Chapter Twenty-Eight Amelia

TWENTY-EIGHT

Excerpt from The Annals of Vampyric Lore , Seventeenth Edition

“Index of Notorious Witches and Vampires,” pp. 1123–24

Watson, Grizelda (b: 1625, approximate): Little is known about Grizelda Watson’s life prior to the late eighteenth century. Watson (reportedly known as Zelda to close friends), by all accounts one of the most powerful witches known to vampire-kind, first rose to prominence at that time due to her then-unrivaled flair for the dramatic and her penchant for outlandish practical jokes. Her infamy grew exponentially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when she adopted the nickname Grizelda the Terrible . She allegedly committed a series of crimes involving arson in what is now the American Pacific Northwest and in Chicago during the early twentieth century. “I like to watch things burn,” she was famously quoted as saying.

Watson was romantically linked with Reginald Cleaves (see: infra 2133–35) on more than one occasion, ostensibly because their public personas were similar. When asked about it, both parties consistently denied they were anything but close friends.

Watson made few public appearances in the final years of the twentieth century. In 2010, however, she was spotted in a Napa County farmers market. Subsequent sightings have confirmed that Watson now goes by the name Zelda Turret , has adopted veganism, and runs a popular hot yoga studio.

Before her disappearance from vampiric society, Watson was famously quoted as saying she “laughs hard, lives hard, and plays hard.” She briefly had groupies in the final decades of the twentieth century, many of whom adopted this quote as their mantra. T-shirts bearing this slogan can still be found on Etsy.

Amelia

After Frederick left to get supplies for Cassie, Reggie and I paged through The Annals together to see if we could find anything useful about Grizelda. I could tell immediately that these books were way older than anything I’d ever seen when working in the University of Chicago Library. The lettering on the book’s cover was in some kind of calligraphy that was so stylized I could barely read it.

“I can’t believe Frederick has something this old just lying around,” I marveled. “He gave me some excerpts the other day in case they were helpful. But those entries were so old I barely understood them.”

Reggie snorted. “If you think this is old, you should see the clothes he used to wear before Cassie got to him.”

Judging from Frederick’s speech mannerisms, I found the idea that his clothes used to be very old-fashioned easy to believe.

When we finally found Grizelda’s entry, we read through it together. My cheeks heated at the brief reference to Reggie being romantically linked to her, but Reggie didn’t seem to be reacting to it, so I told myself to let it go.

“I hadn’t realized Zelda had moved to the West Coast.” Reggie sounded amused. “Good for her.”

“Do you think she’d be up for helping us?”

Reggie shook his head. “If she went through all the trouble to vanish and adopt a new identity, it was probably to get away from her reputation.” He bit his lip, thinking. “I suspect she wouldn’t be enthusiastic about someone from her old life reaching out to ask her for help.”

“Okay,” I said, a bit relieved. Getting a notorious witch I didn’t know to help me had been more than a little intimidating, anyway. Especially one with an ambiguous history with Reggie. But if we weren’t going to ask Grizelda for help, that meant my tax expertise was the only chance we had of frightening The Collective. I was confident in my understanding of the Internal Revenue Code, but much less so in my ability to get vampires with a vendetta to back off.

But there’d be time to worry about that later. Right now, I was paging through what might have been the first history book that had ever legitimately interested me. I wanted to give it my full attention.

“I’m confused about something,” I said. I flipped to the front of the volume and pointed to the date. “The cover to this thing looks ancient, and this title page says it was published in 1873. But Grizelda’s entry is only a few years old.”

Reggie nodded. “There’s a committee that handles updating this thing.” He shrugged. “They’re haphazard about it, though, so some of the stuff in here is hilariously out of date. I don’t think the television shows section has been updated since M*A*S*H went off the air, for example. But it’s better than nothing.”

“Fascinating,” I said, meaning it. Another thought occurred to me. “Are you in the Index of Notorious Witches and Vampires?”

His eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he recovered and schooled his features. He looked down at his hands. “No.”

“Are you telling me the truth?” I asked, teasing.

“Absolutely.” He cleared his throat. “You know, I think we’ve spent enough time reading. Do you want to do literally anything else?”

He moved to close the book. I stuck my hand in it so that he couldn’t. “If you’re not in the Index, I don’t see why I can’t just look through it on my own for a little while.”

He blinked at me. “Why would you want to?”

“It’s interesting,” I said, honestly. “And I’m curious about what a vampire needs to do to earn a place in there. If the lead suspect in that fire from the eighteen hundreds isn’t infamous enough to be written about in here, I can’t imagine what it would take to—”

“Fine,” Reggie interrupted. He let out a long sigh. “Yes. I’m in there. But I don’t want you to read it. It’s nothing you don’t already know, but somehow having my past memorialized in this…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “It makes me feel like I’ll always be defined by things I did centuries ago. I hate it.”

He looked pained. I closed the book. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I meant it when I said you already know everything about me that’s in there. Oh—except maybe for the part where I once had a fan club.” A corner of his mouth quirked up. “Have I told you about them? That was pretty funny.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding about once having had a fan club or not, which itself was pretty funny. But I decided not to press it. “Okay,” I said again. I leaned in closer, until our lips were nearly touching. “So. What do you want to do instead of reading this book?”

