The Season of Risks

Chapter Two

 

  I drove back to the cottage as fast as I dared.

  After I parked the car, a cold prickling sensation crawled along my hairline, from front to back. I looked around. The empty lane gaped back at me: a tricycle in the driveway of the opposite cottage, an outdoor shower dripping by the garage, a bank of lavender blue hydrangea bushes rustling in the sea breeze. I asked myself: What's wrong with this picture?

  But I found nothing unexpected. Slowly I left the car. If someone was watching, that someone must have been hidden or invisible.

  I stood without moving, only watching, thinking, Whoever you are, leave my family and me alone.

  When the tingling subsided, I went inside.

  They didn't ask where I'd been.

  My mother sat at the kitchen table, chopping red peppers. She wore a faded flowered apron over her jeans and T-shirt, and her braided auburn hair trailed down her back. Her face-eyes downcast, mouth relaxed-glowed. But the sight of my father surprised me. He stood at the stove, making crepes, his posture and movements as elegant as if he'd been conducting an orchestra, wearing a tuxedo instead of wrinkled linen.

  I'd never seen him cook before. When we lived alone in Saratoga Springs, in upstate New York, he'd sit with me as I ate meals and later have his own privately. He never cared much about food-to him it was only fuel-and seemed to find my interest in it faintly amusing, if not repugnant.

  But he took a different tonic these days, a new blend of blood supplements designed to manage his instinctual drives rather than suppress them as his old one had. He seemed a different person in many ways, more at ease with himself and others.

  He half turned when I came in and smiled at me. That alone showed the change. In the old days his smile came rarely. Even now it remained shy, an expression of vulnerability as much as happiness, nothing like Cameron's confident grin. But I loved my father all the more for his shyness.

  "Well, Ariella has returned to the fold," Mae said. She pressed her lips together. I knew she wanted to ask where I'd spent the afternoon.

  "Beautiful day. " I sat next to her. They must have made a pact not to interfere with my freedom. It made sense. In less than a month, I'd be going back to school, and they'd leave for Ireland. They'd decided it was time for them to relocate, reinvent themselves. It was a prudent thing for vampires to do.

  I took a deep breath. "I had a sense outside that someone was watching me. "

  In one fluid movement my father removed the pan from the stove and disappeared out the door.

  Mae went to the stove and turned off the burner. "You didn't see anyone?"

  "No," I said. "But my scalp prickled. "

  Only when my father returned, and shrugged, did the evening resume. He went back to cooking. She continued slicing vegetables. Sadly, we were accustomed to being watched.

  "Beautiful day," I repeated, determined to keep it so.

  "Yes, beautiful. " My mother put down her knife, stretched out her hand, and touched my hair. "Oh, Ari, you should come with us. " Mae could never restrain herself for long. "Ireland is too far away from you. "

  My father had bought property in southwestern Ireland-an old castle that would serve as home and also house a new laboratory for his biomedical research. My father and I had agreed that I should finish another year of college, at least. And we had made plans for me to join them at the end of spring semester.

  "It's far," I said, "but we can write. You can call me. "

  "I won't call unless there's an emergency. " She picked up the knife and slowly began to cut pepper strips. "It would hurt too much to hear your voice and not have you near. " She had tears in her eyes, and suddenly I felt miserable, too.

  "Mae, I'll come with you if you need me to. " I put my hand on her shoulder.

  My father kept cooking and said nothing, but the set of his broad shoulders said, We've gone through all of this before. We made a decision.

  She noticed. "No, we'll be fine," she said quickly. "I'll write to you, and you'll write back, won't you?" Her blue eyes glistened, blue as lapis lazuli, and I couldn't help but think: Cameron's were two shades darker. His eyes made me think of star sapphires.

  I quickly blocked the thought. I wasn't ready to tell them about Cameron.

  "Of course I'll write," I said. I patted her shoulder, wondering how long it would be before I went sailing again.

  Dinner that night was memorable. Mae made three different fillings for the crepes: creamed oysters, roasted red peppers with spinach, and sauteed tofu with garlic, tomatoes, and basil. The crepes themselves were pale and velvety inside, golden and crisp outside. The fillings complemented the crepes, and I complimented the cooks. My father seemed pleased.

  Then I had to spoil it all by talking about Malcolm.

  His words had been on my mind all through dinner. "He's doing research on half-vampires," I said. "He wants to test me. "

  My father said one word: "Never. "

  My mother, standing at the sink washing dishes, dropped a knife.

