He was thinking. I mentally photographed it, so I would know that was what he looked like when he was thinking. I thought he looked secretive, like he was deciding how much he should tell me. My memory of the event was nil.
“I don’t think, whatever it was––”
“What?” I asked. Now that I had him talking, I wanted to hear his voice some more.
He sighed. “I don’t think, whatever it was––was human,” he said. “There; I said it.”
That stopped us both in our tracks––our tracks that were being made by him.
I had to marvel at his stamina.
Another time, I said to myself.
He looked like he was on the verge of something. A revelation, perhaps. “Why do you think that?” I asked. I didn’t want to frighten him if this was his first time dealing with the supernatural.
“Because of what it... did, for one thing. And there were other... things....”
Cryptic is cryptic. “Would you like to explain that, or should I just guess?” I said.
He laughed. Even in my advanced state of delirium, it sounded like something I wanted to get to know a whole lot better. My heart beat with unreserved enthusiasm.
Here was someone who had fought that thing off. I certainly hadn’t.
My heart spiked, painfully. Who was this stranger?
He steered us through the late-night crowds, my only directions the street I lived on. I realized he was going to leave me soon. “Don’t leave me. Not yet,” I said. I didn’t care if I sounded pitiful. The pitifuller, the better. At least he wouldn’t leave me. “I just got here,” I said.
“I won’t. I promise,” he said.
My heart started flopping some more.
“Now, will you at least tell me your name?” he said.
“Halsey.”
“Halsey what?” But I was still too overwhelmed by the sound of his voice, especially when he said my name. I stared at his lips forming the words huskily.
“Halsey Rookmaaker.” I gulped.
We walked some more. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my name is?” he asked.
I was still too caught up in the situation to hear what he said, exactly. “Sorry. I would love to know your name. What is your name?”
“It’s Lennox.”
Lennox... Lennox what?
My stalker tendencies perked up. If he tells me his last name, I can google him. Something told me not to push my luck. You don’t want to scare him away.
“I wonder what your last name is?” I said. He laughed again. It was like a bark. I marveled in spite of myself.
“Can you promise me something?” he said.
“Anything.”
“Just don’t go on any more late-night strolls, okay? I don’t know if you know it, but there’s a killer on the loose.”
“My landlady,” I said. “She’ll kill me.” I had already begun to think of her as my nemesis.
“I’m sure she won’t,” he said.
I just shook my head. “You don’t know her. She can’t see me like this... or you.”
He thought about that. “You’re right,” he said, as we rounded the corner, onto Condotti.
“I know I am,” I said. My brain filter didn’t work tonight.
“I can’t let her see me.”
“I see you,” I said.
“I know you do.” He smiled at me. I looked into his eyes and felt my will die inside of me. It just rolled over and exposed itself. I hoped he wouldn’t be too rough. It was whatever he wanted.
“Don’t you think that’s rather sudden?”
“What?” I said, prepared to defend my feelings for him.
“You just got here. She’s going to kill you?”
“Oh, that.” But I said, “I think she’s capable of it. I don’t know why. I think she may be a little protective of me.” The moment I said it, I knew it was true. “She reminds me of someone else, actually.”
“Who?”
It looked like it was going to be a night for revelations. “My old headmistress at my school,” I said. “She used to tell me... stuff. I get the feeling, now, that she really did care about me.”
He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “I have someone like that, too,” he said. We were almost there. “Maybe she told you stuff that was for your own good.”
“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” I said, voicing for the first time a fear I had. I didn’t know I was even capable of such feelings. I had never had a sense of losing anyone before. Not even my parents. They were already lost, by the time I had any sense in me.
“I don’t know about that,” he said, charming to the last.
“If I ask you, will you see me again?” My blood did strange things. Why had I been so bald in my affection for him?
“I don’t know about that, either. Why don’t you ask me, and we’ll see?”
I gulped. “Will you see me again tomorrow?” I asked; hope, hope.
“I’m busy tomorrow.”
It felt like being crushed. Not by his arms, which were nice. He was lean and wiry. But it was like being stabbed in my guts. He didn’t want to see me anymore. I was inconvenient. This silly girl who needed to be rescued all the time. I felt every prick of his condemnation.
“Oh.”
He stopped. We were there. This was it.
“You can put me down now,” I said, defeated. He kept holding on tight.
Something in me perked up.
“I have things to do tomorrow,” he said, “but––” and my mind got excited. “Of course I can see you again, Halsey.” He looked up at my balcony. When he said my name, I almost died. “After all, I know where you live, now.”
Part of me that never would have, smiled. Did he want to come up? Part of me that never thought that, did. I had never had a boy in my room before, ever.
He put me down. It felt like anticlimax. A gentle no. “Tomorrow,” he said.
I noticed that he was my height. A little taller, perhaps. Five ten, five eleven. I was five four. I expected him to be seven feet tall. He felt like that, in my imagination. All dependable and rescue-y.
“Just make sure you clear it with your landlady, or else I’ll have to fly up to your window to visit you, okay?”
