Through gritted teeth he snarled, “Where is she?”
“Perhaps Rhode had trouble with the awakening,” Gavin attempted to rationalize.
“Nonsense,” Vicken spat. “She was never here. Or if she was, it was not for long.”
He got up and paced back and forth. They stood in the library. Every single book on the monstrous shelves was a book on the occult, a book on history, or a subject the coven felt was relevant to learn. I spent years perfecting it. A fire roared in the corner of the room. The coven sat in a semicircle, though two chairs were empty: Vicken’s and mine.
Vicken was pacing. His gait was smooth, and he held his hands behind his back. He looked positively decadent in his designer clothes and modern haircut. In his hand was a charred piece of paper, and on it, one word: wickham. His hands were covered in dirt and some had collected under his fingernails. He had been digging in the soil with his bare hands.
“Perhaps she’s dead,” Gavin said again.
“Fool. Don’t you think we would feel it?” Vicken asked.
Heath nodded, and Song grunted in agreement.
“Have we compiled the research?” Vicken asked. “I want you to go through it again. I want to know every possible definition of whoever or whatever this Wickham is.”
“I think Rhode is dead. I feel that,” Gavin said.
It was Vicken’s turn to nod.
“And no one has heard from or seen Suleen?” Vicken asked.
“He has ignored all of our attempts at communication. Do you think he would honestly show himself to us?” Heath asked. “He does not meddle in these matters.”
“He is the only one who could answer my questions.”
“Not the only one,” Song said. “There are others who could help.”
“I wouldn’t call upon anyone else unless I had no other choice,” Vicken explained. “Besides, Suleen is intimately connected. He knows Rhode.”
There was a collective silence.
“It’s time,” Vicken said, and sat back in the chair. “We’re going to find her.”
I gasped and opened my eyes. The cold breeze from the window brushed my right cheek. I had leaned my head against the window and had fallen asleep before the entrance to the highway. Then I felt a squeeze on my left knee. I looked at Justin, and the images from my dream seemed to evaporate.
“You’ve been asleep for an hour,” he said. When I looked out the windshield, I saw that we were back in Lovers Bay. We turned onto one of the driving paths through Wickham, and Justin pulled his car into the spot in front of Seeker. He had dropped everyone off at their dorms and I had slept right through it. “Did you dance at all?” he asked, and opened the SUV’s sunroof. I looked up at the early fall sky.
“That was one of the best times I’ve ever had,” I said, and leaned back into the seat. “I wish Tony had been there,” I admitted, and brought my hand to my hair. I nervously attempted to make sense out of the straggly and sweaty parts stuck to my shoulders and forehead. I smiled after pulling my hair back. “But thank you,” I said. “Can we go again next week?”
Justin threw his head back and laughed out loud. He squeezed my shoulder with his right hand, then we were quiet for a minute. I listened to the sounds of Wickham at night. Somewhere in the distance tiny waves rolled onto the Wickham beach shore.
“There’s been something I’ve wanted to ask you for a while,” he said, and he moved his hand, which was still on my shoulder, and pressed on my back so I would lean forward a bit. “What does your tattoo mean?” he asked.
The question was out of the blue, yes, but if I could tell anyone, it was Justin. I supposed he had never asked me before out of respect. Or maybe he didn’t want to know the truth. I took a breath.
“Long ago, Rhode, the vampire you recognized in the photo, was a member of a brotherhood of knights. Sometime in the fourteenth century, men, healthy men, were dying. From the Black Plague. Huge pustules would cover the body. Children endured pain beyond belief. After seeing the devastation of the Black Death, Rhode decided to become a vampire. That complete story, I do not know, but when he returned he told his lord, King Edward the Third, what he had done. It is not easy to hide a vampire transformation.”
“Why?” Justin asked, his hand still on my back, only now his thumb was rubbing my skin.
