Chapter 22

22

When I wake up, it’s in the parking lot of the seediest motel I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Good morning,” Naomi says. “I forgot you have the cutest little whistle snore.”

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” she says. “At the Quality Star Motel.”

The exterior is either brown or that dirty. The doors to the rooms are powder blue, scuffed, and dented. There’s a death trap of a playground in a weedy patch of land on the other side of the parking lot, which crumbles beneath us.

“It’s cheap enough that I can pay cash,” she says, putting on a pair of sunglasses and a black beanie. She tucks her hair into the hat, then pulls down the driver’s-side sun visor to check the mirror. “Goddamn it. I keep forgetting. How do I look? Inconspicuous?”

“Hard for me to say. I’d recognize you anywhere.”

“Aw,” she says, opening the car door. “I’m gonna go get us a room. Two nights? Just in case?”

“Yeah,” I say, queasy at the idea of spending two nights in this place.

“Cool,” she says, stepping out.

I stop her before she closes the door. “Wait. Are you okay to talk to someone?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

I raise an eyebrow.

“I’m not super thirsty,” she says. “We drank enough last night. I think.”

“Naomi.”

“I’m fine! I can do it,” she says, then shuts the door before I can talk her out of it.

“Yeah, let’s just roll the dice, see what happens. Maybe someone else will end up dead or injured or a vampire or a skeletal zombie,” I mutter to myself, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “Wouldn’t that just be a trip?”

I watch her go into the office, and I consider running after her so I can babysit, but by the time I talk myself out of it, she’s already coming back, dangling a room key over her head.

I get out of the car. “Nice.”

“Room six,” she says. “Right here.”

She goes in, leaving me to unload our bags from the car, drag them into room six.

The room is as expected. Wood-paneled walls. Matted carpet. An ancient TV. Furniture that looks like it’s held together with chewing gum. There are two double beds made up with paisley bedspreads, though I can’t distinguish between the pattern and the stains. There are several lamps, with their shades all covered in dust. There’s a ceiling fan that’s hanging loose, the wires visible. The room is stuffy, and it smells like mustard.

Naomi comes out of the bathroom, walks over to one of the beds, and lifts the covers to check the mattress for bedbugs.

“See any?”

“Surprisingly, no,” she says.

“Some bloodsuckers have higher standards.”

She waves me off. “It’s not that bad. I think it’s charming.”

I lock the door, secure the dead bolt, the chain. I pull the curtains across, releasing a dense cloud of filth and making the room go dark.

“How’s the bathroom?” I ask.

“It’s pretty clean.”

I see for myself. She’s not wrong. It is pretty clean. At least, cleaner than the rest of the place. There are two small spiders in the corner near the toilet. I let them be.

I stare at the toilet. I haven’t used one since before…

I sit down and wait for something to happen. Nothing does. I flush the toilet anyway. I wash my hands, splash some water on my face. Avoid the mirror not because of my reflection, but because of the absence of it.

Naomi lounges on one of the beds, shoeless. There’s blood on her tie-dyed sweat suit. I hadn’t noticed until now. Maybe it was a smart outfit choice after all.

“So…what did you say to Lee when you called him?” I ask, taking the other bed, the one closer to the window.

“Nothing about our exploits, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she says. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“He flies in today.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see him tonight. I know where he’s staying.”

“Do you know what you’re going to say to him?”

She slips under the covers, then turns on her side to face me. “Thanks for the memories. I’m about to fall off the face of the earth.”

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t know yet. I’m sad and I’m—I’m not entirely, like, processing any of this as reality. I know what needs to happen tonight, and I’m not ready. I love him. But at the same time…”

“At the same time what?”

“I’ve been with him since I was twenty-four years old. How do you even know if you still love someone for who they are, or if you love them out of habit?”

I don’t have an answer for her.

“We’ve always been touch and go; you know that. Sometimes I’ll look at him and think he’s my soul mate, and other times I wonder if he’s the worst thing to ever happen to me. If I’d be better off if I never met him. He takes so much energy, so much air. Things get bad and we fight, and I get resentful. Then, when things are good, it’s almost like we’re regressing or something. Like we keep each other from changing because we fell in love with the versions of who we used to be, who we were when we were younger, in our twenties. It’s this weird codependent arrested development. I know it isn’t healthy. I’ve tried to change the dynamic, but…Eh, whatever. Doesn’t matter anymore, right?”

“Why haven’t you talked to me about any of this?”

“I wanted to figure it out on my own before I dragged you into it,” she says, breaking eye contact and fluffing her pillow. Lying.

“The real reason.”

“I’ve tried. But…”

“But…?”

“I worried you’d encourage me to stay.”

“Why would you think that?” I ask, realizing it’s a stupid question as soon as it crosses my lips.

“Have you spoken to him?” she asks, pausing to yawn. “To Joel?”

“Um, yeah. I did. It’s done.”

“What do you mean? What did he say? What did you say?”

“I told him I wasn’t coming home.”

“Did you give a reason?”

