HER DRIVING WAS JUST FINE, I HAD TO ADMIT—WHEN SHE KEPT THE speed
reasonable. Like so many things, it seemed to be effortless for her. She barely looked at the road, yet the truck was always perfectly centered in her lane. She drove one-handed, because I was holding her other hand between us. Sometimes she gazed into the setting sun, which glittered off her skin in ruby-tinged shimmers. Sometimes she glanced at me—stared into my eyes or looked down at our hands twined together.
She had tuned the radio to an oldies station, and she sang along with a song I’d never heard. Her voice was as perfect as everything else about her, soaring an octave above the melody. She knew every line.
“You like fifties music?” I asked.
“Music in the fifties was good. Much better than the sixties, or the seventies, ugh!” She shuddered delicately. “The eighties were bearable.”
“Are you ever going to tell me how old you are?”
I wondered if my question would upset her buoyant mood, but she just smiled.
“Does it matter very much?”
“No, but I want to know everything about you.”
“I wonder if it will upset you,” she said to herself. She stared straight into the sun; a minute passed.
“Try me,” I finally said.
She looked into my eyes, seeming to forget the road completely for a while. Whatever she saw must have encouraged her. She turned to face the
last bloodred rays of the dying sun and sighed.
“I was born in Chicago in 1901.” She paused and glanced at me from the corner of her eye. My face was carefully arranged, unsurprised, patient for the rest. She smiled a tiny smile and continued. “Carine found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and I was dying of the Spanish influenza.”
She heard my gasp and looked up into my eyes again.
“I don’t remember it very well. It was a long time ago, and human memories fade.” She seemed lost in thought for a minute, but before I could prompt her, she went on. “I do remember how it felt when Carine saved me. It’s not an easy thing, not something you could forget.”
“Your parents?”
“They had already died from the disease. I was alone. That’s why she chose me. In all the chaos of the epidemic, no one would ever realize I was gone.”
“How did she… save you?”
A few seconds passed, and when she spoke again she seemed to be choosing her words very carefully.
“It was difficult. Not many of us have the restraint necessary to accomplish it. But Carine has always been the most humane, the most compassionate of all of us.… I don’t think you could find her equal anywhere in history.” She paused. “For me, it was merely very, very painful.”
She set her jaw, and I could tell she wasn’t going to say anything more about it. I filed it away for later. My curiosity on the subject was hardly idle. There were lots of angles I needed to think through on this particular issue, angles that were only beginning to occur to me.
Her soft voice interrupted my thoughts. “She acted from loneliness. That’s usually the reason behind the choice. I was the first in Carine’s family, though she found Earnest soon after. He fell from a cliff. They took him straight to the hospital morgue, though, somehow, his heart was still beating.”
“So you have to be dying, then.…”
“No, that’s just Carine. She would never do that to someone who had another choice, any other choice.” The respect in her voice was profound whenever she spoke of her adoptive mother. “It is easier, she says, though,
if the heart is weak.” She stared at the now-dark road, and I could feel the subject closing again.
“And Eleanor and Royal?”
“Carine brought Royal into our family next. I didn’t realize till much later that she was hoping he would be to me what Earnest was to her—she was careful with her thoughts around me.” She rolled her eyes. “But he was never more than a brother. It was only two years later that he found Eleanor. He was hunting—we were in Appalachia at the time—and found a bear about to finish her off. He carried her back to Carine, more than a hundred miles, afraid he wouldn’t be able to do it himself. I’m only beginning to guess how difficult that journey was for him.” She threw a pointed glance in my direction and raised our hands, still folded together, to brush her cheek against my hand.
“But he made it.”
“Yes. He saw something in her face that made him strong enough. And they’ve been together ever since. Sometimes they live separately from us, as a married couple. But the younger we pretend to be, the longer we can stay in any given place. Forks is perfect in many ways, so we all enrolled in high school.” She laughed. “I suppose we’ll have to go to the wedding in a few years. Again.”
“Archie and Jessamine?”
“Archie and Jessamine are two very rare creatures. They both developed a conscience, as we refer to it, with no outside guidance. Jessamine belonged to another… family, a very different kind of family. She became depressed, and she wandered on her own. Archie found her. Like me, he has certain gifts.”
“Really?” I interrupted, fascinated. “But you said you were the only one who could hear people’s thoughts.”
“That’s true. He knows other things. He sees things—things that might happen, things that are coming. But it’s very subjective. The future isn’t set in stone. Things change.”
Her jaw set when she said that, and her eyes darted to my face and away so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I’d only imagined it.
