Immortal Beloved

  “Get off, you stupid git,” I snarled, regaining my balance. “You win. You can have your little Xanadu all to yourself again. I’m gone.”

  Reyn gave me a narrow-eyed look. I had managed to surprise him again. Bully for me. I ripped my arms out of his grasp and spun away. Solis hadn’t kicked me out of the place—no doubt River would let me stay anyway. But he’d refused to teach me. I mean, who needs that? Five minutes later I had hauled my dead-pony suitcase down the stairs and out to my rental car. I was practically weeping with rage and frustration trying to get the goddamn thing into the boot, but I’d bust my gut before I asked anyone for help.

  At last I slung myself into the driver’s seat, popped it into gear, and peeled out, spewing rocks behind me like the tacky adolescent I was.

  To hell with them.

  CHAPTER 8

  Could not find the effing map. Could not remember how the hell to get back to the highway to Boston. My breakfast now sat like acid-laced lead in my stomach as I pulled too fast into the parking lot in front of MacIntyre’s Drugs on the main street of this town. Literally, on Main Street. There was one main street, and this was it. God, get me out of here.

  To add to my jangled nerves, my feeling of unease, almost panic, for lack of a better word, was seeming to increase the farther I got from River’s Edge. What was going on? What was hanging over me? For the past twenty-four hours, my nervous breakdown had seemed to tamp down a little. It was back in full force now—a howling in my brain that told me to hide. My fingers brushed the back of my neck, made sure my scarf was there.

  A couple of local kids, dressed in goth black and smoking cigarettes, sat with their backs against the building in a wide alley between the drugstore and the next store over, Early’s Feed and Farmware. One of the kids, a girl with green-streaked hair and a silver hoop in her nose, decided to mess with an outsider. She called, “You can’t park there. Handicapped spot.” The other kids giggled.

  I shot her the bird without replying and strode into the store, hearing them laughing again outside. A quick glance around showed cheap sunglasses, a stand of fishing lures, and an ancient chest freezer with LIVE BAIT written on the side. A tall, slender girl stood behind the counter, straightening boxes of old-fashioned alarm clocks on a shelf. A feather duster was stuck in her apron tie. She turned around, already smiling, but faltered when she saw me. “Can I help you?”

  “Do you have any maps?” I said brusquely. “Like for Massachusetts or the Northeast?”

  “We sure do,” she said, coming from behind the counter. From outside we heard more laughter and then the sound of breaking glass. The girl started, glancing outside, then bit her lip, not wanting to take on the local JDs. “Um, right over here.” She led me to a crooked wire stand, its yellow paint chipping off to show rust underneath. “Here’s one for Massachusetts. And here’s one for the Northern Atlantic Region.”

  The girl seemed colorless, her pale ash-brown hair almost the same shade as her skin and eyes.

  “Meriwether!” The loud, harsh voice made the girl jump.

  “I’m here, Dad.”

  “Why aren’t you behind the counter?” the man barked, coming into view. He was red-faced, with thick black hair and long, unhip sideburns. Big hairy arms stuck out from his turned-up sleeves, and he wore actual red suspenders.

  “I’m just showing this… girl the maps,” the girl, Meriwether, said. Clearly she was cautious of her father, if not afraid. Maybe afraid.

  Her father looked me up and down, then seemed to dismiss me as the same kind of lowlifes who were loitering outside. “What do you want?”

  Staring him down, I held up the two maps Meriwether had given me, then put them on the counter. Meriwether scurried around to the other side and started ringing them up, punching in the prices by hand. My gaze fell on some high-octane energy drinks, and I added a four-pack of those. And then some candy bars.

  “Okay,” Meriwether said breathlessly. “Is that everything you need?”

  “Yes. Thanks very much for your help,” I said deliberately. “You were very helpful.”

  “Oh,” said Meriwether, blinking. “Thank you.”

  Her father snorted and headed toward the back of the store.

  Blushing, Meriwether gave me my change and banged the register drawer shut. “Thank you, come again,” she said by rote. I thought, No way in hell am I coming here again.

