And Bogdan lived inside my mind.
That was the true horror. His emotions pressed against mine constantly. His commands bypassed my every thought. The unbearable need to please him was woven into my nervous system against my will.
If he wanted me close, my body moved.
If he ordered silence, my mouth stopped.
If he was displeased, pain crawled through me until I fixed it.
Over time, he became less a man and more gravity itself. Impossible to resist.
I looked away from him now in my cottage because remembering hurt too much.
Bogdan observed me from where he sat in the armchair. “You never truly adjusted to becoming like me, did you?”
“No.”
“Most eventually do.”
“I would rather have died.”
His lips curled. “And yet you didn’t.”
No. I didn’t.
Even then, even trapped beside him in that endless nightmare existence, I still wanted books, music, cities, and freedom. And eventually I wanted revenge.
Bogdan traveled constantly in those years. London. Paris. Prague. Vienna. He collected beautiful things and discarded people carelessly. Sometimes he vanished for months and returned covered in someone else’s blood, smelling like expensive perfume and dirt.
I learned a lot during those absences—new languages, folklore, and the exact shape and limitations of compulsion. Most importantly, I learned Bogdan had grown arrogant. He genuinely believed I loved him.
So, I waited. I waited for decades. Until finally, one terrible storming night on the Irish coast, I prepared his coffin while he slept after feeding. I wrapped the chains myself. Rowan ash woven carefully through iron links. It wasn’t enough to kill him, only to weaken him.
Then I dragged that coffin inch by inch through rain and mud toward the cliffs while every instinct inside me screamed not to betray him. The compulsion nearly broke me. I vomited blood twice from the strain of it.
By dawn, I stood alone on the cliffside staring down at black Atlantic water while the coffin disappeared beneath the waves.
I remembered sobbing afterward. It had taken a lifetime, but his mind was finally gone from mine.
I wandered after that. Everywhere. Anywhere. I danced, drank, loved recklessly sometimes, lived stupidly often. Eventually, freedom became lonely. Then came the opportunity to care for children, the children I’d always wanted but could never have. A widow in Boston hired me first because her twin boys stopped speaking after their father died. I stayed with them for six years.
After that came another family. Then another.
Over time, I realized caring for children made eternity bearable. Children changed constantly. Grew constantly. They reminded me life moved forward no matter how desperately grief wanted to freeze it. And somewhere along the way, being needed became my purpose.
Now, Bogdan sat in my cottage surrounded by grocery lists and children’s schedules. It was wrong that he occupied the same space where Billie’s drawings were taped crookedly to my refrigerator. The same space that proved I had built something gentle despite him. And he was reading it all with interest.
That frightened me more than his anger would have. Anger I understood. Interest meant he had found something worth taking from me.
“Mondays,” he murmured, scanning a page. “Piano lessons for the boy. Tuesdays, museum preparation with the girl. Saturday…” His eyebrow lifted slightly. “Baking lessons with a timid little mother from the school.”
He turned another page.
“Meal planning. Gardening schedules. Family movie nights.” His mouth curved faintly. “My dear girl, you have become quite domestic.”
The words shouldn’t have embarrassed me, yet heat crept into my face anyway.
Bogdan noticed it. He always did. “That embarrasses you?” he asked softly. “Not the blood drinking. Not the immortality. But handwritten lunch schedules?”
