The Season of Risks

Chapter One

 

  The season of risks began with the summer of love. That was my name for it: a time of strong feelings that changed quickly, from bliss, to embarrassment, to anxiety.

  Those feelings came with the smell of coconut oil, worn by others to tan but by me as perfume; the sharp green scents of the ocean, always nearby; the surf sounding bass notes for wavering songs played on some distant radio; and sand damp-soft between my toes, gritty on my clothes, and on my lips the taste of salt from the sea or from tears.

  My mother and my father sat facing each other in wicker chairs under an awning in the backyard of our rented cottage. We were on Tybee Island, near Savannah. They wore wide-brimmed hats and loose-fitting clothes made of unbleached linen. I saw them from my bedroom window when I awoke; they probably had been up for hours and might have just returned from a walk on the beach.

  The sounds of their voices woke me, his as measured as music, its inflections blending the places he'd lived: Brazil, Virginia, England, even a tinge of southwest Ireland, where he had traveled the year before. Her voice was liquid Savannah: a soft drawl that made me picture young women lazily discussing their beaux as they primped for a ball.

  But she was talking about ghosts.

  "No, it was September," Sara said. Sara is her name, but I call her Mae, the Portuguese word for mother; she told me she liked the sound of it better. Her hair is as long as mine, but hers is reddish brown. Mine is dark, like my father's. I've been told I have her eyes. I can't clearly see my reflection in mirrors, but I hope that it's true.

  "It couldn't have been September. " Raphael's voice never sounded irritated or emphatic, but managed to be speculative and a bit remote, even in disagreement. He prided himself on his long-term memory. "By September I had arrived in England. When you told me the ghost story, I was still at school in Virginia. It must have happened earlier. "

  My father had told me that ghost story. A young man killed in a duel in 1815 had shown up in Mae's apartment in Savannah-or rather, his apparition had. After a few visits, my mother decided that her visitor was the ghost of someone named James Wilde, whose grave she'd seen in Colonial Cemetery, across the street.

  My mother bent forward to pick up a tall glass of Picardo, one of the blood substitutes that provide the nutrients and oxygen we need to keep us from drinking mortals' blood. The dark red liquid glowed as she lifted the tumbler to her lips, then set it back on the table. "But I remember the way the air smelled. Like dead leaves. "

  "The odor came from him. From James. " My father turned his head, and I glimpsed his face-sunglasses, narrow nose, upper lip curved in a bow and lower lip turned down at its corners. I'm told my mouth has a similar shape. "Remember, I was with you the last time he appeared. "

  "The green smoke in the room. " Her voice was low, and I had to strain to hear her. "I'll never forget that night. But it was cold and damp. It must have been September. "

  He looked off at the century plants edging the yard. "The cold and damp-they came from James. "

  The words made me shiver, although the morning air felt warm and already humid, hinting of afternoon rain. Poor James Wilde, killed in a duel at the age of twenty-two because a friend had called his honor into question.

  Then I began to think of my own ghost story: the night two years ago when my friend Kathleen had appeared outside my window, although she'd been killed a month before. The way she called my name. And I said nothing. I sat watching her, too numb to respond.

  I pushed the memory away. I wasn't ready to revisit it yet. But for the rest of that sunny summer, I grew more and more aware of cold patches of shadow all around me, cast by nothing I could see.

  "Please don't tell me you're eavesdropping again. " Dashay swung into the room before I could move from the window.

  "Please do come in," I said in my most formal voice. Dashay was my mother's best friend, and probably mine, too-but I valued my privacy, particularly when invading others'.

  "Already here. " Dashay dropped onto the foot of my bed. She wore peach today-a pale shirt and darker cargo pants, an apricot-colored scarf woven through her hair. She glanced toward the window. "What are they up to?"

  "Disagreeing about the past," I said. "About when things happened. " My parents had recently reunited after several years apart. My father had raised me on his own, until I ran away to find my mother. Using dreams and hunches to find her in Florida, I managed to bring them back together again. Exactly how together, I couldn't tell yet.

