“Justin!” called a voice.
Both of us spun around. Tracy and the Three-Piece headed toward the greenhouse, coming from the direction of the Union. All three were dressed in black, short cocktail dresses, though each one was just slightly different in style from the others.
“Hi, Lenah,” Tracy said when she got to the pathway.
“You tanned so fast,” Claudia said to me.
I looked down at my arms.
“I guess I didn’t notice,” I replied with a shrug.
“Staying in tonight?” Tracy asked, looping her arm through Justin’s. I looked into Tracy’s eyes as a vampire would. A stare that pierced deep into the pupils. Though I saw no depth to her soul. She was flat, a child of the secular universe. In fact, every one of the Three-Piece was a victim of her own self-absorption. Justin on the other hand had a light in his eyes. A window of sorts, where I could see that he was much, much more than an average boy. He had stealth and courage—like Rhode. He had soul. I tore my eyes away from Tracy’s. There was a tug in my chest as though a spell had been broken.
“Yes, I’m staying in,” I said, and refocused on Claudia and Kate. “Sunday isn’t a big night out for me.”
“Just hanging out outside the greenhouse?” Kate asked. She was in an extremely short dress. “Too bad,” Tracy said to me, and then looked at Justin. “Let’s go, I want to get to the club and back before curfew.”
And with that, they started walking up the path. I didn’t want to follow behind, so I pretended I was looking at something in the greenhouse.
“ ’Night,” Justin said with a glance back at me.
“ ’Night,” I said, and soon they were enveloped in the blackness of the path and I was walking home.
Nine a.m., Monday morning, and I found Tony at the library. Turns out he had been there for hours. He was surrounded by hundreds of pictures. I mean it, hundreds of pictures—of me. After I put my backpack behind the desk I looked down the long aisle of books toward the back study area. I took off my sunglasses and started down the row of books toward Tony.
I stood above the table, but Tony didn’t look up. The pictures were from the snorkeling trip. There must have been two hundred photos, each from a different perspective. Tony’s head was down, and his fingers tightly clenched a stumpy piece of charcoal. I looked at a white sketch pad on the table and saw the outline of a pair of eyes that looked very much like my own.
“You realize this could be categorized as an obsession?” I said with my arms crossed over each other.
Tony shot back into his chair and I have to admit I took a step back out of surprise. His usual happy-go-lucky attitude was nowhere to be seen. His smooth skin had a few lines of charcoal on it and a black smudge on his forehead where he must have been resting his palm while working.
“I’ve never done a portrait like this before,” he said, and then bent over, back at the sketchbook. “I gotta get the perspective right,” he grumbled, though it seemed Tony was talking more to himself. He looked at me, back down at the sketch pad, and ripped the page out of the notebook. He crumpled it into a ball and dropped it to the floor. I slid one of the photos from off the table.
In it, Justin Enos and I stood on the rim of the boat. Justin’s hand was in mine and the way our profiles looked, it was as though we were washed in sunlight. I was looking into Justin’s eyes and I was smiling. The water directly below us cast a glittery, gold glow on our faces. Before I had a moment longer to look at the curve of my mouth and whiteness of my teeth, Tony snatched the photo out of my hand and threw it carelessly into the pile.
“Hey!” I protested.
“Wrong. The perspectives on these are all wrong.”
“Tony, how could that be? Look how many there are. I’m sure you can find—”
He shook his head quickly and with one sweep of his arm pushed the photos into a canvas bag and stalked away up the long aisle and toward the front door. His backpack fell off his arm and dangled over his wrist. He brought it back over his shoulder just as his baggy pants slid off his backside, showing me his boxer shorts and the top of a very small butt crack. He took a small hop library door.
“Tony, wait!” I called, and pushed out of the library.
I tried to hold in the laughter as I jogged to catch up.
“You don’t get it, Lenah,” he said to me, but he kept walking. “I have to get this right. I mean, it’s not just your portrait. It’s a big part of my scholarship. Every project I choose has to have some kind of learning curve. You know, where I’m applying something new to my work.”
