by Angel Lawson
Grant may be a vampire, but he was also a meticulous creature of habit. The odds were certainly in my favor and it was a gamble I was determined to take.
I forced myself out of the car and walked to the front door. I had intentionally dressed down, in jeans and a tank. A lightweight cardigan covered my shoulders and I wore my hair down to cover the scar on my neck. I had no desire to give the impression I was here to work. I didn't want anyone to mistake my appearance as a reemergence of things being back to normal. Things were anything but normal, even if Grant thought he could deposit my paycheck like every other week. I’d decided to accept them. It could go toward the intensive therapy I had a feeling I was going to need.
Nerves churned in my belly. That was dumb. Grant was at work. The house would be empty. I promised myself this as I pushed my key in and twisted the knob.
“Amelia!”
Shit.
Olivia stood in the hallway with an eager, excited look on her face. I took in her flaming red hair, the bright yellow sundress and super high heels. She held her arms out to me expectantly and I could only eye her warily in return. Would her skin feel strange and cool like the others? I never asked Grant the undead status of the rest of his family, but I had my suspicions. Even so, for some reason, I wasn't afraid of Olivia, but I made no attempt to embrace her either. Everything about this was beyond weird.
"Hi, Olivia. What are you doing here?”
She pulled back a little and I think she actually squirmed under my gaze. "Grant needed some help around the office."
I felt a rush of guilt at that, but in all, I wasn't convinced. "True. But how did you know I was coming? You were waiting for me, weren’t you?"
Olivia took a small, hesitant step forward and gave me a tentative smile. "Grant told you he would be watching to make sure you were safe. Didn't he?"
My mouth dropped in horror. He had told me that, but I assumed it would be his security crew, not Grant himself. "He's been watching me? Like outside my house watching me?"
Olivia shook her head. "No, not Grant. He's keeping his distance like he promised."
I breathed a sigh of relief. For some reason I needed him to give me space, real space, so I could work all this out. I wanted our next meeting to happen on my terms. Yeah, I said it. I had plans for a next meeting. When? I didn’t have that figured out yet. "If it's not Grant, then who? His security team?"
She hesitated for a second, although the reassuring smile never left her face. "Something like that. Look, I'd rather Grant tell you everything, okay?"
I nodded in agreement because Grant and I had many things to discuss, my 'security' being another one to add to the list.
We stood in the foyer together, Olivia grinning while I grimaced, with my hands shoved defensively in my back pockets. I hadn't expected her to be here and now that she was, my plan was a bit derailed.
Olivia finally broke the tension and said, "I wish I could tell you more, but I'm not really allowed to talk to you. I've probably already said too much."
I rolled my eyes. "So Grant just tells you what to do and you comply?"
A wicked grin formed on her lips and she sniffed. "No, I don't. Which is why I'm not allowed to talk to you. He thinks I’ll ruin everything. I had to sneak over here while he was distracted."
I couldn't help but laugh. Olivia clearly was her own person (vampire?), even when it came to hyper-controlling Grant Palmer.
“You know,” I said, without thinking. “I’ve really missed you.” I’d also missed Elijah and his quiet charm. And I even wondered where Ryan was, with his giant hands and quick wit. But most of all, I missed Grant.
“I’ve missed you as well,” she said. "I know things are really weird right now. Like bad weird and I’m not in the position to ask you for any favors. But I really need you to remember your promise to me, the one you made that day we were cleaning Grant's closet."
I knew the conversation she was talking about. I had been thinking about it for the last several days. I’d promised, at the very least, to always be Grant’s friend no matter what I saw or heard.
Olivia set me up.
"This is what you were talking about, isn't it? You knew I would find out," I asked.
"Yes, I knew it was inevitable that you would find out, although not in the terrible, horrific way it ended up happening. The fledgling made it impossible to predict. If I could have made it happen differently I would have—please believe that.”
“You’re saying all vampires are predictable?” I asked, confused. “What is a fledgling?”
“No. Wow, this is complicated.” She sighed. “I really shouldn’t be here, but I wanted to let you know I was serious about Grant. You mean so much to him, please give him a chance. I don't know what would happen if he lost you."
The severity of her tone scared me a little, as though Grant was incredibly fragile. It was hard for me to reconcile vulnerability with the vicious animal that absolutely destroyed Jenna in the woods that night. But then again, I knew there was more than one side to Grant. There was the vicious animal and then there was the awkward man who had a panic attack about wearing sneakers and took me on a romantic date to the museum. The one that bought me Thai food for dinner and had a security detail to keep me safe.
“I’ll do my best,” I said and found myself in a tight, super-strength embrace.
“And a fledgling is a newly created vampire—like Jenna. They’re very strong.” With a final squeeze, she released me and spun on her heel, walking away. She paused at the back door. "You've got two hours before he gets here, the key to his bedroom is hanging behind the mirror at the top of the stairs.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, trying to follow.
“Amelia, I said be his friend. I never said go easy on him. Give him hell. He deserves it." And with that she was gone.