“We look different in vampire form. Our features take on an ethereal look. The amazing part of Rhode’s tale is that King Edward accepted Rhode. Imagine discovering that your favorite knight, your number one, decided to join the ranks of the devil. When Rhode returned and told his lord what he had done, Rhode said, ‘Evil be he who thinketh evil,’ and thus the phrase was born. For Rhode, death was the ultimate—”
I stopped. My voice was breaking. I swallowed hard, and my eyes burned. I blinked a few times, and the burning went away. I looked up at Justin, whose smile had faded, though his exhausted features calmly looked into mine.
“Death was not something he could face. So he protected himself from it,” I finished.
“He became a vampire so he would never die?”
I looked out the window. The long, winding path to the right of Seeker was dark and the trees swayed. Such peace lay outside the window.
“But he died for you,” Justin said.
“Yes, he did. Anyway, that phrase, ‘Evil be he who thinketh evil,’ became the calling card of the Order of the Garter, which still exists in England to this day. It also became the motto of my coven. Though I bastardized it to no end.”
I brought my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees. I looked at the dashboard until all the small dials and lights were a blur.
“Rhode really believed that: To be evil, you had to wield it. Mean it. From your soul.”
“Did you?” Justin asked.
“Yes.”
In my mind’s eye I was looking at Rhode on the couch of my living room. His sunken cheeks and his strong masculine jaw were so bony, so breakable. And the blue of his eyes had already burned its color into my blood years before. But that night they had dimmed. I would still recognize that color anywhere, in flowers, in the sky, and in all the minutiae of the world. I tried to swallow but suddenly found that I couldn’t. I had to get out—Justin’s SUV was too small. I was too small. I was going to burst out of my skin.
“I should go,” I said, opening the door. I stepped into Seeker’s parking lot.
Justin rolled down the window and called after me. “Hey, Lenah! Wait.”
I heard the motor go silent, the driver’s-side door open and close, and the thud of Justin’s shoes thump on the dirt behind me. I turned to face him and I clenched my fists. The lights from Seeker Hall illuminated the benches and dorm entrance behind me.
I must have been a scary sight because Justin stopped two or three feet from me. My jaw was set in a hard clench, my eyes squinted down at the ground, and I was breathing like a bull, through my nose.
“What is it?” he asked. “What did I say?”
“You didn’t do anything. It’s me. I want to burst out of my skin. Take my mind and throw it into another body. I want to forget everything I’ve done up until two months ago.” I was saying all of this through clenched teeth. Spit came out of my mouth, but I didn’t care.
Justin’s eyes reflected pure panic. His mouth dropped a bit, and he scanned the ground and said, “It’s like bungee jumping.”
“…What?” This was perplexing, to say the least.
“You’re standing there on a bridge and you know you’re about to do something supremely stupid. But you do it, anyway. You have to. To feel something. Because doing something that crazy is better than just standing around living life with all your mistakes and stupid responsibilities. You jump because you have to, because you have to feel that rush. You know you’ll lose your mind if you don’t.”
“You’re saying that deciding to be human again after six hundred years as a ruthless vampire is like bungee jumping?”
We were silent for a mo
ment.
“You don’t see the connection?”
I couldn’t help laughing. How did he do this? How could he make me see it this way? In the deepest moment of turmoil he’d made me realize that this life, the one I was in now, was full of laughter and happiness.
I threw my arms around Justin’s neck and kissed him so deeply that when he moaned I could feel the vibration of the sound and it sent a chill through my body. I could feel it in my toes. I kissed the nape of his neck and the small space between his neck and shoulder. Then I pulled away so there was only an inch or two between us. “Come upstairs with me,” I whispered before I even knew what I was really saying.
Justin’s eyes widened. He smiled so his dimples were deeper than I’d ever seen them before. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. I was sure.
After sneaking by the guard, Justin met me at the top of the stairs and I stood in front of the door. I slipped a finger into the bushel of rosemary at the door and took out a single leaf. I handed it to Justin. “Press it. Keep it in your wallet. When you look at it—you’ll remember tonight.”
Soon we were standing face-to-face in the middle of the living room. Around me were the talismans of my life: the sword, the photos, the vial of Rhode’s dust around my neck.
