Chapter 20

20

I put on clean clothes, throw the dirty ones in my suitcase, zip it up. I check to make sure I have everything. My wallet. My phone. The AirPods.

“You ready? I’ll call for my car. What do you think? We get my car, get away from here, and then stop somewhere to figure out what’s next? I still don’t feel great about just leaving him in the woods. Naomi?”

She sits on her bed, just staring out the window, still in her bloody clothes.

“Get changed!”

“Don’t yell at me,” she says, pouting.

“Help me out here,” I say.

She stands up and undresses, pausing to examine her jacket, a mournful look on her face.

I call the number on the Waterfront website, press one for reception, and someone too friendly answers. They assure me that the valet will have my car outside in ten minutes. I thank them multiple times, hoping they can’t tell the difference between gratitude and guilt.

I drank someone’s blood. I drank someone’s blood. Manners won’t make up for that. Nothing will.

Naomi now wears a tie-dyed sweat suit. I open my mouth to ask her if she has a matching neon sign, to tell her to change, to tell her we need to lie low, that she needs to use her head. But there’s no time to argue.

“They’ll be outside in five,” I lie, knowing that if I tell her five minutes, she’ll take ten, and if I tell her ten, she’ll take fifteen.

“Okay,” she says, sitting on her suitcase so she can zip it up.

“Do you need help?”

“I got it,” she says. “I’m a pro.”

“How are you feeling?” I ask her, leaning against the bedroom doorframe.

“Like I just ripped a bong.”

“That’s not what I meant. We’re about to interact with a human. Can you handle that?”

“Can you?” she asks. I can’t tell if she’s being defensive or not. I wonder if she’s embarrassed about the rabbit, about her lack of self-control. She’s never been the type to feel guilty for indulging her whims. If she wanted chocolate cake, she’d eat chocolate cake. If she wanted to get railed by someone, she’d take them home. If she wanted the Gucci shoes, she’d swipe her card and not worry. But this is different.

“Yeah. I think so.” If I ever wanted chocolate cake, I’d do calorie math and ruin it.

“Well, then, we’ll just have to see what happens,” she says, hopping up. “Why are we in such a rush to leave, again? It’s not like we have a destination or any plan of action here.”

“Because we left an employee bleeding in the woods,” I whisper.

“Oh, right.”

We move our suitcases next to the front door. Wait there.

“Let me do the talking. Why don’t you stay at a safe distance?”

“Fine,” she says. She looks nervous, and it’s making me nervous.

“What?”

“Can I drive? I need something to focus on.”

“Are you good to drive?”

“Yeah,” she says. “The high is wearing off. Which is kind of a bummer.”

I don’t believe her but I’m too tired to argue. “Okay, well, let me get the keys from the valet. Don’t get too close.”

“Okay, hoss.” She chews her lip for a moment, contemplating something. She punctuates her thought by blowing a raspberry. “Let’s just go back to the house. It’s somewhere to stay. No one will know we’re there. They have blood, Sloane. They said the first few days are the hardest. We can wait out the worst of our thirst there. See if that guy in the woods reports us or not.”

I know what she’s suggesting is likely smarter than just taking off without a plan, but I’m reluctant to go back to that place, return to the site of such horror. To seek shelter from monsters. Monsters I don’t trust not to fuck up our lives more than they already have. And going back would be giving them too much power over us. It’d be dangerous to set ourselves up for that dynamic, to put ourselves in a position where we need these strangers. These vampires.

We can’t go back. Even if part of me wants to see Henry again. Especially because of that.

The sound of an engine interrupts my thoughts. I go to the window, watch my car pull up in front of the cottage.

“No,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I don’t like it.”

“Need I remind you, the last time we went to that house it didn’t end too well for us?” I say, opening the door to meet the valet. Luckily, the sun has sunk behind the trees, twilight mild, making it more tolerable to be outside. “Wait here.”

Todd steps out of my car. “Hello.”

“Hi,” I say, the word catching in my throat. There’s that tickle, that itch, and I can hear his heart beating. I can hear the blood sailing through his veins. I can smell it. Pungent.

“Here are your keys,” he says, coming toward me, passing me the fob. I bristle on contact, pull away as fast as possible. Take two big steps back.

“Thank—thank—” A cough interrupts me. “Thank you.”

He narrows his eyes, maybe sensing something is amiss. But then he shrugs. “Okey dokey. Well! You drive safe. Slippery out there.”

He starts down the drive toward the road, but then—

“Hi, Todd.”

I stop breathing as he stops walking, turns back toward the cottage, where Naomi stands in the doorway. I can hear her wheezing. From the look on Todd’s face, he can, too.

“Naomi,” I say, failing to disguise the panic in my voice.

She takes a step forward, making eyes at him. Flirty eyes. Not her feral, thirst-crazed eyes.

He bows his head to her, which might just save his life, because his neck sinks into his collar and there’s no exposed skin for her to lunge at, to sink her teeth into.

Though I guess if she wanted blood badly enough, she could go after his face.

“Hope you have a great day, Todd. Stay warm,” she says. She looks at me, giving a smug grin, proving a point. In this moment, her desire to show me that she’s capable of restraint is stronger than her bloodlust.

Whatever works. I give her a thumbs-up, and she beams.

“All right, then. Bye, girls,” Todd says, walking away. I can only hope he goes straight back to the mansion and doesn’t take any detours through the woods.

