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“What are you talking about?” she asked.
The boy continued to rant in a furious whisper. “I should have known it was her. I did know, but I forgot.... I think she used me or something... inside her did... everything’s so muddled in my mind... I mean, I remember what happened but sometimes I can’t believe it did happen... and I feel like I’m the one who should be out there. Sometimes I feel like I am out there.”
He wasn’t making any sense, and Hannah was starting to feel as confused as he sounded. “Who’s she?” But he didn’t have to say it. This time, it was written all over the anguish on his face. Hannah felt a quick stab of jealousy. There was another girl involved. There always was. You didn’t get to look like him—weary and handsome, with those sad black eyes—and not have some kind of girlfriend baggage.
“She was very special to me,” he murmured. “But I think I’m going to have to get back... so I can. God. So I can kill her.” Then he broke down into gasping, choking sobs. “I have to... but I don’t know if I’ll be able to.... I might just let it have me.... It would be easier in a way.”
Hannah got up from her bed and embraced him. She was not a touchy-feely kind of person but she wanted to do something to make him feel better. When her parents first separated, she was a zombie, an empty shell, devoid of feeling, but aching with a great and furious need for comfort. Her mother had tried to help, to reach out, but Hannah had resisted accepting succor from the person who was partly to blame for her misery. After all, maybe if her mother hadn’t been such a hard person to live with, her father would never have left her for Delphine, the Temptress Art Dealer. Who knew.
But whatever sorrow the divorce had brought to her life paled in comparison to what this boy was going through. He radiated fear, trembling in her arms. She didn’t really understand what he was telling her, but she could tell that he was running out of time.
Something thumped on the window hard, making them jump away from each other. Hannah took a sharp breath. The glass vibrated, but held and didn’t shatter. That vampire thing was back. It was out there. It was close. It wanted to feed.
And so did he.
The boy needed her blood, the strength and life force within it. He needed her to survive. He would die without her. Maybe not the kind of death humans experienced, but an emptiness nonetheless. A defeat. He would give himself up. He was growing weaker and weaker, and one day he wouldn’t be able to resist the monster’s call. He would walk out to meet his doom.
All he needed was to sink his fangs into her skin and drink her blood.
Hannah felt a shiver of revulsion at the thought. He was a monster, too. There was a monster in her bedroom. She moved away from him, her eyes wide and frightened as if seeing him for the first time. A stranger. A dirty, incoherent, and unwelcome stranger.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I think you should leave now.”
“It’s all right,” he said mournfully. “I didn’t expect you to. It’s a lot to ask.”
The light blinked off, and he was gone.
Hannah’s mother got up early the next morning to make her breakfast. Banana pancakes with maple syrup that came from the can with the Canadian flag on it. Hannah twirled the syrup around before taking a bite.
“Not hungry?” Kate asked. Kate had been the kind of person who ordered the housekeeper to make breakfast, who had made lists on Post-it notes, a litany of orders for the staff to take care of for the day. Hannah had never seen her mother cook anything aside from the random scrambled egg or the rare serving of pasta. Kate made one dish and made it well—spaghetti with meatballs. Now she cooked and cleaned, and her hands were dry and cracked from wiping down the bar at work. In the winter, Kate was a souschef at the attached restaurant, chopping carrots and boning chickens.
“Not really.” Hannah shook her head. She had never wished for the kind of relationship with her mother that meant they could talk about boys and crushes; she was almost glad that her mother didn’t jibe with the current intense befriending of her children. Kate was Mom. Hannah was Daughter. There was no girlfriend gossip between them, and that had suited them both fine.
“You look tired, hon. Please don’t read with that dim light up there. It’ll ruin your eyes.”
“My eyes are already ruined.”
Her mom drove her to the school, a few blocks away. Hannah trudged in the snow. The whole day she thought about him. She remembered his words, his desperation to get away from the creature in the night that was hunting him. How alone he had looked. How scared. He looked like how she had felt when her father h
ad told her he was leaving them, and her mother had had no one to turn to.
That evening, before going to bed, she put on her cutest nightgown—a black one her aunt had brought back from Paris. It was silk and trimmed with lace. Her aunt was her father’s sister and something of a “bad influence” (again, her mom’s words). Hannah had made a decision.
When he appeared at three in the morning, she was waiting for him, sitting in the armchair next to her bed. She told him she had changed her mind.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to do. I’m not that kind of vampire.”
“Yes. But do it quickly before I chicken out,” she ordered.
“You don’t have to help me,” he said.
“I know.” She swallowed. “But I want to.”
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
She put a hand to her neck as if to protect it. “Promise?” How could she trust this strange boy? How could she risk her life to save him? But there was something about him— his sleepy dark eyes, his haunted expression—that drew her to him. Hannah was the type of girl who took in stray dogs and fixed birds’ broken wings. Plus, there was that thing out there in the dark. She had to help him get away from it.
“Do it,” she decided.
