Chapter 30

30

The journey down the fire escape is even more trying than the journey up. I’m light-headed, and I keep wanting to turn around, to go help those people—or the man who’s still alive, at least. But I know I can’t save him. And even if I were to go back up those stairs, I’d probably just end up doing something I’d regret. Draining him.

Maybe he’d be relieved to die, would welcome the release.

Maybe that’s just what I’d tell myself.

When we get to the bottom of the fire escape, Henry offers me a smoke. The two of us hang back while Ms.Alice heads over to the camper, her hands on her hips.

“You shouldn’t wander off, Sloane,” he says.

“I…She knew all of your names,” I whisper, my voice rough. “She knew you.”

“We’ve met before,” he says.

“Did you…Do you… know her? Know what goes on here?”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, lighting my cigarette for me.

“I don’t know what to say.” I take a long drag.

“Some like us don’t stop at blood. Once they develop a taste…” He pauses, shaking his head. “You’ve met someone like Alice before. A feeder. The night we met. The man in the cellar. We’d encountered him in passing. When you live as long as us, paths cross. We were in New York and needed a place to stay. When we arrived at the house, we found he’d been…he’d broken a rule. That’s why he was down there. That’s why we deprived him of blood. Retribution.”

“What rule?”

“He’d taken a girl. Several girls. Young girls.”

“Christ,” I say, collapsing onto the bottom step of the fire escape. “This just keeps getting worse.”

“But we’re not like that,” Henry says, sitting next to me. “That’s not how we live.”

“Okay, but not being cannibals or child murderers is a pretty low bar.”

“When you put it that way…”

“It’s not the phrasing. It’s the truth,” I say, anxiously pawing at my face. “What I just saw up there—what am I supposed to do with that? With knowing she’s out here eating people. I just have to go on with this knowledge? Forever?”

“There are many horrors in this world we have to live with.”

“I know. But before, I could be the victim,” I say, surprising myself. I hadn’t realized it until it came flying out of my mouth. Hadn’t realized that part of me liked being cheated on, because it gave me an excuse to feel sorry for myself, and ever since my fall, I’ve looked for any excuse for self-pity, any opportunity to feel like one mistake cost me everything, like the world was a ruthless and unfair place and there was nothing I could do about it, because admitting defeat felt like it protected me from losing more than I already had. But now I’ve made more than one mistake, and my whole narrative is fucked. “I’m just overwhelmed. And—and what she said about me. About…”

I can’t repeat it, the insinuation that I might turn into what she is. That I could ever let my thirst bring me to the point of such depraved overindulgence.

“You can’t listen to her,” he says.

“It scares me,” I say, my voice small and quaky. “The thirst scares me.”

“Let me show you,” he says, kneeling in front of me.

“Show me what?”

“How we live without killing. Without hurting anyone. How we get our blood,” he says. “We’ll find a blood bank nearby, a hospital. We’ve done it countless times before. Not a drop of blood given unwillingly. I promise. Let me do this for you.”

“Why?” I ask, my exhaustion giving way to my cynicism. “Why are you trying to be good to me? Is it guilt? Don’t you get it? Your words, your promises—they don’t mean anything. I don’t know how to believe you, how to trust you. I don’t even know how to trust myself.”

He shakes his head, pushes his hair out of his face. “You ask me why. Do you not see it? Do you not feel it? Am I imagining this? What’s between us? If I am, tell me.”

I sigh. “No. I…”

“How can I earn your trust?” He puts his hands on my knees and pulls them apart, and he leans into the space, into me, and he kisses me. “This way? Will you trust my mouth? Will you allow me to prove myself? Prove that I mean what I say. May I?”

It feels unnatural to release the millstone of cynicism and grant myself permission to be in this moment, not to think of circumstance, of consequence, of fear or shame, the potential of future shame. Unnatural, awkward, wrong. So wrong.

But then, all of a sudden, it isn’t anymore. Or it is but I just don’t care.

“Go on, then,” I say, my throat still dry and the words raspy and hushed. “Prove it.”

His hands slide under my shirt, his skin on my skin. He unbuttons my jeans, kisses down my side, and then sinks between my legs. Right out in the open, at the bottom of the fire escape, in the shadow of the coaling tower.