“So painting a portrait of me has to push the envelope in terms of your artistic ability?” I asked. Our gazes met, and Tony’s frustration eased into a smile. He rested his arm over my shoulder.
“When you put it that way and talk so fancy, yeah. Also, you’re easy on the eyes.”
We started walking toward anatomy class, but there was foot traffic. Students gathered together in a large group, so we had to walk slowly.
“The prince and princess are having a fight,” said a junior in front of Tony and me. I did not know her, but she had poor blood flow (dull blue veins—that color was always a clear indication).
Tracy and Justin were on the meadow in front of Quartz. Tracy was pointing at Justin so that one French-manicured nail was inches from his nose. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the ground. As we turned left toward the Madame Curie statue, I caught only a snippet of the fight.
“You’re always suggesting the library these days. Let me guess, Justin, to see the one girl on campus who doesn’t throw herself at you!”
“Tracy! That’s not it!”
“She’s really rich. I assume that has something to do with it. Sorry not everyone can buy their way into a private apartment, Justin. I know you have a single, but roommates are, like, part of the deal here.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“You never want to come to my room anymore. And don’t try to deny it! You think she’s pretty. I’ve seen the way you look at her in English class!”
“Whoa,” Tony whispered as we walked into the science building for anatomy. I couldn’t help feel a burn of satisfaction.
During class, my thoughts jumped back and forth between Justin and Tracy’s fight and Vicken’s voice echoing through the campus. After obsessing over Tracy’s accusations about Justin’s feelings for me, I would revert back to thoughts about Vicken. How and why did I hear him so clearly? I knew I wasn’t crazy and hearing voices. A vampire in love can communicate with his mate telepathically, though Vicken’s connection should have been severed with my transformation.
Vicken’s willpower and determination when he was alive were powerful forces; they were part of the reason I changed him into a vampire. These aspects of his personality would have exaggerated as the years went on—perhaps he could’ve reached me even though I was thousands of miles away.
“Sit,” Tony said after anatomy class. He interrupted my thoughts by the sharp sound of wood dragging across wood. He slid a stool from one side of the art tower to the other. After a few moments, I was sitting on the stool while Tony worked away. He abandoned the charcoals, deciding he couldn’t grasp my features well with it. He came from behind the easel and bent forward, close to my face. He took a pinkie finger, decorated by a silver band, and moved a strand of hair out of my eyes. He checked the accuracy of a paint color by dabbing it on his palm.
“You look great. This is gonna be perfect,” he said with a smile. I liked the smell of paint in the room and the fresh grass outside wafting with the breeze through the open windows. Tony smelled a little like a boy, musky but covered in paint. I looked into Tony’s eyes—he stared into mine. A smile crept across his face. Soon, before I knew it, I was lifting my chin toward his, and our lips were inches apart.
Then someone knocked on the doorway frame.
“Lenah?”
Tony jumped backward. He spun around to the doorway. Justi
n walked into the art studio. I smiled, completely unable to help it.
“I went to the library to look for you,” Justin said, striding across the floor toward me.
“First the greenhouse, now this?”
“The librarian said you’re usually up here with Tony.”
“Just for work,” I said, and stood up. Tony was already putting his paints away. I was smiling so much I felt giddy.
“Are you painting Lenah?” Justin asked, and craned his neck to peek at the easel.
“Yeah,” Tony said curtly, and gathered his paintbrushes in his hands.
“Cool. Can I see?”
Tony picked up the canvas. “No. Totally not even ready yet.” He moved the easel so it faced the wall.
“He’s a little sensitive,” I said, still smiling.
“What’s up, Enos?” Tony said. “You don’t usually come up here.”
“I’m here to see how brave you are,” Justin said, but he was talking to me.
“Brave?” I asked, turning to face Justin more directly.
“Saturday. We’re going bungee jumping.”
I looked from Justin to Tony. Tony shook his head quickly. “Don’t do it, Lenah. It’s suicide.”
“What’s bungee jumping?” I asked.