  Outside, the morning seemed too bright and still chilly, a brisk wind whipping right through my black leather coat.

  “Better move your car,” the goth girl called again, and I shot her a lethal glare that seemed to take her aback. She laughed nervously and turned to her friends.

  “Get a life,” I snarled, slamming into my car and throwing it into gear. She looked at me in surprise, then shook her head angrily, shrugging.

  It occurred to me that I should take my own advice. But I never do.

  Every big city has immortal hangouts. It seems to go through trends—for decades, many of us will prefer Milan, and it will be full of clubs and immortals with apartments or houses—always lots to do, lots of people to hang out with. Then Milan will slowly fall out of favor—maybe the political climate will change, or the economy, or a war will break out, and another city, like San Francisco, will become popular. But all major cities, and of course many smaller cities, keep a fairly consistent, if smallish, population of immortals.

  Some people fall in love with a city and stay there for centuries. They usually hate the inevitable modernization and talk fondly of the old days, before there were streetlights, etc. Forgetting the fact that the roads were horrible before streetlights, and people got robbed all the time, and it took forever to get from one place to another. I mean, hello? Indoor plumbing? A huge plus.

  But most of us have favorite places, favorite time periods. I don’t. Right now the hip happening place was London. But I knew I could find old friends in Boston, knew where to go to look for them. It was stupid, this feeling of dread, like I had to hunker down somewhere with my head low. It was stupid and irrational and I was going to ignore it. In Boston I would chill with people I knew and hang out while I decided where to go next. I cranked the rental’s radio up loud and flew down Route 9 until it hooked up with I-90.

  It felt like about twenty years ago that I had been slugging down gin at the Dungeon. How could I have been so—unaware—just, what, four days ago? It was another lifetime, another Nastasya. Maybe it was time to change my name again, reinvent myself, move to another city. I’d been Nastasya for about thirty years. I was past due for becoming someone else. Someone who didn’t hang out with Incy and Boz.

  That’s what you’d been trying to do at River’s Edge.

  I’m an old hand at ignoring the voice inside my head, so I simply pushed back farther on my barstool and motioned to the bartender for another screwdriver. She’d asked for ID, of course—they almost always did. I knew better than to exaggerate too much—my American license showed me to be just a few months past twenty-one. It had been better when the drinking age was eighteen—closer to how I look. But I could pass as a young-looking twenty-one.

  I’d gotten to Boston in the late morning, checked into a hotel, and crashed until about ten PM—time to go out. I’d decided to go to Clancy’s, finding it right where it had been about ten years earlier. They’d updated it, and I didn’t like it. I remembered it as dark, grungy, with repulsive olive green carpet surrounding a twelve-by-twelve wood-tile dance floor. A tiny closet had held a cheesy DJ who would play your request if you sat on his lap. It had been homey, cozy, and packed with immortals.

  Now it had better lighting, faux-distressed wooden floors, and a real DJ stand, raised above the dance floor, with some pink-pigtailed kid spinning vinyl records. The clientele seemed to be about half and half, human/immortal. I recognized some faces, but no one was running up to me and giving me air kisses.

  Of course, you know, immortals are human. We’re not aliens, put here to infiltrate the earth and ta
ke over everything. We’re completely human, but we just don’t… die so much. When I was little, my father had told us fairy tales about a princess who was so good, she was given the gift of immortality. I’ve wondered if he had really believed that. There are different myths and theories in different immortal cultures, but when you analyze them, it always comes down to, boom! It just happened! It was a gift or a curse or they drank magick water or ate a magick plant. I thought maybe it had been a weird spontaneous genetic mutation. Like cancer or color blindness.

  Want to hear something funny? I didn’t even realize I was immortal until I was in my twenties. I knew I still looked really young, but I remembered my mother also looking very young. Anyway, I was a servant in a house in Reykjavik. The mistress of the house, Helgar, recognized me as immortal and then slowly had to convince me.

