Their courtship was unconventional. Clandestine meetings after her performances. Long walks under starlight when others slept. He never seemed to appear during daylight hours, a quirk she’d attributed to his mysterious profession.
“What do you actually do besides write, Cosimo?” she asked one night as they strolled along a deserted Venice Beach. “You can’t live off writing one or two articles a month.”
“I exist,” he said simply. “I’ve been doing that for a very long time.”
The cryptic answer should have alarmed her, but instead, it created a bond. She told him little about her own past. They didn’t need to spell anything out. They were as thick as thieves. Two outsiders sharing secrets without speaking them aloud. They simply understood each other.
“Cosimo, what would you say if I told you I never age?” She was finally bold enough to confess this to him one night after too much champagne in the Casino ballroom. They were sitting barefoot in the sand, listening to the sounds of the waves. “It’s been ten years since my first film, and I’ve had to powder my hair to convince people I’m aging normally.”
Instead of disbelief, his face reflected understanding and something more. Was it relief?
“I think I can show you why that is, Ondalune. Do you trust me?” Cosimo asked.
She nodded. Cosimo rose to his feet and held out a hand to pull her up. She giggled as he walked backwards toward the ocean.
“Cosimo, you know I can’t. I’ll break out in a rash. I won’t be able to film tomorrow.”
“You’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Trust me.” He held her fingers to his lips and stared at her with those oddly compelling eyes of his, eyes full of starlight and ancient spells. It was difficult to say no to those eyes. He stepped backward into the surf with her, pressing his lips to hers, and holding her as she changed.
And after that, nothing had been the same for her. She finally knew what she was. There was no turning back. Not in life, and not on film. When it was time to film the final scene ofThe Mermaid’s Whisper, she agreed to the director’s request to capture the scene with a “special” new camera. She agreed to do something that had been strictly forbidden in her contract. She ran right off the pier and dove into the ocean.
The final stage of transformation began, the most painful yet. Goldie’s lungs expelled the last of the sea water, forcing her to gasp desperately for air through lungs that still remembered their purpose. Her fingers separated with burning intensity as the webbing shrank away. As her human form fully reasserted itself, the most significant memories rushed back in a torrent.
“I’m not human, either, Ondalune,” Cosimo finally admitted one moonless night at her hillside home. “I haven’t been for four centuries.”
“What are you, then?” she asked, surprised by her own calm. She’d known this already, hadn’t she? There had to be reasons she’d never seen him eat. Reasons he only came to her in the dark of night. No mortal man she’d ever met had skin like his, or a touch that was both warm and cold at the same time. She’d been waiting for him to trust her with his secret.
“I am a vampire. Cursed to live forever in the shadows.”
She should have been terrified. Instead, she reached for his hand, tenderly taking it in hers. Then she turned her hand over in his palm, offering him her wrist. Staring at him with wide eyes, she spoke quietly, carefully. “I wouldn’t deny you, Cosimo. Anything.”
He’d turned her hand back over with a small shudder. “You don’t have to worry about that. I don’t feed on other creatures’ blood, Ondalune. I’m not like the Strigoi and other vampires you may have heard of in legends. I only feed on those whose Ordinary lives have ceased to be worth living. Those who are sick, desperate, and seeking release. The world has no shortage. Better to drain someone’s pain than their joy. I am their savior. But I am also misery personified.” He looked away, ashamed, unable to meet her eye.
His face reflected so much pain that it made him look his actual age. She would have traded all her joy in that moment to wash that pain away.
“We’re both outcasts, aren’t we? For the world, we are only acting, always hiding what we are. But with each other, we can be real.”
He stared at her in wonder. “You’re not afraid of me?”
“Of you? No. Of what the world would do to either of us if they knew our secrets? Absolutely. Besides, there is nobody else in this strange world that I would care to not grow old with.”
How grateful she was to have met him. To have broken through the loneliness of their shared solitude. She knew his heart, even if it no longer beat a rhythm to match hers. She’d have staked her life on the belief that no matter what he was, he had a beautiful soul.
The transformation complete, Goldie lay panting and shivering on the rocks, human once more. Her mind raced as it struggled to keep pace with the flood of recovered memories, sorting and organizing the scattered puzzle pieces. She struggled to sit up, wrapping her arms around herself, shivering not from the cold but from the emotional impact of remembering.
Eventually, she recognized the pile of wet rags on the sand beside her. It took her a moment to recognize what it was. The ocean had washed her clothing ashore with her. Exhausted and grateful, she shoved her legs into her pants and pulled the sweater over her head. As she slipped her feet into her shoes, the final pieces of the puzzle finally dropped into place.
It was the night of the premiere at the Catalina Casino. She felt the excitement of seeing her most ambitious film on the big screen with Cosimo at her side. They’d made plans to disappear together after the screening. Aside from her uncle, who would miss her? They would travel the world, free to be themselves. Two immortal outcasts in love.
But then Uncle Burnie appeared backstage, his face stern. He asked for a private word, and when Cosimo joined them, the tension was palpable.
“You’ve been reckless,” Burnie said, his usually kind face stern. “Both of you.”
She was expecting a lecture about the age difference between her and Cosimo. She was prepared for her uncle to argue that twenty years was too much. In reality, it was closer to four hundred years. If only he knew the truth! Burnie would never understand what they meant to each other. How could he? He was just a man.
“I don’t answer to you,” Cosimo replied coldly.
“No, but she does.” Burnie gestured to Ondalune and turned to glare at Cosimo. “Or have you forgotten the very reason her biological father placed her in my care as an infant?”