“What kinds of things does he see?”
“He saw Jessamine and knew that she was looking for him before she knew it herself. He saw Carine, and our family, and they came together to
find us. He’s most sensitive to non-humans. He always knows, for example, when another group of our kind is coming near. And any threat they may pose.”
“Are there a lot of… your kind?” I was surprised. How many of them could walk around with us all totally oblivious?
My mind got caught on one word she’d said. Threat. It was the first time she’d ever said anything to hint that her world wasn’t just dangerous for humans. It made me anxious, and I was about to ask a new question, but she was already answering my first.
“No, not many. But most won’t settle in any one place. Only those like us, who’ve given up hunting you people”—a sly glance in my direction
—“can live together with humans for any length of time. We’ve only found one other family like ours, in a small village in Alaska. We lived together for a time, but there were so many of us that we became too noticeable. Those of us who live… differently, tend to band together.”
“And the others?”
“Nomads, for the most part. We’ve all lived that way at times. It gets tedious, like anything else. But we run across the others now and then, because most of us prefer the North.”
“Why is that?”
We were parked in front of my house now, and she turned off the truck. The silence that followed its roar felt intense. It was very dark; there was no moon. The porch light was off, so I knew my dad wasn’t home yet.
“Did you have your eyes open this afternoon?” she teased. “Do you think I could walk down the street in the sunlight without causing traffic accidents?”
I thought to myself that she could stop traffic even without all the pyrotechnics.
“There’s a reason why we chose the Olympic Peninsula, one of the most sunless places in the world. It’s nice to be able to go outside in the day. You wouldn’t believe how tired you can get of nighttime in eighty-odd years.”
“So that’s where the legends came from?” “Probably.”
“And Archie came from another family, like Jessamine?”
“No, and that is a mystery. Archie doesn’t remember his human life at all. And he doesn’t know who created him. He awoke alone. Whoever made
him walked away, and none of us understand why, or how, he could. If Archie hadn’t had that other sense, if he hadn’t seen Jessamine and Carine and known that he would someday become one of us, he probably would have turned into a total savage.”
There was so much to think through, so much I still wanted to ask. But just then my stomach growled. I’d been so interested, I hadn’t even noticed I was hungry. I realized now that I was starving.
“I’m sorry, I’m keeping you from dinner.” “I’m fine, really.”
“I don’t spend a lot of time around people who eat food. I forget.”
“I want to stay with you.” It was easier to say in the darkness, knowing how my voice would betray me, my hopeless addiction to her.
“Can’t I come in?” she asked.
“Would you like to?” I couldn’t picture it, a goddess sitting in my dad’s shabby kitchen chair.
“Yes, if you don’t mind.” I smiled. “I do not.”
I climbed out of the truck and she was already there; then she flitted ahead and disappeared. The lights turned on inside.
She met me at the door. It was so surreal to see her inside my house, framed by the boring physical details of my humdrum life. I remembered a game my mother used to play with me when I was maybe four or five. One of these things is not like the others.
“Did I leave that unlocked?” I wondered. “No, I used the key from under the eave.”
I hadn’t thought I’d used that key in front of her. I remembered how she’d found my truck key, and shrugged.
“You’re hungry, right?” And she led the way to the kitchen, as if she’d been here a million times before. She turned on the kitchen light and then sat in the same chair I’d just tried to picture her in. The kitchen didn’t look so dingy anymore. But maybe that was because I couldn’t really look at anything but her. I stood there for a moment, trying to wrap my mind around her presence here in the middle of mundania.
“Eat something, Beau.”
I nodded and turned to scavenge. There was lasagna left over from last night. I put a square on a plate, changed my mind, and added the rest that
was in the pan, then set the plate in the microwave. I washed the pan while the microwave revolved, filling the kitchen with the smell of tomatoes and oregano. My stomach growled again.
“Hmm,” she said. “What’s that?”
“I’m going to have to do a better job in the future.”
I laughed. “What could you possibly do better than you already do?” “Remember that you’re human. I should have, I don’t know, packed a
picnic or something today.”
The microwave dinged and I pulled the plate out, then set it down quickly when it burned my hand.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I found a fork and started eating. I was really hungry. The first bite scalded my mouth, but I kept chewing.
“Does that taste good?” she asked.
I swallowed. “I’m not sure. I think I just burned my taste buds off. It tasted good yesterday.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“Do you ever miss food? Ice cream? Peanut butter?”