My back arches as the rapture jolts my body, my being, and I look up at the dark velvet sky, manage to clear my mind of everything except this: How do we know the difference between a curse and a cure?

—

By the time we get back to the camper, it’s no longer spewing fumes into the atmosphere. Ms.Alice appears to have fixed it. She chats up Naomi, who looks perfectly content to be in conversation with her. Charmed, even. Blissfully ignorant of what I know about Alice. Ilie sits with Elisa on the steps to one of the abandoned stores, and Tatiana is a few feet away, drinking what I assume is blood out of a flask.

“Look who it is. And here I thought you two had gotten lost,” Ms.Alice says, turning to me and Henry. “Y’all owe me some thanks. You’ll be able to drive on outta here. Though I don’t know how far you’ll get. The sun won’t wait for you, you know.”

“Thank you, Ms.Alice,” Elisa says, standing and walking toward the camper.

“Yes. Thank you very, very much,” Ilie says, following Elisa.

“Aw,” Alice says, shuffling over and pulling one of Elisa’s curls straight.

“So,” Naomi says to me, “where’d you disappear to?”

I just shake my head.

“We’re leaving,” Henry says, going to open the van’s driver’s-side door. It’s locked.

“Hold on, now. Not so fast,” Ms.Alice says, dangling the keys to the camper over her head, unleashing something rank and insidious that permeates the air. “?’Cause I ain’t do it for nothin’. Last time it was a favor, and I was happy to do it. But you said you’d come back to see me sometime, share a meal. You lied . So this time—this time I want something in return. And I want it now.”

“What?” Henry says, with a grimness that startles me.

“Well, since I’m such a sweet old lady, I’ll give you a choice. You can either give me all the blood you got on ya, and I know ya got some because your little birdie told me,” she says, pointing to me, making me instantly queasy, “or…I’ll take this one.”

She sidles up to Naomi, who goes rigid. Alice reaches out and lifts her chin. Gently at first. But then she clamps on, grabbing Naomi’s jaw. “I like the look of ya. I reckon you look like I did once upon a time, years and years and years and years ago.”

“You can let go of her now,” I say, my voice doing that weird thing it did with the gas-station clerk. I sound different. Frightening.

Ms.Alice doesn’t budge. She lets her eyes shift to the side, to me. She smiles a syrupy smile, but her eyes flare red. “Oh dear, is that how you speak to your elders? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Alice releases her grip on Naomi’s jaw, begins to stroke her hair. I hadn’t noticed until now how long her fingernails are. How sharp. “Was I too rough with ya, sweetheart? I’m sorry. You’ll have to forgive me. I ain’t used to people. I’m so lonely up here. So lonely, and with so much time to be lonely.”

“It’s all right, Ms.Alice,” Naomi says, instantly forgiving her, granting her the benefit of the doubt. To Naomi, Ms.Alice is a wounded bird. A creature deserving of empathy.

“Such a dear,” Alice says. “You want to stay here with me, sweetheart? I’ll teach ya how to be. How to really be. This crowd doesn’t get it like me. It’s good huntin’ around here. We could eat good together.”

“No,” Henry says vitriolically.

“No?” Ms.Alice says. “I wasn’t talkin’ to you, was I?”

“We won’t be separated,” he says. “Naomi is with us. We’ll give you two bags. That’s all we can spare.”

Ms.Alice’s eyes burn red again. This time they stay that way. “That wasn’t one of the choices. No deal.”

Tatiana tucks her flask into her pocket and struts right up to Ms.Alice. “That’s our best offer. I suggest you take it.”

“Or what?” Ms.Alice gives a brief, bitter laugh. “No one’s got any morals these days. No sense of gratitude or respect. But I’m stickin’ to my guns. I get what I want, or you don’t get your vehicle.”

It happens so fast. Tatiana lunges for the keys, and Alice backhands her. I barely process the shock of the slap before Tatiana grabs Ms.Alice by the throat.

Alice scratches at Tatiana’s face, so Henry takes her wrists, holds them behind her. I have to remind myself that they’re not violently assaulting a helpless old woman. It’s not what it looks like. But Naomi doesn’t understand this. She didn’t see what I saw, doesn’t know about Ms.Alice’s appetites.

