Chapter 3

Iread something once that said if someone spent thirty seconds looking at each piece of art in the Louvre, it would take more than one hundred days to see them all. In my first few weeks in France, I found myself wandering the city—missing the life I left behind in Italy and wondering what I would make of myself in Paris. After spending a day in the Louvre and ogling at pieces of art that existed long before me and would continue long after me, I returned home to find Willa and Addie on the couch.

In an attempt to break the ice and gain their friendship—as we’d only known each other a few weeks—I told them about my day at the Louvre and the one hundred days theory. Willa immediately leaped on the idea, and the three of us returned to the massive museum the next day.

Today was the twenty-first day we were going to the Louvre to see something new. Sometimes, Willa would stand in front of a painting and count to thirty before moving on. Strangers would glare at her disturbance while Addie and I erupted into giggles.

“Okay,” Addie announced as we stood on the escalator beneath the pyramid. She peered at her disheveled map, covered in notes from rooms we’d already seen. “Today, we are visiting European sculptures and Near Eastern and European Art.”

“I’m going to take your map and rip it in two,” Willa scolded. She tripped over Addie at the bottom of the escalator because Addie was too busy reading her notes to bother stepping away from the moving stairs.

“I will bite you if you take my map,” Addie retorted.

“Your bite does not scare me,” Willa said with a flash of her fangs.

“Children,” I tried to mimic Willa’s scolding tone but laughed instead.

Willa and I fell into step behind Addie, winding our way through the Louvre toward the rooms we’d targeted for the day. We could do this so much faster if we spent longer here each day or even skimmed through the art pieces instead of studying each one, but we usually spent a couple of hours at a time, then left to find lunch somewhere.

After what felt like endless wandering, we found our room to start in—filled with marble sculptures encased in glass. Willa bolted to the first one, skidding around an Italian couple, and began counting to thirty. Addie wandered to another corner of the room to admire her own sculpture.

I lingered in the middle, sucking in a deep breath and listening to the laughter of my friends. I admired a sculpture of a woman with golden hair falling in waves down her mid-thigh.

“She looks like you,” Willa chirped, appearing beside me.

“She does not!” I argued.

“Please,” Addie added, walking up to our other side. “If you were a thousand-year-old sculpture, this would be it. Otherwise, you’re a modern-day Barbie doll.”

I laughed, rolling my eyes. Addie wasn’t entirely wrong in her description. I stood over six feet tall, an embarrassing amount of which was legs. My golden blonde hair fell to the middle of my back and glittered in the sunshine. Instead of blue eyes like Barbie”s, though, my eyes were brown. Unlike the sculpture before me, I wasn’t made of soft curves. In fact, I didn’t have curves at all; my body was all sharp corners and edges—too much leg, ribs that jutted out when I sucked in, hardly an ass at all.

“Sure,” I said. “But this Barbie bites.”

We continued our journey through the Louvre, laughing through sculptures, artifacts, and paintings.

A few hours later, when Addie grew overwhelmed by the museum”s hustle and bustle, we returned to the lobby beneath the pyramid.

“I need water,” Addie rasped, holding Willa’s arm.

Addie was more sensitive to sounds and crowds than most people; too many sensations made her anxious and overwhelmed. The Louvre seemed busier than usual today, so it wasn’t surprising that she needed a break. Willa walked Addie toward the bathroom, saying they’d be right back.

I lingered in the lobby, people-watching. I grimaced at an American couple who brought their screaming toddlers, thinking what a miserable vacation that likely was. A mother and daughter laughed about Greek mythology as they scanned through the ticket counter. A few teenage girls beelined for the gift shop.

One woman stood alone amongst it all.

She lingered in the middle of the bright room, ignoring everyone moving around her. There was a map of the museum crumpled in one of her hands and a tattered pink backpack at her feet. She stared at the pyramid, and when I focused on her, I could hear her heart racing from across the room. She wore a pair of leggings and a shirt stained with… blood.

I watched her as she turned in a slow circle. Although she wore no makeup and her clothes were wrinkled, she was the most captivating person in the room.

She was a vampire.

I smelled it in her blood and heard it in her heartbeat a moment later. She was immortal, and the blood on the hem of her blueish-gray shirt was tears. There was a leftover smear of blood beneath one of her eyes.

Curiously, I tilted my head and scanned the room, wondering why no one else seemed to pay any attention to the ghost of a woman. People skittered around her. One bumped her shoulder and did not apologize. She remained where she was, staring up and up and up, as if the glass glittering in the sunlight held all the answers for whatever she was searching for.

While she stood there amongst the chaos—oblivious to all of it—it felt like an invisible string snapped together between us. As if the universe was saying finally, you found her. A million possibilities rushed through my mind—a hundred hellos and a thousand goodbyes.

I shifted, glancing behind me to see if Willa and Addie were back so I could ask if they saw her too. They weren’t.

Just as I convinced myself the woman wasn’t there at all, a French woman bumped into her and kicked her backpack, then shouted curses at the vampire for being in the way. From across the room, I watched the veins in her face turn black. She gripped the French woman by her throat, strangling her scream of shock.

Panic shot through me, and I moved across the room with inhuman speed—my whole body blurring for a fraction of a second before I came into focus in front of the vampire.

“We’re in public,” I warned, peeling her fingers from the French woman’s throat.

“Who the fuck are you?” The vampire spun on me while the human woman scrambled away. Fury blazed in the vampire woman’s eyes, which were as blue as the ocean, and a rim of red formed around them.

“What’s stopping that woman from running and screaming ‘vampire?’” I snapped, gripping her hand. She tried to wrench it away; recognition flashed in her eyes when she understood I was much stronger than she was.

“No one would believe her, anyway,” the woman spat. Her American accent was thick and Southern, even deeper than Willa’s, and it was ice cold. This time, when she ripped her hand from mine, I let her go.

“Are you hurt?” I asked. “What’s your problem?”

She scoffed. “None of your business, blondie.”

I tried to stop the snort that escaped me but couldn’t. “How original of an insult,” I said. Then, I leaned closer and closed my hand around her throat, watching her eyes widen and her pupils dilate. “My friends and I are trying to have a nice day at the Louvre. I have no interest in your lack of self-awareness ruining my day. You should leave.”

The vampire snarled and stepped away from me, but not before I noticed the red tears on her waterline. A tinge of regret formed in my stomach. She picked up her discarded backpack, swinging it over one shoulder before storming away.

She didn’t leave the museum. She walked into it and headed toward Nike of Samothrace and the Mona Lisa. I watched her go, keeping my eyes narrowed.

“Who was that?” I jumped when Willa appeared next to me.

“No one,” I replied. “Just a reckless vampire.”

Willa wrinkled her nose. “Are you ready? I’m going to take Addie home.”

I glanced at Willa, then over to where Addie sat on a bench on the edge of the room, her arms wrapped around her waist. I took one step in their direction, but my heart lurched. I looked back to where the vampire had disappeared.

“You take her home. I’m going to stay,” I said.

Willa nudged my arm. “You okay?”

I offered her as strong of a smile as I could. “Yeah, I’m going after that vampire.”

“Be safe,” Willa warned.

“You too.”

I waited until my friends were gone, then I went back inside the museum.