“I’m glad you know the truth,” I whispered. “You don’t know, you can’t know, what tonight meant for me on that dance floor.”
Justin stepped forward and cupped his hand on my right cheek. Sheets of shivers rolled down my arms. Glorious touch. Justin’s touch—one that I wasn’t sure I could live without now.
“I love you, Lenah,” he said. I was shocked to see his eyes were watery.
“I’ve never said it to a human before,” I said, and looked down at the floor. I wouldn’t dare look at the bureau, where Rhode’s eyes would meet mine. This was a different love, one that I could feel with my beating heart.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it,” Justin said, and leaned forward to kiss me again. I placed a hand on his chest to stop him and stepped back. I had to remove Rhode’s remains from my neck. A respect thing. Maybe a vampire thing. I placed the necklace on the coffee table.
When Justin kissed me and then lifted me up so my legs wrapped around his waist, I knew he was headed toward my bedroom. Once we entered the room, Justin kicked back his leg and shut the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Lenah?” Justin whispered. He was stroking my head with his hand. My head was on his chest, and I listened to his heart beating, recuperating back to a normal speed. Outside, the sky was filled with stars.
“Yeah?” I replied. I was dozing, almost asleep under my warm and fluffy comforter.
“Will you go to winter prom with me?”
“Of course,” I whispered, sure I would fall asleep in moments. “Justin?”
“Mm-hmm?” he said, moments from sleep himself.
“What’s a prom?”
He laughed so hard that my cheek bounced up and down on his chest.
The late morning light shone through the bedroom window curtains. Something looked different. The things in my room seemed fuzzy—I rubbed at my eyes and slipped away from the bed as quietly as I could. Justin was still asleep, stomach down, so only his bottom half was covered by the comforter. I pulled a nightgown off a hanger from my closet. I slipped the black cotton dress over my head and rubbed my eyes until I approached the bay window in my bedroom. It was then that I noticed how different my world had become in one night.
Trees looked solid. I couldn’t distinguish the fibers in the bark. Blades of grass moved in the wind by the thousands, but their individual sways and vibrations were indistinguishable to my eyes now. I could see the beach in the distance, but the details in the sand were muted and blurry. I could no longer see the chips in the paint of the chapel across campus. I rubbed my eyes again, but the view remained the same. Rhode was right: I had lost my vampire sight and finally become the human he had dreamt that I would be.
I think hours passed as I sat on the window seat and looked out at the campus. At one point, I wrapped my shoulders in a blanket and just stared and stared. Then I heard the sheets rustle behind me.
“Lenah?” Justin asked, but he was sleepy.
I turned my body to see him in the bed. His hair was messy, and his chest was bare. He held the sheets over his bottom half and joined me on the window seat. I turned back and kept staring out the window. He looked out the window and then at me.
“What is it?”
I turned my head to meet his eyes. “It’s gone,” I said, returning my gaze to the much different view out the window.
“What? What is?”
“My vampire sight.”
Justin sighed. “Wow.” There was a moment of silence. “Is it—um, my fault?”
I almost laughed aloud, but I didn’t. Instead I smiled and said, “No.”
I refocused on the glittering ocean and the blurry rolls of the waves.
“Maybe this is why humans are so caught up in their own thoughts,” I said, still keeping my gaze forward. “They can’t see what the world is really like. If they could, they would look beyond their own dreams and preoccupations.”
I looked at Justin when he didn’t say anything. His eyes, those green wild eyes that were always looking for the next daredevil trick, were still and calm.
“I love you, Lenah.”
I took a breath; it was my choice to love now. My choice to decide if I meant it or not. No curse binding me for all of eternity. “I love you, too.”
With that, Justin leaned forward and took the blanket from off my body.
In the three weeks that passed after Halloween, fall turned to winter very quickly. When everyone else went inside to get warm, so did Justin and I. We had become virtually inseparable. My thoughts of the coven were becoming more and more distant. Perhaps Suleen was wrong. Perhaps they had overlooked the ashes in the fireplace. Maybe Suleen was given the wrong information?