  "Malcolm says his work is designed to help vampires and humans live longer, better lives and to protect the future of the planet. "

  "He's a Nebulist, Ari. " My father picked up a towel to dry the dishes. "He bends the facts to fit his schemes. Surely you can see that. "

  Part of me did. Part of me felt skeptical of Malcolm and all he'd said. But another part wanted to believe that he had been acting, continued to act, to protect us. Otherwise, Kathleen had died for no reason.

  "Don't we all tend to make facts fit our notions of how things should be?" My question hung in the air between the table and the sink, the words transparent pale yellow, quivering.

  But my father wasn't in the mood for debate. "Malcolm has no moral compass and no respect for anyone else's. It's that simple. " He dried a plate with a flourish, making it spin on its way to the drying rack.

  I wanted to explain. "It isn't that simple. As Malcolm said . . . " But I saw from his face that he was close to anger. I kept the rest to myself.

  For my father, it was that simple: he was a Sanguinist, Malcolm a Nebulist. I admired him, in a way, for holding on to his principles, but that night I found his stubbornness too old-fashioned, even archaic. Wasn't it time for negotiation?

  But I kept quiet. I watched him drying dishes. I'd never disagreed with him so strongly, and he'd never been angry with me before. The air felt thick with unexpressed emotions, so dense they made my lungs ache.

  The tensions of that night lingered in the cottage for days afterward. Our meals together were strained, with my mother doing most of the talking. My father and I had little appetite.

  I spent most of the time alone on the beach, or in my room, practicing being invisible.

  Turning invisible requires concentration-and special clothing, unless you walk around naked. I was lucky to possess both the clothes and the concentration. Thanks to our ability to absorb the heat of our bodies' electrons, vampires can, when we choose, deflect light.

  My parents considered invisibility a survival technique to be used sparingly, to evade predators; vampires who used it otherwise, they thought, were vulgar tricksters who risked exposing themselves as being others. I disagreed. It didn't take much effort to choose a discreet spot to make the change, and in my experience, most mortals weren't particularly observant.

  To me, being able to pass through crowds undetected was the ultimate freedom. Of all our special traits, invisibility was my favorite.

  So I practiced, even though I didn't dare wear my frayed metamaterials suit outside of my room. I didn't want to risk any more parental disapproval.

  Instead of the uniter, I had begun to feel more and more like the outsider in the family.

  Thankfully, Cameron called and asked me to go sailing the following weekend.

  Saturday was breezy and humid, with wispy cirrus clouds scudding across a slate blue sky. Cameron was alrea
dy on board Dulcibella, pulling a sail out of a canvas bag, when I arrived at the marina. He wore cutoff denim shorts, and I paused a moment to admire his legs: lean and muscular, the color of tupelo honey.

  He noticed and gave me a quizzical look.

  "I've never seen your legs before," I said.

  He dropped the sail, leapt onto the dock, and hugged me. "I've missed you," he said, his voice muffled by my hair.

  I leaned back and traced the outline of his lips with my index finger.

  I have no memory of boarding the boat, or casting off, or hoisting the sails. But we must have done those things, because soon we were free of the land, moving down the Intracoastal Waterway, under sail. This time I took the tiller. For the first stretch, we had to tack-to periodically change direction. I could feel Cameron watching me approvingly; it was as if the boat told me when it was time to turn its bow into the wind.

  The wind was strong and steady, making the rigging jingle and clang. We had to raise our voices against it.

  "The weather is unsettled," he said. "We may have to cut our sail short. "

  But after a while the wind lessened. The boat moved into open water, on what Cameron said was called a broad reach. We were able to talk more easily now.

  He asked about my upbringing; he said he'd heard of my father, whose reputation in vampire scientific circles was international. I told him about my homeschooling years in upstate New York and about finding my mother. I didn't say much about Hillhouse and said nothing about the murders of my two closest friends. It wasn't the right time.

  Cameron told me about some of the many lives he'd led: stonemason, sailor, horse trainer, student, teacher, lawyer, politician, singer-

  "You sing?"

  Then he sang to me, in a language I couldn't identify, a song whose melody took root in my brain and played in my head for months afterward.

  When the song ended, I asked, "What do the words mean?"

  "It's a story song. One of the ways vampires passed on their folklore. " He said the lyrics were based on an old vampire tale called "Winter Woman. " "Two soldiers lose their way in a snowstorm and take refuge in an abandoned barn," he said. "While they're sleeping, a woman enters the barn. She's draining the blood from one when the other man wakens, terrified. She says she'll let him live, but only if he never tells a soul that he saw her. "

  He recited the lyrics in English: "'If you ever tell anyone, even your own mother, what you saw tonight, I'll know. I'll know, and I'll come and kill you. '"

  I saw the words, icy blue, quiver in the air above us, struggling against the wind.

