Chapter 17

17

I stand in the hallway in my shoes and coat with no phone, no ride. No clue. Naomi trots in from the kitchen.

I put my hand up. “Don’t say anything.”

“Wasn’t gonna,” she says.

“This—whatever is happening to us right now, whatever was done to us last night—is serious. This is bad. And you don’t seem to understand that. Or care.”

“I do care. I feel some responsibility to handle it, since I’m the one who brought us here.”

“How are you handling it? I’m not shacking up with these people, Nay. This is because of them.” I stop short of saying what I really mean, which is because of you .

“You heard them. We need to get our thirst under control. I don’t want to stay here forever either. Just until we can manage on our own. I’m trying to make the smart decision here. Be cautious.”

Where was all this caution last night? I wonder.

“No,” I say.

“No?”

“No. I’m done. How do we know if anything they say is true? We don’t.”

“Do you not feel it? Do you not feel…different?”

I won’t answer her question. I won’t confirm it out loud. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not waiting around for another surprise zombie or for them to serve us lunch with blood as a condiment. Because whenever I think my luck can’t get any worse, it does! It always does.”

“But what if…” She shakes her head.

“What?” I ask.

“What if this wasn’t bad luck?”

Behind her there’s a painting of a sailboat that looks like it could be either in a museum or at a garage sale; I don’t have an eye for art. The walls are sooty from the candles, which have burned to stubs.

“I watched you get your neck ripped open. I thought you were going to die in my arms. I appreciate that you always search for the silver lining, but there’s none here.”

“If we never came here, if this didn’t happen, then what? You’d go back to Joel and keep going through the motions? I’d go back on the road with Lee and get caught up in his shit. I’ve spent the last decade in service of someone else’s dream. Decade, Sloane. That time gone. Those years gone, like that.” She snaps. “What was our future, before this? Neither of us ever wanted babies. So, what? We get old and no one likes to look at us anymore; no one wants to listen. There’s a window for women in this world, Sloane. And once it closes—”

“You told me that it wasn’t too late. Last night in the bathroom, before this happened. Now you’re saying our lives were hopeless. You’re trying to sell me a lie.”

“I’m not. It wasn’t too late. Just, now the choice was made for us, the change. A change who knows if either of us would have made on our own. Chances are, we would have gone back to our lives, to what was familiar, at the expense of what we really want. But there’s no going back now.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I say. “But I know it isn’t this.”

“If you want to leave, Ilie will take you back to your place,” Henry says, walking over with Naomi’s dress, neatly folded. She’s in only her coat and underwear. He gives the dress to her, then turns to me. “We won’t force you to stay.”

“We hoped you would stay,” Elisa says. She stands at the end of the hall in a crushed-velvet nightgown, a sleep mask on her forehead. “You’re welcome to come back. We should be here for another few days. Maybe longer. Oh, are you sure you want to leave? We’d love to have you.”

Naomi steps into her dress, which I take as a sign that she’s agreed to leave with me. “Thank you, Elisa. That’s very generous.”

Ilie appears in a fur coat and snow boots and with enormous sunglasses over a balaclava. He slips on a pair of winter gloves. “I will clear the driveway. We have snowblower, goes quick.”

“Um, okay. Thanks,” I say.

“Not a problem! I like to do it,” he says, going out the front door.

I experience the hot crush of shame I get anytime I’ve been mean to someone and then they’re nice to me. Even after I remind myself of the circumstances, the guilt lingers. I stare at the sailboat painting. The longer I look at it, the more beautiful it becomes.

“I’d offer to help him, but he enjoys it,” Henry says, coming up beside me. His arm brushes against mine, and the sensation in my throat intensifies to an itch, to this bizarre, fast-mutating ache. I have a split-second fantasy of grabbing his hand and pulling him closer to me, certain his skin on my skin would kill any other craving.

“Just admit you’re lazy,” I say.

He laughs. The good laugh. The cute, endearing one. “You’ll see. He’ll be so proud when he’s done.”

It’s him on top of me in the conservatory. It’s him chewing my wrist open, ripping the metal out.

I clear my throat, attempting to rid it of the tickle, the itch that I won’t scratch. But it doesn’t work. I take a step back, a step away from him.

Down the hall, Naomi huddles with Elisa. They whisper to each other like schoolgirls swapping secrets. Does Naomi have any recollection of just how gruesome it all was? Or was she unconscious for the worst of it? Was she spared what I had to witness? Does she not realize the magnitude of this? Do I?

“Your friend is right. It’s too soon to be out in the world,” Henry says. “Especially for her. She’s reckless.”

She is, but I don’t like him saying it. “You don’t know her.”

“You do. Is she disciplined? Can she practice self-restraint?”