  "Facts don't matter to memories. " Her voice had darkened. She shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts. "I'm going back to Blue Heaven today. Check on the horses and the honeybees, take care of some business. Want to come along? Leave the lovebirds on their own to figure out what, happened when. "

  Dashay talked too fast, I told myself, and I needed time to think about her question. "I'm still waking up. "

  Already I felt torn. Blue Heaven meant home-the farm she and my mother owned in Homosassa Springs, Florida. A neighbor had been taking care of things while we were away on Tybee. I missed the house, the horses, the bees. Most of all I missed Grace, our cat. But I didn't feel ready to leave my parents. Yes, I wanted to eavesdrop some more. I wanted to know if they were in love.

  And to be more honest with you than I could be with myself at the time, I wanted to decide if I might be in love myself. His name was Neil Cameron.

  "I think I'll stay here," I said. Strangely, Dashay looked relieved-only for a second, until her mouth reshaped itself to an expression of regret.

  When she left, I turned to look out the window again. They still sat there, talking, their voices now too soft for me to hear.

  The week before, I'd gone sailing for the first time. Cameron had a sloop called Dulcibella. He'd sailed it up from St. Simons Island and docked at a marina on the Intracoastal Waterway between Savannah and Tybee Island. It was our first meeting alone together.

  I'd met Neil Cameron the previous spring, when one of my college classes took a field trip to a caucus of third-party candidates in Savannah. From the moment I saw his dark blue eyes, watched him move, and heard him speak, he charmed me, and since then he had charmed a large percentage of the American public in his campaign for president. They might not have been so charmed had they known he was a vampire.

  How can one vampire identify another? That's a common question mortals ask. I'd found out the most obvious way: I noticed that he didn't cast a shadow. But some vampires swear by their instincts; they say they can sense the presence of an "other" viscerally, by a tingle along the spine or scalp. I've felt those tingles, but only when someone or something was secretly watching me. I think many mortals feel them, too. Next time you feel such a sensation, look around. Try to see who's watching you. Even if you see no one, a vampire or spirit might be keeping an eye on you.

  Cameron never hid his nature from me-he knew I was other, too, the instant he saw me order Picardo. It's an aperitif popular with vampires, too bitter for mortals.

  But he did feel a need to hide his real identity from the rest of the world. That was one of the things we talked about, the day of our first sail.

  We sailed through tidal marshes, seeing no other beings except the occasional long-legged shorebird, half hidden by tall grasses. I sat across from Cameron in the boat's cockpit, watching the muscles in his arm as it moved the tiller. His skin was the color of clover honey; that meant it must have been darker when he was "vamped. " Vampires grow paler once they're "declared. "

  Cameron-that's how I thought of him, not Neil-looked over at me and smiled. That's what I liked best about him: the enigmatic smile that made me feel as if I mattered to him more than anything, and that I shared his secret, something so important that it could change the world. I wanted him to share my secrets, too.

  He wore a beat-up baseball cap, but his dark curly hair escaped at its sides. I felt the urge to reach over and touch it, feel its silkiness, a
s we rushed through the water.

  "Hard alee," he said. As he brought the boat about, we changed places in the cockpit. The sails rippled and flapped, then went taut again. "Are you wearing enough sunscreen?" he asked.

  "Plenty. " I had coated myself four times.

  "I could never give up sailing. "

  I understood. Seeing land from the water gave it a kind of logic, explained it in ways I couldn't put into words. And when the wind blew strong and steadily, as it did for most of that day, the boat skimmed the waves so lightly that it seemed to fly. But most vampires feared sunburn too much to sail. If my parents had known where I was that day, they would not have approved.

  "Isn't it like most risks we take? Preparation makes all the difference. " I tightened my sun hat's cord under my chin, thinking of how my father had warned me to always hide my nature from mortals, how my mother had supplied me with a fake ID so that I'd fit in at college. They'd taught me that vampires had to be prepared at all times-to move, to disappear, to reinvent themselves in safer places.

  "Preparation works up to a point. " He looked sad for a moment. His free hand made an odd gesture-a kind of wave with a twist. I'd never met anyone else who talked with his hands as much as his voice.

  "Some risks you can't anticipate," he said. "They're like squalls that come out of nowhere. One moment the water is still; the next, you're awash in the vortex of something you never saw coming. "

  His eyes moved from the river ahead to me again, and we exchanged a look, despite the veils of sunglasses. I'll never forget that look, or the way his eyes cut through the dark lenses.