I smiled, stupidly. Whatever he wanted. I was all for it. “Well, I’ll see you,” I said; I decided I would allow him to escape. If he wanted to, I would leave him an out. It was the least I could do, for all the saving of my life he had done. But he said, “I’ll keep an eye out for the––”
I looked down at my tank top. The part with the broken strap was coming down. I could see part of my bra peeking out. I had left a finger trail of blood where I had reached for my locket and not found it. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I started crying.
I mean, here was this guy, and I started crying on him, after everything he had done. Full-on waterworks. My lip even half-blubbered. But he just reassured me that he would see what he could do. He suggested I file a report, much good it would do. “The Questura is swamped––with the murders,” he said.
I just teared up even worse. “I will,” I said. I turned, hitting the button, waiting for my landlady to buzz me in. When I turned to thank him one last time, he was gone. Out of my life. Forever.
“Halsey, you stupid twit,” I said to myself. My landlady gave me worse. She was convinced I was going to be murdered within a fortnight, she said, making sure to give me extra fresh jabs with her not-real hand masquerading as a butcher’s knife.
“You’re probably right,” I said, nodding my bloodstained head. When I got to my bathroom, I saw my face in the mirror. I was wearing the biggest grin you ever saw. Which just goes to show how crazy I really was. Why would he ever feel that way about me? I couldn’t imagine it. No way.
No way.
Something about me decided not to give up hope, though. I would see him again. Or I would see him again, in my dreams. But I would see him again. I knew it!
Len
nox
I looked up at the white stone balcony; it was rounded, enough for two people to stand at. I thought about ‘flying’ her up to it. If I held her in my arms, like I was doing, I could run her up the wall.
The problem was she would notice. She had been in the throes of something and so didn’t know I was a vampire. I made sure not to touch her skin. It was kind of hard not to notice the heat coming through the thin cotton top she had on. I felt her skin give way to the firm muscles of my arms and hands. She weighed absolutely nothing. Carrying her was effortless.
What was of tremendous exertion was the discipline I had to show not to bite her.
I wanted to devour her, body and soul, to nourish myself on her hot, thick, wet, sticky blood. It was too much to bear. I needed to get away, to think.
She kept speaking to me. I felt: you can do this... take her....
I wanted to so badly. I wanted to give in to every lesser impulse. To luxuriate in each expression of my desire for her. It would be fun. Demented thoughts chased themselves through my brain.
You were given those fangs to bite, to taste; to take pleasure in the kill. To feel smaller, weaker things give way beneath you. You were born for such things...
I let her down from my grasp and said some business about going to the police––and then I ran, as far and as fast away as I could. I ran to where I found her.
I stopped running. I stood beneath the lamp. I looked into its bright filament.
She had gashed her head.
The locket hung from the lamp. I crawled up to it, and plucked it off. It had somehow caught and snagged when she floated....
The silver chain was broken. On the ground, I held the locket in my fingertips. There was a little hinge, which I pried open.
Two faces stared out at me, one on either side––a man and a woman... her parents... her family. I had memorized her face, of course. I marveled at who gave her what bits. I could see the look of self-confidence in her father’s eyes, but she had her mother’s beauty: the round soft face, the fragility––the terrible fragility––the sense of comfort and caring that seemed to radiate from her.
Halsey Rookmaaker.
Who was this girl? Why was I so attracted to her? What was it about her blood that made me want to taste her so? She would be a moment’s compromise. No one would ever have to know. I carefully planned every detail of her murder.
It came slick and fast, like a reel of film spinning too fast to see. But I saw it all.
The careful stalk, the swift ambush, the quick jerk as I forced my way into her neck––the gush, the absolute, overwhelming rush, of the thickness of her blood. Mentally drinking her sated me.
I hadn’t absolutely ruled out killing her; not yet, at least. She was safe, for the time being. I would get to know this Halsey Rookmaaker. I would get her to care about me, first, if I could.
I had to see where this would lead––I had the locket and an invitation. It wasn’t enough to see me over her threshold, but perhaps I could connive my way in. I wanted to see her behind locked doors. To maybe have her open her heart to me so I could rip it out. Still another part of me wanted to be her friend.
What was she doing to me? This was coming at totally the wrong time. If I didn’t stop....
Could I do my job, and spend time with her? Or should I let Rome perish? Certainly, whatever was out there wasn’t going away.
I would have to do my best. I went home to get on the computer and do some research. It would be a busy day tomorrow, especially seeing as how I would be spending half of it stalking some unknown teenage girl.
The locket was my in. I ran back to Castle Occam, to begin planning my strategy. She had to see that I had more sides to me than just Stalker Boy. I could be caring and considerate. I could be hers, if she’d let me. And I thought: I don’t think she knows what she can do. I don’t think she knows what happened. I don’t think she knows that she’s magic. Because that way I could victimize her easier.
Tomorrow... tomorrow... I told myself.
Chapter 5 – Halsey
The following morning, I booted up my laptop, searching for a WiFi connection, and logged in to my e-mail account. It had all the usual spam. However, there was a message from Becca, my best friend at school. I clicked on it.