  "Years later, he marries a beautiful woman. They have two children and live together happily. One cold night, the memory of the snowstorm returns to him, and he tells his wife the story of how his life was saved. In an instant, she transforms herself into the Winter Woman, and she kills him. Then she disappears in a cloud of ice. "

  It took me a second or two to react. "She kills him?"

  He smiled. "No happy endings in vampire tales. " Then he looked away. "Looks like we're going to get some weather, after all. "

  Cumulonimbus clouds with dark gray bottoms banked the sky ahead of us. Cameron took the tiller and brought the boat about. Sprays of salt water hit us, breaking the spell of the vampire tale. Then we were racing toward land.

  Cameron pulled life jackets from the cockpit locker and helped me fasten mine before putting on his.

  "I think we can beat the storm. " He stretched out his free hand and smoothed back my hair. "Are you scared?"

  I looked up at the taut sails and the swirling sky, then back into his eyes, wondering what emotion gave them that gleam. "Maybe a little," I said.

  Dulcibella ran with the wind toward the shoreline, barely touching the whitecaps. The air sparked with ozone, and lightning streaked the sky behind us.

  "Go, Dulcie!" Cameron said. "That's the way. "

  He dropped the jib sail as we neared the marina. The boat rounded in the wind and came alongside the dock's windward corner. I sprang onto it with a coil of rope and tied the line onto a cleat, while Cameron wrapped another rope around a post.

  "You're a natural sailor," he said, but I barely heard him. Thunder rumbled above us, lightning cracked the sky, and a torrent of warm rain pelted down. We leapt back onto the boat and I nearly fell down the ladder into its cabin. Cameron came behind me, pulling shut the sliding hatch. We stood in the cabin's dim light and laughed. The rain had flattened his curly hair, and his T-shirt clung to his skin. We shed the life jackets and our sandals, and Cameron handed me a towel.

  Rain struck the cabin roof, noisy as hail, and the boat rocked from side to side. Wrapped in the towel, I sat cross-legged on a long cushioned seat, leaning against the bulkhead. Cameron pulled off the lid of an old coffee can and took out matches. He lifted a glass chimney and lit the wick of a tarnished brass lamp that hung above a small table. When he was done, the lamp moved with the motion of the boat, and the smell of kerosene filled the cabin.

  Then he came to sit next to me. He took my feet, one by one, and used a towel to gently rub them dry. I pulled my towel free to blot his hair and wiped its edge along his cheek.

  His head bent as he dried my legs-first the right, then the left. The tingling sensation spread through me, a thousand times more intense than the sensation I had whenever someone was watching me. I shivered.

  The storm made the boat tilt and right itself, over and over again, creaking as it swayed. Our bodies were in charge now, moving together in time with the boat. Our hands and legs entwined, and my fingertips felt swollen. I looked at his throat, had an urge to sink my teeth deep into it. I closed my eyes.

  I felt him pull away-first his mind, then his body. I opened my eyes. His mouth was open slightly, and I saw his fangs.

  "Why not?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. My hand pressed the back of his neck, tried to bring him back to me.

  He resisted. Shaking my hand off, he sat up on the edge of the berth.

  Gently, he pulled me toward him. I pressed my ear against his chest, floating in the rhythm of his heart.

  My parents were out when I returned to the cottage. My mouth still felt swollen, and my hair smelled of kerosene. I made myself take a long shower, though I really didn't want to lose the smell. Forever afterward, the sharp odor would remind me of passion, of regret.

  It's possible that some trace lingered, because that night at dinner, my parents looked at me as if I were a stranger. Even my mother didn't seem to know what to say to me. I ate quickly and retreated to the safety of my room.

  When Dashay returned from Florida a week later, bringing some papers for my mother to sign, I told her I wanted to come along on her trip back to Blue Heaven. I needed a change, I said.

  Cameron was back on the road, campaigning. I told myself his absence played no part in my decision. But it occupied my thoughts so much that not until we were halfway to Florida, Dashay driving my mother's old pickup truck, did I notice how quiet she'd been.

  I watched her profile: small nose, defiant chin, cloud of cinnamon-colored hair. How lovely she looked, and how sad.

  "Tell me," I said, and her hand moved to switch on the radio. I switched it off. "No, tell me. "

  "You don't want to hear it. "

  "You know I do. "

  She took a deep breath. "It's like this. That man's come back to town. "

  She had to mean Bennett. He'd been part of our family once. When we'd first met, I'd liked him immediately, and I found it hard to stop liking him even when he left her for another woman. Left us.