  "Other storms-you're warned they're on the way. You do everything you can, and sometimes you fend them off. But even with warning, they may turn out to be nothing like what you expected. They may not even pose the same kind of risks. "

  I didn't entirely understand him. It seemed an odd conversation for such a beautiful day.

  We dropped anchor off Oysterbed Island and waded ashore with a picnic basket. Cameron led the way to a flat rock near a clump of wax myrtle trees. He didn't hesitate, and I knew he must have been here before. I wondered who'd come with him.

  It might have been Tamryn Gordon-one of his closest aides, who coordinated his campaign strategy. I'd met her at the caucus in Savannah. A tall woman with wavy hair, she wore a red dress that flattered her curves. Her sophistication and style were as dazzling as her face, whose symmetrical features looked as if they'd been carved. But when Cameron spoke, her face flushed and her eyes looked as excited as mine must have been, even though she had likely heard the speech many times before. Yes, Cameron was that good.

  "He's fresh, but not naive," she'd said to me without any introduction. Her voice was low pitched, almost gravelly, and its tone sounded matter-of-fact, as if she were checking items off a list.

  "Wise, but not complacent," I said tentatively, suddenly ashamed of my faded pink sweater.

  Tamryn frowned, as if I'd said something obvious or irrelevant. "He has the potential to be one powerful man. " As she walked away, she turned back for a moment, her eyes cold. "Don't you dare ruin things for him. "

  I'd stared after her, baffled. What had she seen in my face?

  Cameron, in the midst of smoothing a rug across the rock, stopped moving. I realized I'd forgotten to block my thoughts. Blocking is the norm with civilized vampires; it takes concentration to generate neural "white noise," but it's easier to do than tuning out the thoughts of others. My mother says that practicing blocking and not listening is the best etiquette, but that seems old-fashioned, even prissy, to me. Often, listening to thoughts strikes me as justifiable, sometimes necessary.

  "It's okay," Cameron said, his voice gentle. Was he pardoning my jealousy?

  He added, "I've been sailing this river for more than a hundred years. And each time, it's a different river. "

  Something I tended to forget: Cameron had been made a vampire long, long before I was born. "Will you tell me how it happened?"

  He knew what I was asking. "Yes, but not today. Let's not let the past overshadow the present. " He finished smoothing the rug and began to unpack the food.

  Then there would be other days like this. Other chances for me to ask questions, hear his stories. That meant he didn't think me too young or too immature. Or likely to ruin things for him.

  We talked while we ate the smoked salmon sandwiches and strawberries he'd brought. Like me, and like most Sanguinists-the sect of vampires my father belongs to-Cameron practiced pescetarianism: he ate fish, but no other forms of meat, and relied on blood substitutes to keep strong. The other vampire sects-the Colonists and the Nebulists-prefer red meat and fresh blood. Then there are unaffiliated vampires, who do as they please.

  But he was talking about vampires' concerns with nature and the environment, not food. "So you see, Ariella, what unites the sects is far greater than what separates us. " As he spoke, he put his hands together, then apart, seeming to forget that one hand held a sandwich. "We need to keep the planet healthy if we're to survive. The differences among us have to be bridged, even if some can't be entirely overcome. "

  I wanted to agree with him. Identifying with a particular group of vampires seemed antiquated to me and more likely to generate hostilities than resolve conflicts among vampires and humans alike. My mother's friend Dashay didn't see the point of the sects, either; Mae herself felt ambivalent. But I knew how deeply my father's reservations ran about the Nebulists and the Colonists, and to some extent I shared them.

  I thought of the chart my mother had made to teach me about the sects.

  SECT

  ORIGIN

  LOCATION TODAY

  CHARACTERISTICS

  Sanguinists

  England, 12th c.

  worldwide

  Environmentalists; ethicists; mostly celibate; proponents of equal rights for vamps and mortals; subsist on blood-based sera and artificial blood.

  Colonists

  Germany, 19th c.

  Germany, Latin America, China, and United States (outposts in Arizona and Idaho?)

  Use humans for food and sport; favor their extinction through cultivating and harvesting; subsist on human blood.

  Nebulists

  England, 20th c.

