Chapter 24

24

The van reappears on our way back to the motel.

“Maybe it’s just driving around?” Naomi says, pulling into the parking lot. The van goes past, and we hold our breath until it’s out of sight.

“Wait,” I say. “You have a little…”

She still has some of Levi’s blood at the edge of her mouth. She licks it up. “Probably shouldn’t have bitten him.”

“At least you didn’t kill him.”

“Are you being a dick?”

“No. I’m just saying.”

“Right. I mean, maybe it’s good that I bit him,” she says. “He definitely won’t come after me now. He’ll be fine. He’ll rebound with some groupies. He’ll be just fine.”

“I’m sorry, Nay.”

She sighs. “I know. Me, too.”

She opens the door and steps out into the lot. I follow her.

“Van’s back,” she says, peering over her shoulder as she unlocks our room. “Don’t look.”

She ushers me inside, closes the door, and locks the dead bolt, secures the chain.

I pull the curtain back just enough for a single eyeball. “It’s turning in here.”

“Really? Shit.”

The van parks on the far side of the lot, near the rusty playground.

“Maybe we’ll get abducted on this trip after all,” she says.

“It’s them,” I say, the handprint on the window reaching into the corner of my eye.

“Who?”

“The vampires,” I say.

“Why are you so convinced?”

“Because…” I say, waving her in to show her the handprint.

“So?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Someone’s getting out,” she says, and I yank the curtain closed. “Hold on. Let’s see who it is. They already know we’re in here.”

She peeks behind the curtain. “Hmm. I can’t really tell.”

I poke my head over. It’s a man. His back is to us. He stands under a sputtering streetlamp. One second, he’s drenched in bright orangey light; another, he’s in the dark.

“Is he alone?” Naomi asks.

My heart thrums.

“What’s he doing just standing there? Should we go out?”

“No,” I say, pushing her back and closing the curtain. “Absolutely not.”

“Should I call Ilie?”

“Do you have his number, or was it in the phone that you threw out the car window?”

She opens the curtain. “There’s a chance I didn’t think that through.”

The man has moved closer to the motel, but he’s keeping his back to us. He wears a sweatshirt, hood up.

“Why is he walking backward?” Naomi asks.

I close the curtain. “They like games. What if they’re playing some weird cat-and-mouse game? What if they let us go so they could chase after us?”

Truth or dare .

“They had that guy locked in the basement. What if they torture people? What if that’s their thing?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she says, opening the curtain. She screams.

He’s at the window. He’s right outside.

He turns around.

It’s Ilie.

“Hello, loves.”

I close the curtain, check the dead bolt.

“What do you want?” I ask him through the door.

“We thought you might be thirsty,” he says.

Naomi and I look at each other. We are thirsty. So thirsty. But this doesn’t sit right with me.

“Why did you follow us?” With the aching in my throat it’s difficult to shout through the door.

“You don’t want to stay, but it is not good for you to be on your own,” he says. “You get those guys.”

“What?”

“Those guys. You get three guys. Second one very bad.”

“You’ve been watching us,” I say, clutching Naomi’s arm. Her expression is unreadable.

“Not the whole time,” he says.

Naomi laughs, and I smack her leg.

What? she mouths. That’s kind of funny.

They watched us murder, I mouth back.

She cocks her head.

“They saw us murder that guy,” I whisper.

“May I come in?” he asks. “I have a drink for you. To share. We got from hospital, not from human. Well, originally it came from human. They gave it on purpose. Not for this, but…”

“Leave it at the door,” I say, pinching my throat.

“You don’t want to hang out?” he asks.

“No.”

“That’s mean,” Naomi says.

I can’t with either of them.

“Leave it at the door. Then turn around, get back in the van, and drive away. Go home.”

“I will leave it,” he says. “But you are our responsibility. We look after you, like we look after each other. You want to do your own thing, that is okay. But we watch.”

He knocks on the door twice.

Naomi peeks behind the curtain. “He’s going back to the van. He left a cup.”

I undo the chain, unlock the door, open it just enough for me to stick my arm out and grab the cup—an ordinary travel tumbler with an extraordinary substance sloshing inside. I pull it into the room, barely get the door closed before I start drinking, sucking through the hard plastic straw.

It’s like my body rises to meet it. It’s so good. I soak it up. Succumb to the indulgence.

Naomi’s hands clamp over mine as she pulls the tumbler away from my mouth and toward hers. I don’t want to let it go. I don’t want to share.

“Sloane!” Naomi says, trying to pry it out of my hands. “Sloane! Save some for me! Please.”

Do I let it go? Or does she successfully wrestle it from me?

She unscrews the lid and tips the cup back. There isn’t much left. A sip at most.

Naomi sticks her tongue out, licks the inner rim of the cup.