She shook her head. “I hardly remember food. I couldn’t even tell you what my favorites were. It doesn’t smell… edible now.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
“It’s not such a huge sacrifice.” She said it sadly, like there were other things on her mind, sacrifices that were huge.
I used the dish towel as a hot pad and carried the plate to the table so I could sit by her.
“Do you miss other parts about being human?”
She thought about that for a second. “I don’t actually miss anything, because I’d have to remember it to be able to miss it, and like I said, my human life is hard to remember. But there are things I think I’d like. I suppose you could say things I was jealous of.”
“Like what?”
“Sleep is one. Never-ending consciousness gets tedious. I think I’d enjoy temporary oblivion. It looks interesting.”
I ate a few bites, thinking about that. “Sounds hard. What do you do all night?”
She hesitated, then pursed her lips. “Do you mean in general?”
I wondered why she sounded like she didn’t want to answer. Was it too broad a question?
“No, you don’t have to be general. Like, what are you going to do tonight after you leave?”
It was the wrong question. I could feel my high start to slip. She was going to have to leave. It didn’t matter how short the separation was—I dreaded it.
She didn’t seem to like the question, either, at first I thought for the same reason. But then her eyes flashed to my face and away, like she was uncomfortable.
“What?”
She made a face. “Do you want a pleasant lie or a possibly disturbing truth?”
“The truth,” I said quickly, though I wasn’t entirely sure.
She sighed. “I’ll come back here after you and your father are asleep.
It’s sort of my routine lately.”
I blinked. Then I blinked again. “You come here?”
“Almost every night.” “Why?”
“You’re interesting when you sleep,” she said casually. “You talk.”
My mouth popped open. Heat flashed up my neck and into my face. I knew I talked in my sleep, of course; my mother teased me about it. I hadn’t thought it was something I needed to worry about here.
She watched my reaction, staring up at me apprehensively from under her lashes.
“Are you very angry with me?”
Was I? I didn’t know. The potential for humiliation was strong. And I didn’t understand—she’d been listening to me babble in my sleep from where? The window? I couldn’t understand.
“How do you… Where do you… What did I…?” I couldn’t finish any of my thoughts.
She put her hand on my cheek. The blood under her fingers felt burning hot next to her cold hand. “Don’t be upset. I didn’t mean any harm. I promise, I was very much in control of myself. If I’d thought there was any
danger, I would have left immediately. I just… wanted to be where you were.”
“I… That’s not what I’m worried about.” “What are you worried about?”
“What did I say?”
She smiled. “You miss your mother. When it rains, the sound makes you restless. You used to talk about home a lot, but it’s less often now. Once you said, ‘It’s too green.’” She laughed softly, hoping not to offend me again.
“Anything else?” I demanded.
She knew what I was getting at. “You did say my name,” she admitted. I sighed in defeat. “A lot?”
“Define ‘a lot.’” “Oh no,” I groaned.
Like it was easy, natural, she put her arms around my shoulders and leaned her head against my chest. Automatically, my arms came up to wrap around her. To hold her there.
“Don’t be self-conscious,” she whispered. “You already told me that you dream about me, remember?”
“That’s different. I knew what I was saying.”
“If I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I’m not ashamed of
it.”
I stroked her hair. I guessed I really didn’t mind, when it came down to
it. It wasn’t like I expected her to follow normal human rules anyway. The rules she’d made for herself seemed like enough.
“I’m not ashamed,” I whispered.
She hummed, almost like a purr, her cheek pressed over my heart.
Then we both heard the sound of tires on the brick driveway, saw the headlights flash through the front windows, down the hall to us. I jumped, and dropped my arms as she pulled away.
“Do you want your father to know that I’m here?” she asked. I tried to think it through quickly. “Um…”
“Another time, then…” And I was alone. “Edythe?” I whispered.
I heard a quiet laugh, and then nothing else. My father’s key turned in the door.
“Beau?” he called. I remembered finding that funny before; who else would it be? Suddenly he didn’t seem so far off base.
“In here.”
Was my voice too agitated? I took another bite of my lasagna so I could be chewing when he came in. His footsteps sounded extra noisy after I’d spent the day with Edythe.
“Did you take all the lasagna?” he asked, looking at my plate. “Oh, sorry. Here, have some.”
“No worries, Beau. I’ll make myself a sandwich.” “Sorry,” I mumbled again.
Charlie banged around the kitchen getting what he needed. I worked on eating my giant plate of food as fast as was humanly possible while not choking to death. I was thinking about what Edythe had just said—Do you want your father to know that I’m here? Which was not the same as Do you want your father to know that I was here? in the past tense. So did that mean she hadn’t actually left? I hoped so.