The answer is no, but I’m too mad to give him the satisfaction of being right, so I change the subject. “You killed someone last night.”

“There’s more to that story. I hope you’ll give me the chance to tell you someday. Maybe then you’ll think better of me.”

“Don’t you have any remorse for what happened? For what you did to us?”

He gets out a cigarette, lights it as he looks at me. “More than you’ll ever know. Too much and still not enough.”

He ashes his cigarette on the floor, then hunches over so his mouth is at my ear. “But also, not at all. Because I want you.”

The tickle in my throat becomes a storm. This immense, raging, urgent thing that makes it impossible to breathe.

He leans back. Takes a long drag. “It’s beyond attraction, isn’t it? What’s between us.”

I can’t answer him. I can’t look him in the eye.

“Goodbye, Sloane.” He turns around and walks down the hall, past Naomi and Elisa, who are both staring at me in a way that feels invasive and embarrassing. Henry goes left, and then he’s gone from view.

Ilie bursts through the front door. “Okay, we are ready! Come see. It is clear.”

“Coming,” I say, so relieved to be getting out of this house—this awful, awful house. I hurry out the door, inhaling fresh air.

It’s cloudy, but it’s bright. Too bright. I wince at the daylight.

“We are sensitive,” Ilie says, pointing to the sky. “We don’t catch fire; that is just rumor. But it is not the best.”

His car is where we left it, now covered in snow.

He opens the passenger-side door for me. I turn around to make sure Naomi’s coming. She is, but she doesn’t look happy about it. Or maybe she’s just recoiling at the light.

“After you,” I say, letting her sit first. I squeeze in next to her.

“Sloane,” she whispers to me. “I’m still thirsty.”

“Just…try not to think about it.”

Ilie wipes the snow off the car, then hops into the driver’s seat. He backs up too fast and the tires skid. “Whoa, whoa.”

He pulls up to the gate, and as it opens, he strokes Naomi’s hair. “It is too bad you are leaving. We like you. Drago likes you, Sloane. He never likes anybody.”

“Who’s Drago? Henry?”

“Oh, yes, yes. He changes his name. He is my great uncle, you know. Good guy. But very moody.”

“Ilie,” Naomi says, shielding her eyes from the light, “how often do we need to drink?”

On the short drive back to the cottage, Ilie attempts to explain to us the logistics of vampirism. I struggle to concentrate—exhausted and overwhelmed and distracted by the light incinerating my eyeballs, melting my brain.

He tells us we can eat and drink whatever, but it won’t be the same as it was. He tells us nothing will satisfy us like the taste of blood. He tells us we can survive without it for weeks, even months at a time, but we will want it, and the want will consume us if we don’t give in. He tells us we don’t need permission to enter places, but it is polite to ask. He tells us we don’t get fangs. We don’t have any particular aversion to garlic, or crucifixes, and being impaled with a wooden stake wouldn’t feel great but also wouldn’t necessarily kill us. He tells us, with regret, that we do not turn into bats.

“I do not know who started that,” he says. “Too bad. It would be cool. But we can float. Not too high, for not too long.”

I think about the shadow at my window. I think about Henry.

I don’t know if I’m flattered or horrified.

I’m not special enough to hold my own husband’s interest, but an ancient vampire will watch me sleep.

Ilie turns onto the winding road that leads to the Waterfront. “It is your choice, I know. You do what you like, but if you change your mind, you have my number. We can help you. If you do not get blood from us, you will have to…you know.”

“We’re all set,” I say.

“Okay, boss,” he says, throwing a hand up. “If you say all set , all set. If you change your mind, you call me anytime. Who knows? Maybe our paths will cross again.”

He winks.

We pull up to the cottage and I’m out of the car in two seconds, but Naomi idles.

“We’ll go inside and make a plan,” I tell her.

“Yeah, okay,” she says. She takes a breath, then leans over and kisses Ilie on the cheek. “Bye.”

“Goodbye, my loves,” he says. “But maybe this is not goodbye.”

He gives another wink before Naomi closes the car door; then he zooms off, spraying us with snow.

We stand in place for a minute, watching him drive away. His car disappears beyond the trees and the world is quiet, snowy and still, and everything seems perfectly ordinary. I’d swear it was all a bad dream if not for the tickle in my throat and the heaviness in my chest and the harshness of the light.

Naomi takes my hand.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I’m not ready to accept her apology, and I can’t tell her that everything’s going to be okay, because we’d both know that was a lie. I pull my hand away, too sullen to be touched.

“Let’s go in before someone sees us,” I say. We look a mess. Our clothes ripped and bloodstained, our hair tangled nests.

We look like victims, and maybe that’s what we are. Or were.

I don’t think I know what we are anymore.