I gently took it with my thumb and index finger. “To what on this good earth am I allowed this honor?” I asked, stunned. Even in the highest days of my ranking as queen of a coven, Suleen never visited me. He took a step back so there were a couple of feet between us.
“I come with a warning,” he said in his languid tone.
I slapped my hand over my mouth. My heart pounded with such a force that Suleen looked at my chest because he could hear it.
“Nuit Rouge. My God. I completely forgot,” I said. “Last night was the final night of Nuit Rouge. Today is November first. Nuit Rouge has ended,” I said, and looked to the ground, to the trees, to the sleeping houses that I wished I was in, and then back at Suleen. “Vicken has discovered I am not hibernating?” Suleen nodded once slowly in response.
I looked back toward Justin’s parents’ house in the distance. It was still dark.
“As a unit your coven is unstoppable. Separate as they are now, they will not succeed.” Suleen paused. “The hunt for you has begun.”
It was back. My vampire extrasensory perception was overtaking my human conscience. I assumed it was because of my close proximity to Suleen’s power. An image, not from my own mind but from Suleen’s, came to the forefront of my sight: Rhode’s fireplace in my home in Hathersage.
“There is something else…,” I whispered, looking at the fireplace in my mind. A waver in my tone gave away my fear. “Something else you came to tell me.”
“They have found a clue in the embers. Rhode burned all his evidence of your transformation minus one. One word left on a charred and blackened piece of paper.”
“Wickham,” I said. I saw the image in my head. A tiny jagged piece of paper from the school’s brochure. The ESP connection with Suleen was extremely strong. I could feel Suleen’s compassion, which surprised me—as I believed all these years that he cared nothing for trivial matters such as these. I felt my human and vampire connection to the event and somewhere through the images from Suleen I could almost feel Vicken’s rage.
I had to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. I bent over and placed my hands on my thighs. Suleen cocked his head to the side to watch me. My reaction must have been interesting.
“So—” I said between breaths. I stood back upright, holding a hand over my chest. “They’re coming for me.”
“They will come to reclaim their maker. They do not know you are human, Lenah.”
“That will be a surprise.”
Suleen’s gentle eyes smiled, though his face remained stoic. His eyes traveled to the vial of dust on my neck. In a flicker of an instant, I thought I saw sadness in Suleen’s eyes. He took a step forward and reached for the vial. He gently held the pendant in his hands.
“They have to figure out which Wickham and where, right?” I asked. Suleen let go of the vial and cupped his hand on my cheek again. He did not say anything in response. I knew as well as he did that it was only a matter of time before they found me. I was trying to rationalize.
“You were Rhode’s brightest day,” he whispered. There was a stab in my chest when Suleen said Rhode’s name aloud in the quiet street. “Close your eyes,” he whispered next to my ear, and I did. After a moment he said, “Go forth, Lenah, in darkness and in light.”
When I opened my eyes, the street was empty and Suleen was gone.
After a couple of days, the Halloween decorations came down and were replaced by the most ridiculous decorations I had ever seen. Shops on Lovers Bay’s Main Street were covered in turkeys. Pumpkins were still all the rage, but there were also cardboard cutouts of tall ships, strangely dressed people in high, black boots and top hats, and, of course, more turkeys.
“Thanksgiving,” Justin explained. We were walking through campus on our way to the library to study for the math SAT. Justin went into a long explanation of his family’s Thanksgiving. I listened, though my mind was running in circles as it had been ever since Suleen disappeared on Justin’s street.
Truth be told, I wanted to believe that Suleen’s visit was some kind of apparition. That I had made it up. Despite Justin’s attempt to study for the SAT, he couldn’t distract me anymore. All I could see and think about was Suleen’s warning. I carried the thyme with me everywhere, always in my pocket.
“Look. The square root of eighty-one is nine, right?” Justin asked. We were walking up toward the library to work in one of the private study rooms. Justin had gotten to enjoying those rooms because he could pull the shades and kiss me for a half hour instead of working on square roots.
“But I don’t understand why we need to be able to answer these questions and then be tricked with other possible answers,” I replied.
“That’s why these tests are evil. We have to take them….”
Justin could have been talking about anything and as he kept talking, I was back on his parents’ street in Rhode Island. Suleen was cupping my face and I was imagining Vicken researching every possible explanation for Wickham that he could. I had let my new life distract me for too long. I was so foolish.
“You just concentrate on the problem and then look to the answers.” Justin was still explaining the best way to take the test as we walked up the pathway and toward the library. I watched his mouth move, the way his hard, structured jaw was oddly juxtaposed to his pouted mouth. His profile was relaxed, and his hair had grown out a bit, so the clean-cut sports boy was just a little bit messy.
It was time to tell him the truth.
“Let’s go to my room,” I said, pushing the door to the library closed. Justin had one hand on the door handle to pull it open. “To study,” I clarified.
Justin turned his head to look at me. “Your room?” His eyes were a mix of shock and utter excitement.
“Not like that,” I said, and pulled him out of the doorway of the library so the students behind us could walk inside.