Sandwich in hand, Charlie sat in the chair across from me. It was hard to imagine Edythe sitting in the same place just minutes ago. Charlie fit. The memory of her was like a dream that couldn’t possibly have been real.
“How was your day? Did you get everything done that you wanted to?” “Um, not really. It was… too nice out to stay indoors. Were the fish
biting?”
“Yep. They like the good weather, too.”
I scraped the last of the lasagna into one huge mouthful and started chewing.
“Got plans for tonight?” he asked suddenly.
I shook my head, maybe a little too emphatically. “You look kinda keyed up,” he noted.
Of course he would have to pay attention tonight. I swallowed. “Really?”
“It’s Saturday,” he mused. I didn’t respond.
“I guess you’re missing that dance tonight.…” “As intended,” I said.
He nodded. “Sure, dancing, I get it. But maybe next week—you could take that Newton girl out for dinner or something. Get out of the house.
Socialize.”
“I told you, she’s dating my friend.”
He frowned. “Well, there’re lots of other fish in the sea.” “Not at the rate you’re going.”
He laughed. “I do my best.… So you’re not going out tonight?” he asked again.
“Nowhere to go,” I told him. “Besides, I’m tired. I’m just going to go to bed early again.”
I got up and took my plate to the sink.
“Uh-huh,” he said, chewing thoughtfully. “None of the girls in town are your type, eh?”
I shrugged as I scrubbed the plate.
I could feel him staring at me, and I tried really hard to keep the blood out of my neck. I wasn’t sure I was succeeding.
“Don’t be too hard on a small town,” he said. “I know we don’t have the variety of a big city—”
“There’s plenty of variety, Dad. Don’t worry about me.”
“Okay, okay. None of my business anyway.” He sounded kind of dejected.
I sighed. “Well, I’m done. I’ll see you in the morning.” “’Night, Beau.”
I tried to make my footsteps drag as I walked up the stairs, like I was super tired. I wondered if he bought my bad acting. I hadn’t actually lied to him or anything. I definitely wasn’t planning on going out tonight.
I shut my bedroom door loud enough for him to hear downstairs, then sprinted as quietly as I could to the window. I shoved it open and leaned out into the dark. I couldn’t see anything, just the shadow of the treetops.
“Edythe?” I whispered, feeling completely idiotic.
The quiet, laughing response came from behind me. “Yes?”
I spun around so fast I knocked a book off my desk. It fell with a thud to the floor.
She was lying across my bed, hands behind her head, ankles crossed, a huge dimpled smile on her face. She looked the color of frost in the darkness.
“Oh!” I breathed, reaching out to grab the desk for support. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Just give me a second to restart my heart.”
She sat up—moving slowly like she did when she was either trying to act human or trying not to startle me—and dangled her legs over the edge of the bed. She patted the space next to her.
I walked unsteadily to the bed and sat down beside her. She put her hand on mine.
“How’s your heart?”
“You tell me—I’m sure you hear it better than I do.” She laughed quietly.
We sat there for a moment in silence, both listening to my heartbeat slow. I thought about Edythe in my room… and my father’s suspicious questions… and my lasagna breath.
“Can I have a minute to be human?” “Certainly.”
I stood, and then looked at her, sitting there all perfect on the edge of my bed, and I thought that maybe I was just hallucinating everything.
“You’ll be here when I get back, right?” “I won’t move a muscle,” she promised.
And then she became totally motionless, a statue again, perched on the edge of my bed.
I grabbed my pajamas out of their drawer and hurried to the bathroom, banging the door so Charlie would know it was occupied.
I brushed my teeth twice. Then I washed my face and traded clothes. I always just wore a pair of holey sweatpants and an old t-shirt to bed—it was from a barbecue place that my mom liked, and it had a pig smiling between two buns. I wished I had something less… me. But I really hadn’t been expecting guests, and then it was probably dumb to worry anyway. If she hung out here at night, she already knew what I wore to sleep.
I brushed my teeth one more time.
When I opened the door, I had another small heart attack. Charlie was at the top of the stairs; I almost walked into him.
“Huh!” I coughed out.
“Oh, sorry, Beau. Didn’t mean to scare you.” I took a deep breath. “I’m good.”
He looked at my pajamas, and then made a little harrumph sound in the back of his throat like he was surprised.
“You heading to bed, too?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess. I’ve got an early one again tomorrow.” “Okay. ’Night.”
“Yeah.”