Chapter 6
Grant
It was late afternoon before I made it back to my quarters in Asheville. I had cancelled my afternoon appointment with the CFO because it would have been impossible for me to even pretend to pay attention during that meeting. My patience with the Foundation was at an all-time-low, which was unfortunate as our major fundraiser for the psychiatric hospital was coming up.
I found that nothing much mattered unless I was hunting Caleb or spending time with Amelia. Consequently, my time at the Foundation passed painfully. Being around so many slow-paced humans was completely frustrating. They only reminded me of the one human I couldn't be with. I was reminded how their blood was unappealing, their scents weak and bland. I longed to inhale the sweet lemony scent of the woman I loved.
Exhausted and depressed, I arrived at home that afternoon. My convertible sat back in its corner of the garage, covered as it had been for years. Increasingly, I felt my time in Asheville was coming to a close. I’d deal with this situation, lock up this building, and add it to another part of the Grant Palmer museum.
Entering the kitchen, I stopped cold. The room was brimming with Amelia’s perfume. Was I hallucinating? Psychotic? Had my brain finally cracked under the extreme level of my obsessive compulsiveness?
I roamed the downstairs, catching faint trails of her movements through the house and came to a heart-charging realization. She had been here. She’d sat at her desk. Walked through the kitchen. With closer inspection, I found her footsteps pressed into the threads of the library carpet. Fresh oils from her fingers marred the bookshelf, and her fingers had touched the frames of her favorite paintings.
All of these were new. She had been here. Today.
I felt my surge of joy that she had been in the house and began to fantasize that maybe she came looking for me and that she wanted to talk. As I passed the main stairway, I noticed the scent was stronger going up the stairs and rushed to the dressing room.
At the top of the stairs, I carefully opened the door to the oversized closet, relishing the moment. Soon the euphoria turned to a dull ache. I’d succumbed to a new low. Inhaling the memory of the woman
I loved. I ran my nose over the rows of clothing longing for a rush of her smell, stopping short when I got to my beloved T-shirt collection. I flipped through the shirts and realized quickly one was missing.
Did she take it? She could have whatever of mine she wanted.
I turned to leave when something caught my eye. Amelia's own shirt, a red tank top, hung from the brass hook on the back of the door that opened to my bedroom. I walked over and pressed it to my nose. Mine, I thought, inhaling a satisfying lungful of her luscious scent. I paused when I discovered a second smell on the shirt, and my suspicions increased.
Olivia.
Annoyance flared. I’d given Olivia one task—to keep her mouth shut. She couldn’t even do that for me. She was bossy and nosey and completely out of line betraying me as far as Amelia was concerned. I didn’t need help dealing with her. I had a plan. A process that required delicate, exact precision to ensure success. I’d created a spreadsheet. Once I figured out the appropriate time to implement my plan, all bets were off. Until then, I needed Olivia to back the fuck off.
I was plotting my next encounter with my cousin when I pushed opened the door to my office-bedroom suite, gasping in surprise.
Amelia.
In my private quarters, where only my family had been allowed, I found Amelia perched on my brown leather couch. The powerful thump of her heart beat overshadowed the faint strains of music playing in the background. She wore the missing T-shirt from my collection, the seams falling past her shoulders, the neck revealing her collar bones. In her lap was a thick, leather bound photo album. She held one of my baseballs up to her nose.
There we so many things wrong with this picture, but at the same time so much was right. Absolutely perfect.
The room was my haven. It held the collectables from my past, the items that documented that I had existed before and after the change. Throughout the room were objects that I had possessed for decades and refused to part with. Besides the baseballs and leather album, this room held the only parts of my parents I could keep. Next to the couch was dark wood chair, simple straight lines, from my father's office. I'd had it reupholstered several times, but it was his all the same. Across the room was a chest from my mother's dressing set, as well as an armoire. Now Amelia, who was truly the only person I had loved in my entire existence, other than my parents, sat nestled in the middle of it all. My past crashed into my present and it all clicked perfectly into place.
She glanced up at me standing in the doorway and said, as though I had been in the room the entire time, "You know I can almost still smell the leather on this ball. And it's what? Seventy years old?"
There it was. The question that opened all the other questions. Whether Amelia knew it or not, she had just opened Pandora's Box and no matter how we tried to put the lid back on there was no going back.
I nodded, unable to respond verbally although I knew the specific answer. I caught that ball in 1917. When I was nineteen years old. That ball was ninety-eight years old.
I watched as she held the ball under her nose again. She took in a small sniff before focusing her attention on the book in her lap, while running her fingers down the faded programs I had mounted inside. “If you loved Babe Ruth so much why didn’t you go to any of his games? He started with the Yankees a couple of years after this.”
I gaped at her knowledge of baseball and my idol, confirming my theory that Amelia was the biggest mystery of my lifetime. I pushed the sound of her raging heartbeat out of my ears and said, "I would have gone. But I couldn't. It…" I floundered for the right words, "It would have been too soon."
She cocked her head to the side. "Too soon for what?"
"Too soon after this." I gestured to my body. "After my change."
She studied me for a minute. The only indication of her nerves was the sound of her thrumming heart. I watched her swallow, the veins on her neck expanding gently. "So you were born in…?" she ventured.