“Seriously?” Justin asked, and now leaned against a studio desk. He crossed one ankle over the other. A pose I had seen him do before. This was a comfort position, a way he stood so that he would feel as though he was in a position of power. I sighed—this ability to read positions was a vampire trait. A habit that thus far I could not turn off. “You jump from a bridge to a lake. It’s fun.”
Tony stepped between us and put both hands up. One hand was still gripping all of his brushes. “You wear a strap around your ankle. It’s a really elastic cord and then you jump from a high bridge or a building—”
“It’ll be worth it,” Justin interrupted.
Tony placed his paintbrushes in a water basin inside the art tower sink. He washed off his paint palette and turned. “To who, Enos? Just because you have a death wish doesn’t mean Lenah does,” Tony said.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go.” Justin’s face lit up immediately. “But only if Tony goes.”
“No. Nope. No way,” Tony said. “No,” he repeated with a kind of maniacal laughter. He stood in front of some of the student cubbies and pushed a red curtain aside. The curtain sectioned off Tony’s art cubby. All the art students had them. He threw his palette into a metal bin. “No,” he said, laughing again and shaking his head. He threw his black leather portfolio book under his arm and blasted past Justin and me. “No,” he said, stepping into the stairwell. “No. Ha. Ha. I mean, no.” He continued saying it all the way down the stairwell.
That night, I came home and collapsed onto the lounge chair. My eyes rested on the bureau across the room and I stared at the photo of my coven. My body just couldn’t run for endless hours anymore. There were blood and muscles now and my ever-present thumping heart.
It was so quiet. My eyes grew heavy. Outside, it was silent, but every once in a while I could hear chatter from people walking in the stairwell of my dorm. I listened to my breathing because it actually mattered if I had oxygen in my lungs. In and out. In and out…the rhythmic whoosh of the air was comforting. My eyelids slid down for the hundredth time and finally, I let them fall. Then, there, in my mind, coming out of the blackness, was the first-floor sitting parlor of my home in Hathersage, though it looked dramatically different.
One hundred years ago there were large Oriental rugs, deep red curtains, furniture upholstered in plush velvet. In this dream, the room remained the same but accessories had been added, like flat-screen televisions and computers.
In the corner, Vicken, dressed in a pair of black dress pants and a black button-down shirt, paced back and forth. He walked to the window and pressed a button on the right side of the wall. The shades mechanically rose. Outside, directly below the window, was the cemetery washed in a blood-orange glow. On a tombstone was my name, Lenah Beaudonte.
“Something is amiss,” Vicken said, though he spoke in Hebrew. “Rhode’s materials are gone. His bedroom stripped.”
“She will rise,” Gavin said, speaking in French from the doorway. “Patience.” Vicken did not turn to look at him. Their speech was a mishmash of languages, cultures, and accents.
“We’ve gone over this,” Heath said, joining Gavin in the doorway and of course only speaking in Latin.
“Yes, but every day as we come closer to Nuit Rouge, there is a rising doubt in my mind,” Vicken explained.
“Fear,” Song said, slipping past Gavin and Heath and sitting down in a brown leather lounger that faced the window. He spoke in English.
Vicken scoffed.
“Fear is what holds you to that window,” Song said.
Vicken’s fingers dug into the window frame. His nails cut a line of ridges in the wood. He turned from the window rapidly and collapsed into an empty armchair. On an end table was a dish filled with dried lilac. He picked them up by the tips of his fingers and let the purple petals fall like grains of sand back into the bowl.
“I need her. If in five weeks she does not rise, I will dig her up with my bare hands,” he said, and that’s when I opened my eyes in the living room, gasping for breath and smelling lilac in my hair.
Chapter Fourteen
Nickerson Summit is a bridge suspended 150 feet over a river. That Saturday we left in Justin’s SUV for Cape Cod Bungee, which was only half an hour from Wickham. Most people had to get parental consent to bungee jump—I just forged Rhode’s signature. After an hour tutorial and a bunch of papers in which we signed that if we died our parents wouldn’t sue, we took our lives into our own hands. We lined up to bungee off Nickerson Summit.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this. Such a bad idea,” Tony said, pacing back and forth in front of the bridge. He stopped every few paces and shook his shoulders. “You can do this,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Are you gonna jump with me?” Tracy asked Justin while hanging all over him.