I walked into my room, glad that the bed wasn’t visible from where Charlie was standing, then shut the door firmly behind me.
Edythe hadn’t moved even a fraction of an inch. I smiled and her lips twitched; she relaxed, and she was suddenly human again. Or close enough. I went back to sit next to her. She twisted to face me, pulling her legs up and crossing them.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that shirt,” she said. Her voice was so quiet that I didn’t have any worries that Charlie would hear us.
“I can change.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not you wearing it—its entire existence.” She reached out and brushed her fingers across the smiling pig. My pulse spiked, but she politely ignored that. “Should he be so happy to be food?”
I had to grin. “Well, we don’t know his side of the story, do we? He might have a reason to smile.”
She looked at me like she was doubting my sanity.
I reached out to hold her hand. It felt really natural, but at the same time, I couldn’t believe I was so lucky. What had I ever done to deserve this?
“Your dad thinks you might be sneaking out,” she told me. “I know. Apparently I look keyed up.”
“Are you?”
“A little more than that, I think. Thank you. For staying.” “It’s what I wanted, too.”
My heart started beating… not faster exactly, but stronger somehow. For some reason I would never understand, she wanted to be with me.
Moving at human speed, she unfolded her legs and draped them across mine. Then she curled up against my chest again the way she seemed to prefer, with her ear against my heart, which was reacting probably more than was necessary. I folded my arms around her and pressed my lips to her hair.
“Mmm,” she hummed.
“This…,” I murmured into her hair, “… is much easier than I thought it would be.”
“Does it seem easy to you?” It sounded like she was smiling. She angled her face up, and I felt her nose trace a cold line up the side of my neck.
“Well,” I said breathlessly. Her lips were brushing the edge of my jaw. “It seems to be easier than it was this morning, at least.”
“Hmm,” she said. Her arms slid over my shoulders and then wrapped around my neck. She pulled herself up until her lips were brushing my ear.
“Why is that”—my voice shook embarrassingly—“do you think?” “Mind over matter,” she breathed right into my ear.
A tremor ran down my body. She froze, then leaned carefully back. One hand brushed across the skin just under the sleeve of my t-shirt.
“You’re cold,” she said. I could feel the goose bumps rise under her fingertips.
“I’m fine.”
She frowned and climbed back to her original position. My arms weren’t willing to let her go. As she slid out of them, my hands stayed on her hips.
“Your whole body is shivering.”
“I don’t think that’s from being cold,” I told her. We looked at each other for a second in the dark.
“I’m not sure what I’m allowed to do,” I admitted. “How careful do I need to be?”
She hesitated. “It’s not easier,” she said finally, answering my earlier question. Her hand brushed across my forearm, and I felt goose bumps again. “But this afternoon… I was still undecided. I’m sorry, it was unforgivable for me to behave as I did.”
“I forgive you,” I murmured.
“Thank you.” She smiled and then was serious as she looked down at the bumps on my arm. “You see… I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough.…” She lifted my hand and pressed it to her cheek, still looking down. “And while there was still that possibility that I might be… overcome”—she breathed in the scent at my wrist—“I was… susceptible. Until I made up my mind that I was strong enough, that there was no possibility at all that I would… that I ever could…”
I’d never seen her struggle so hard for words. It was so human. “So there’s no possibility now?”
She looked up at me finally and smiled. “Mind over matter.” “Sounds easy,” I said, grinning so that she knew I was teasing.
“Rather than easy I would say… herculean, but possible. And so… in answer to your other question…”
“Sorry,” I said.
She laughed quietly. “Why do you apologize?” It was a rhetorical question, and she went on quickly, putting a finger to my lips just in case I felt like I needed to explain. “It is not easy, and so, if it is acceptable to you, I would prefer if you would… follow my lead?” She let her finger drop. “Is that fair?”
“Of course,” I said quickly. “Whatever you want.” As usual, I meant that literally.
“If it gets to be… too much, I’m sure I will be able to make myself leave.”
I frowned. “I will make sure it’s not too much.”
“It will be harder tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve had the scent of you in my head all day, and I’ve grown amazingly desensitized. If I’m away from you for any length of time, I’ll have to start over again. Not quite from scratch, though, I think.”
“Never go away,” I suggested.
Her face relaxed into a smile. “That suits me. Bring on the shackles—I am your prisoner.” While she spoke, she laced her cold fingers around my wrist like a manacle. “And now, if you don’t mind, may I borrow a blanket?”
It took me a second. “Oh, um, sure. Here.”