His breath caught. “We do have the apartment to ourselves. I could take this opportunity to thank you for everything you’re doing to help me.” He tilted his head and pressed a lingering kiss, and then another, to the place on my neck where he’d bitten me the night before. His intent couldn’t have been clearer. The feel of his mouth on my skin sent a flash of heat straight to my core.

“Cassie’s here,” I pointed out. “We aren’t alone.” But I was already growing dizzy with want, the way he was trailing open-mouthed kisses up along the column of my throat. It had only been a few hours since we were last intimate, but the way he was mouthing at me made me want to take him back to bed with me all over again.

“She’ll be asleep for days,” he murmured against my skin. “We’ll be quiet. She won’t hear a thing.”

“Won’t I?”

Cassie’s voice rang through the quiet apartment like a bell. Reggie and I sprang apart like naughty teenagers.

She stood at the end of the hall, just outside the bedroom she’d been sleeping in. Even at this distance, I could tell something about her was subtly different, though I’d have been hard-pressed to say what it was if I hadn’t known. She looked taller, somehow. Her stance was more self-assured. It was difficult to reconcile this person with the Cassie I’d known for decades as Sam’s flighty best friend.

“Cassie!” Reggie jumped from his chair, all thoughts of seducing me forgotten. He rushed to where she stood, placing a gentle hand at her elbow. “Are you all right? You shouldn’t be awake right now.”

“I’m all right.” Her voice sounded different, too. Rougher, somehow. I didn’t know if that was due to her having just woken up, or if whatever changes were happening in her body had done something to her vocal cords. “Hungry, though. It’s…really unpleasant.” Her hands shook a little; they went to her throat.

“I know. I’m sorry. Freddie went out to get something for you,” Reggie assured her. “He didn’t think you’d need it this soon, though. He might be a while.”

Cassie nodded, and her eyes flicked to me. “Amelia. Hi.” She closed her eyes, then took in a deep breath through her nose before letting it out again. Her whole body shuddered. “I think I better not be around you right now. I’m…not quite myself.”

While lying in bed together the night before, Reggie had told me his human memories were fuzzy and insubstantial. He’d compared them to faded photographs from a different person’s life. Was that because he’d last been human such a long time ago? Or did something happen to a person’s mind and memories when they became a vampire?

When Cassie said she wasn’t quite herself, was this what she meant? It would break Sam’s heart if Cassie didn’t remember their friendship anymore now that she’d turned.

“You should rest,” Reggie said. “When you wake up, Freddie will be back with something for you to eat.”

Cassie smiled at the mention of Frederick. At least some memories were still intact, then.

“The only thing I feel more than hunger right now is fatigue,” she admitted. “Going back to bed sounds amazing. You won’t think I’m rude if I leave you alone out here?”

“The only thing I think is rude about you is your art,” he teased, grinning at her. She managed a watery laugh. He was trying to put her at ease. God. This man. “Now go back to sleep.”

When we were alone again, Reggie sat back down in the chair next to mine, elbows on his knees. He peered at me quizzically. “What are you thinking?”

My mind was in too much of a muddle to answer that question. My thoughts were flitting from The Collective, to the choice Cassie had made, to whether I would have to make it myself one day if I wanted to be with Reggie, and then back again. My every instinct was to stop and think everything through, and not get up from that chair until every puzzle in front of me had been solved and the next ten years of my life had a nice, neat, careful plan. But I knew that wasn’t possible.

Some puzzles, I was coming to realize, were only solvable in the fullness of time.

“What am I thinking?” I repeated. If I shared any of it with Reggie, he’d feel guilty. Or worse. “I’m thinking that I’d like you to hold me for a little while.” That part, at least, was true.

I didn’t have to ask him twice. His arms were around me as soon as the words left my mouth, his embrace steady and sure.

And then, as if reading my mind: “I don’t expect anything, Amelia. I would never ask you to do anything you don’t want to do.” There was an unmistakable undercurrent of emotion in his words that touched my heart. “I promise.”

I slid my arms around his neck, then pulled back to look into his eyes. “But what if you change your mind? What if in twenty years you don’t want to be with someone who looks like she could be your mother?”

He gave me a crooked grin. “A week ago, you said you’d never see me again after Gretchen’s wedding. Now we’re planning our outfits for your retirement party?” I opened my mouth to reply to that, then closed it again when I realized that that was exactly what I was doing. “Amelia, I want as much of you as you are willing to share. Planning things too far into the future often amounts to little more than wasted time.”

“But you might want more one day.” How could he not see that? “How can you know now what you’re going to want later?”

Reggie leaned in and pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of my mouth. I closed my eyes, reveling in its sweetness. “ If I change my mind about this, we will cross that bridge when we come to it,” he promised. “But I can’t imagine ever feeling differently about asking you to fundamentally alter yourself at a cellular level just so I can keep you forever.” He pulled back so he could look into my eyes. I wondered if he knew how much I already missed having his mouth on mine, or if he could somehow sense the rash of butterflies taking flight in my stomach at the mention of the word forever .