It was early, 5 a.m. I didn’t know why, but I hadn’t been sleeping well lately. In fact, I did know why. The thing was, my parents had been dead since before I could remember. Why should their deaths be bothering me now?
I went into the hall in my bare feet, searching for breakfast. The lack of any kind of appliance was my only gripe with my current living conditions. I was willing to trade it all in for the upsides, though. Among them, that I was no longer at St. Martley’s Academy. There was a vending machine. It didn’t sell coffee, which is what I chiefly wanted, but I remembered the Succo del Gatto and looked to see if the machine carried something similar. Something bitter. I needed some kind of pick-me-up. I settled upon a non-alcoholic campari––it gave me the kind of brain food kick I needed when I trawled the interwebs, looking for information.
I ignored my landlady, whose disembodied eyes I could feel following me back to my room, shut and locked the door, and popped the campari open.
It tasted excellent.
A light breeze from the doorway onto the balcony felt divine. I could hear shopkeepers opening their stores down below. I would have to visit all of them. Before I got lost last night––I momentarily lit upon his face––I had seen many more avenues full of interesting places.
There were sights and sounds and tastes and purchases to explore––now and in the future.
It took a while, but I found a service provider––the signal was strong. I checked my e-mail.
St. Martley’s touted ‘an education most becoming of the sensitive lady.’ That meant taste. As if they could teach us posture and diction as well as the dark arts. Actually, St. Martley’s was an opportunity to find myself in a clique, the kind that either opened doors, or shut them forever.
I had been one of the ones who was in, which meant that I could get away with being a bitch.
I never abused my powers––loaded word––without cause.
My friend was Becca.
Becca started a clique that was elite.
I clicked on the message with the title COVEN GIRLS.
(“So she’s just a major bitch. Talk about whore of the whorepocalypse. Forget me. No, seriously. Forget me. If I have to talk to you while you’re out living it up while I’m stuck in this prison...”)
I sipped my campari. Becca being Becca. Least she was entertaining. Couldn’t say that for all them girls. She did tend to forget about others while she got stuck in her own little CW dramas. What was she talking about?
(“Write to me, kid. Don’t think because you’re gone you ever left. I intend for you to keep me up to date on all your loser guy conquests. Slut.”)
I sighed. If she only knew. I was tempted to reply back: “I haven’t met anyone yet,” but remembered that wasn’t true. I wanted to keep it to myself for now. She would understand that. She was all for letting things develop. I wondered how things were going. Her correspondence tended to be less with the hard facts, more with the gossip.
Gossip was making things true by saying them. She taught me that.
(“I’m so over him. Did I tell you what he said?”)
I scrolled through the rest of it.
(“Bound to be better than this place. I hate that you’re not graduating with us. Have some time. Let me know if it’s worth seeing. Becks.”)
I responded: “No losers on the horizon, sad but true. Flip your tassel for me. I’m inspecting things. Keep you posted. Gotta go. Bye.”
It had that proper rushed feel, while saying nothing at all.
I missed her. I didn’t think it would be that way if she were here. But a certain distance had brought nostalgia. I thought temporarily of Mistress Genevieve, my headmistress, and how I wanted her to t
hink well of me again.
This is your world now, Halsey. I quoted some Latin. One of the benefits of St. Martley’s.
The one about living for the moment, not squandering sunlight, etc. I felt my education, like a ball of energy. I could squeeze it at will. Graduating was just a ceremony. I felt the reigns of my own life in my hands, now. It felt nice.
Before I did anything else, I took another bath. I had so much time. A lifetime of time. I soaked, lathered, rolled and wallowed. I thought of him. I thought of why I was thinking of him. I was hooked on his eyes.
There was something about him.
He would be here tonight. He said so. What did that mean, though? It wasn’t like he was going to knock on my door or anything, was he?
Were we just going to meet? How was it going to happen? I hadn’t thought it through. It was probably because of how sudden it all had been. He came out of nowhere, all at once. Lennox....
I searched for his name on the Internet. Not enough to find a match. If I played my cards right, I could wheedle information out of him tonight. The word was like magic.
I have a date. Tonight.
I decided not to quibble over semantics––he was probably just checking up on me, like a doctor with a patient. Wink. I finished the thought and soaked some more. In the closet was the backpack. In the backpack was my future. It wasn’t necessarily a good future. I decided to let myself have this. You deserve it, I said. Somehow, I didn’t think so.
In the time it took to finish toweling myself off, Becca had already messaged me back three times. (“Spill. I know you’re seeing someone. You probably have a rendezvous.”) She was always saying things like that. They were goat-getters hoping to get me into revealing too much. I wasn’t so enamored with her that I didn’t think she was above talking behind my back, even if we were best friends, and blood sisters, and part of the same coven. I had always suspected her of frenemishness; no one could be so habitually indiscreet and keep your confidences. (“I bet he’s hot. Is he hot? What’s his name?”) I blushed slightly. (“Come on! You can’t have a Roman holiday, and not let me in on it.”)