  England (Oxon) and N. America (esp. Toronto, Miami, and L. A. )

  Proponents of vampire rights; mostly celibate; believe human extinction is inevitable, but prefer to take victims one at a time; subsist on human blood and artificial blood.

  Colonists seemed easy to despise, even though I'd never met any. They were known to hate humans, to consider them a blood source-nothing more. Nebulists proved harder to judge. My father's oldest friend, a vampire named Malcolm Lynch, was one of them. He claimed to want what was best for all, but clearly considered vampires intellectually and physically superior to mortals.

  Only the Sanguinists favored equal rights for vampires and mortals. And now here came Cameron, telling me that position was "too idealistic. "

  "You can't have equality if one group is essentially invisible," he said. "I saw a poll last week that claimed forty-five percent of registered voters believe in vampires. The question was designed to identify ignorant voters-that is, anyone who believes in vampires must be a fool. "

  "But it's possible some of those voters do believe. Some of them might even be vampires. "

  I knew it was a weak argument. No one kept official records or census numbers on the vampire population in America. But there were abundant rumors among the mortals that vampires existed-rumors that grew and spread sporadically when something gruesome happened that humans couldn't explain. And sometimes rumors led humans to hunt suspected vampires, set fire to them, or try to hammer stakes into their hearts. Horror movies and books reinforced the stereotypes that vampires were all bloodthirsty, soulless fiends who needed to be eradicated so that mortals could live in peace. I tried not to let the stereotypes upset
me, but they made me feel sick sometimes.

  "Yes, it's possible. " Cameron took a sip from his glass of wine, a fine red made with pinot noir grapes and laced with Sangfroid, another blood substitute. "In any case, it's pretty clear that America isn't ready to elect a self-proclaimed vampire as president. "

  I set down my plate and leaned back on my elbows, watching an osprey soar high overhead, a silver fish dangling from one talon. Cameron's points made sense. But how would things ever change unless vampires openly declared themselves?

  There were a few isolated cases of vamps "coming out of the box," as it was called, but they were dismissed by the general public as acting, or at worst, behaving psychotically. Yet if you searched the Internet, in less than a minute you'd find hundreds of thousands of blogs and postings from self-proclaimed vampires. Were they all liars or lunatics?

  Until more real vampires came out of the box, nothing would change. Most would continue to live in secret, moving periodically or having surgery to conceal their agelessness.

  Cameron sensed my disappointment. He held out both hands like parentheses. "Ari, whether the voters know it or not, if I come to be elected, I will be the first vampire president. I'll be able to shape policies to protect our interests and build a future that benefits all of us. "

  I resisted the urge to say, But that sounds too idealistic.

  He heard what I thought. "This isn't about ideals," he said. "It's a matter of survival. Vampire factions are in a cold war now-against each other and, to varying extents, against humans. If things get worse-if they flare into full-fledged war-the consequences will be devastating. Worse than the last time. "

  My father had told me about the Great War. A struggle among the sects for power and influence, it took place in Europe, while mortals were waging what they now call World War I. Millions of vampires were tortured and burned before the sects declared a truce. It took them only six months to learn what mortals decided after more than four years of combat: war was a senseless waste.

  Unlike humans, vampires had avoided warfare since then. But disagreements were reportedly growing among the vampire factions.

  My father strongly disapproved of war, and the Sanguinists favored peaceful resolutions. I wondered whose side Cameron was on.

  He removed his hat, and his dark hair sprang out. He tilted his head and smiled at me. "I'm me, myself, and I. "

  The downwind sail back to the marina was quiet, except for the occasional cackle of a kingfisher as it darted out from the shoreline. I leaned my back against the deck and looked down at the embroidered tunic I wore over my jeans; it had been a birthday gift a few weeks ago and today marked the first time I'd worn it, hoping that our sailing trip would be a date. It wasn't a date so much as a campaign stop. I refocused quickly, blocking the thought.

  But those moments when he looked at me, when his eyes told me I mattered more than anything-those weren't campaign rhetoric. They were real. They simply hadn't been enough.

  When we docked, we stowed the sails and shut the hatch of Dulcibella's tiny cabin. Cameron would spend the night there and sail home the following morning.

