Page 77 of We Were Eternal Once

“Have you spoken to your lover about your anger?” she parries.

“That is different,” I protest.

“It is not. My truths mean consequences. I do not think my family will so readily accept what I’ve to say. I’m already an outcast. I was sent here so I no longer sullied the family name. If I were to return and tell them they were wrong, that centuries of knowledge is inaccurate…They would not accept this. I would go from outcast to pariah. Or they’d execute me.”

“Execute you? That is dramatic.”

“It is the truth,” she says quickly. “You don’t understand, just as I don’t understand your feud with your lover. Accept that whatever keeps you from making peace with them is exactly what keeps me from making peace with my family. Accept that we walk two separate paths that the other will never understand.”

There was only one way to make Zora understand my path, and that was to live it. I wish time hadn’t erased my first memories of meeting you. How did you tell me what you were? What did you say of this life? How does one never reveal their nature to humans, yet create life?

“This upsets you,” Zora says, misunderstanding my silence.

“No—I am simply thinking. You are right, I do not understand your worries, just as you do not understand mine. Perhaps we can grieve together in that knowledge, that we are both influenced by circumstances we cannot control.”

“I wish I could elaborate. Do not think that I am withholding because of anything within my control. There are…rules. Even speaking like this is dangerous for me.”

“Speaking in abstracts? For a family that is countries away and too poor to live off their vocation, they have much power.”

Zora’s smile is fleeting and sad. “It is not their power. It is a price, a curse, one that they didn’t understand. But enough of this melancholy. I think the remedy for us is a bit of fun. I want to test your sleight of hand this evening. Have you played cards before?”

Zora knew of a gambling hall that allowed women to play, where she slipped cards in and out of her sleeve to win more and more money. I sat opposite her, telling her of my cards with subtle taps on the table. By the time the moon began her descent, the other patrons were on to us, cursing and kicking us out the door. Zora stuffed her pocket and her satchel with her money and ran through the street, too fast for the lumbering drunks to catch her.

I caught one and drank him dry, leaving his body discarded in the shadows of the alley behind the gambling hall.

Zora waited for me at our meeting place, her gaze far away as she stared into the thinning crowd of the night. Soon the day workers would stir, and the streets would fill with the steady thrum of the city.

“Bonsoir,” I say, then hesitate. Her expression is no longer the feckless thief, it is the introspective woman lamenting her past. “What is it?”

“I am at a crossroads,” she says. “I do not know which way to go.”

“I am sure you’ve assessed the risks of both roads,” I remark. Her eyes track my movements, her muscles tense. Then she sighs and shakes her head.

“Bonsoir,” she says. “I hope things with your lover settle after a night away.”

I give a small smile and shake my head. “I fear it will take more than a night away to restore peace.” Do I want to restore peace? My anger returns, hot and acrid. Why must the thought of you destroy everything? This evening was ripe for the taking, and I spent the first bit of it lamenting on a bench in the garden. Now you take the shine out of the night, dulling what should have been a wonderful evening.

“There’s still time,” Zora says.

“Yes. Much time,” I agree.

“Yes,” Zora agrees, her gaze far away again. I want to stay, to ask her what troubles her, to question her crossroads. If I linger, I will be caught outside in the sun, and that is not something I can escape.

So I return home and slip into my grave alone, my arms wrapped tight around my body, as if it will hold my aching heart in place.

Intervention

“Iknow you’re there,” I say into the dark. She’s been following me for several blocks now, weaving in and out of cramped quarters of some slum district outside of Paris. It is an easy place to hunt, where humans are not missed. It is also far from where I suspect Zora lives.

I wonder what she would do if she saw me feed? I have imagined telling her several times since the night we spoke of melancholy. Is this the best way to tell a human of our kind?

I would like to ask you, but you’ve escalated your distance. I did not think it was possible, that your cruelty could run any deeper. You pass by me in the halls as if I don’t exist. You give me answers that are not answers. You leave for days at a time—to where? I do not know. You must move about during the day, though I don’t understand how.

You won’t speak to me, you’d rather let me suffer in your silence. I thought yelling or screaming would finally fix things, that you would be forced to acknowledge me. I destroyed everything I could—I tore up your room, I broke every item I could find. Most of it I didn’t recognize, you never carried things of value with you. Still, it felt good to break something of yours.

The next day it was clean once more, as if I did nothing. Even my greatest acts of destruction were inconsequential, something easily swept into the trash and disposed of.

I thrilled at picturing you cleaning the mess, only to find a human servant doing it one time. I smelled her blood on the air as she sliced her fingers on the glass from the window in the room we once shared.