“He gave me one.” I exhale, shake my head. “We have a doorbell camera. He had someone over Thursday night.”

“He did what ? That motherfucker. That piece of—”

I cut her off. “It’s fine. It’s over now. He’s not expecting me. Good timing, I guess.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“Numb,” I say, debating whether it’s grosser to lie on top of the bedspread or underneath it. I kick my shoes off and get under. “I feel completely numb. About him. About everything. Like you said, how are we supposed to process any of this?”

She doesn’t respond. When I look over at her, I see that her eyes are closed. She’s out.

Naomi has a long battery life, but when she goes down, she goes down hard and fast. She’ll wake up in eight hours fully charged.

She was right. I should have powered through my exhaustion last night, because now I’m bored cooped up in a motel room, with only my thoughts to keep me company, and my thoughts suck.

I get my phone out. It’s dead, and I let it stay dead. Better that I don’t check my messages—generic Happy birthday s from friends and coworkers, from my family—whom I’m not particularly close to. I wonder how long it will take them to notice I’m gone. When I don’t log in to work on Monday, will anyone clock my absence? Will it make any difference at all?

It’s too soon to miss anyone, to miss any of it. I wonder if anyone will miss me. The vanilla version I’d been living as for so long, anyway—mild mannered, true neutral. I filed down all my rough edges to fit in wherever, appease whoever, and maybe I made myself entirely forgettable in the process.

I look around this seedy motel room, and I wonder if the life I have to leave behind is that much better than the one I’m stuck with now.

Then I remember that I’m a killer.

—

I doze off eventually. When I wake up, I’m thirsty.

My skin is dry and flaky, my lips splitting.

“You’re fine,” I whisper to myself. “You’re fine.”

Naomi’s in the shower. I can hear the water running, and she’s singing to herself. “?‘Another night, another dream, but always you…’?”

I bury my face in my pillow. I get a musty whiff and remember that the case maybe hasn’t been washed ever.

It’s motivation for me to get out of bed. I check the alarm clock on the nightstand, but it’s broken. I shuffle over to the window and cautiously peel back the curtain. It’s dark out. It was dark when we checked in, but that was early-morning dark. This must be night dark.

For once I’m grateful it’s winter.

I look around the parking lot. There’s a blue hatchback, but it was there this morning, so no new cars. No new people. Nothing amiss. Except…

There’s a handprint on the window. Outside, on the other side of the glass. An outline in the grime.

Maybe it was there before? And even if it wasn’t, we’re at ground level, not like at the cottage. Anyone could have left it. That’s the rational explanation. The one that makes the most sense. Not that Henry followed us here all the way from New York to leave me a cryptic message in the form of a handprint.

“Hey,” Naomi says cheerily, catching me off guard.

I clap a hand over my heart. From my limited knowledge of vampire lore, I thought vampires didn’t have heartbeats, but I have one. There’s just enough of me that still feels human, feels normal, until the thirst asserts itself.

I clear my throat. “You startled me.”

“Sorry,” she says. She wears a fluffy white hotel robe.

“Where’s that from?”

“The Waterfront,” she says.

“You stole it?”

“They’ll charge the room,” she says. “Joel will pay for it. Don’t worry—I took one for you, too.”

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” she says. “How am I supposed to do my makeup if I can’t look in the mirror?”

“I can do it,” I say. I pull the curtain closed and turn my back to the window, to the handprint.

“What’s wrong?” Naomi asks. “You’re not upset about the robes, are you?”

“You don’t think they’d come after us, do you?”

“Who?”

“The vampires.”

She lugs her suitcase onto the bed and opens it. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. They’re vampires?”

“So are we.”

It’s strange how matter-of-fact this is. But we’re already past blood sucking and murder, so why wring our hands over it now?

“Did something happen?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “Just…paranoid, I guess.”

She gets out her makeup bag and waves me over to her.

“What was the deal with you and that guy?” she says, passing me a liquid liner.

“What guy?”

“The hot, weird one.”

“They’re all hot and weird,” I say, taking the cap off the liner. “Hold still.”

“Did you hook up?”

“No,” I say. “Look straight. We just kissed.”

She gasps. “Really?”

“I said, hold still.”

“Tell me, tell me,” she says, not holding still.

“It doesn’t matter. Everything that happened after is what matters.” Not wanting to talk or think about Henry, I change the subject. “Does Lee know you’re coming? Are you meeting him somewhere?”

“He rented a house,” she says. “For him and the band. We’ll go by. I’ll talk to him. Try to leave things in a place where he won’t ask too many questions. Won’t report me fucking missing or anything like that. Hey, you think he’ll notice if I repurpose Bogart’s goodbye dialogue from Casablanca ? If I go full Here’s lookin’ at you, kid? ”

“Probably not. As long as you don’t do the voice.”

“Eh. Too bad. My Bogart impression is top-tier. Uncanny.”

As I finish her winged liner, check to make sure it’s even, I notice her skin is dry like mine.

“Naomi?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you thirsty?”

She waits a long time to respond.