I reached behind her with my free hand and snagged the old quilt that was folded over the foot of my bed, then offered it to her. She dropped my wrist, took the blanket and shook it out, then handed it back to me.
“I’d be happier if I knew you were comfortable.” “I’m very comfortable.”
“Please?”
Quickly, I threw the quilt over my shoulders like a cape.
She chuckled quietly. “Not exactly what I was thinking.” She was already on her feet, rearranging the blanket over my legs and pulling it all the way up to my shoulders. Before I could understand what she was doing, she had climbed onto my lap again and nestled against my chest. The quilt made a barrier between any place that our skin might touch.
“Better?” she asked.
“I’m not sure about that.” “Good enough?”
“Better than that.”
She laughed. I stroked her hair. That seemed careful.
“It’s so strange,” she said. “You read about something… you hear about it in other people’s minds, you watch it happen to them… and it doesn’t prepare you even in the slightest for experiencing it yourself. The glory of first love. It’s more than I was expecting.”
“Much more,” I agreed fervently.
“And other emotions, too—jealousy, for example. I thought I understood that one clearly. I’ve read about it a hundred thousand times, seen actors portray it in a thousand plays and movies, listened to it in the minds around me daily—even felt it myself in a shallow way, wishing I had what I didn’t.
… But I was shocked.” She scowled. “Do you remember the day that McKayla asked you to the dance?”
I nodded, though that day was most memorable to me for a different reason. “The day you started talking to me again.”
“I was stunned by the flare of resentment, almost fury, that I felt—I didn’t recognize what it was at first. I didn’t know jealousy could be so powerful… so painful. And then you refused her, and I didn’t know why. It was more aggravating than usual that I couldn’t just hear what you were thinking. Was there someone else? Was it simply for Jeremy’s sake? I knew I had no right to care either way. I tried not to care.
“And then the line started forming.” I groaned, and she laughed.
“I waited,” she went on, “more anxious than I should be to hear what you would say to them, to try to decipher your expressions. I couldn’t deny the relief I felt, watching the annoyance on your face. But I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know what your answer would have been, if I’d asked.…”
She looked up at me. “That was the first night I came here. I wrestled all night, watching you sleep, with the chasm between what I knew was right, moral, ethical, honorable, and what I wanted. I knew that if I continued to ignore you as I should, or if I left for a few years, till you were gone, that someday you would find someone you wanted, someone human like McKayla. It made me sad.
“And then”—her voice dropped to an even quieter whisper—“as you
were sleeping, you said my name. You spoke so clearly, at first I thought you’d woken. But you rolled over restlessly and mumbled my name once more, and sighed. The emotion that coursed through me then was unnerving… staggering. And I knew I couldn’t ignore you any longer.”
She was quiet for a moment, probably listening to the uneven pounding of my heart.
“But jealousy… it’s so irrational. Just now, when Charlie asked you about that annoying girl…”
“That made you jealous. Really?”
“I’m new at this. You’re resurrecting the human in me, and everything feels stronger because it’s fresh.”
“Honestly, though, for that to bother you, after I have to hear that Royal
—male model of the year, Royal, Mr. Perfect, Royal—was meant for you. Eleanor or no Eleanor, how can I compete with that?”
Her teeth gleamed and her arms wove around my neck again. “There’s no competition.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Tentatively, I folded my arms around her. “Is this okay?” I checked.
“Very.” She sighed happily. “Of course Royal is beautiful in his way, but even if he wasn’t like a brother to me, even if he didn’t belong with Eleanor, he could never have one tenth, no, one hundredth of the attraction you hold for me.” She was serious now, thoughtful. “For almost ninety years I’ve walked among my kind, and yours… all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything, because you weren’t alive yet.”
“It doesn’t seem fair,” I whispered into her hair. “I haven’t had to wait at all. Why do I get off so easily?”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “I should make this harder for you, definitely.” Her hand stroked my cheek. “You only have to risk your life every second you spend with me, surely that’s not much. You only have to turn your back on nature, on humanity… what is that worth?”
“I’m not feeling deprived.”
She turned her face into my chest and whispered, “Not yet.”
“What—” I started, but then her body was suddenly motionless. I froze, but she was gone, my arms wrapped around the empty air.
“Lie down,” she hissed, but I couldn’t tell where she was in the
darkness.
I threw myself back on the bed, shaking the quilt out and then rolling on my side, the way I usually slept. I heard the door crack open. Charlie was checking up on me. I breathed evenly, exaggerating the movement.
A long minute passed. I listened for the door to close. Suddenly Edythe was next to me. She lifted my arm and placed it over her shoulders as she burrowed herself closer to me.