“Hey!” she says.

Ms.Alice’s red eyes shoot over to Naomi. There’s an opportunity for manipulation, and she doesn’t hesitate. “Please. They’re hurting me.”

“Let go of her!” Naomi shouts, pulling at Henry’s arm. “I’ll stay! I’ll stay. I’ll…”

Distracted by Naomi’s declaration, Henry must loosen his grip, because Ms.Alice’s hands break free. They’re quick, flittering up to Tatiana’s face. To her eyes.

Ms.Alice’s thumbnails are atrociously overgrown, impossibly pointed. Tatiana screams, and then Ms.Alice is free and Tatiana is on the ground, silk pajamas soaking through with snow as she holds her face in her hands. She moans to herself, speaking in French.

“My girl,” Ms.Alice says to Naomi, smiling sweetly again, arms open wide in anticipation of an embrace.

Naomi stumbles backward.

“Come on, now, darlin’. Oh, I think you’ll do quite nicely. Anyone happens upon you in these woods, they’ll be happy to follow you anywhere, I reckon.” With her smiling like that, I can see there’s skin between her teeth.

I wonder if Naomi sees it, too.

“She’s not staying,” I say. “We’ll give you the blood. You can take the blood.”

Tatiana spits at the ground. Her eyes are intact but a goopy pink, her face streamed with black mascara. She looks to Henry and says something to him in a foreign language.

“Here!” Ilie says. He and Elisa have the cooler. They open it, toss a bag of blood at Alice’s feet, then another. But she doesn’t seem interested anymore. She’s focused on Naomi.

“I’ll stay,” Naomi says. “It’s fine. I’ll stay.”

“What are you doing?” I ask her. “Stop. I’m not leaving you here. Not with her.”

“What does it matter?” she says, uncharacteristically resigned.

“You heard her. She’s stayin’,” Ms.Alice says. Her body shakes, and suddenly she has Naomi by the hair, pulling her toward the woods. “No changing your mind on me, darlin’.”

The first time Naomi was arrested, it was for assault. She came to my dorm to comfort me after Smith circulated the naked pictures I’d sent him. She told me she was going to step out to smoke, but she went and found Smith and punched him in the face and smashed his phone. This all happened outside, on the street, so instead of the campus security it was NYPD who showed up, and they didn’t exactly care that Naomi was a nineteen-year-old girl. I finally emerged from my dorm when a classmate alerted me to the situation. The whole incident only brought me more notoriety at school, and sometimes I wonder if that’s what really set me off self-medicating. Because it’s always been easier to blame Naomi. Because whenever she tries to save me, she makes things worse.

But she does try to save me. It can be a burden to be loved the way she loves me. I’ll never be sure if I deserve it. I can only love her back the best I can.

Ms.Alice yanks her hard by the hair, and Naomi winces, and then I’m there, and I’ve got Ms.Alice’s arm in my mouth, and I bite down with all the force I have, and she screams this awful scream and falls back away from me.

Her blood is in my mouth, and it tastes like nothing, but that only makes me angry. Resentful. Rabid. Makes me want to chew her up and spit her out.

“Y’all belong on leashes,” Ms.Alice says, cradling her arm, pressing on the wound to stanch the bleeding.

I remember what Henry said. We bleed. There is blood in our veins. We have thick skin, but we aren’t impenetrable. We need to be careful; we do not have much to spare. It’s painful to lose.

“Fine,” Ms.Alice barks, tossing the keys and scooping up the two bags of blood that lie in the snow. “Get outta here. Get! But don’t come back again. I’m tired….”

Her voice breaks, and I feel sorry for her. I shouldn’t. She’s a murderous cannibal. But she’s alone. And she’s been alone for who knows how long? She could be alone forever. Maybe loneliness makes monsters of us all.

Maybe it’s no excuse.

The bland stickiness of her blood lingers on my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I’m disgusted by it, and at myself for attacking her like that. I took from her body, a body she feeds with bodies. I bit into her. I cannibalized a cannibal.

With a final cry, Ms.Alice scuttles toward the hills. I see her red eyes watching us from the distant trees.

There’s a moment of silence before Henry reaches down, picks the keys up off the ground, and says, “Let’s go.”