I wanted to run from the room and hide. This was the single hardest conversation I'd ever had. The other night in her room, I was cloaked by darkness. The tough questions lay ahead. I promised to be truthful and I was determined to keep my word. I steadied my voice and said, "Eighteen-ninety-nine."
"Eighteen…um, wow,” she said. I nodded slowly.
"And you were changed in…?" she asked, her voice strong but her eyes wide.
I locked my eyes with hers. “Nineteen-nineteen."
I watched as she quickly calculated in her head, knowing where she would arrive as she subtracted the numbers.
"Twenty?"
I nodded again never losing contact with her eyes.
"Twenty years old," she repeated, scrunching up her forehead until creases formed.
"Yes." I forced my voice to remain calm. If I showed my nerves I could lose her. She was here, and I wasn't going to scare her off if I could manage it.
Obviously still considering my age, she pushed the album off her legs and pulled her knees up to her chin defensively, wrapping her arms tightly around them. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting her head hit the back of the couch. I absorbed everything about her; her exhaustion, the dark circles tinting the skin under her eyes, a signal the nightmares hadn’t diminished. She looked thin. Trying to keep to my word, I hadn't asked Ryan or Sebastian any of these personal details. I’d kept my word, but to what end?
With her eyes still shut, she began talking again. "You don't seem twenty. Sometimes you do look young. I notice it when you’re lost in thought and I can see this trace of youth in your appearance, but not in your eyes. Your eyes have the wisdom of someone much older. You're twenty, but at the same time you are actually…" and again she began subtracting mentally. As she worked it out, I focused my eyes on the way the fabric of her jeans pulled across her knees. Her shoes, plaid slip-on sneakers, and her shirt, my shirt, draped over her shoulders.
I finally broke the silence. "One hundred and sixteen."
With her head still back, I could see her lips forming the words. "One hundred and sixteen." Over and over she said them. I feared we were one step away from Amelia running from the house in terror.
"Amelia, why are you here?" I asked. I was still by the door. I needed to move, but I also wanted to block her exit if she attempted to leave. I was incredibly desperate for her to stay. At the same time I wasn't sure what to do with her either. I wanted to be near her so badly. I'd had thoughts of her sitting in that exact spot. The circumstances were not the same, but as long as she was here, I would take her.
Her head popped up, making pieces of her golden hair fly around her shoulders. A ruffle of her scent passed in my direction. She narrowed her eyes at me in accusation. "Why am I here? You broke into my room, right? Without my permission? While I slept? On more than one occasion?"
"True," I admitted.
"Well, turnabout is fair play. I figured I could snoop around your room the way you snooped around mine," she challenged and I couldn't really argue with her.
"That seems fair to me," I said. "Although for the record, I want it noted I didn't really 'snoop' around your room."
She rolled her eyes at me. She still had her arms clenched around her legs, tightly bound to her chest. "Whatever, Grant. How do I know you weren't rummaging through my underwear drawer while I slept?"
I felt my jaw drop and I did the only thing a guilty man could do with an accusation like that. I lied. "What? That's what you think I did? I did not. Ever."
From her position on the couch Amelia eyed me carefully. "Fine. I believe you," she said before muttering under her breath, “Maybe."
I took the moment of distraction to move further into the room. I just wanted to be closer to her. Feel her. I missed her so much. I walked over to the shelves against the wall and picked up a photograph in a heavy pewter frame. Amelia's eyes were on my back and I could tell she had shifted out of her defensive position and was now leaning a little in order to see what I had in my hands. She was curious, which was what contin
ually kept her in trouble. I glanced down at the frame in my hands. Amelia had no idea how hard the next few moments would be for me. I was going to show her the real me, the human me. It was something I had never shared with anyone, including the coven.
I carried the frame over to Amelia and sat in my father's chair next to the sofa, giving her some space. Sinking into the rich leather cushion, I offered her the frame and she gently took it from me. It was a black and white picture of a man and a woman standing outside. The paper had faded and the edges crumbed under the glass in the frame. The man was dressed in a dark suit and tie, the woman in a long, white lace dress and an enormous hat.
Amelia leaned forward, hovering over the photograph, so close I could see her breath leaving faint marks on the glass. Silently, she alternated between looking at the photograph and then glancing up at me, comparing the two. Her hair fell over her shoulder, trailing down her chest, almost grazing the frame. She studied the photograph, as though she needed to memorize every detail for later.
“Your parents?” she guessed.
"On their wedding day, or so it says on the back of the photograph."
"They were so beautiful," she said in a wistful voice. "You have your father's hair, but I think your mother's cheekbones."
Her words thrilled me. Even after all this time I had this need for a connection to my parents. These mementos were all I had. Encouraged, I left her on the couch and went over to the armoire against the far wall. It had several drawers inside as well as a closet. I slid open one of the drawers and pulled out a second frame.
Inside, was a photograph of me and my father outside the Polo Fields where the World Series final game had been held. I walked back over to Amelia handing her the photograph before sitting across from her again.
She ran her finger down the glass of the picture, tracing the images inside. She tilted the frame and pointed to one of the people and said, "Is this you?" The amazement in her voice was clear.
