After setting a pot of water to boil and extracting from Diantha the location of her olive oil and garlic cloves, I return to my line of questioning.
“Why were you so close to that fucking demon club?”
“I didn’t know! Up until yesterday, that ‘fucking demon club’ was a hoity-toity membership-only supper club for rich douchebags.” She pushes her hands into her hair and lets out a little grunt of frustration, like a piglet stuck in mud. “I-I can’t explain what happened. It’s too complicated.”
I leave my garlic to sweat in hot oil, cross my arms over my chest, and lean back against the counter. In the low apartment light, she looks so young. Twenty-five, twenty-six maybe? I know that’s not far off from how old I look. But there’s a weight thatcomes with the extremely slow rate at which I’m aging. And even if my face still looks like that of a twenty-something-year-old fuckboy, inside I carry every second of the last five decades I’ve spent here.
“One second I was standing in the shadow—the next, I was gagged, bound, and dragged into an alleyway.” She gives me a dry, hard look.
I scoff. “What drama. There was nogagging. No bondage was involved. You were unconscious.”
“No, I was…” She wets her lips. I watch the pink tip of her tongue trace the curve of her mouth.
“Look.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “I know you’re not human. You don’t have to lie to me.”
Her eyes snap up to mine. “What?”
“You…” I roll my eyes around the room. A sensation I haven’t experienced in years flares in my chest. It’s like fear’s ugly little brother. Humiliation, maybe? “You aren’t a human.” She stares at me blankly. So, I continue: “I can tell, because I’m not human either.”
Suddenly, her face drains of its last remaining color. The pulse point in her throat, the one that almost brought me to my knees, throbs. “What…what are you?”
Shemustbe joking.
How can she ask such a banal question? I’m practically dripping sweat in the middle of January. My fangs have nearly drawn blood from my bottom lip. My skin is sallow and waxy, clearly meant to be a richer shade—if I ever allowed myself to step out into the sun. Not to mention, I’ve been staring at her like she’s a perfectly grilled piece of ribeye.
Isn’t it obvious?
I laugh. “I’m a fucking vampire.”
Diantha
He’s a vampire.A motherfucking vampire.
And then, after making this announcement, he has the balls to look at me likeI’mthe insane one.
Oh, sure! Right!
I lock the bathroom door behind me and take seven deep gulps of air.
Vampire.
An Italian vampire.
As if that makes some sort of difference. Like, what if Santa Claus were from Algeria? Or Australia? What if unicorns had seasonal affective disorder?
I sit down on the edge of the bathtub and bury my face in my clammy palms, head spinning and chest constricting as every muscle in my body simultaneously tenses and vibrates.
My poor mother spent my entire childhood warning me that there were things in this world more powerful, more terrifying, than burglars in balaclavas and rageful ex-husbands who’d had too many beers. She spent so much time trying to prepare me for moments exactly like this, trying to get me to embrace my lineage and power so I could defend myself. And instead, what do I do?
I land directly in harm’s way.With a fucking vampire in my house and a bunch of freaky fucking demons on my ass!
“Oh my god,” I whisper into my hands. “I’m turning into my mother.”
“Diantha, please.” Orfeo’s voice snaps me to attention. I spin around and grab hold of my toilet brush, brandishing it at the locked door.
“Stay away from me. Don’t take another fucking step!”
I won’t die. I can’t die. I refuse to leave this realm before I fulfill the promise I made my mother. I willnotlet us both become trapped in the Dream Place.