Once he’s out of sight, I open the trunk of my car and we throw our bags in. I slam it shut and toss her my keys. “Go on.”

She catches them and does a spin, then hurries toward the driver’s side. I climb into the passenger seat of my own car, despondent. Naomi throws it into drive, accelerates. I’m surprised to find there’s some relief in movement. A false sense of freedom. It feels like we’re escaping something, though I know there’s no putting this weekend in the rearview. The things that happened here can’t be undone. I’m keenly aware. We left Matthew bleeding in the woods.

There’s no putting space between us and the problem, because we are the problem.

But for now, it’s just us in the car, like old times, and we can listen to some music, and we can fake normality for a little while, for as long as we can. Fantasize that this is enough to sustain us.

—

Naomi speeds. She’s got a lead foot—she’s told me on multiple occasions that she believes speed limits are “suggestions for people who can’t drive.”

“Slow down. We don’t want to get pulled over,” I tell her.

“I never get pulled over,” she says. “Besides, I’m not going that fast.”

I know for a fact that she does get pulled over, because she often brags about being a pro at talking herself out of tickets.

Her phone buzzes, and she picks it up to look at it. I cringe. Why did I let her drive?

“It’s Lee,” she says, sighing, dropping her phone back into the cup holder.

She turns up the music, signaling that she doesn’t want to talk about him, or how, whether she likes it or not, their relationship is now over. I’m tempted to ask if we can put on my Chernobyl podcast, just to hear about other people having an exceptionally bad time, but I know she’ll veto it.

And I doubt it would help, be of any comfort.

I stop myself from chewing on the inside of my cheek, my bad habit now off-limits, too hazardous. What if I bleed? Would I drink myself dry? I don’t understand the ways my body is different now, and it’s so frustrating, I could scream. Yet at the same time…my wrist, my joints—they’re all so quiet. Everything destroyed by my fall or corroded by age doesn’t hurt or bother. I’m hesitant to call it healing, reluctant to be grateful, because it cost me too much.

I can’t see myself in the car’s mirrors. I can’t say this was a good trade. It certainly wasn’t a fair one.

I know I’m not saving you, Henry said last night, but I’m giving you all the time in the world to save yourself.

Was that romantic? Or was it deeply messed up?

Actually, the same questions apply to our entire time together.

He said he was giving me a choice, but I didn’t have a choice. Why does it always feel like this? Like every open door is a trapdoor.

Naomi’s phone buzzes again, and she curses, lets her head back. She tries to shake it off, drums her fingers on the steering wheel. There’s no ghosting Lee, and I know she doesn’t want to ghost him.

He’s going to be a problem.

I should be coming up with next steps, because I know she isn’t. But I’ve always had an easier time running away from something than running toward anything, and it’s so hard to think right now. My throat…

“Do your parents still have that”—my words chafe against the burgeoning need—“that summer house? It’s in North Carolina, right?”

“Uh-huh,” she says, craning her neck to look at road signs, as if we have a destination.

“Maybe we stay there until we acclimate to our thirst? Until we figure out if we’re in trouble for…for what happened at the Waterfront.”

She doesn’t say anything. She should be on board; she basically pitched the same idea, just at the vampire house instead of her parents’.

Except her idea would solve our thirst, assuming the vampires would continue to share their supply. On our own we’ll have to…to pay for our own meals.

How is this happening? How is any of this real?

I pinch my throat. Clear it. Cough. It’s thirst; it feels close enough to ordinary thirst, just for something so specific. I think about how in cartoons or movies, when someone’s wandering in the desert and they’re delirious from their thirst, they hallucinate finding water. An oasis. They’re splashing around in it, elated, and there’s a palm tree overhead providing shade. I imagine us pulling over somewhere, stepping out to find a spring with blood bubbling up from the ground. And we could sip from it, and no one would be hurt, no one would suffer, and I wouldn’t have to feel any guilt or doubt over my satisfaction.

I must manifest the idea, because now she’s pulling over. Only I don’t want it. The fantasy wasn’t real. Is never real. Those cartoons and movies always cut away from the hallucination to show them writhing around in the sand.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to talk to Lee or he’s going to freak out. And I’m so dizzy, I can barely see.”

“I can drive,” I say. “We shouldn’t stop.”

“I need a minute,” she says, parking.

We’re at a basic rest stop with some vending machines, picnic tables, bathrooms. There’s a path down to a vista of the lake and surrounding woods, coated in fluffy white marshmallow snow that glows in the moonlight. There’s a plaque that I’m sure details the historic significance of this spot, who lived here once upon a time. Who died here.

There’s no oasis.

Naomi grabs her phone and gets out of the car. I know “a minute” is never just a minute, so I get out, too. I walk down the path and sit on a snow-covered bench, staring out at a beautiful view while trying not to hyperventilate. Time liquefies, leaks away.

The feeling in my throat is getting harder to ignore, morphing from discomfort to pain. It’s taking over. I’m in danger of its monopolizing my body, my thoughts.

The onset of panic makes me feel like I’m trying to breathe inside of a plastic bag. I can’t do anything about it except resist. Pretend the resistance isn’t futile.

I push myself to stand, walk over to the ledge where the hill drops off. There’s no fence. One misstep and it’d be a long, long fall. A hard landing.

I brace myself, bend my knees, lean forward, prepare for a scream I’m too shy for. I swallow it down and bury my head in my hands.

And I wonder…if I’m not screaming…then who is?