“You’re a terrible actor—I’d say that career path is out for you.”
“There goes my ten-year plan,” I muttered. My heart was being obnoxious. She could probably feel it as well as hear it, careening around inside my ribs like it might bust one of them.
She hummed a melody I didn’t recognize. It reminded me of a lullaby.
Then she paused. “Should I sing you to sleep?”
“Right,” I laughed. “Like I could sleep with you here.” “You do it all the time,” she reminded me.
“Not with you here,” I disagreed, tightening my arm around her.
“You have a point. So if you don’t want to sleep, what do you want to do, then?”
“Honestly? A lot of things. None of them careful.”
She didn’t say anything; it didn’t sound like she was breathing. I went on quickly.
“But since I promised to be careful, what I’d like is… to know more about you.”
“Ask me anything.” I could hear that she was smiling now.
I sifted through my questions for the most important. “Why do you do it?” I asked. “I still don’t understand why you work so hard to resist what you… are. Don’t misunderstand, of course I’m glad that you do—I’ve never been happier to be alive. I just don’t see why you would bother in the first place.”
She answered slowly. “That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others—the vast majority of our kind who are quite content with our lot—they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we’ve been… dealt a certain hand… it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.”
I lay still, feeling kind of awed. She was a better person than I would
ever be.
“Did you fall asleep?” she murmured almost silently after a few minutes.
“No.”
“Is that all you were curious about?” I rolled my eyes. “Not quite.” “What else do you want to know?”
“Why can you read minds—why only you? And Archie, seeing the future and everything… why does that happen?”
I felt her shrug under my arm. “We don’t really know. Carine has a theory… she believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified—like our minds, and our senses. She thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Archie had some precognition, wherever he was.”
“What did she bring into the next life, and the others?”
“Carine brought her compassion. Earnest brought his ability to love passionately. Eleanor brought her strength, Royal his… tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness,” she chuckled. “Jessamine is very interesting. She was quite charismatic in her first life, able to influence those around her to see things her way. Now she is able to manipulate the emotions of those near her—calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”
I considered the impossibilities she described, trying to take it in. She waited patiently while I thought.
“So where did it all start? I mean, Carine changed you, and then someone must have changed her, and so on.…”
“Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don’t believe that all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”
“Let me get this straight—I’m the baby seal, right?”
“Correct.” She laughed, and her fingers brushed across my lips. “Aren’t you tired? It’s been a rather long day.”
“I just have a few million more questions.”
“We have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.…”
A feeling of euphoria, of pure bliss, filled up my chest until I thought I might explode. I couldn’t imagine there was a drug addict in the world who wouldn’t trade his favorite fix for this feeling.
It was a minute before I could talk again. “Are you sure you won’t vanish in the morning? You are mythical, after all.”
“I won’t leave you,” she promised solemnly, and that same feeling, even stronger than before, washed through me.
When I could speak, I said, “One more, then, tonight.…” And then the blood rushed up my neck. The darkness was no help. I was sure she could feel the heat.
“What is it?”
“Um, nope, forget it. I changed my mind.” “Beau, you can ask me anything.”
I didn’t speak, and she groaned.
“I keep thinking it will get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts.
But it just gets worse and worse.”
“It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on my sleep-talking,” I muttered. “Please tell me?” she murmured, her velvet voice taking on that
mesmerizing intensity that I never could resist.
I tried. I shook my head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is,” she threatened.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said, then locked my teeth.
“Please?” Again in that hypnotic voice. I sighed. “You won’t get… offended?” “Of course not.”
I took a deep breath. “Well… so, obviously, I don’t know a lot that’s true about vampires”—the word slipped out accidentally, I was just thinking so hard about how to ask my question, and then I realized what I’d said and I froze.
“Yes?”
She sounded normal, like the word didn’t mean anything. I exhaled in relief.
“Okay, I mean, I just know the things you’ve told me, and it seems like
we’re pretty… different. Physically. You look human—only better—but you don’t eat or sleep, you know. You don’t need the same things.”
“Debatable on some levels, but there are definitely truths in what you’re saying. What’s your question?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Ask me.”
I blurted it all out in a rush. “So I’m just an ordinary human guy, and you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I am just… overwhelmed by you, and a part of that, naturally, is that I’m insanely attracted to you, which I’m sure you can’t have helped but notice, what with your being, like, super aware of my circulatory system, but what I don’t know is, if it’s like that for you. Or is it like sleeping and eating, which you don’t need and I do—though I don’t want them nearly as much as I want you? You said that Eleanor and Royal go off and live like a married couple, but does that even mean the same thing for vampires? And this question is totally offside, completely not first date appropriate, and I’m sorry and you don’t have to answer.”