It’s amazing what you can convince yourself when you want to hide from the truth.
I was watching a lacrosse practice at the end of the season. It was only days before Thanksgiving break and soon practices would be moved inside. Music echoed from dorms. Students walked across the meadow and to and from the greenhouse. I no longer kept flowers in my pockets. The only trinket I kept was the vial of Rhode’s remains around my neck. That day, I sat on the edge of the lacrosse field. I rested a notebook on my knees while finishing up a draft on an English paper. Justin ran up and down the length of the field, tossing the ball from the cradle of the net and back with other lacrosse players.
Claudia, who was walking back from the Union holding a coffee for me and a tea for herself, sat down on my right. “Tony Sasaki is leaning against Hopper. Like, staring over here.”
I took the coffee and turned to look.
A large oak tree stood tall next to the Hopper door. Except now, like the rest of the trees on the campus, it was starting to lose its leaves and only a few branches grasped onto drooping red and orange leaves. There was Tony, with a black knit cap pulled over his hair. He met my eyes and motioned with a quick wave of his hand for me to come toward him.
I pushed up from the ground.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” I said to Claudia, whose eyes said she knew that whatever Tony wanted to talk to me about, it probably wasn’t good. He had kept up his icy demeanor for weeks now.
“Hey,” I said, though I looked down at my coffee and then up at Tony’s eyes.
“Can I talk to you about something?” he asked, but his mouth was set tight and he looked directly into my eyes.
“You haven’t wanted to talk to me for about a month,” I said. A blast of icy wind whipped my hair around my mouth and cheeks. I gripped the coffee cup. “Three weeks, actually.”
“Come inside,” Tony said, and turned to walk into Hopper. I glanced back at the field. Justin was turned toward me and in response, I shrugged my shoulders. I followed Tony in
side.
Tony’s feet made his particular rhythm as he walked up the twisting stairs toward the art tower. I knew the heavy shuffle of his feet and the way that his boots sounded on the wood. I followed behind, my feet making considerably less noise even though I was wearing boots, too.
When we walked into the art tower, Tony crossed the floor and turned left. The portrait was now framed and hanging on the wall. Tony stood to the right of an easel. Behind him were the large, open cubbies where students stored their pens and supplies. Tony’s cubby was hidden behind the easel.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” I asked, still only a few steps into the room. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I had to know. Doesn’t make it right, but I had to know. I mean, all this time. There was something different about you,” Tony said, as though he was rationalizing it to himself.
“What?”
“When you started spending all that time with the Three-Piece and Justin. It wasn’t you. At least, I didn’t think you liked the kind of people who made fun of everyone else. Of me.”
“I got to know them, Tony. You hung out with them. They’re not bad, especially Justin.”
“You made me hang out with them. I didn’t want to.”
My cheeks got hot, and I didn’t want to look at Tony. His fingers, covered in their usual paint and charcoal, pushed the easel so the wooden legs made a scratching sound on the floor. Behind the easel a red velvet curtain covered Tony’s cubby.
“What is this?” I asked.
Tony pulled the curtain to the right. Inside the cubby was a stack of eight or nine books. At the top was a thick, hardcover book that looked very familiar. The metal cover, the gold leafing on the pages. It was the Order of the Garter book from the library and on top of it was the photo of Rhode and me.
“You tell me, Lenah. I know it’s wrong. I know it is. And I’m not crazy or anything. But when I ran out that day, after I told you I loved you,” Tony said, taking the book and the photo from the cubby and putting them on an art desk, “a couple of weeks ago, I was organizing my pictures, filing them away, whatever. In every single one, you’re so pale. I mean, you’re physically hiding from the sunlight. That was my first clue. So, I went to your room and I knocked on the door. But you hadn’t locked it. So I turned the knob, thinking maybe you didn’t hear me. I went inside to wait for you. I sat on your couch and waited to apologize for just springing it on you when I told you—” He paused. “When I told you I loved you. And that’s…that’s when I saw this.”