Elisa puts her arm around Naomi and loads her into the camper.

Ilie helps Tatiana to her feet. She brushes the snow from her legs and comes toward me.

“You are a savage,” she says, before kissing me on the cheek. I’m not sure when she had her change of heart. Not sure when these strangers started to feel like family.

She gets into the camper, then Ilie. Henry waits for me. I walk past him without eye contact, embarrassed by my violent outburst, my savagery. He sits beside me inside the camper, puts a hand on my thigh. A simple act of reassurance that could alleviate my shame if I let it.

“Everyone in?” Elisa asks from the front seat.

“We’re here,” Ilie says. “Let’s go!”

I’m fatigued from the scuffle, and I can no longer support the weight of my own head on my neck, so I rest it on Henry’s shoulder.

“Sometimes there are weirdos,” Ilie says. “Ms.Alice is weirdo. Not so good with people. In more way than one.”

“Mm,” Naomi says, shuddering. “How come she doesn’t turn someone? Make herself a friend?”

“She’s not old enough,” Henry says.

“But she’s old,” Naomi says.

“In appearance. She was turned late. Cruelly. She was abandoned by the one who changed her. Left to fend for herself. She let her thirst consume her. She still has not learned the restraint it takes to turn someone. It takes centuries to master, and it can only be done so many times. When you turn someone, you give them part of yourself. Your essence. Your soul. If you give away too much, there will be nothing left.”

I almost ask him how many people he’s turned but decide I don’t want to know.

“Right,” Naomi says.

“Why did you volunteer to stay?” I ask. “Why would you do that?”

She shrugs. “If it was gonna be a whole big thing, I figured it’d be, like, easier if I just hung out with her for a while.”

“She fucking eats people,” I hear myself say. There’s a tense pause, and I’m nauseous remembering the thick, rubbery texture of Ms.Alice’s skin as I bit down through it.

“Wait. What?” Naomi asks. “What did you just say?”

“Never mind. You’re better off not knowing.”

“You’re not going to tell me?” she says, her tone combative. “Okay. You know why I volunteered to stay? Because you don’t seem to want me around, Sloane. You’ve admitted you think all of this is my fault. And you’ve ditched me two nights in a row now. Just gone off—”

“I guess now you know what it feels like.”

“Really? Really?”

“How can you say I don’t want you around? You have no idea what I just saved you from.”

“I guess now you know what it feels like. What I’ve been doing for you for the last twenty fucking years.”

“Forget it,” I say. “Just forget it.”

“Okay, sure. Sure, Sloane. Let’s just bury it and see how that works out.”

“Let’s.”

“Do not fight, loves,” Ilie says.

“We’re not fighting,” we snap in unison.

Ilie raises his eyebrows, puts his hands up in surrender.

“Sorry, Ilie,” I say.

Naomi sighs and lies down, using Ilie’s lap as a pillow. She closes her eyes, and he plays with her hair.

After a while, once Naomi starts softly snoring, Henry asks me, “Are you all right?”

“No,” I say. “No, I’m not.”

I went through a phase when I read obsessively about the Donner Party. Cannibalism seemed so abstract, about as real to me as Santa Claus. To witness it was another bend in my reality that I’m not totally sure I can withstand. And this tension with Naomi, the wedge our thirst is driving between us, feels just as dangerous as the thirst itself.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

“I’m thinking I wish that never happened,” I say. “That I didn’t know about Alice or feeders. That I didn’t attack her like that. Bite her like that.”

“Why? You were defending your friend.”

“Yeah, but…” I want to believe there’s a way forward here. Buy into this teenage dream of freedom and love and sex and friendship and excitement and no responsibility, no consequence, no guilt, no shame. I want to believe in a genuine second chance that won’t end in disaster. But what if existing this way is too much for me to handle? What if the blood stops going down so smoothly, or if it starts going down so smoothly that I forget what it is that I’m subsisting on? What if it costs me Naomi? What then?

“I promised you. I will show you how we can live,” he says, raising my hand to his lips, and he kisses my knuckles. “Will you let me? Will you trust me? Will you try?”

I want to, but it’s too painful. And he can’t promise me that I will ever learn how to live with myself.