I sucked in a huge breath.
“Hmm… I would have said this was our second date.” “You’re right.”
She laughed. “Are you asking me about sex, Beau?” My face got hot again. “Yes. I shouldn’t have.”
She laughed again. “I did climb into your bed, Beau. I believe that makes this line of inquiry quite understandable.”
“You still don’t have to answer.”
“I told you that you could ask me anything.” She paused, and then her voice was different. Kind of formal, like a teacher lecturing. “So… in the general sense—Sex and Vampires One-Oh-One. We all started out human, Beau, and most of those human desires are still there—just obscured behind more powerful desires. But we’re not thirsty all the time, and we tend to form… very strong bonds. Physical as well as emotional. Royal and Eleanor are just like any human couple who are attracted to each other, by which I mean, very, very annoying for those of us who have to live with them, and even more so for the one who can hear their minds.”
I laughed quietly, and she joined in. “Awkward,” I murmured.
“You have no idea,” she said darkly, then sighed. “And now in the specific sense… Sex and Vampires One-Oh-Two, Beau and Edythe.” She sighed again, more slowly this time. “I don’t think… that would be possible for us.”
“Because I would have to get too… close?” I guessed.
“That would be a problem, but that’s not the main problem. Beau, you don’t know how… well, fragile you are. I don’t mean that as an insult to your manliness, anyone human is fragile to me. I have to mind my actions every moment that we’re together so that I don’t hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, simply by accident.”
I thought about the first few times that she’d touched me, how cautiously she’d moved, how much it had seemed to frighten her. How she would ask me to move my hand, rather than just pulling hers out from under it…
Now she put her palm against my cheek.
“If I were too hasty… if I were at all distracted, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I’m with you.”
If her life were in my hands that way, would I have already killed her? I cringed at the thought.
“I think I could be very distracted by you,” she murmured. “I am never not distracted by you.”
“Can I ask you something now—something potentially offensive?” “It’s your turn.”
“Do you have any experience with sex and humans?”
I was a little surprised that my face didn’t go hot again. It felt natural to tell her everything. “Not even a little bit. This is all firsts for me. I told you, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”
“I know. It’s just that I hear what other people think. I know that love and lust don’t always keep the same company.”
“They do for me.”
“That’s nice. We have that one thing in common, at least.”
“Oh.” When she’d been talking before, about how we tend to form very strong bonds, physical as well as emotional, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was speaking from experience. I found that I was surprisingly relieved
to know that wasn’t the case.
“So, you do find me distracting?”
“Indeed.” She was smiling again. “Would you like me to tell you the things that distract me?”
“You don’t have to.”
“It was your eyes first. You have lovely eyes, Beau, like a sky without clouds. I’ve spent all my life in rainy climates and so I often miss the sky, but not when I’m with you.”
“Er, thanks?”
She giggled. “I’m not alone. Six of your ten admirers started with your eyes, too.”
“Ten?”
“They’re not all so forward as Taylor and McKayla. Do you want a list?
You have options.”
“I think you’re making fun of me. And either way, there is no other option.” And never would be again.
“Next it was your arms—I’m very fond of your arms, Beau—this includes your shoulders and hands.” She ran her hand down my arm, then back up to my shoulder, and back down to my hand again. “Or maybe it was your chin that was second…” Her fingers touched my face, like she thought I might not know what she meant. “I’m not entirely sure. It all took me quite by surprise when I realized that not only did I find you delicious, but also beautiful.”
My face and neck were burning. I knew it couldn’t be true, but in the moment, she was pretty convincing.
“Oh, and I didn’t even mention your hair.” Her fingernails combed against my scalp.
“Okay, now I know you’re making fun.”
“I’m truly not. Did you know your hair is just precisely the same shade as a teak inlaid ceiling in a monastery I once stayed at in… I think it would be Cambodia now?”
“Um, no, I did not.” I yawned involuntarily.
She laughed. “Did I answer your question to your satisfaction?” “Er, yes.”
“Then you should sleep.” “I’m not sure if I can.”
“Do you want me to leave?” “No!” I said a little too loudly.
She laughed, then began to hum that same unfamiliar lullaby—her voice was like an angel’s, soft in my ear.
More tired than I realized, exhausted from a day of mental and emotional stress like I’d never felt before, I drifted to sleep with her cold body in my arms.