  She became my best friend and taught me more than I had learned in the twenty-one years up till then.

  One day we’d been sitting in the front parlor, the one that overlooked the cobbled street. It was winter but not snowing, and the fire in the big carved fireplace was crackling and leaping. Helgar sat in her chair doing the needlework of a cultured lady, embroidering flowers and rabbits onto what would become the cover of a kneeler in the family’s church. I’d learned how to do that as a child, when I’d lived in my family’s hrókur. Like a castle, but medieval, rough—not fancy, like Versailles or something.

  But now I was a servant, so I sat on a wooden stool, carding wool.

  “I don’t know when we started,” Helgar said. She had a strong, deep voice and spoke well. “My own mother was born in 1380 in England. She still calls it Aengland. She said she knew people in her village who’d been born around the year of our Lord 1000.”

  My eyes had widened.

  “Anyway, Sunna, it stands to reason that there must have always been immortals,” Helgar had gone on. She came to the end of her thread and bit it off, then knotted a new strand. “After all, there’s always been evil.” She sounded complacent. “I would guess the first immortals, the aefrelyffen, came out of Eden itself, right after Eve and Adam. First came the light, then the dark.”

  “I don’t understand,” I’d said. “What do you mean, evil?”

  “Terävä,” Helgar had said. “Didn’t your parents tell you?”

  “My parents died when I was small.” I kept my head down, feeling familiar pain.

  Helgar looked nonplussed, her embroidery forgotten in her lap. “Died! Died? Both of them?”

  I bit my lip, feeling a new shame, for having immortal parents who had managed to die.

  Helgar was astonished, no doubt running through what it would have taken to kill my parents. Clearly they had both been immortal, since I was. But yes, they were dead. I was quite sure. Quite, quite sure.

  “But what about—Terävä?” I asked.

  After several moments, Helgar blinked and said, “Terävä. The dark. Immortals are born in darkness and live in darkness. We can’t help it. There’s evil within us.” Seeming shaken, she picked up her embroidery again, not looking at me. Knowing about my parents had changed me in her eyes, made me something different. I pretended not to notice.

  “What do you mean, evil?” I asked again.

  “Our magick,” Helgar told me, but seemed unwilling to say more.

  “Nastasya!”

  I swallowed and blinked a couple times, seeing that I was still in Clancy’s, though four hundred years later.

  Someone leaned in and kissed my cheeks, left, then right, then left again. She pulled back, and I saw sleek brown hair, brown eyes, a wide smile.

  “Alanna,” I said, trying to inject enthusiasm. I flipped my scarf over my shoulder and smiled.

  “Darling! Actually, it’s Beatrice now.” She slid onto the next stool and clinked her glass against mine. Alanna/Beatrice was relatively young, barely ninety, and filled with the energy and enthusiasm of youth. Her hair was chic, her pearls real, and she wore a leopard-print cashmere sweater and skinny black pants. She looked fabulous.

  “Nasty—still Nastasya?” I nodded. “Nasty, I haven’t seen you in ages.” She smiled her thanks to the bartender and pushed a tip over to her. “Now, you,” she said to me. “You look—” She faltered and took another good look at me.

  I waited.

  “Are you okay?” she asked finally.

  “I’m fine.” I took several big gulps of my drink, citrusy and fresh, overlaid with the cold medicinal vodka aftertaste. “What have you been up to?”

  “Appreciating the longevity of stocks,” she said, and giggled, obviously deciding to let my appearance go. “I spent last summer in Venice, and it was so lovely, except for the tourists. I think I’ll go back next summer.”

  I just didn’t have the energy to ask her questions about it, get recommendations about restaurants, hotels. I liked Al—Beatrice. She was always cheerful, always happy about something. And she looooved being immortal. She thought it was the best thing since the invention of air-conditioning. I’d never minded hanging out with her.

  “You know, it’s funny I’ve run into you,” Beatrice said, signaling the bartender. “People have been asking about you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, feeling a sudden pang of alarm.