  "Did he explain why he left?"

  She said, "Hah. He told me how that woman put a spell on him, how there was something in the water-"

  "But there was something in the water. "

  Last spring, opiates had been found in water bottled in Miami and distributed across the country. I'd tasted it myself, felt its ability to tr
anquilize and distort memory.

  "I don't care about the water. It's no excuse for the man to take up with a witch like that one. " Her right hand pounded the steering wheel, and the truck swerved. Good thing we were taking back roads instead of the interstate.

  "You still love him?" I didn't even need to ask. "You do. You love him. " I remembered the night I'd seen Dashay and Bennett dancing in the garden at Blue Heaven-I'd thought they epitomized romance.

  She shook her head, but her mouth gave her away.

  "Then you have to forgive him. " I remembered something my father said once, when we were discussing the life of Edgar Allan Poe: nothing matters as much as forgiveness.

  "He doesn't ask me to forgive him. " Dashay stopped the truck at a traffic light, and from her voice I sensed that she'd been crying recently. "He's too confused to know what he wants. "

  The light changed. We moved on. Dashay said, "Now it's his turn to suffer. "

  I didn't say anything. I didn't know enough yet to reply. After another few miles, she said, "Funny how folks always like to talk about love, when what they feel is something else entirely. "

  In a way I envied her, for knowing so much more than I did. And suddenly I wished with all my heart that I was older, more experienced, worthy of being her confidante, capable of saying something that might comfort her. Instead I sat in the passenger seat, a silent spectator.

  Homosassa Springs, Florida, is a place even the locals like to keep under wraps. It's home to a manatee refuge, the ruins of a sugar mill, a few hotels, restaurants, and bars-and a large community of vampires, attracted by the mineral-rich natural springs and by the anonymity.

  My mother chose to settle there because Homosassa Springs has more Ss in its name than any other town in Florida. For her, the letter S had always been lucky. (If she hadn't left when I was born, my name might have been Simone or Sally instead of Ariella, my father's choice. )

  Driving into Homosassa felt like coming home. Down that street was Bennett's old house. I wondered if the new owners had kept the wooden carvings of lizards and birds he'd made that had been attached to the backyard fence. I didn't dare ask Dashay where he was living now.

  When we pulled up to Blue Heaven, I jumped out of the truck's cab to open the gate. Grace the cat came bounding down the path from the house. I knelt to pick her up and buried my face in her fur, which always smelled of the dry grass and ferns she napped among.

  Dashay sat still behind the wheel, watching us. I sensed that she might be crying again, so I kept my face close to Grace, asking her how her summer had been going, how many mice she'd chased. Finally I carried her with me back to the truck and looked in, long enough to see that Dashay's face was dry, her eyes like stones.

  "Say hello to Grace. " I set her on the seat and closed the door. Dashay drove the truck through the gate, and I locked it behind us. When I climbed back into the truck, Dashay was talking to Grace in a low murmur, and Grace made the noises, deep in her throat, that sounded as if she were asking questions. Dashay and my mother could communicate with animals in ways I could only try to imitate.

  The house loomed ahead, a ramshackle structure built of limestone and wood and plaster, built and rebuilt after successive storms. I paused long enough to drop my overnight bag near the door and raced down to the stables. I talked to the horses, visited the beehives, and noticed that Dashay had added new plants to her Garden of Gloom, which had been leveled by the last hurricane.

  Inspired by Victorian mourning gardens, she had planted an array of dark, night-blooming flowers and black bamboo surrounding a fountain shaped like a woman whose eyes trickled black tears. Dashay had been known to indulge her sense of the melancholy from time to time, and I was willing to bet that lately she'd spent more time than usual sitting on the iron bench next to the fountain, meditating on all she'd lost.

  Does her brooding give her any comfort? I knew I'd never ask her. I didn't want to think about loss and mourning, much less talk about it, but for a moment, as I gazed at the garden, I thought about Kathleen. Would I ever have a best friend again?

  Two Homosassa girls had hung out with me for a while. One of them vanished. The other, named Autumn, had been murdered last spring after she came to visit me at school. Her body was found floating in a swamp.

  I sank onto the grass near the fountain, and I let myself grieve for all of my lost friends.

  When I walked back toward the house, Dashay was sitting outside, as if she'd been waiting for me. She stood up as I approached.

  Then something black swooped out of the sky at her, so fast that neither of us had time to react. I caught a glimpse of black feathers and one beady black eye. By the time I could move and ran toward her, it had soared upward and disappeared.