“I thought you didn’t want anyone to see your room. Privacy, or whatever you said.”
“Come on,” I said, and led Justin back on the path toward Seeker. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say or how I was going to say it, but it was time he knew what I had been hiding.
We climbed up the stairs toward my apartment.
“Hold on,” Justin said, and stopped in the middle of the stairwell. “Is this why you haven’t shown me your place?” He put out his hands as a gesture of disbelief. It was darker in the stairwell than it had been outside. The hotel-like lamps with their blue shades highlighted the stairs and his light green sweater with a golden glow. “Because you live in Professor Bennett’s old apartment? I knew that already.”
“It’s scared everyone else,” I said, and continued up. The rosemary and lavender were still tacked to their usual spots. I could smell both of them as I unlocked the door and walked inside. Justin walked into the apartment behind me.
“This is amazing,” he said. “You know, despite being a dead guy’s place.”
I decided to give Justin time to take in the decorations of my small apartment, so I walked toward the balcony door. I pushed aside the curtain and looked outside. I watched the swaying trees with their falling leaves and some of the scattered and smashed pumpkins that were left over from Halloween celebrations.
“Whoa,” I heard, and assumed Justin saw Rhode’s sword. I turned and found that I was right. Justin stood a foot away from the distinguished metal. I walked back in and stood on his right side.
“Is that real?” Justin’s voice was filled with awe and his eyes danced up and down the sword. Then he glanced at the iron wall sconces. They were made to look like roses and wire, bound together in a small circle.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, and took hold of Justin’s warm fingers.
“I’ve never known a girl who was into weapons,” Justin said as he continued to look at the sword. He wasn’t paying attention to me.
“Okay,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Is this about Tony?” Justin said, and finally turned to me.
“Tony?”
“The fact that you guys aren’t talking. I noticed. Everyone’s noticed.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not what this is about.”
“Or why you haven’t shown me your room before? I didn’t want to press it because it seemed so important to you to, like, keep it a secret.”
“Secret?” I asked.
“Yeah. Tracy kept saying how you’re a millionaire or your family’s royalty or something.”
I shook my head again and put my hands out so my palms faced Justin. “I want you to look around this living room. I mean really look. And tell me what you see.”
“I did look. Kinda Goth, but that makes sense. You always wear black.” Justin smiled, but the mischievous tone in his voice made me realize how little he actually understood about my true nature. “Come on, are you royalty?” he asked, just compounding his ignorance.
“Please? Really look.”
Justin sighed and turned away from the sword. He spun slowly and looked at the adornments of the room. My bedroom was behind him, and the door was wide open. A black comforter and simple wooden night table were in direct view. Then he turned toward the doorway and caught sight of the coffee table holding my sunglasses and car keys. He walked across the room and stopped at the bureau.
“You have a thing for old photography.” He bent over and picked up the photo of Rhode and me.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve seen that guy before.”
Silence.
“…What?” I whispered, not believing what I was hearing.
“A few days before school started. He was walking around campus. How do you know him? Old boyfriend?”
“No. Well, sort of,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment that Justin hadn’t seen Rhode recently. Somehow, I still hadn’t given up a sliver of hope.
“Sort of?”
“He’s dead. Just keep looking, please,” I said.
He placed the photo down and started investigating the others. There were a couple of me alone, posing here and there around England. Then he picked up the one of the coven, the only one that existed. I wore a brilliant green gown (though the photo was black and white). Gavin and Heath stood on my right, Vicken and Song on my left. While Justin was examining the photo, I focused on Vicken’s face. His arm hung around my waist. It was just sunset, so the sky behind us was light gray and the castle decorated the back of the frame like a monster made of stone. I couldn’t stop staring at Vicken’s eyes. The strong cheekbones, the eyes that trusted me the night I took him in Scotland. Now, in my absence, he was preparing to scour the earth to find me.
“How did you get this photo taken? It’s not even a photo, it’s weird.”
“It’s called a daguerreotype. Earlier in history, pictures were made on glass plates. Around the turn of the century.”
“They’re all so real…”
I went for it: “That’s because they are.”
Justin turned to look at me. “Where did you find someone to take them? You look like a superhuman or something. Is that your family?” he asked, pointing at the coven.
“Those men are the closest thing I have to family. That’s my house in Hathersage.”
Justin examined the photo again. “Why not just take the picture with a real camera?”
“They didn’t exist back then.”
Justin’s expression was incredulous. “Exist?” he said. “Photography was invented, like, a hundred years ago.”
This was going to be harder than I thought.
“Those photos are from a hundred years ago,” I said gravely.
“That’s not possible,” Justin replied.
I stepped to the center of the room, breathing in and out, as steadily as I could. I pointed. “Look about you. Black curtains. Vintage decorations? Photos of me from a hundred years ago. Gothic art and portraits of me in my bedroom that are dated from the seventeen hundreds. Why aren’t you asking me what I think is going through your mind.”
“What is there to ask? I don’t know what’s going on.” Justin was starting to panic. In the past I would have been enthralled to make him feel such fear. Now, I just wanted to get to the point.