  At the edge of the parking lot was my father's ancient black Jaguar, which he'd agreed, after much hesitation, to let me use that summer. Dashay had taught me to drive. Although my style wasn't quite as fast and fluid as hers, it had become more than competent.

  Cameron walked me to my car. I unlocked it, and when I turned around, he kissed me. My mind went blank, my mouth burned.

  When he pulled away, I moved forward. I kissed him back. This time I had a sensation of red light pulsing behind my closed eyelids, of fire moving through me.

  And then we stood apart in the sunlight, both weak, and I wondered, Is it always like this?

  Cameron shook his head. No.

  On the drive back to Tybee, I went over what little I'd heard about vampire love.

  I knew that Sanguinists and Nebulists had traditionally advocated celibacy; they considered sex a distraction at best, a danger at worst. Mae had told me that of course there were exceptions: her relationship with my father had been one of them. She'd said sex between two vampires "might be so powerful as to be all-consuming, even violent. " But her opinions were based on hearsay-she'd been a mortal when I was conceived. And I wasn't about to ask what that experience had been like.

  I remembered a conversation I'd had with Dashay.

  "Some sects think it's wrong to have sex with mortals," she'd said. "And others think sex is wrong, period. "

  "But why?"

  "They don't want vampires to breed. They all have their reasons. Sanguinists think the world is overpopulated, Nebulists think it's nasty to have sex, and the Colonists want the humans to breed because it means more food. But vampires having children? None of them think it's the right thing to do. "

  I'd felt insulted, somehow. I decided I needed to talk to Dashay again. She'd had a passionate relationship for years with another "half-breed" called Bennett.

  So, yes, I was thinking about sex as well as love.

  I turned the car radio dial to the oldies station, rolled down the car windows, and let the breeze and the music blow all my thoughts away. I smelled like coconut oil, I was driving a car down a country road, and I'd just been kissed and kissed back. It was truly the summer of love.

  Then my cell phone rang. I turned off the radio and pulled the car off the road before I answered it.

  "I thought it was time I checked in on you. " The voice belonged to Malcolm Lynch. At one time he'd been my father's closest friend, but he'd never called me before.

  Yet Malcolm had been around our family since I was born-and an influence even when he wasn't there. I'd had a conversation with him in Savannah last spring, the same week I met Cameron for the first time. He'd told me more than I wanted to know about the past: why he'd made my father a vampire and why, years later, he'd done the same for my mother. They were too talented to remain mere mortals, he said.

  "I don't want you checking in on me. " I didn't like Malcolm, didn't trust him. He'd killed my best friend.

  "You need looking after," he said. "More than you know. "

  I looked at the car's dashboard, at the instruments set into burled wood, and in the tachometer screen I imagined I saw Malcolm's face: high forehead, pointed chin, narrow grey eyes, blond hair. The image made me shiver.

  "Everything I do is for your own good. " His voice had a silky quality that made me listen, though part of me wanted to hang up. "Have you thought about our conversation, back in Savannah?"

  I'd tried not to think about it. Malcolm had told me he put Kathleen "out of her misery" when he discovered she was in love with my father. He did it in order to protect me and the rest of the family, because she was about to expose us as vampires. And he'd continued to keep watch over our family since-in order to protect us. Every family should be as lucky as we were, he said.

  "You told me I should work with you," I said. "Become a Nebulist. "

  "Yes, that. " His voice sounded amused. "But I offered you a chance to contribute to our research. Remember?"

  And his words came back to me, as if he'd summoned them: You're half-vampire, one of a statistically rare group whose physiological traits don't match those of either mortal or vampire populations. As such, you could be immensely valuable to the biomedical community.

  Malcolm wanted me to take part in a series of medical tests. He and his research team wanted to figure out what made me me.

  "I remember," I said.

  "So are you ready to help us?"

  His voice was so soothing, so persuasive, that I almost said yes. But something in the dashboard image scared me. "No," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. Then I said it more strongly: "No. "

  "Ari, you disappoint me. " The silky quality was gone now. "Well, I'll take that as 'Not yet. '"

  My hands were clutching the steering wheel, I noticed, though I didn't
remember putting them there.

  "We'll talk again," he said. "Meantime, do be careful. Politics is a rough game. You're too valuable to lose. "

  After he'd hung up, I stared at the phone, wondering how he'd found my number.