  “A couple of people have asked me if I’d seen you, and I said no. Oh, could I please have a sidecar?” Beatrice asked the bartender, then turned back to me. “How funny! What a coincidence. It was Incy, of course. I think Incy and Boz have been calling around, looking for you, asking everyone. What’s going on? Where are they? You guys are always together.”

  My mind raced. “Oh, it’s stupid,” I said with an embarrassed smile. “We were arguing one night, about how everyone knows everyone, and Incy said that no one in our group could really disappear, you know?”

  Bea sipped her drink and nodded, looking intrigued.

  I let out a theatrical sigh. “So I bet him that I could disappear, successfully, so he couldn’t find me. It’s stupid, I know. I have to stay lost for at least two months.”

  Beatrice laughed. “That sounds like Incy. But two months! What did you bet?”

  I grimaced. “If he finds me, I have to get his name tattooed on my ass.”

  Beatrice roared with laughter, throwing her head back. She smacked the bar lightly with one hand. She positively whooped. Yep, Incy was a scamp, all right.

  “Oh, my God!” She wheezed, trying to catch her breath. “And does he have to get yours tattooed on his if he can’t find you?”

  I nodded. “Inside a heart. You know how long tattoos last on us.”

  Beatrice laughed again. “Oh, God, too funny! You guys are crazy! So I guess you want me to keep seeing you a secret?”

  I tried to make puppy eyes at her and probably ended up with more of a rabid squirrel vibe. “Unless you want his name on my ass on your conscience.”

  Beatrice whooped again. “Oh, God, no! I can’t have that! I won’t say a word!”

  I grinned at her gratefully but inside felt almost panicky. Incy had been calling around, asking people about me, already. And he wasn’t even close to Bea—she was probably way down on his list. I really would have to get lost, and good.

  “So will you stay in Boston long?” Bea asked. “You’ll probably run into other people if you do. I think I’ll stay through Christmas. It’s so pretty in the winter, with the snow.”

  “No,” I replied. “I’m just stopping here tonight.” I forced another grin. “I’m going to join a mountain-trekking tour in Peru. Like to see him find me there!”

  Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.… I asked the bartender for another drink, feeling a pleasant warmth in my stomach, a gentle relaxation in all my muscles.

  “Perfect!” Bea said delightedly, and mimed zipping her mouth shut.

  “Bea!” Someone called her name from across the bar, and Beatrice swiveled excitedly.

  “Kim!” Kiss kiss kiss.

  Kim was cool and sophisticated, a beautiful blonde who had
been a top model in the seventies, under a different name, of course. It had killed her to finally have to pretend to age and disappear from the scene. But it was either that or endure all the plastic surgery rumors, which had become increasingly catty and resentful.

  “Hey, Kim,” I said, smiling.

  “Nastasya,” she said. Kiss, kiss. “I barely recognized you. When did you cut your hair?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

  “And the black.” She looked at me with a critical eye. “So… striking with your skin tone.”

  “Yeah. I’m really more of a spring,” I said flippantly.

  “No,” Kim said, shaking her head. “No, you’re not. You’re a winter, with that pale skin, those oddly dark eyes. Have I ever seen your real hair color?” Kim loved this stuff, hair and clothes and makeup.

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I said again. “Anyway. What’s new with you?”

  Bea quickly filled Kim in on my crazy bet with Incy, and Kim smiled and agreed to play along. It had been a brilliant idea, I must say. Then she launched into what she’d been doing lately, which, as it turned out, was quite a bit.

  This was what I had wanted, right? Lights and noise and drinks and people all around to talk to. Of course, I hadn’t imagined the long tendrils of Incy’s influence closing in on me here. But at least this was better than that chilly, empty house in West Lowing. And yet the memory of it, the smell of the kitchen, the laughter, the crunch of fall leaves underfoot, the scent of Reyn’s flannel shirt as he stood next to me—it pierced me sharply, and I inhaled.

  “—so I thought I’d check Clancy’s out,” Kim finished.