings in her was not a man at all, kept her quiet. As much as she could see the longing in his eyes, and she felt her own longing for him, she was still convinced that when he looked at her he saw his wife, and that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted all of his heart, just as he had all of hers. But something kept her in the car, beside him, not wanting to leave. She needed to see his face, hear his voice, feel his hands on hers, his lips on her hair. That thread-like bind she felt the first night she saw him outside his house still held her. As she had on other nights, she started talking so he wouldn’t leave.

  “I didn’t make the connection until tonight at the hospital, but you were here during the witch trials. That’s why you know so much about them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tell me what you saw?”

  James sighed. A burst of icy air slipped through the car window, and the steam from Sarah’s breath made clouds on the glass. She shivered, and he turned all the vents in her direction. He closed his eyes as he spoke.

  “I remember the day I walked the dirt-road lanes of Salem Town with my father, past the wooden houses with their thatched roofs and vegetable gardens, past the artisans at work in their shops, past the horses and cows grazing languidly on the common, around the meetinghouse where we held church and town meetings. The witch hysteria was in full swing that spring day, and many believed the Devil had been unleashed in Salem. There was a lingering worry humming in the air, a blank-eyed terseness that covered everything we saw. I hardly noticed as we passed Ezekiel Davies languishing in a stockade. People, mostly children, were throwing small rocks and spitting on him, and my father fumed as we walked past. We pretended not to notice that our friend was being humiliated in front of the town.