“We’re all gonna jump alone, babe,” Justin said. Tracy leaned in for a kiss. I noticed that her mouth was open and that Justin kept his closed. It was an odd sort of kiss, not equal.
“I want to go first!” Tracy squealed and hugged each member of the Three-Piece.
“Thank God,” Tony said under his breath, and sat down on the curb of the bridge.
“Promise you’ll jump right after me?” Tracy asked Justin. Her eyes took a stab at me, then she kissed Justin on the cheek.
“Sure,” he said, and Tracy took her position on the bridge.
Tracy stood at the ledge of the bridge, held both arms out, and then leaned forward. She shrieked and then she was gone. All of us ran to the ledge of the bridge. The ends of Tracy’s hair just barely touched the river. She held her arms above her head, and her body flowed with the movements of the cord. She rose up, almost back up to the height of the bridge, and then back down. The way her body was so limp, I could tell she completely trusted the technology. How on earth would I do that? As the cord started to slow, she soared through the air more languidly, side to side, so her hair swayed and flew in the wind.
As the bungee company people came in their dinghy to untie her from the bungee cord, Claudia and Kate grasped hands and jumped next. They shrieked the entire way down. Followed by Curtis, then Roy; soon, the only people left to bungee were Justin, Tony, and me.
“Come on, Tony, you can do it!” Tracy yelled from the river’s edge.
I peered over the edge, surprised that Tracy actually said something nice to Tony. When I looked, I saw that the girls were sunbathing. Underneath their clothes they were wearing matching red bikinis. All I had was my bra and underwear.
Tony stepped up to the bridge. He clenched and unclenched his hands.
“My hands are sweating. My back is sweating. I’m nasty.” He turned and tossed me his baseball hat. “I can’
t believe I’m doing this. I wanna puke.”
The bungee guy, standing next to Tony, handed a blue bucket to him out of nowhere. Tony took a deep breath. “I am an artist. I can do this.”
“Are you ready, yet?” the bungee guy snarled. He was squat with a beard and a T-shirt that read, FAT GUYS LOVE MEAT.
“Nice shirt,” Tony said to the bungee guy and then looked back at me. “I can hear my mother, Len. ‘Tony, why you wanna kill yourself?’” I laughed so hard my chest hurt.
Tony placed his arms out at his side, closed his eyes, and screamed so that his voice cracked the entire way down. I heard a splash and then the Three-Piece whooped and cheered.
Justin and I were the only ones left. The bungee man snapped and tied me into the harness. Behind me, on the ground, I could feel Justin watching me.
“You did this on purpose,” I said to Justin as the man continued to strap me in.
“Maybe,” he said.
“What is it you’re playing at? Your girlfriend is down there at the river.”
“Let’s jump together.”
“Come on, Lenah!” Tony called from below.
“If you jump with me, Tracy will know.”
Justin stood up. “Know what?”
“I mean, she’ll think you did it on purpose.”
“I did do it on purpose,” he said.
“You two,” the bungee man said. “Keep your eyes open if you’re jumping together. Don’t bash heads or anything. I hate cleaning up blood.”
“If you jump with me—” I started to say.
“I don’t care anymore.”
Justin grasped my hand into his, and we stepped onto the bridge ledge. I didn’t look at Tracy and the Three-Piece because they were utterly silent below. Justin had waited to jump with me and now everyone knew it. I saw him lift his right foot. “No—wait,” I said, feeling the enormity of the distance from the bridge to the river. Then Justin squeezed my hand, and I refocused on the river below. The way the little waves swept together and moved. I watched the curl of the whitecaps from the dinghy’s motors. It came into my mind at that moment—the dream of the coven. It wasn’t real, though it had felt real. I suddenly imagined Rhode’s enraged face. He sacrificed his life for me and I was going to throw myself off a bridge?