I’m buzzing with the taste. Otherwise I might feel guilty for being greedy. Though why should I? We’re this way because of her. Because of her poor judgment, not mine. Why should I be punished? I’ve been so thirsty for so long. Why should I go on depriving myself?

“What was that?” she asks me.

Her voice sobers me up. And there’s the guilt, waiting for me in my right mind. “I’m sorry. I got carried away.”

“All right…” she says, giving me some legendary side-eye.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, setting the tumbler on the nightstand. “But for the record, can you acknowledge that your thirst is just as intense as mine?”

“What?” I say, pulling back the curtain to see if the van is still there. It is.

“You make it seem like I’m the only one who’s out of control. It’s bad for you, too.”

She is out of control. She’s never been in control. She lets her emotions drive, acts on impulse, on whims. That’s why her thirst is more dangerous than mine. I’m right about this. I know I am. But it’s not worth the argument.

“Yeah,” I say, and run my tongue over my teeth, searching for lingering flavor. “What are we going to do about that?”

I tap on the window.

“Why would we do anything about it? He brought us blood. They’re looking out for us.”

“You don’t find it creepy that they’re following us? That they know about what happened at the Waterfront? At the rest stop.”

I have a vision of the man we left in the woods, his body blue and ruined. Frost in his hair, in his eyelashes. If it snows again, will it cover him? Will it preserve him in the frightful state he’s in? When spring comes, will he thaw like meat? Will it be the smell that leads to his discovery? Will the cops find him before the animals do? Before something else in the woods helps itself to our leftovers?

The remorse should be consuming me, but it isn’t. His murder is the worst thing I’ve ever done, by far, and it just melts into the rest of my shame, my regret. Sinks into the tar pit that I slog through every day, that’s constantly rising, that will overtake me eventually. I can barely function with the calamities of this lifetime, the last thirty-six years. How am I supposed to go on existing forever?

Aging isn’t just about our bodies decaying while we’re still inside them. It’s about living with the accumulation of experiences. The heavy burden of the ugly ones, the longing for the beautiful.

“They could have stopped us from doing it, but they didn’t,” I say. “From killing that man.”

“Maybe because they saw he deserved it,” she says.

“Or maybe because they’re killers and they get off on this stuff,” I say. “What now, Nay? It’s nine o’clock. Do we pack up and go? Try to lose them? How did they find us in the first place? Did you notice the van at all last night?”

“No,” she says, picking up the tumbler and staring inside it, as if it will have magically refilled. “Do you think they have more?”

“Don’t you see what they’re doing? They’re making it so we rely on them.”

“Or they’re being nice.”

“I was awake while they changed us. You weren’t.”

“Can we not fight? This night is shitty enough already.”

I sit down on my unmade bed. “I think we should leave. Drive until morning. We’re sitting ducks here.”

“Whatever you want,” she says, tossing me the car keys. “You can drive. I don’t feel up to it, probably because I’m thirsty, and because, if you recall, I just cut ties with the person I spent the last twelve years of my life with, which was pretty fucking hard and ended pretty fucking poorly.”

“I told you seeing Lee was a terrible idea,” I say, because I’m not done fighting. Because I have the energy, because I’m full of blood and resentment.

“You did. But you know what? If you’d asked me to take you to see Joel, I wouldn’t have said anything. Not a word. I would have taken you. And when you were done with your goodbyes, I would have kicked him in the balls so hard that he’d see God.”

Now I remember why I don’t pick fights with Naomi. She has a way of winning.

She takes her sweet time packing up, getting her suitcase ready. I compulsively check behind the curtain. The van hasn’t moved. I wonder why Henry wasn’t the one to come to the door. I know he’s here, and that he wants me to know he’s here. He left me the handprint. He’s not finished with his playground games.

When she’s done packing, she pulls up her suitcase handle and opens the door, heads out to the car.

“I need you to unlock it,” she calls from the parking lot.

I take one last look around the motel room, and suddenly I wish we weren’t leaving. It’s grimy and ugly and the perfect place for us, for the versions of us we are right now. I know that wherever we find ourselves next, we’ll be different once we get there. I’m afraid of meeting our future selves. Afraid of what they’ll be capable of.

Naomi left the tumbler on the nightstand, so I go pick it up, then get my suitcase and walk out of the room, letting the door shut itself behind me.

I unlock the car.

“I’m dropping off the room key,” Naomi says, leaving her suitcase for me to put in the trunk. It weighs fifty tons.

She comes back and hops into the passenger seat. “The roads are icy.”

“Got it.” I start the car to a fun surprise. “Nay. It’s on Empty.”

“Yeah. We need gas. So?”

“Nothing,” I say, backing up, watching the van in the rearview. I fully expect it to follow us out of the parking lot, but it doesn’t. It stays parked there.

And I’m reluctant to admit that part of me is disappointed. That maybe part of me, some part I’ve either long forgotten or just discovered, likes being chased.