  "Are you okay? Did it hurt you?"

  She hadn't budged. "Brushed my hair with its wings. " She didn't even look scared. "That's my old friend the grackle. He comes to tell me change is headed our way. "

  I knew about harbingers, creatures that appear to warn us that something important is about to happen. I had one of my own: a blind man. Like Dashay's black bird, he showed up when a major change loomed ahead for me.

  "Good change?"

  She stretched out both arms, palms up. "Who knows?" she said.

  The house welcomed us with its familiar scents: sandalwood, cinnamon, wild rose, and white geranium. Mae used essential oils to clean and polish.

  We were finishing supper when Dashay's cell phone rang; she'd changed the ringtone from "Welcome to Jamrock" to some funereal melody that I didn't like at all. She looked at the screen and said, "I don't think I need to talk to that man. "

  "Of course you do. " I would have snatched the phone away to answer it myself if she hadn't changed her mind.

  "Yes?" she said in a weary tone.

  I left the room to let her talk. My bedroom was a comforting sight; the periwinkle blue walls, the white bed, and the mother-of-pearl lampshade all had escaped the hurricane, although the roof of the house had had to be replaced. I felt a pang that I'd spent so little time here this summer, and that soon I'd be leaving yet again.

  Dashay came in. "Look, I'm going to meet that man, talk to him some. I won't be long. "

  "Bennett?"

  She nodded.

  "Why don't you say his name?"

  "You need to stop asking me questions," she said. She didn't sound angry, merely distracted and eager to be on her way.

  I wasn't tired yet, and the house felt warm, so after she left I went outside to cool off. On the house's north side my mother had planted a circular moon garden: angel's trumpets, moonflowers, flowering tobacco, and gardenias-all white flowers that bloomed only at night. That garden, too, had been ripped apart by the hurricane last year and, since then, lovingly restored. A breeze from the gulf nearly always ran through it, making the leaves and blossoms rustle and bob.

  I sat on one of four teak benches at the garden's center; brick pathways extended from it like radii, separating the flower beds. When the moon shone, the petals reflected its light; when the moon was full, they took on a near-phosphorescent glow. Mosquitoes hovered, so close that their wings sometimes brushed my skin, but not one bit me-they don't like the taste of vampires.

  Tonight a quarter moon cast only enough light to make the flowers faintly luminous. Beyond the garden, pines and mangroves shaded the path that led to the river. I sat listening to the drone of mosquitoes and groans of tree frogs, inhaling the sweet ivory scent of gardenias, wondering where Neil Cameron might be this fine evening, whose company he might be keeping.

  And then I saw the cat-not Grace, and not the scrawny tom who regularly stopped by, knowing Mae would feed him. This was a different cat, strange and yet familiar. Its body had a silver glow.

  I rubbed my eyes. The cat still sat calmly, front paws neatly aligned on the brick pathway. Then I recognized it: Marmalade. She'd been a neighbor's cat back in Saratoga Spring
s. She'd played with me in our rose garden, chased squirrels and butterflies, done all of the thousands of tricks that make cats cats. Then, one winter night, she'd been killed by Malcolm. He'd admitted it much later-said he'd done it because the cat annoyed him, got in his way while he kept invisible watch over me.

  I have to admit, at times the death of an animal troubles me more than the death of a human, who generally has better options for self-defense against predators. Marmalade had been powerless in Malcolm's hands; he'd admitted he had strangled her and tossed her body against our back steps. At the time, his voice managed to make his actions sound logical, necessary.

  In a split second the enormity of Marmalade's death, which I'd pushed out of my mind soon after it happened, came back to me in full force. How could Malcolm-how could anyone-do such a thing? My father had been right. Malcolm should never be trusted, never.

  And as I sat there brooding, the silvery cat glided up the path toward me. I watched it come, knowing it was dead, wanting its company yet fearing it. Silently it came, paw by paw along the bricks, and with each step my heart beat faster yet grew cold with dread. I heard my voice say, "Marmalade. "

  The cat stopped moving.

  "Oh, Marmalade, I'm sorry. "

  The cat seemed to stare at me with empty sockets where yellow eyes once had gazed back with affection, even love.

  Then she turned and, just as slowly, walked away. As she went, she began to fade. Her silvery presence dissolved into ground fog, what Floridians call "smoke. "

  I can't say how long I sat there or how much I wept. Sometime later Dashay's voice called my name, again and again, and brought me back.

  I wondered later if I should have tried to follow Marmalade. But then I thought, Where could she have led me? Only to the land of the dead.