“Think. When we went snorkeling…why hadn’t I ever seen the light reflect on the ocean?”
Justin swallowed so hard that I could see the muscles next to his ear clench. “I don’t know. You’re sick? You have that weird disease where you can’t go out in the sun?”
“Is it so easy to make excuses for me?” I asked.
“Jesus, Lenah. What are you saying?” Justin’s naturally green eyes darkened.
“Those men,” I said, getting close to him. “Those men standing on either side of me and the man you saw before school started. Those men are vampires.”
Justin looked at the photos and then back at me. “No…,” he said. A general reaction, a common reaction. In fact, every human I ever told and then subsequently murdered had had the same exact reaction.
“Up until eight weeks ago I was a vampire. One of the oldest of my kind. Those men there are my coven.”
Justin placed a hand on top of the couch as though he needed it to support his weight. “Do you think I’m a freak? That I would believe—” Justin started to say.
“This is the truth,” I said. “You know me. You know I wouldn’t lie.”
“I thought I did, but I guess I don’t know anything because right now I’m supposed to believe that you were a vampire. A bloodsucking, immortal vampire. That you killed people. Did you kill people?” His tone was sarcastic, even a little mean.
I swallowed. “Thousands. I was the most powerful female of my kind. If you were to meet me as a vampire, I would not be myself as I am to you now. I would be ruthless. I would have used whatever tactics and means I had to hurt you. I was painfully sad about the life I lost. Rhode”—I gestured to the photo—“believed that the closer a vampire felt to her life before she died, the more evil she would be as a vampire. And I was horrible. Those men in my coven were specifically chosen. Boys, just like you. I picked them for their strength, speed, and ambition.”
“You found them? To, like, join you?” His sarcasm was painful.
“I wouldn’t say ‘found.’”
“What would you say?”
“I made them…into vampires.”
“This is crazy!” Justin was yelling now. “Why are you lying about this?”
I stalked over to the kitchen and took the tins out, opening the tops and showing him dried dandelion heads and the white petals of chamomile flowers sitting in the bottom of the tiny circular tins.
“How do you think I know so much about herbs? Or why I’m obsessed with medicinal healing. That I knew you could place that flower on your tongue and eat it.”
“I don’t know,” Justin said, and took a step back.
“Or why I have a real sword on my wall.”
I sighed and let my gaze fall from Justin’s. He wanted to lace me into this perfect, innocent idea. Lenah, from England. Lenah, who couldn’t drive. Lenah, who was falling for a boy who took her to unusual places so she could feel alive. I stalked over to the bureau and took the urn. I opened it, and a few pieces of glittering dust flew in the air.
“This is an urn filled with dust. The remains of a dead vampire. Why do I have this if I’m lying?”
“Why are you doing this?” Justin yelled.
“I’m trying to protect you!” I yelled back, throwing my arms out. The urn fell to the floor, hitting the ground with a thud, scattering Rhode’s beautiful ashes in a pile on the floor. At the same time, my pinkie finger hit the side of the sword. There was a searing zing. I screeched and fell to my knees. Pain—glorious, murderous, shocking pain. It had been 592 years since I last felt mortal pain.
I turned my palm over. There was a hot, pulsating feeling. I had sliced my fingertip. The cut was tiny, but the blood oozed out. The flow was harmless, but there it was, the proof that I was human inside.
Justin s
tood across me and came down to his knees. Together we kneeled in Rhode’s remains. I stared down at the tiny cut and did what I most desired—I brought my hand up to my lips, licked the blood, and closed my eyes. Before, it had been the taste of satisfaction—one of the only flavors in my life. I leaned my head back and sighed, relishing the wonderful duality in the moment. I hated the rust, metallic flavor but I loved that I remembered it so well.
I opened my eyes, sharing the silence with Justin. I looked at the blood, now just barely coming through, and then up at Justin’s gorgeous face.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It tastes different,” I whispered. The taste of the blood now, in this life, was just a momentary curiosity and a surge of familiarity. The relief dissipated into small waves of memories—barely making an impact on the person I was now. The vampire was gone. She had dissolved with the ritual.
“Different?” Justin asked.
“It tasted better before.”
Justin reached out for my hand and as I snatched it away, my blood smeared on the inside of his wrist. Just a small, rust-colored line that ran from one end of the wrist to the other. Then, in that moment, as my eyes lost their focus on Justin’s skin, Rhode’s voice echoed in my ears.
You cannot see what you have done!
Then Vicken came next.
Your features, lassie, are not of these parts.
Then came my own impassioned voice, which I recognized from the day out on the peaks.
God help me, Rhode, because if you don’t, I will walk out into sunlight until it scorches me to flames.
Then Justin, although he was sitting in front of me, spoke to me in my head.
Everyone you love is dead. That must be lonely.
How many memories can come through at once before they are just jumbled words and faces mixed together by years of pain?
The night, the night I took Vicken, I was transfixed by his happiness. Just as I was transfixed by Justin’s happiness. I refocused on his wrist and my blood smeared across his skin. There, under the smear, was his vein, a bright blue vein.